Magical Girl's Knight Brother

Chapter 535 The Out-of-Control Cards

Above ground.

Tang Zijun gripped the head of a Church Purifier, staring at the mechanical structure above it that flickered with electric sparks. Her gaze darkened slightly. So, it really was a Church, but in reality, they had all been transformed into machines by the gods of the era. No wonder they were so troublesome.

From the very beginning, Tang Zijun had already noticed that these white-robed people did not have a heartbeat in their bodies. Instead, there were only electromagnetic sounds and metallic friction sounds. At first, Tang Zijun thought they were half-human and half-machine, like those prosecutors.

But now, these beings seem more like mechanical forms completely corrupted and transformed by the core, utterly devoid of humanity and reason. Whether they even retain their original thought processes is a mystery. Casually tossing the head to the ground, Tang Zijun frowned and looked around. Beside him lay countless incomplete mechanical humanoids scattered haphazardly. "Strange... why do I feel like someone's watching me?"

During the battle, Tang Zijun had been vaguely sensing a kind of surveillance, a presence that appeared and disappeared just as he tried to detect it, as if it had never existed. Tang Zijun naturally didn't believe he was hallucinating. At first, he thought it was the gods of the era watching him; although the speed was somewhat unbelievable, it wasn't impossible given their abilities. However, when Tang Zijun tried to use the power of the God of Time and Space to search, he didn't sense any special energy reaction. Instead, the group of Church Cleansers around him were all unleashing strange core energy. He also considered whether some hidden entity was watching him, but even with his hearing fully activated, he couldn't detect anything. Apart from the old chimney's henchmen howling in the ruins of the lair, there was no one nearby, and no one could approach him undetected. Just as Tang Zijun was wondering, he suddenly felt something rattling in his pocket. He frowned slightly and realized it was the communicator that Leisen had prepared earlier. He took the palm-sized black box out of his pocket, and then an even louder electromagnetic sound rang out.

(Sizzle... Wolf sizzle... Sizzle, run away... Sizzle...)

"What nonsense are you talking about?"

Tang Zijun was speechless. He guessed that the signal here was messed up by the battle just now, or there might be a problem with the black box inside. He then decided to use the repair method that everyone knows to knock on the black box hard.

Bang! Sizzle

(Buzz... Wolf Rider... Can you hear the buzzing... This is Leisen.)

"It actually works." Tang Zijun's lips twitched, then she quickly pressed the communication switch. "Hello, I can hear you, Leisen, are you safe?"...Quickly, Wolf Riders, get out of there!

Leisen's rough voice suddenly rang out from the communicator, with even a slight tremor in his tone.

"I'm about to leave. Zorin knows the location, you go first, I'll meet you in a bit, it depends on who gets there first." (You don't understand! Wolf Rider, today is the Epoch of Gods. Zzzzzzz. Zzzzz...)

"What? Feed?"

Tang Zijun frowned, then tapped the black box a few more times.

"What did you just say? I didn't hear you clearly. You said today is what of the Epoch of Gods?"

(Sizzle... Today it's sizzle... sizzle...)

Listening to the sound from the black box, completely dominated by electricity, Tang Zijun slapped her forehead.

"No, bro, don't do it now."

As they were talking.

Suddenly, it was as if someone had dimmed the colors in my field of vision.

The already faint light faded away without warning.

It wasn't the gloom before a storm, nor the gradual change of nightfall, but a brutal stripping away of everything in sight, the outlines of all objects, as if a layer of viscous ink had been splashed on them in that instant. Tang Zijun stopped moving, and the expression on her face slowly faded.

The communicator's beam became the only light source in this rapidly expanding shadow, and a suffocating heaviness swept over him, making the air seem thick and sticky. He slowly raised his head, and with his movement, his field of vision shifted from the ground to above him.

Above the bend of the sky, the oppressive, leaden-gray, heavy clouds were torn apart by some powerful force at this moment.

A massive, circular rift, its edges crackling with ominous arcs of electricity, slowly emerged from the sky like an open eye. The rift's interior was not emptiness, but rather churning with chaotic particles of matter, like boiling crude oil, emitting an indescribable, eerie glow. Then, from within that bottomless rift...

A terrifying black shadow loomed down.

Its sheer size is indescribable; it almost completely occupies the entire sky as far as the eye can see, even larger than the entire City of Glory. It is a sphere.

A sphere that seems to absorb all light.

Its surface is not a smooth mirror, but rather a metal that has been hammered and solidified millions of times, presenting a heavy matte texture. The fine, geometrically beautiful patterns appear and disappear like the veins of a living organism.

