Chapter 53: Upheaval in Tianhe City

Click!

Following the flash of the blade, a continuous sound of shattering echoed through the air.

Shen Xing watched in astonishment as the space before her eyes began to ripple, fracturing like a mirror into a web of spider-web-like cracks.

"Incredible!"

The fissures rapidly connected, and soon, a pitch-black exit appeared before the three of them.

Bai Ying let out a breath; it seemed that executing that single slash had not been easy for her either.

"My job is precisely to handle this, otherwise Commander Ouyang wouldn't have sent me. Let's go, this place is going to become unstable very soon."

Bai Ying waved at the two of them. Shen Xing stepped forward, looking at the dark exit ahead with a trace of hesitation.

"Rest assured, there won't be any accidents. It looks a bit terrifying, but our world is right on the other side. Trust me."

Shen Xing nodded, took a deep breath, and resolutely stepped through.

"Your turn."

Once Shen Xing was gone, Bai Ying visibly relaxed. With the mission having progressed to this point, it was essentially one hundred percent complete.

Thus, when she urged Xu Minghui, her tone was quite casual.

"Thank you!"

Xu Minghui did not drag her feet either, quickly coming to the side of the exit. Before leaving, however, she asked a question:

"You mentioned earlier that Shen Xing is Commander Ouyang's favored companion. Is that true?"

Bai Ying was momentarily taken aback. She glanced Xu Minghui up and down, then smiled meaningfully.

"I'm not entirely certain, but it's bound to be true. Out of consideration for our shared sisterhood as women, I advise you to put the brakes on any ideas you might have as early as possible."

Xu Minghui twitched the corners of her mouth stiffly, took a single step forward, and vanished.

At that moment, whether because the spatial fluctuations had been detected by the goblins or not, a horde of them came charging madly from the distance, seemingly eager to seize the opportunity to break directly out of this world.

In response, just as she was leaving, Bai Ying slashed out with another brilliant flash of blade light.

In an instant, the charging goblin army was entirely wiped out, their bodies severed by cuts of flawless precision.

***

When Bai Ying emerged, she found that the two of them were still waiting for her in the same spot.

"My mission is finished. You two can decide for yourselves where to go now."

Bai Ying waved casually at them and turned to leave.

Just after taking two steps, however, she seemed to remember something and walked back.

"Right, Shen Xing, you'd better come with me. The situation outside is somewhat complicated right now, and since you're injured, you might not be able to handle it. I'll take you directly to the commander to avoid any unexpected trouble on the way.

As for this lovely lady, can you get home by yourself? My time is limited, and I'm afraid I won't be able to come back to escort you specially."

Xu Minghui shook her head, her voice calm as she replied:

"Don't worry about me, I can manage on my own. I'll make a call home and have my father send someone to pick me up."

"That's for the best. Let's go, Shen Xing."

Bai Ying smiled slightly, ignoring Shen Xing's surprise, and directly grabbed him by the arm as she headed outward.

At the moment of parting, Shen Xing and Xu Minghui gazed at each other for a long moment, then smiled simultaneously.

Shen Xing mouthed silently: Take care.

Xu Minghui nodded heavily. Only after the two of them disappeared from her sight did she murmur softly:

"Wait for me, Shen Xing. We will meet again very soon, I promise!"

***

Along the way out, Shen Xing remained entirely silent.

While driving and dodging attacks that could materialize from anywhere, Bai Ying teased, "Are you too terrified? You were perfectly fine when you went in, so why did the whole world change by the time you came out?"

Recalling the moment she had just stepped out of the dimensional gate and beheld the corpses scattered all around, Shen Xing nodded with a heart full of complex, roiling emotions.

"To be honest, though, you're much calmer than I expected. I thought you'd be paralyzed with fright and completely at a loss."

Gazing at the chaotic city outside, Shen Xing said no more.

The urban area of Tianhe City had now been reduced to a doomsday landscape.

As far as the eye could see, all manner of monsters were rampaging through the streets, attacking one another.

The ground was littered with the corpses of humans and monsters alike, creating a scene of unspeakable carnage.

The once-prosperous streets had all been reduced to ruins.

Lofty skyscrapers that once possessed an imposing grandeur had been struck down by some powerful monster, cleaved cleanly in two.

Even now, ordinary people could be seen desperately fleeing through the streets.

And within the buildings that had miraculously escaped destruction, numerous survivors were trapped.

Through the windows, Shen Xing could see their panicked and despairing expressions.

Bang!

The car shuddered abruptly, followed by the emission of a pungent odor.

"Damn it!"

Bai Ying's expression shifted, and she cursed fiercely.

It turned out that a pool of green liquid, flying from who knows where, had landed right on the roof of the car.

The liquid possessed terrifyingly corrosive properties, eating countless small pits into the car's roof.

"Should I ask why things turned out like this?"

After a moment of silence, Shen Xing spoke up.

"Ha, I thought you'd manage to hold it in all the way. But you've probably already guessed the answer anyway, so asking is pointless. The situation is still in the emergency response phase right now; we simply don't have the bandwidth to investigate the root cause of all this.

We only know one thing for certain: this was definitely not an accident, but something deliberately orchestrated by some organization. Because all of this chaos began unfolding successively on the exact same day—the very day you went inside."

As she spoke, an exceptionally sturdy severed arm smashed against the windshield of the car, shattering a massive hole into it.

Bai Ying had to raise her voice and roar to make herself heard over the deafening rush of the wind at such high speeds.

"Are you saying that on that day, every single dimensional gate that opened suffered a sudden surge in energy?"

"Precisely. If there had only been one or two such cases, we could have managed. But with them erupting everywhere at once, the situation instantly spiraled out of control.

Most of the teams weren't like you; they didn't manage to hold out until now. Shortly after the energy surge, most of them were slaughtered by monsters exceeding their combat capabilities, thereby opening the floodgates straight to our world.

Because we couldn't plug the breaches immediately, monsters poured into our world from the other side in an endless stream.

Even though the dimensional space possesses energy restrictions preventing creatures above a certain tier from passing through, the sheer volume was simply overwhelming.

Looking at the carnage outside now, do you feel like the city's armed forces failed to do their jobs?"

Shen Xing shook his head.

"I saw their corpses. There were soldiers, police officers, and private security personnel. Surely it's because of these people's resistance that the city has managed to hold out until now, right?"

Bai Ying sighed softly.

"The fact that you noticed that makes me rather fond of you. To be frank, two of my closest friends died in this defensive battle. One was my dearest sister in arms, and the other was my childhood sweetheart.

So you surely understand why I didn't come to rescue you yesterday, and instead waited until today. Because yesterday, this place was literally a meat grinder, a living hell.

The number of monsters you see now is merely one percent of what it was yesterday."