Most of the evacuating people were on their last mile before they could pass the Energy Prohibition Array.

For cultivators, it was almost a step. For mortals it was a cruel distance. The men in masks fell into a dilemma.

Their minds knew the efficient answer. Yet their hearts could just up and do it, like life was worth nothing.

The masked men signed up to avenge the same event that racked their lives.

They imagined themselves the ones under the judgment of mere energy waves.

These were innocent lives, only minutes away from their salvation.

They looked at each other, searching for a way that was not there.

Jekyll, leading the operation, clenched his teeth until his gums bled.

Guilt and responsibility tore at him in opposite directions.

Across the field, the hybrids laughed at the men's hesitation, mirroring what the Aberrant itself was feeling.

Now it knew ridicule. It could not help but mock them, its voice coming out through different hybrids.

"Stupidity. Idiocy. Dull witted minds."

"No brain cultivators. Once I get out of here, no one can stop me."

"Just kill me already. What's the hesitation for?"

Its words tried to play on the hearts of the men fighting it. Even so, the pummeling into its main body did not stop.

It stood still and took the beating. The reason was that something inside it tugged at its mind.

Not wanting to waste time, it issued an order for the hybrids to charge and infect more.

Obedience without question came from them. Muscles in their legs clicked, then they dashed.

A decision had to be made now in Jekyll's mind.

He roared the command, uncertain if it was right and unable to wait for certainty.

"Stop them. Save as much as you can."

The Physical Body Path cultivators with free hands gave chase.

Walls were raised behind the Energy Prohibition Array and thrown up behind the fleeing masses.

Water conjurers made sudden floods that slicked the ground and forced people to slide faster.

Their safety became secondary. Fate would decide who lived.

In the span of three breaths, the first hybrid was already behind a man.

It only pricked him, testing, learning. That single prick was enough.

The man warped into a lesser copy. Even that lesser copy carried strength at gilded core late stage.

It ran and bit, then learned the same method from the bite.

"Pour everything you have. Don't let them near the people."

More than a hundred twenty walls went up, each over fifty meters. There was no delay. They were flung at once, thundering behind the evacuees.

Jekyll floated above with his peers and rained destruction. Heavy water droplets. Freezing lances. Fire palms.

They did all they could. The hybrids answered with robust bodies and an almost impregnable tolerance for pain.

Some of them were torn from the blast, but the bodies still ran. Those looking irredeemable were picked up by their own brethren hybrids.

The half-dead hybrids were wielded like weapons. They were swung into the raging forces from above, still alive, thrown forward as if their bodies were only tools meant to bleed and keep moving.

As the first few hundred infected morphed, they spread wider, fanning out to catch more.

Infection followed. Each new iteration came out weaker than the last, but weak did not mean harmless.

They still dragged down more people who were supposed to be saved.

Jekyll counted the evacuees the best he could. At least eight to ten thousand at a glance, almost a fifth of those who had still been trapped near foot of the mountain.

One masked cultivator saw the survivors collapse into the dirt and roared.

"Get out of here. Run. Run. Away. This is not a safe area."

The people did not move. They were too tired. Some were injured from the sliding and the crushing press of bodies.

More evacuees kept spilling out. More infected kept forming behind that.

The line could not hold. Jekyll made the choice.

He began tossing the exhausted into the ghostly fog of Cairnlight Barterhold, because a fogged mountain was better than an open field with hybrids in it.

He could only hope Eldric would not make those people undead, and would not be offended by his action.

More and more people stumbled into salvation by sheer momentum.

The hybrids did not pause for it. While one pack pressed the line, others scoured the mountain's edges.

They found more than three thousand hiding in crevices, people who had thought they were clever, thought stillness could pass for safety.

The creatures bulldozed forward with machine-like coordination. Some hurled themselves upward and released sonic waves.

Others rammed the walls until stone split. The first four walls failed in half the time.

Conjurers reinforced the next layers with steel. The hybrids adapted. They started reading qi patterns before techniques were thrown.

They copied qi almost perfectly, then burned away conjurations with their own vitality, spending life like fuel.

And through it all, the Aberrant itself processed the flood of information.

It was learning. Mimicking. Improving. Gaining battle awareness that even heaven's children would envy.