It had no portholes, no thruster nozzles, and no markings or features; it simply and quietly "sank" down from the crescent moon. "Are you kidding me?"

Looking at the enormous black shadow, Tang Zijun murmured softly.

It wasn't that he didn't recognize this thing; on the contrary, he was extremely familiar with it—it was the first "god" he had ever seen in this world! The last time he dealt with this guy, he was with Xiao Xiao. Because he had to take care of Xiao Zao, and also because he didn't quite understand this world at the time, he chose to run away, turning into a shadow and traveling far away. And now, seeing this "old friend" appear before him again, Tang Zijun was genuinely filled with emotion.

Previously, from a distance, the object resembled a meteorite suspended in mid-air. Now, standing directly beneath it, Tang Zijun realized that she had underestimated its size. This thing was probably far more than a few hundred cubic meters of air compressed and distorted at its base, forming visible ripples that spread like water.

The low-frequency humming sound wasn't transmitted through the air, but acted directly on the spatial structure itself, like a groan that shakes reality when a dormant star's core is awakened. The communicator in my hand went out with a "zzzt," and the last bit of light disappeared.

Absolute darkness descended—except for the thousand-meter-tall black sphere hovering overhead, slowly pressing down, occupying physical space and radiating immense oppressive force. Tang Zijun stood in the center of that ever-expanding shadow, as if the entire world consisted only of him and the sphere above him.

Immediately afterwards, a female voice, devoid of any emotion, slowly echoed in Tang Zijun's mind.

"We meet again... an otherworldly being... no, I should say a god from another world."

"Yes, we meet again." Tang Zijun smiled insincerely and picked up the belt again, fastening it around her waist. "Isn't this the 'famous' guardian of the Holy Temple, the sower of the Sacred Garden, the legendary god of harvest?"

"It's an honor that you still remember me."

The woman's voice had a sharp, overloaded quality, like that of an information stream processor.

"But you shouldn't be here. Your existence should be erased. The core database has never recorded any such circumvention protocol." "According to the spacetime anchor maintainers'...plan report, you should have already been annihilated. Your existence is a paradox." "So...you still 'exist'?"

Upon hearing this, Tang Zijun's lips curled into a smirk, her voice tinged with mockery. "You seem quite perplexed by my 'avoidance,' but have you considered that time itself is immutable? All those who manipulate time will ultimately be manipulated by time. But we are not human; we are gods."

"You are not gods, you are nothing but a mistake, a failed scientific experiment, just like you." Tang Zijun pushed up her glasses. "Why don't you come out of your own temple?" Yes, from the moment the other party appeared, Tang Zijun saw through its existence completely this time—this black sphere was none other than one of the temples containing the core energy of the gods of the era, just like the Temple of the God of Time and Space.

"Is it because you're afraid?"

"Or is it because you don't even have a body?"

As soon as he finished speaking, the surrounding atmosphere became deathly silent.

Silence enveloped the scorched earth of the neighborhood, broken only by the crackling of distant flames and the faint hum of the purple spatial rifts on the surface of the giant black sphere overhead. The cold "female voice" remained silent for a few seconds.

Immediately, a tremendous force began to rapidly converge.

"You got away by sheer luck last time."

"But this time it won't be so easy... Since you've chosen to come here to die, then stay..."

"...I will continue the task that the God of Time and Space failed to complete—to annihilate you here."

This time, it's no longer a localized spatial collapse.

The entire lower hemisphere of that kilometer-long black sphere suddenly lit up with countless thicker, more dazzling, pulsating, deep purple lines, like veins. These lines spread wildly, instantly forming a geometric array covering the entire lower half of the sphere, radiating destructive energy. Space was no longer distorted; instead, it began to groan, as if the entire spatial structure of the city had been forcibly incorporated into a "hard drive" about to be completely formatted. "What a pity, I quite miss the more 'benevolent' you from before."

Tang Zijun suddenly waved his hand, and a black card instantly appeared at his fingertips.

"If I'm going to fight you, I'll use this one. Your abilities can't affect shadows in the two-dimensional world...?!"

Before he could finish speaking, a strange feeling suddenly arose.

The next second, the black card at Tang Zijun's fingertip trembled violently, then broke free from his finger and spun in the air, flying into the distance. Tang Zijun frowned, his gaze following the card as it was thrown into the distance.

But then they saw a woman in a black robe standing atop a collapsed ruin.

The card, carrying the power of a terrifying shadow, drifted into her hand.