VOL.1 Chapter 8: The Backlash of Three Millennia, Light and Shadow Overthrown

Close-quarters combat ignited into savage chaos in an instant.

The four Orb Reavers fought with a sinister, bloodthirsty style that cast aside all orthodox combat tactics. Every strike was a reckless killing blow. Their black Void energy blades sliced the air, trailing wispy tendrils of shadow mist. Wherever the dark edges bit into bluestone pavement, dense clusters of corrosion pockmarks bloomed across the stone surface.

This corrosive force belonged exclusively to the Void, inherently counteractive to Ruin Warden spirit essence. Ordinary spirit power would dissolve and be devoured on contact, placing conventional Guardians at a crippling disadvantage. Yet Jam’s Warden power far surpassed the standard caliber of any Ruin Guardian.

Pale white spiritual radiance coiled tight around his frame—dense, weightless yet unyielding. This primal core power had been tempered through countless years patrolling cursed ruins and stabilizing failing seals. When waves of Void corrosion washed over his luminous barrier, they could only sizzle and wear away sluggishly, never able to pierce his defenses or carve his flesh.

“Your spirit power is potent,” one Orb Reaver hissed through a cruel, graveled snarl. “But no amount of Warden light can stop fate’s unraveling.”

The words had barely faded when two shadows flanked him, executing a feint-and-strike gambit. They sought to throw his defensive rhythm off-kilter and crack open his spirit shield. The other two raiders circled the melee entirely, surging straight for the temperature-controlled preservation shed. Their objective could not have been clearer: wreck the interception barriers and dismantle the Rune Reversal Formation to reignite the Void parasite infestation.

The enemy’s battle split was devilishly calculated. They would pin their captain down as a distraction, while a secondary strike team targeted the core support nodes. Even if all four of them perished, shattering the barriers alone would reverse the tide of the fight.

“Over my dead body.” Bangbangtu let out a low roar and burst forward, cutting off the two flanking assailants’ path cold.

He summoned no spirit energy, wove no defensive runes. He bore the full brunt of the Void blades with nothing but his flesh. A black energy edge crashed against his shoulder; corrosive mist exploded outward, his canvas field uniform carbonizing and peeling away in an instant. Dark red gashes split open across his skin, and biting Void venom burrowed through his wounds to snake along his meridians.

Bangbangtu’s expression remained carved from granite. Not a single crease marred his brow. He twisted his wrist to lock the attacker’s arm, a sickening crack of dislocated bone ringing out. Paired with explosive close-quarters grappling, he sent one reeling back, crippled.

He fought by absorbing blows to land counterstrikes—crude, unrefined, yet brutally effective. This instinct had been honed through hundreds of life-or-death skirmishes in forbidden wastelands.

“Rear interception secured,” Bangbangtu gasped, stamina fraying as Void venom gnawed at his body. “No need to fall back; focus on eliminating the frontline foes.”

His report crackled over the squad’s private comms, steady and unshaken, no trace of agony or panic bleeding through his tone.

Sage never took her eyes off the brawl while maintaining the reversal formation simultaneously. Her cool, precise voice cut through the chaos over the channel: “Three-centimeter spirit energy rift on the left foe, open for two full seconds—prime opening for a strike.”

Her eyes could decode far more than carved runic scripture; she traced every current of energy flow and spotted weaknesses invisible to the naked eye in the blink of an eye.

Jam seized the opening the second it appeared. He ducked low, surged forward, and flashed sideways in one fluid motion.

He condensed all his spirit power into his palm, no flashy flourishes—only a pinpoint straight blow, driven dead-center into the thinnest segment of the foe’s Void shield.

Boom—A dull shockwave of energy rippled outward.

The black barrier shattered into drifting wisps of mist. The Orb Reaver went flying backward, crashing hard against bedrock. Plumes of pitch-black fog spewed from his mouth, his power fading drastically. The tide of combat had shifted in a heartbeat.

Banbandin knelt beside the barrier node, his fingers flying across the terminal’s keys as he reinforced the interception array while scanning the raiders’ energy signatures. “These Reavers host Void seed cores within their bodies. Standard wounds cannot kill them outright—only runic confinement can lock their power away.”

This was one of Kaelor’s trump cards. Every Orb Reaver under his command bore a fragment of his primal Void seed bound inside their flesh. As long as the seed remained intact, they could regenerate their forms and fight endlessly, immune to exhaustion and pain. For centuries, generations of Ruin Guardians had hunted them, only to find the task near-impossible.

“Daipithy.” Jam’s voice rumbled low over the comms.

“Copy that.”

