Wow! The item-dropping rate is really high!-Chapter 1020 - 704: The Painting?

Despair, like a cold venomous snake, coiled around her heart, tightening more and more.

The port area was already in chaos. Several docks had completely collapsed, and burning shipwrecks floated on the sea, with thick smoke obscuring the sky.

The new aquatic Bug Race seemed endless, even beginning to attempt climbing the port area's defensive walls.

On the coast, the orcs' clamor reached its peak, as if they found the "great entertainment" before them utterly thrilling. No longer satisfied with long-range projection, more green skins began boarding ragged landers, attempting to forcibly storm the beach and join the feast of destruction.

The city defense army and navy were exhausted and scattered, with their firepower seriously divided, and the defense line was about to crumble.

The temporary command center in the parliament building had fallen into dead silence.

All communication channels brought bad news or were completely interrupted with busy tones.

On the big screen, red representing the Bug Race-occupied area, purple signifying the Spiritual Energy pollution zone, green indicating the orc activity area, and the ever-expanding black mass on the southeastern sea, representing a high-dimensional threat, were rapidly devouring the blue area representing city control.

The Speaker sat slumped in his chair, his eyes vacant.

Senator Ethan and other officials looked ashen, with some starting to sob softly or mutter prayers.

They once believed that prosperity and democracy could withstand anything, yet now, faced with an all-encompassing disaster beyond comprehension, they saw their own and the Order they had built as painfully fragile.

Just as it seemed the entire city was about to be torn apart, swallowed, and corrupted in the next second, and everyone's will was being pushed to the abyss of collapse—

In the Spiritual Ability Guild tower, Kiro Lan, half-kneeling and with consciousness starting to blur from exhaustion, felt the scene before him suddenly flicker and overlap in an eerie way.

The violent Spiritual Energy turbulence, the twisted figures of those who lost control, the growing darkness from the demons' distant arrival reflected outside the window...

These broken and despairing images, for some reason, began to slowly merge with a similarly dark and oppressive yet strangely familiar fragment of a memory deep within.

The thick smoke sketched with dark ink, the dim sky devoid of sunlight, countless distant shadows, the ruins on the land, and... a human figure stepping out from behind the ruins.

This scene... she had seen it!

Not in this purgatory-like reality, but long ago...

Where?

A somewhat hollow-headed Kiro Lan thought in confusion.

For a moment, a flash of insight.

The bedroom!

Bai E's bedroom!

After the Master left, Kiro Lan often went to clean his bedroom.

Whenever she felt troubled, she would hide there alone, inhaling the faint scent left behind by the Master, as if all her worries would gradually dissolve.

She remembered a painting lying open on a desk by the window in the Master's simple bedroom.

The style was realistic and heavy. She had seen it but couldn't understand it.

It felt oppressive, yet the lone human silhouette in the painting inexplicably brought her a sense of solace and curiosity.

Never did she expect that now... in this apocalyptic desperation, the floodgates of memory, burst open by despair, would bring back every detail of that painting with unparalleled clarity.

Moreover, it perfectly matched everything she was currently experiencing!

Ink-like smoke... dim sky... distant shadows... human ruins...

And... the silhouette stepping out from behind the ruins!

Kiro Lan's pupils suddenly contracted, her heart nearly stopping.

Could it be... could it be that the painting hanging in the Master's bedroom wasn't about abstract meaning or a distant future, but... this moment?!

Is it Ming Pearl Port today?!

This thought exploded in her mind like a thunderbolt, bringing an even deeper chill—

If the painting foresaw this disaster, does it mean all this is unavoidable? Is it a predetermined fate?

Are all of them destined to die here?

And if she, Morphie, and an entire city were destroyed today, would the three great crises of the Bug Race, Demons, and Beastmen spread uncontrollably, rolling back the world to its original point?

Even leading to the complete extinction of humanity?

However, just as this cold, despairing thought arose, a mutation occurred!

It didn't come from a new attack by the external Bug Race, Demons, or Beastmen, but from her own Spiritual Energy perception, or rather, a kind of mysterious "resonance" beyond conventional perception.

The painting existing in her memory, as if breaking free from the constraints of time and space, was no longer just an image in her mind, but transformed into an illusory yet remarkably clear "light stream," "flying" out from the depths of her consciousness!

This light stream wasn't material but carried a bizarre sense of presence. It ignored the violent Spiritual Energy turbulence in the tower and the barrier of physical walls, unraveling from Kiro Lan's center, expanding towards the edge of the entire threatened Ming Pearl Port!

All those still fighting, fleeing, or trapped in despair—

Morphie and the soldiers in the old city's bloody battle, the military and civilians fighting the Bug Race and Beastmen in the port area, the ashen-faced officials in the command center, even those on the edge of madness, the out-of-control Spiritual Ability Users, and the howling Beastmen outside the city, the Bug Race surging from the sea bed, and that dark mass gathering with malice on the sea surface...