Silent Crown

Chapter 497 Prologue

The moment Ye Qingxuan walked out of the underground palace, he almost suffocated.

In the chaotic streets, the crowds were screaming.

The sun alternated between strong and weak. Sometimes it even looked within reach. One side of Ye Qingxuan was dazzling and warm like he was walking under the sun, but the other side was so cold that his marrow was nearly frozen.

Under the sunlight, the shadows danced abnormally like living things.

The twilight sky became like a pot of boiling molten iron, spilling turbulently. Cracks appeared in ancient buildings, and the boom of something collapsing came from the depths of the earth.

The color of reality peeled off and faded under the erosion of the Aether waves. The steel city was gradually being corrupted into a magic world.

The roaring bells were deafening, ringing one after another. The enormous enchantment protected the foundation of the city and fought against the erosion of the Aether waves, trying to save the city from falling apart.

Thousands of towers spouted blazing lights and opened the dancing darkness, illuminating the world.

In this twilight where all the lights were rapidly dying, the Sacred City glowed as if it was on fire and red-hot cracks were spreading everywhere.

The power of the abyss blew out, impacting the Sacred City.

The first to be affected there were the human senses.

People who were more sensitive had already peeked into the large shadow emerging in the sky. Under the weight of countless pairs of cold eyes, their will was tortured and brought to the brink of collapse.

Insensitive people were unaware of that, so they just screamed and ran away when they saw others suddenly fall to the ground, vomit blood, and go insane.

They were like rats that didn\'t know they were in a hot iron house.

As soon as the celebration of the Sacred City was over, the funeral started in a hurry.

The city had already became the center of the battlefield.

A scorching fohn swept through, a sign of a tragic war to come.

Musicians with strong competencies like Ye Qingxuan would be fine under such circumstances. In the chaos, many musicians suddenly fell to the ground and died on the spot with their five sense organs oozing blood and their heart sounds having collapsed.

Even Ye Qingxuan felt the pressure of suffocation at the moment. Without the protection of the clothes of original sin, he would have been close to death, losing 40% of his fighting force.

Now the enchantment of the Sacred City was running at full capacity, so that the order of the human world could be maintained and the city wouldn\'t devolve into a dark world.

The Physical World seemed to be chaotic, but had no other anomalies.

But in the deepest part of the Aether World, the vast abyss had already collided with the Sacred City, bursting out endless turbulence.

The Sacred City glowed with endless flames.

The abyss trembled, shaking off a layer of dust—that was the seed of the demon.

The combat between the two giants affected the whole Aether World. Under the impact of the terrible waves, even the far-reaching Scepter Light was like a candle flickering in the wind.

Numerous mysterious places fell apart.

It was the ants that suffered first in the combat between the giants.

Countless oddities in the Aether World panicked and scattered, fleeing to the rest of the world before the arrival of the next waves of terror.

The Aether World was in such chaos. Beneath the sea of Aether was brewing turbulence.

When the shock of terror spread through the nine layers of the Aether Sea to the physical world, it almost shattered the nearest Sacred City. The turbulent music theory and the terrible changes, for musicians, were like a storm and a tsunami mixed together.

The drastic changes in the outside world caused imbalances of the music theory inside human bodies, with disastrous consequences.

The orientals called this phenomenon the "dead wind."

Almost all the musicians with weak foundations and unreasonable construction of music theory inside their bodies were affected more or less, with the light symptom of feeling nauseous and the severe of vomiting blood.

As for the musicians who hadn\'t stabilized their music theory after taking precious pharmaceuticals to gain higher levels, or those who had long been controlling serious injuries from their early years, some suffered from the Aether riots inside their bodies, some burned themselves to death, and some went into shock because the Aether density in their blood soared and influenced their hearts and brains.

At this moment, the constant changes of Aether density in the Sacred City exploded numerous Aether balls for measuring. Just like being thrown into the eye of wind, the Aether density sometimes became as harmless as that of the White Area, and sometimes soared to a terrible degree that even the Black Area couldn\'t be compared with.

For musicians, the Sacred City had instantly become a forbidden place with extreme horrors in the World of Dark or the ruins after catastrophe.

It wouldn\'t be any better for the ordinary people.

At this moment, the Sacred City had turned into a huge cauldron for alchemists to mix their drugs. Even if it was enveloped in enchantment, the fierce reactions could still be carried out without a break.

The Aether World overlapped the Physical World in the areas where the alchemy matrix gathered, forming a series of "flooding outlets" through which the chaotic aftermath blew out.

Innumerable oddities and ethereal shadows flew through the air.

Some were harmless, but the others were the demons that rose from the abyss.

Human beings would be drawn into an empty shell in a twinkle, with no way to resist at all when they encountered those demons.

Even priests dressed in robes lost their protection from God and were slaughtered mercilessly. The young friars who went everywhere to preach the Word struggled and fled .

Then invisible things bit their heads off.

Blood splattered.

Fell on Ye Qingxuan\'s boots.

When Ye Qingxuan walked onto the ground, the first thing he saw was such a chaotic scene.

"Help! Help!"

A young priest fell to the ground, screamed and trembled in confusion.

