1.57 Void Storm on Purging Day

"Indeed," Wu Chen readily changed his tune.

"Master, is the Five-Frame the Celestial Palace?" the Brain asked again.

"It is," Wu Chen realized belatedly.

The Brain said in a trembling voice, "If it comes with its own territory, that means it possesses a 'Dominion (Plot Territory)' and can become a 'World Guardian'. That is a powerful six-star existence."

"Understood." In short, the harvest was immense, that was all.

The current situation waited for no one. Wu Chen had no time to dwell on it. The female warriors who had finished repairing the armor immediately took their respective stations. Wu Chen also sat back down inside the AE86. The internal channel of Base 0326 gradually fell silent. Everyone braced themselves, concentrating on defending against unpredictable meteor attacks.

On the front viewscreen of the AE86, the scenes of fierce battles in the Shattered Traveler Camp and the Sci-Fi Helix played out endlessly. However, most players profited simply by using the Reaper rules to eliminate the invading plot fragments. Only Wu Chen successfully ingested a five-star card. Whether through addition or subtraction, all roads led to the same destination: either completely stripping away or completely fusing the invasion fragments with the player's exclusive branching plot. It was a choice of one out of two.

Time ticked away second by second. Just as the battle seemed deadlocked, a huge beam of light suddenly descended from the sky, piercing the night sky and instantly vaporizing the invasion fragments.

"Master, the starships are backing us up!" The Brain hurriedly switched the view.

Defending against the last wave of incoming fragments, the elite players inside the Sci-Fi Helix returned to the atmosphere with their exclusive sanctuaries. The stray remnants that had previously managed to land on the ground had no power to resist. The main guns of the returning starships unleashed thunderous blasts, clearing them away entirely.

Before the alternation of day and night, the starships landed safely, standing tall along the streets, returning to their respective positions and reorganizing into clusters of skyscrapers. Glancing at the starship skyscrapers, which suffered varying degrees of damage and were accompanied by explosions and fire, Wu Chen suddenly had a sense of déjà vu, feeling as though he were in New Port City—a place full of broken walls and ruins of skyscrapers everywhere.

The battle outside the atmosphere must have been extremely fierce. Many starships even hurried back with crystal fragments still stuck to their hulls that they hadn't had time to clear. The starship skyscrapers, much like Wu Chen's flat-plate base, were exclusive sanctuaries for players. The primary reason they were in such a rush to return to the City of Shattering was clearly the arrival of the scheduled alternation between day and night.

The Purge Night was about to transition into the Purge Day.

The rules were about to change.

The sudden silence before the drastic change caused a slight sense of discomfort in Wu Chen, who had grown accustomed to the "Helix Battlefield" that lasted all night.

The internal network of the Traveler Camp was also silent. Through the real-time images quietly refreshed by the Brain Aiyi on the front viewscreen of the AE86, Wu Chen seemed to catch a whiff of an even more severe crisis.

At midnight, lightning appeared in the sky.

Chains of electricity darted across the firmament, yet they did not strike the ground.

Heavenly thunder rolled in right after. For a moment, lightning flashed and thunder rumbled, illuminating the entire sky.

For some reason, Wu Chen suddenly thought of the mutant nerve bundles capable of melting through spacetime.

And just as Wu Chen had expected, the lightning blanketing the sky was tearing apart the spacetime of the City of Shattering. It was like an eye of destruction slowly opening up. A transverse line formed by gathered lightning split the spacetime of the City of Shattering into two halves.

Within the continuously widening eye of destruction lay an endless void.

Crack—

A sudden, shattering sound echoed out of nowhere deep within the souls of all players across the Four-System Helix.

Spacetime froze abruptly, followed by a steep increase in suction force. The remaining incoming plot fragments within the city and the plot invaders who were still locked in fierce combat with players were all ruthlessly torn away from their attachments and sucked wholesale into the void. It was just like a giant vacuum cleaner suspended above everyone's heads. All external objects that did not belong to the City of Shattering were swallowed up as fragilely as paper and debris. It looked very much like a "comprehensive urban garbage cleaning operation." Yet, not a single player in the City of Shattering rejoiced, simply because all players whose domains had been invaded by "foreign garbage" were implicated, with none spared.

