Buried Alive
The dragon breath that brushed away all "structures" not only destroyed the buildings on the surface, but also affected the underground Shelters... The structures supporting the Shelters collapsed with a loud bang, and this also meant...
All the refugees hiding in the Shelters were buried alive.
The people hiding in houses on the surface could rely on the power of the Divine Path to escape a calamity, but those ordinary people who lacked the strength to even truss a chicken, facing the rumbling collapse of rock, soil, and bricks, where could they possibly run??
Plop—
A staff member of the Huang Consortium felt his legs give way and knelt on the ground on the spot.
Scarlet blood was like red makeup staining the earth, spreading outwards. The stench of blood mixed amidst the dust of rock and soil, drilling into everyone's nasal cavities and frantically stimulating their nerves!
"How could this be... how could..."
Mumbled whispers spat out from the throats of the crowd. They seemed to have been drained of all strength, blankly staring at the sinkhole before them.
But now...
A gust of wind brushed past, and everything was like an illusionary bubble, shattered without a trace.
"Down here... there were tens of thousands of people hiding down here!!!" A figure nearly lost his voice. "All at once... they're all gone???"
"No... more than tens of thousands."
Another person spoke with a deathly pale face, "This gust of wind covered several surrounding districts. Besides here, there are countless small and medium-sized Shelters in other places... If, if they are all like here... the number of victims should be nearly a million."
There was not a trace of blood on everyone's faces.
Uncle Quan blankly stared at the sinkhole before him. After a long while, he fiercely gritted his teeth and charged into it!
He ran atop the collapsed ruins, frantically moving hard stones and digging through the soil, shouting loudly as he did:
"Even if buried alive, there must be survivors!! Save people now! There's still time!"
As soon as these words came out, the crowd fiercely snapped back to reality. They immediately swarmed forward, looking for various tools, attempting to dig into the ruins of the underground Shelter!
But between the underground Shelter and the surface was a thick layer of concrete and soil. It simply wasn't something human strength or shovels could easily dig open. No matter how hard they tried, progress was slow...
At this moment, they couldn't see that deep within the bloodstained earth, agonizing souls were slowly drifting up into the sky.
...
A massive Alchemy Array silently circulated amidst the clouds. A mangled figure was reborn from the blood mist, staggering and sitting down in the center of the array.
"Is this the oppressive feeling brought by the World-Destroying Tier... If I wasn't proficient in Human Alchemy, I'm afraid I really would have gone to visit God."
Brand coughed violently. The Spiritual Power he had just recovered after resting a while was hollowed out once more, but he had no time for lingering fear right now. After his pair of eyes swept below, his eyes were full of pleasant surprise!
"It succeeded! It's done!! Hahahahahaha!!"
Looking down from here, the Red Dust Main City, originally filled with ruined buildings, had already been sprayed into a large expanse of flat ruins by the dragon breath. Dozens of sinkholes were scattered everywhere amidst the ruins. Dense numbers of agonizing souls were being drawn by the Alchemy Array, rising into the sky!
Some of these souls were victims crushed to death on the spot when the Shelters collapsed, some were survivors buried alive underground with their last breath remaining... But under the effect of the Alchemy Array, whether already dead or dying, the souls were forcefully extracted. As far as the eye could see, there were a full million!
A million souls ascending to heaven simultaneously in hideous agony. They filled every street, they came from every town;
As far as the eye could see, it was like a churning sea of souls!
"Hiding underground? Is it useful?" Brand sneered, "Now, haven't they still become my nourishment."
Brand was very happy. He pressed his hands on the Alchemy Array beneath him, pushing the power to gather souls to the absolute limit. Blood-colored lightning wandered amidst the clouds, and those nine hundred and ninety thousand souls gathered previously also rapidly merged towards that rising sea of souls!
A single breath from the Cessation Calamity harvested a million souls. Combined with the previous nine hundred and ninety thousand, it was enough for Brand to refine two more Philosopher's Stones.
Two Philosopher's Stones, not to mention restoring Lord of Wuji to his peak, could at least let him regain more than half of his power. Even if he couldn't defeat the Lord of the Red Dust, he could still take him and retreat in one piece...
What's more, Brand believed that since the Cessation Calamity had already appeared, destroying the entire Red Dust was just a matter of flipping a hand. Refining all the Philosopher's Stones would only take a few more dragon breaths.
"Destroy the Red Dust?" Brand raised his hands, his entire person bathed in the swarming sea of souls.
He carried a hint of a smile and spoke indifferently,
"As easy as flipping a hand."
...
The Cessation Calamity did not stop after releasing one dragon breath.
Except this time, it didn't go looking for that annoying human again, but sniffed that familiar aura and slowly turned towards the other side of the Red Dust Main City...
Those Wind Tunnel-like eyes of nothingness locked onto the Calamities of the Ghost Mockery Abyss engaged in the chaotic melee!
It flapped its skeletal wings and opened its giant mouth once more...
The second dragon breath began to brew!
"It's coming for here?"
Standing on the back of the Shadow Toad and witnessing the entire process just now, Chen Ling's expression instantly turned ugly.
As the gale frantically swept towards the Cessation Calamity, a crisis of life and death surged into his heart. At the same time, dense scarlet pupils opened from the void behind him, seemingly enraged, furiously glaring at the Dust Dragon in the distance!
The Audience was restless!
Chen Ling had long guessed that there was some kind of feud between the Cessation Calamity and the Calamity of Mockery, but he didn't expect the Cessation Calamity to actually pursue him all the way to the Red Dust Domain, and even looking like it wouldn't rest until he was dead...
He could feel the Audience within his body getting restless, seemingly frantically wanting to come out and teach this giant dragon a lesson, but after all, they were blocked in the audience seats by the Fourth Wall, completely unable to personally intervene in the performance. In other words, if he was really hit by this dragon breath, no one could save him either!
"Damn it..."
Chen Ling's brain worked rapidly, attempting to find a glimmer of survival, but beneath the Oppressive Aura of the World-Destroying Tier, everything seemed so pale and powerless...
"Go!" Chen Ling heavily stomped on the Shadow Toad beneath his feet. The latter immediately leaned down to gather strength, and then fiercely leaped out!
The gale swept past. Relying on the Shadow Toad's speed, Chen Ling crossed a distance of several kilometers in the span of a breath. After its massive body heavily smashed into the ground, it leaped up once again!
Chen Ling's movement speed was already extremely fast. He tried to use this method to dodge the dragon breath's lock-on, but no matter how he tossed and turned, that pair of Wind Tunnel eyes still stared dead at him in the air. The crisis of death had not diminished in the slightest!
The second dragon breath in the Cessation Calamity's mouth grew increasingly brilliant and surging!