Chapter 39: Advent

Jiang Yuxin turned toward the tallest, most dilapidated administrative building, her steps resolute.

Yin Qingle glanced at her phone—no new messages from Yin Xiran—bit her lip, and followed, suppressing her growing unease.

The building’s entrance was a gaping maw, the door long gone.
Inside, the dim daylight vanished, replaced by a choking stench of concrete dust, rust, mildew, and stagnant water.
Yin Qingle covered her nose, gagging.

The interior was a ruin—scaffolding and debris littered the floor, rusted steel bars jutted from the ceiling like a monster’s ribs.
Faint light slanted through broken windows, illuminating swirling dust but failing to pierce the cold, dead silence.

“Should we… search here?” Yin Qingle’s voice echoed, barely a whisper, as if afraid to wake something.

Jiang Yuxin didn’t reply, her eyes scanning like a hunter’s.
No footprints, no remains—nothing to suggest Li Wenbo had been here.
Yet he had.

This doesn’t add up.

Her brows furrowed.
“Where would they take him?” she murmured, half to herself, half to Yin Qingle.

Yin Qingle shook her head, lost in the maze-like ruins.

Jiang Yuxin closed her eyes, her mental power radiating.
Moments later, she opened them, locking onto an unfinished stairwell leading to the rooftop.
“Follow me.”

The stairwell was windowless, nearly pitch-black.
Yin Qingle fumbled for her phone’s flashlight, its weak beam barely cutting through the dark, revealing gravel-strewn steps and twisted steel.

Their footsteps and Yin Qingle’s nervous breaths echoed in the cramped space.
As they climbed, the air grew colder, heavier, oppressive.
At the top, they pushed through a rusted fire door.

The rooftop sprawled like a desolate plain, its cracked concrete slick with rainwater, reflecting the leaden sky.
Ventilation ducts dotted the expanse, but the vast emptiness felt like standing on a forgotten island, loneliness threatening to swallow them.

Then, they saw it.

A massive white cocoon, over two people tall, stood at the center.
Its surface, a grotesque mix of silk and leather, pulsed with thick, vein-like tendrils, moving almost imperceptibly, as if something alive stirred within.

Yin Qingle’s breath stopped.
Fear froze her blood, rooting her in place.
She wanted to flee but couldn’t move.

Jiang Yuxin, unfazed, stepped closer, curiosity flickering in her eyes.
At five meters, she raised her hand, her mental force slicing through the cocoon’s shell, probing inside.

Her calm shattered.
Disgust, icy rage, and a flicker of horror crossed her face, as if she’d plunged into a cesspool of filth.

The cocoon held no form—just a conceptual void, surrounded by a concentrated sludge of despair, pain, sorrow, resentment, and a seductive craving for death.
It fermented like a virus, feeding the void.

“Yin Qingle!” Jiang Yuxin spun, her voice sharp with urgency.
“Destroy it! Now!”

Yin Qingle, startled by the command, trusted Jiang Yuxin’s judgment.
Her mind blanked, hands rising instinctively.

“Ahhh!”

A crimson energy erupted from her, wild and volcanic, condensing into a torrential force that slammed into the cocoon.

Boom!

The explosion tore the sky, shockwaves sweeping the rooftop, scattering water and debris.
The cocoon’s shell shattered into flaming fragments, burning to ash mid-air.

Smoke and dust choked the air.
Yin Qingle, panting and soaked in sweat, leaned on her knees.

Jiang Yuxin stared at the cocoon’s former spot.
Nothing remained.
No contents, no trace.

A holy yet eerie chant rose from the gray sky, sung by a thousand lifeless, mechanical children’s voices.

They looked up.

A jagged gap had torn through the clouds, golden light pouring down, forming a sacred pillar over the ruins.
In its center, an entity descended.

It had an angelic silhouette, with oversized wings of pure light.
But its body was a writhing, mollusk-like white mass, covered in countless blinking eyeballs.
No head, no face—just a blood-red, cross-shaped crack at its core, emitting the chilling chant.

The deformed angel descended, silent and inevitable.