Those starships that had rushed back to the city before the alternation of day and night flew into the void along with the uncleared crystal fragments on their hulls and their torn bodies. Some starships were even torn in half at the waist. The scene was utterly terrifying. Within the Four-System Helix, any player's exclusive sanctuary that had been invaded by fragments and infested by plots, and had failed to complete cleanup before it struck, would be torn apart along with the crystal fragments, plunging directly into the void and turning to ashes.

It was like tearing open an unhealed scab; in the face of the terrifying void power, the City of Shattering became increasingly fragmented.

Fortunately, Wu Chen had eliminated the impact of the fragment invasion at the very beginning, thus escaping collateral damage. Baili Yan and the others, who had docked with Base 0326, also managed to escape unscathed.

However, not every player in the Shattered Traveler Camp was as lucky as Wu Chen. With shattered roofs and torn walls, or even their entire bases being uprooted, people, objects, and base debris converged into a tornado, spiraling upwards and vanishing into the void. In the blink of an eye, nothing was left behind except bare flat plates.

The flat plates were the original objects of the City of Shattering, possessing the memories of this world, and would not be easily erased.

Unbeknownst to them, the "Void Storm" was already raging through the city, converging beneath the firmament into a terrifying eye of the storm that greedily devoured everything in the city. As long as anything was "tainted" by the invading plot fragments, it would be sucked into the void. The Void Storm meant "instant death upon contact, and perishing upon touch." Even if one was innocent enough to be accidentally grazed by fragments caught in the storm—even if it was just a minor scrape leaving behind a trace of debris—they would be instantly torn to pieces by the Void Storm. No wonder the veteran players stayed put in their stations and dared not move rashly. Rushing around blindly like headless flies at this moment was pure suicide.

At this time, apart from exclusive sanctuaries, the only things that could protect players were "protective shields." All exclusive sanctuaries were enveloped in protective light barriers. During the confrontation with the fragment invasion and the Void Storm, the protective shields would continuously consume sanctuary coins. That was right, they consumed sanctuary coins.

How long one could stand firm beneath the eye of the storm sweeping through the Four-System Helix depended decisively on their reserves of sanctuary coins.

No wonder veteran players divided the Purge Day into two halves based on day and night: the first half to defend against the invasion of fragment meteor showers, and the second half to defend against the engulfment of the Void Storm.

During the first half, if a base's protective shield was pierced by fragments, the player had to completely clear out the invading plot fragments before the second half arrived. Otherwise, when the second half came, they would be swallowed by the Void Storm. Similarly, even if one was fortunate enough not to be hit by the meteor shower in the first half, suffering no fragment invasion or plot parasitism, once the Void Storm swept through the Four-System Helix in the second half, the player still needed to have sufficient sanctuary coin reserves to resist the indiscriminate attacks of the Void Storm.

Due to the uncertainty of the fragment storm, the exact number of sanctuary coins required was equally uncertain. In short, the more, the better. If the sanctuary coins were exhausted before the storm ended, and a player's base lost its protection and was unfortunately grazed or tainted by fragments, it would spell certain death—"instant death upon contact, and perishing upon touch."

At this very moment, let alone talking about "saving the world," it was already the greatest misfortune within misfortune if players could simply "save themselves."

From this, it was also evident that the cruelty of the Purge Day lay in this: first, it unceremoniously dumped garbage all over your house, and then it wiped out your house as if it were garbage itself.

And as the head of the household, you had nowhere to reason with. As long as you failed to clean up the garbage within the limited time, you would be cleaned up along with it as garbage. What was even more vicious was that even if you cleaned your house sparkling clean within the limited time, you couldn't stop the howling winds and lightning from blowing garbage from elsewhere right back into your house.

The only way for players in the City of Shattering to resist the "indiscriminate sweeping" of the Void Storm was through the protective shield. And the only way to maintain the protective shield was through sanctuary coins.

Ah... one had to admit, the logic was crystal clear, and the execution was rigorous.

"Master, the storm is coming," the Brain warned in advance.

"Mm." Through the multimedia viewscreen of the AE86, Wu Chen saw the edge of the Void Storm moving toward the location of the Traveler Camp.

The ashes flickering within the storm were fragments from different plot worlds that had been torn to powder by the eye of the void. Like tiny sparks, they were poised and ready, waiting to attach themselves to any "combustible material" to ignite a prairie fire, burning away the very last trace of proof of their existence.

Deep within the souls of every player in the entire camp, a chill ran through them.

Witnessing block after block of floating cubes—reconstructed from player bases—being swallowed by the storm, Wu Chen unconsciously held his breath.

Rumble—