When he saw Ye Qingxuan, he saw him as a chance to save his life, and pleaded, "Help me, gentleman! Please help me! I will repay you! I swear!"

Ye Qingxuan hesitated and sighed.

"This is really ... terrible."

After saying that, he reached out and pointed at the priest at a distance.

A faint moonlight stretched out from his fingertips and pierced the priest between his eyebrows.

Just like a pot of boiling water, the scene in front of him suddenly twisted with strange screams and ear-piercing cries.

Viscous blood splattered everywhere.

The fierce turbulence of music theory left the demons nowhere to hide.

Around the young priest, a dozen demons were "pushed out" of the air with the all-pervasive fire of moonlight burning on their bodies. They were burnt into ashes before landing.

Ashes mixed with blood and became black mud.

Even behind the priest\'s head, an eyeball-shaped demon fell down and burst into a mass of stenchy slurry.

Although the Sword of Moonlight ran through his head, the young priest was still safe, without even a scratch. He sat dully in a pool of blood and didn\'t know what happened.

Lola saw the cowardly reaction of the young priest and couldn\'t help but mock Ye Qingxuan.

"This coward was frightened silly. What\'s the point of saving him?"

When the young priest heard Lola\'s voice, he looked over and couldn\'t help staring at her sharp ears and the tiger teeth protruding slightly between her lips.

As the young priest perceived the identity of Lola and the servants behind her, his face suddenly became pale and his teeth trembled.

"Hydra, hydra, hydrarg..."

Before the priest spoke the complete name of Hydrargyrum, Ye Qingxuan pressed his finger to the priest\'s forehead to freeze his consciousness and erase his memory of Lola.

"I should still hide in the Underground Palace for now." Lola touched her sharp ear and sighed. "Anyway, you have the Heaven Ladder, and I can support you at any time."

However, Ye Qingxuan still felt the implied meaning through Lola\'s flat tone.

He looked into her eyes and asked after a moment of silence, "You don\'t want any troubles, or... don\'t want to meet Ye Lanzhou?"

Lola looked downwards and brushed her bangs, then smiled softly and said, "I said goodbye to him more than a decade ago, and it\'s as if he has been dead for years. If we meet each other now, we will both feel awkward."

"Are you sure about that?"

"It doesn\'t matter."

Lola turned around with no more hesitation and walked back to the underground palace with her servants. "If he is still alive, please tell him that I didn\'t disappoint him." She was silent for a second. "I\'m going to give him a sound beating."

Ye Qingxuan shouted to her back, "If you don\'t come, I\'ll take your share and beat him until he cries."

Lola froze, then turned back to see his serious look and smiled.

It was like a sudden release from a cage. She smiled with a sense of relief.

"Well then, please!"

Her final words came with the wind.

The door was closed.

"Just leave it to me." Ye Qingxuan clenched his fist and spoke to himself.

In front of him, the young priest who had lost his mettle finally recovered. Seeing Ye Qingxuan, who had saved his life, he suddenly recalled what had happened and broke down, crying out loud on the ground.

"Hey, don\'t cry!"

Ye Qingxuan kicked him impatiently and said coldly, "Tell me your name, age, gender, where you came from, where to go."

"Nor–Nora, 22..."

The young man stammered his name, and then stammered about his hometown, birthplace, family background, graduation school, and even his internship department.

Finally, Ye Qingxuan interrupted impatiently, "You said that you would repay me, right?"

At the sight of Ye Qingxuan\'s fierce and arrogant expression, Nora was shocked and nodded self-consciously.

"Then take me to the Central Temple." Ye Qingxuan waved to the young priest. "Don\'t tell me that you don\'t know the way."

The Central Temple was another place of extreme danger, so Nora\'s face instantly became pale after hearing that. "Don\'t go, sir! The Central Temple is out of control! I just escaped from there! There are demons everywhere!"

"Out of control?" Ye Qingxuan looked up to the sky: "Well, that explains why."

The dying enchantment in the sky looked like broken glass, and it struggled to resist the powerful and endless darkness. The situation had become so dangerous in a short period of time, which shouldn\'t have happened, let alone the appearance of the "flooding outlet" inside the Sacred City.

Even the most powerful tool would become rigid and stiff when it lost the control of its operators. It could defend itself in the face of other enemies, but when it came to the pressure of the abyss, it was not strong enough to win.

At that moment, the entire sky lost its color and turned dark. At first glance, there was only empty and lifeless darkness.

The turbulence of the Aether World continued.

Compared to the Sacred City and Hyakume, Ye Qingxuan was too weak. He couldn\'t even see through the situation, for he had already fallen into it. Without doubt, the situation had already become very terrible.

The Sacred City, at this moment, was in the overlapped area of the Physical World and the Aether World.

The world in this area was gradually losing light.

It was bad.

Very bad.

"Don\'t be silly, let\'s go." He kicked Nora again. "We have no time to waste."

"Are we still going to the Central Temple?" Nora cried with no tears and retorted reluctantly, "What can we do there? "

Nora was so terrified that he couldn\'t even get up from the ground. Ye Qingxuan looked at him and couldn\'t help but sigh. Then he pulled on Nora\'s back collar and went forward.

"Idiot! We are going to make this world a little brighter!"