At the center of Goldkeep Crownmarkets, five peak emperors could not sit still. Light beacons rose.

Four turned green. One turned red. A vote passed in an instant. The event was now deemed worthy of intervention.

Every peak emperor knew what these masked men were.

Silent Severance.

Some called them terrorists. Others called them saviors. No one knew their leader, but one thing held true.

When an eldritch was present, they arrived. When the job ended, they vanished like smoke.

Divination, mystic, and heavenly energies blurred communication as much as possible. A coordinated strike began to form.

"Contractcrown of Plunder Alp. If you're here for... a murder, whose name is to be written?"

"Blessedgrove, Fortunecrest. Ah, seeking herbs or simples, are you?"

"Lenderstone of Vaultspire. Have you a venture in need of backing? Capital, credit, or both?"

"Crateyard, Bulkstock Summit. Buying by the lot, sir? Step closer, I'll show you my best terms."

"Craftsworth of Guilds Peak. Arms and armour, is it? Name what you require, and we shall see you properly equipped."

The words they transmitted were cryptic, as if they could not say the wrong word.

They knew, and were sure someone was watching, so they could only hint.

On Radeon's side, a distress connection sent through divination arts tried to penetrate in.

His arrays stopped it, but Myridion Seersight let him understand everything anyway.

Eldric lounged in his chair and spoke as if this were an afternoon matter.

"What is it you require? This old man will lend what aid he may."

Across more than four hundred cities, distress connections began to spark.

In the span of that same minute, only five walls stood against the hybrid tide.

The Aberrant sensed something wrong in the wavelengths it had learned to read.

The air suddenly buzzed with activity, as if the world itself had begun to speak.

Its mind tried to cram the feeling into meaning, yet it did not have any knowledge of divinizing.

As it stood still, its purpose became clearer in its mind as it forced itself to remember.

The Aberrant was part of something larger. It tried to call that greater being, the whole it belonged to.

Then it cut off its own attempt. It saw human logic superior. A flaw it mistook for peerless intelligence.

With its human mind. The Aberrant longed for safety like any living being, so it joined the smaller hybrids and charged out.

The six walls exploded in a single move. It traveled from the peak down to the foot of the mountain in almost a thought.

Hundreds of men were flung aside, their arts backlashed against them.

It escaped the Energy Prohibition Array.

The moment it breathed the energy of heaven and earth, the world seemed to hollow.

With a single inhale, spiritual and elemental energy gathered as if the Aberrant owned the world.

With that one breath, it surged straight to Spirit Transfiguration peak.

It even touched the edge of Ethereal Integration, and yet there was no heavenly tribulation.

This seed had already surpassed what was mortal. The mechanical heavenly dao saw no reason to strike it again.

Pressure rolled out from it. The men holding the Energy Prohibition Array, all peak Nascent Embryo, were pressed under the Aberrant's aura.

Their faces hit the dirt. With another breath, it reached half-step Ethereal Integration.

Spiritual qi in the atmosphere bottomed out, drained so hard, other cultivators could barely gather any at all.

Yet in front of it lay fog it could not absorb. Power churned within that fog, abundant, held fast by something.

The Aberrant touched the shielding array. It tolled like an impenetrable gong.

It was the array the Preta had erected, showing its might to the world.

It pressed again. The whole mountain shifted. Inside, disciples were thrown about.

Jekyll watched the chaos and felt the operation slipping beyond control.

Hybrids were rising into the peak of Nascent Embryo, some even reaching early Spirit Transfiguration stages.

His men battled to suppress thousands of conversions. Evacuees scrambled, those still able to escape transformation fleeing with raw terror in their eyes.

Everything spiraled. Jekyll gritted his teeth and called in, voice breaking under the weight of it.

"I. I have failed you. Failed you all."

The masked men caught his feeling and answered with a nod. In their eyes was an eldritch resolve to die.

His gaze toward Cairnlight Barterhold held apology. He could not keep the word written on the scroll.

Then, as if he had prayed too long and finally been answered, something changed.

"Hold a moment. Something is happening. I ask you all to wait."

A hand of hazy black smoke reached for the Aberrant, which had stared too long at Cairnlight Barterhold.

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