Daipithy never left the side of the Protruding-Eyed Nuo Mask, pouring an unbroken stream of bloodline spirit power into the artifact. Fine golden light wound across its bronze surface, granting him a complete, unobstructed field of vision. To his heightened senses, the Void seeds inside all four raiders blazed like beacons, their positions and energy trails laid bare with zero concealment.

“All seed coordinates locked—concentrated at the chest for every target,” Daipithy relayed with pinpoint accuracy. “Targeted confinement is viable.”

Sage instantly recalibrated her array. Faint strands of light peeled away from the formation suppressing the Sacred Tree, branching off into three separate luminous threads. “I’ll weave seed-binding runes. A single confinement cycle lasts thirty minutes—long enough to wrap up this fight.”

Their coordination was seamless, every tactical step executed without delay.

Pale white runic filaments streaked out of the preservation shed, following the trajectories Daipithy mapped and coiling around each of the four shadow assailants in an instant. The runes cinched tight upon contact, clamping down hard on the Void seeds embedded in their torsos. The raging Void power inside each Reaver was forced into abrupt stagnation.

All four figures stiffened as one. The black mist swirling around their frames thinned rapidly, their combat strength cut in half, their brutal assault grinding to a full halt.

“Impossible!” One Reaver snarled in raw disbelief. “The seed-binding runes were lost to time—modern Ruin Guardians cannot recreate them!”

Sage’s expression stayed flat, her tone devoid of emotion. “Lost does not mean extinct.”

For years on end, she had pored over every surviving tome of the Guardians’ archives, decoding fragmented glyphs to reconstruct and refine long-forgotten arrays. This mastery over lost runic craft was what made her the squad’s core script specialist.

The window of opportunity had fully opened. Jam wasted no time capitalizing on it. He burst forward in a blur, channeling the full extent of his spirit power, landing four precision strikes one after another on each Reaver’s vital points.

The spirit force pierced through their physical forms, crushing the flow of Void energy within them and snuffing out any chance of a counterattack.

The four shadow figures collapsed one by one, their mist dispersing, their vital signatures fading to silence. Their bodies remained trapped beneath the binding runes, incapable of channeling even a wisp of Void power ever again.

The Orb Reaver squad that had plagued the Guardians for centuries was neutralized and confined within mere minutes.

The battlefield fell quiet, yet none of the five dared relax their vigilance for an instant.

The true mastermind had yet to set foot on this field.

Deep within the western mountain forest, a suffocating wave of Void power drew closer by the second.

The wind died entirely. A deathly hush descended over the entire archaeological site. Heavy cloud cover blotted out daylight, turning bright afternoon into murky twilight.

One step, two steps, three. Slow, resonant footfalls echoed through the trees, carrying an aura of overwhelming oppression that reverberated across the entire sacrificial pit.

Kaelor emerged from the shadows.

He shed all attempts at stealth. No faint wispy fog clung to him now—only dense, pitch-black primal Void energy coiled around his frame, its aura so heavy it congealed the air itself. A thin streak of black blood lingered at the corner of his pale lips, a lingering wound from the severed conduit. Yet the injury did nothing to dim his menacing aura; it only sharpened the icy rage and twisted obsession burning in his silver-grey eyes.

Three thousand years of suppression, three thousand years of hibernation, three thousand years of isolation and hatred spilled forth all at once.

He lifted his gaze, his silver pupils pinning the five-man Guardian unit clustered at the pit’s center. His stare swept over his four immobilized subordinates, no flicker of remorse or pity crossing his face—only biting scorn.

“You fought well.”

He murmured, his voice hoarse yet resonant enough to cut through the site’s dead silence.

“A full five-man Guardian unit, polished tactics, flawless coordination.”

“Your generation stands a cut above your stagnant, stubborn ancestors who knew nothing but martyrdom.”

Jam met his gaze head-on, his tone rigid and unyielding. “Withdraw from the Wood Ruin Rift and cease all erosion. We will grant you a final chance to retreat.”

This was the Guardians’ last line of principle, their sole offer of mercy.

At Kaelor’s words, a sharp, bitter laugh tore from his throat, cold and piercing, steeped in unbridled sarcasm.

“A retreat? Where was my chance to flee when I was cast aside, slandered, forgotten, and imprisoned in darkness for three thousand years?”

He raised his palm, Void energy surging outward in an instant. Fractures split open across the ground in every direction, and the Void current within the underground cavern raged wild. The broken conduit point hummed and shuddered, building catastrophic force.

“I want no escape today.”

“I will overturn three thousand years of distorted judgment between light and shadow. I will tear apart the false fate the Dai bloodline has sworn to uphold!”

A gale howled to life, sheets of black mist swallowing every inch of the Sanxingdui archaeological grounds.