"Found you! Little mouse!"
From Leilin's lip movements, the wizard deciphered the words, which immediately made his eyes turn bloodshot red.
"Void Assassins! Don't hold back — kill him!"
Almost losing his composure, the wizard grabbed the command lever and roared the order.
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!
At least eight Void Assassins materialized simultaneously, launching an assault on Leilin, while ahead of him, a massive fire giant roared and swung a titanic fiery iron whip.
Under the lockdown of the magical arrays, facing both the flames and the surprise attack of the Void Assassins, even a Fourth-level Morning Star would find this extremely troublesome.
This level of attack — even if Hunter Ganlier were here, he would probably be severely wounded immediately!
"Alert! Spiritual Power connection detected. Three false signal locations eliminated. Coordinates confirmed!"
The Chip's mechanical voice sounded in Leilin's ear, bringing a smile to his face. Ever since learning that there might be a mastermind behind the scenes, Leilin had continuously ordered the Chip to deduce the location of the core control room.
The previous failures and injuries had all been deliberate feints, designed to lure the opponent into a trap.
A single magical array wasn't enough to provide sufficient data and information flow, but the opponent clearly couldn't accept that and actually sent forces to attack again — which the Chip immediately seized upon to trace their location!
"Judging from my deductions and the Chip's analysis, the opponent's actual strength may not be that formidable. They might not even have control over the ruin's core — otherwise, there's no way the attack would be this limited!"
Leilin looked at the blades and flames about to reach him, a strange smile forming on his face.
A brilliant blood-red radiance suddenly erupted from his body, coalescing into four hovering rings of light.
"First-tier Talent Spell: Komoyin Scales! Petrifying Gaze!"
"Second-tier Talent Spell: Venomous Gall!"
"Third-tier Talent Spell: Fear Intimidation!"
"Fourth-tier Talent Spell: Bloodline Metamorphosis! Combined Morning Star Killing Move — Komoyin Serpent Transformation!!!"
BOOM!
A colossal serpent tens of thousands of meters long suddenly descended upon this area.
The magical arrays shattered, the earth split open, and countless buildings were directly crushed into powder. Even the void itself trembled continuously.
Pop! The fire giant from before, along with numerous restraints and fire-element magical arrays, were swept away by the massive serpent's body. Every rune was annihilated, and even the foundational arrays below were directly obliterated.
Crack! Crack! Crack!
The Void Assassins' normal human forms were like ants before the Komoyin giant serpent. Their razor-sharp swords couldn't even pierce a single scale, and they were simply flicked away to unknown locations by a casual tail sweep.
The killing move of an ancient Morning Star Warlock — Komoyin Serpent Transformation, the Morning Star trump card that allowed a Warlock to transform into a terrifying ancient creature — had appeared once more!
"Hiss hiss!!!"
The enormous black serpent aimed its head in another direction. Within its amber starlight eyes, an eerily human-like look of mockery appeared, and its body crashed forward like a black tempest.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
Along the way, various faint glows flickered beneath the giant serpent before quickly dimming and fading.
"Wh-what's happening? This is a Morning Star killing move? How… how dare he!"
Having been locked onto by the aura of the ancient beast, the wizard in the core control room collapsed directly to the floor. The moment his eyes met those of the serpent, the fear hidden deep within his genes erupted immediately, freezing his entire body to the point where he could barely move a single finger.
The direction the giant serpent had been looking was precisely where the core control room was located, and judging by its crushing advance, it would arrive here in just a few seconds.
The old man trembled violently, only now regretting that he had provoked Leilin, this harbinger of doom.
Bang! An impact resembling a magnitude-nine earthquake shook the room. Objects inside the core control room bounced up violently before slamming back down.
Accompanied by terrifying hissing, the old man trembled even more violently, because he knew that the horrific ancient creature had arrived outside the core control room.
"I still have the core control room's defensive magical array! I'll… I'll be fine!"
The previous attack being blocked had evidently given the old man a sliver of confidence, but before he could struggle to his feet, an even greater tremor came rushing through.
BOOM! Bricks and stone flew everywhere as the entire roof was ripped open. Two eyes, luminous as stars, shone down with terrifying radiance.
"Aaaah!" The old man collapsed on the ground. Beneath his trousers, a faint acrid smell began to spread.
"You little bug — you're quite good at hiding, aren't you?"
The massive serpent body shrank rapidly, eventually returning to a normal human form. Streams of dark energy coalesced into armor that clung to his perfect physique.
