The glass dome of the gymnasium refracted a distorted spectrum under the blood moon, slicing the basketball court into a cage of light and shadow.
Lu Ye's [Eye of the World] locked onto the shadow atop the bleachers—the mutant known as the "Reaper" was tearing open its kin's skull, shoving energy crystals into its cracked chest cavity like eating grapes. With each crystal consumed, a new segment of purple-black crystal sprouted from its exposed spine.
"It's evolving," Qin Hao said, his silver light threads drifting uncontrollably toward the Reaper. "My cellular overdrive is warning me… its energy purity is already over 60%."
Zhao Yang's fangs dripped venom, his blood moon-enhanced [Dark Blood Kinetics] revealing something even more horrifying: "Those crystals are being refined… it's expelling impurities." Following his pointing finger, dozens of grayish-white crystal residues littered the floor.
Chen Mo grunted, clutching his right arm. His bronzed skin was resonating with the Reaper's crystal spine. "This thing is hijacking my shockwave frequency!"
Lu Ye's Dimensional Space deployed a weapon rack. "Qin Hao, disrupt the crystal resonance. Chen Mo, create frequency chaos. Zhao Yang—" he tossed a bundle of rebar—"give them a kinetic feast."
Tactical Execution:
Qin Hao plunged his healing threads into the ground, hijacking the gymnasium's electrical system. Flickering emergency lights disrupted the blood moon's woven spectrum.
Chen Mo smashed his fists together, unleashing a reverse shockwave. Cracks exploded across the Reaper's spinal crystals, and the heads of three guard zombies burst like balloons.
Zhao Yang's fingers wove blood mist, turning the supersonic rebar into crimson lightning, pinning the falling crystals to the wall.
The Reaper let out a human-like roar for the first time. It snapped off a segment of its crystal spine, fashioning it into a spear and hurling it at Qin Hao—
"Spatial Lockdown!" Lu Ye activated his ability, and seven crystals in his storage grid shattered simultaneously. In the frozen air, everyone saw the crystal spear etched with runes identical to those on the meteorite.
Zhao Yang seized the moment to ambush the Reaper from behind but froze. His vampire vision pierced its rotting skin, revealing a fully intact human heart—or rather, a heart-shaped core—pulsing powerfully, its surface crawling with distorted patterns that throbbed in sync with the blood moon's fissures.
"This… isn't human," Zhao Yang rasped. In his moment of hesitation, the Reaper's hand clamped around his throat, its grip tightening like a chain, the sound of cracking cervical bones piercing the air.
Lu Ye's [Eye of the World] churned at full speed, finally deciphering the microsymbols on the spinal crystals—a set of untranslatable, three-dimensional glyphs, like imprints from a four-dimensional realm. The more he tried to read them, the more the images on his retina warped. [Data Access Insufficient—Source Unknown]
Qin Hao's roar accompanied a blinding silver explosion sweeping the arena. He detonated all his healing energy, the cellular overdrive's side effects cracking his skin inch by inch. "Chen Mo! Now!"
Chen Mo's bronzed arms plunged into the ground. The gymnasium floor surged like ocean waves, hurling the Reaper into the air—straight into Zhao Yang's final blood-blade storm.
When the purple-black crystal heart landed in Lu Ye's hands, his Dimensional Space emitted a sound like shattering glass. Inside the storage grid, all previously collected crystals were fusing, compressing into a fist-sized, blood-red prism radiating a soul-chilling aura.
[Blood Moon Core Fragment]
Purity: 91%
Function: Grants brief access to deep meteorite information
Lu Ye instinctively probed it with his Eye of the World. The next second, a blinding light seared his vision like staring into the sun. His sight flashed with the outline of a colossal entity cloaked in starlight. It had no face, its form constantly shifting, as if it didn't belong to the three-dimensional world. Yet, across an infinite distance, it slowly turned its head to gaze down at them.
Zhao Yang collapsed in a pool of blood. Though Qin Hao had barely reconnected his cervical spine, his vampire regeneration had stalled. The Reaper's final attack had injected an imprint of that unknown entity, causing the vampire runes on his skin to fade.
"Did you… feel that just now?" Qin Hao's voice trembled. "That gaze…"
Chen Mo, sweat beading on his forehead, scanned the dome warily. "It's still watching."
Outside, unnatural black spots began seeping from the blood moon's edges. On the radar of Lu Ye's Eye of the World, mutants across the city were converging on the university at an alarming rate, as if driven by an invisible will. The aftershock of that gaze lingered, unrelenting.