Leilin charged into the control room and seized the old man by the throat, his eyes flashing with dangerous light. "Just a Crystallization
His aura had dimmed slightly — the expenditure just now had clearly been substantial.
Morning Star Wizards, restricted by the Peace Accord, could not unleash killing moves with too large a destructive radius on the Central Continent. But this was already within the ruin's domain, technically not on the Central Continent at all, so the restrictions no longer applied.
But then why hadn't the other Morning Stars used their killing moves?
First, ruins often contained extremely powerful magical arrays. If the area of effect was too large, it would trigger chain reactions, ultimately hurting even the Morning Star caster.
Second, the Wizards had entered to scavenge resources — why would they unleash their ultimate moves to destroy everything, along with whatever treasures lay inside?
Only someone like Leilin, who feared nothing and no one, and who had used the Chip to pinpoint the exact location while confirming there were no traps or counter-arrays along the path, would dare to simply bulldoze his way through.
This was also because the old man hadn't obtained full control authority. Otherwise, if he had activated even one genuine ancient magical array, Leilin would never have broken through to this point — he might even have been trapped and killed by the arrays.
"However, once I've made my move, the situation here will probably change immediately…"
Leilin smiled bitterly to himself. This was the inevitable consequence of his actions, but fortunately he had mentally prepared for this. Even if he gained nothing else from this trip, it would still be worth it.
…
"Hmm? This fluctuation? A Morning Star killing move?!"
Fierce waves of magical energy immediately propagated throughout the entire ruin, and virtually every Morning Star realized what was happening in an instant.
"Someone's already made their move — we need to hurry!"
Silber stared at the wall of thick vines before him, a faint expression of impatience crossing his face. "Get out of the way!"
"Yes, sir!"
Then, terrifying energy gathered upon Silber, and an Annihilation Storm ten times more powerful than Philip's swept through…
"What a bunch of rule-breaking youngsters!"
On the other side, a middle-aged wizard wreathed in golden light, resembling a god, shook his head helplessly and set down the document in his hands.
"However, it seems someone has already seized partial control of the detection arrays in these ruins. And that faint sense of being watched from before…"
The middle-aged wizard frowned. "This may truly be the headquarters of the ancient Scarlet Arc Moon — of immense value. If I came all this way with a group of Morning Stars only to have someone else snatch it from under our noses, it would be a laughingstock…"
"Very well!" Behind the middle-aged wizard, the phantom of a massive golden lion abruptly manifested.
BOOM! The sheer pressure of his aura alone caused the entire building to collapse, and from the surrounding void came the constant sound of iron chains snapping.
"This presence… this fluctuation… it's a Radiant Moon level Grand Wizard!"
On the other side,
The phantom of the golden lion glimpsed on the horizon filled them with a growing sense of foreboding.
Not only the Morning Stars of Jupiter's Thunder, but even the Warlocks of the original Psychic Ring and
Once they held nothing back, the terrifying destructive power of Morning Star Wizards was fully on display.
"As expected — once I made my move, it triggered a chain reaction among the other Morning Stars. They've all stopped holding back and are rushing this way…"
Leilin looked at the open notebook, where many of the buildings on the map had already been breached by several black dots. Even the control room was filled with the sound of alarms blaring.
Click… click… click…
The old man on the other side was on the verge of passing out.
He had never imagined that in such a short span, these Morning Stars would transform into ancient man-eating beasts, their various defensive arrays meaning absolutely nothing before them.
The thought that he had once considered using the arrays here to deal with them made cold sweat stream endlessly down his forehead.
Regarding this descendant of the Scarlet Arc Moon, Leilin hadn't yet decided how to deal with him. The old man's temperament was extremely weak — a single threat had been enough to make him hand over everything, including the core authority to control the Void Assassins, which had saved Leilin quite a bit of trouble and spared the old man the horror of having his soul searched.
Beyond that, Leilin had also discovered the inheritance left behind by the old man's ancestors, which counted as a modest gain.
However, from the old man's expression, Leilin keenly sensed that he was still concealing something. With time being pressing, though, he didn't spend too much effort uncovering it.
"What are you afraid of? The arrangements of ancient wizards couldn't possibly be that simple…"
Leilin glanced at the old man with undisguised contempt. His earlier actions may have seemed reckless, but the route had in fact been meticulously probed and calculated by the Chip — not a single fundamental grand array had been triggered.
After all, for the ancient wizards, Morning Stars were merely the minimum requirement for entry. How could there not be specialized counter-arrays and such? Those wizards would soon enough taste the consequences of their own actions.