After struggling for about three minutes, Siren suddenly gasped heavily, and wisps of water vapor rose from his body. He raised his hands and looked at his arms; the originally pitch-black limbs were merely covered in a faint layer of black mist. Ninety-nine percent of the Black Flame the Nightwalker had driven into him had been forced out by the pills; only the last sliver of fire clung to him like a maggot on bone.

After muttering a curse against the Nightwalker's entire ancestral line, Siren pulled out several pills to restore his energy and vital blood and stuffed them into his mouth. He glanced cautiously around before quickly following the creek deeper into the mountainous terrain.

He hadn't gone far when a massive ball of black flame, hundreds of meters in diameter, suddenly roared and tumbled towards him from behind. A heart-wrenching roar echoed from within the Black Flame: "You despicable creature, I will tear your body into ten thousand pieces! I will subject you to the most agonizing tortures imaginable! I will use every means at my disposal to crush you!"

A sphere of black flame, about a meter in diameter, plummeted down. The small creek Siren had just used to wash his body, along with the nearly one thousand meters of surrounding forest, instantly turned to ash amidst a piercing shriek of wind and fire. A circular crater a kilometer in diameter appeared on the ground, its surface fused into molten, glassy material.

The Black Flame surged, whipping up waves of heat as it traced the creek back to its source.

Siren flattened himself behind a rock outcropping, witnessing the Nightwalker's frenzy. He shook his head, sighed, and continued his desperate flight forward. His running speed was considerably faster than the Nightwalker’s flight, barely allowing him to maintain a safe distance. However, the Nightwalker’s psychic power spanned hundreds of kilometers; he could clearly perceive Siren’s every move. Escaping the Nightwalker’s pursuit was essentially impossible.

Stumbling forward for over a hundred kilometers, feeling the residual black fire within him constantly devouring his essence and blood to strengthen itself, Siren gritted his teeth with grim resolve. "Fine, I'll take you on a tour... Nightwalker, I’ve seen your file back at the Special Operations Bureau! You creatures all signed seclusion pacts. If you dare break the rules and attack, I don't believe those old fogeys on our side won't intervene! Hmph, no matter how strong you are, can you really stand against a Grandmaster of the Void Realm?"

Spitting a mouthful of thick, black, fire-laced saliva onto the ground, Siren forced a dry laugh. "Even if you could beat one Grandmaster of the Void Realm, we have over thirty of them!"

Running, fleeing. Whenever Siren felt the black fire inside him was about to incinerate his body uncontrollably, he would hurriedly swallow a handful of pills, using their medicinal power to force the Black Flame out of his body. With each suppression, each forceful expulsion of the Black Flame, Siren’s body was like a piece of fine iron, constantly being melted and hammered. Gradually, he actually felt himself running faster, and even his five senses sharpened considerably.

"What do you call this? The Chief said it’s called 'breaking down to rebuild the self,' right?" Siren comforted himself with a bit of gallows humor while running aimlessly. "Looks like if I survive this, my power will certainly leap forward when I get back. But thank heavens the Chief gave me enough pills, or I’d be in serious trouble this time!"

With a rush of wind, Siren leaped hundreds of meters into the air, landing atop a cliff face ahead.

A dozen kilometers behind, the Nightwalker had already soared high into the sky, tracing a massive arc toward Siren’s position.

Siren glanced left and right, quickly selecting a mountain ridge ahead and continuing his frantic dash along its spine. This ridge was like a razor blade, stretching nearly a hundred kilometers long; Siren was running along its very edge. The ridge was only a foot wide, barely accommodating one person standing upright, with bottomless abysses on either side. The ridge shimmered with a magnificent silver-white color, faintly emitting light.

If one were looking down from high altitude, piercing through the thick clouds that obscured all high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft and satellite surveillance, they would see that the ridge Siren was running on, along with eleven other nearby ridges, etched a pattern of a sun radiating intense light upon the ground. At the end of these twelve ridges, each over a hundred kilometers long, lay a circular, bottomless sinkhole. A faint white light emanated from within these ridges, forming a thin, luminous shield above the pit, upon which countless distorted characters resembling runes could vaguely be discerned.

Perhaps due to the great antiquity of the site, this light shield above the sinkhole could no longer completely seal the opening below. Thick black mist continuously spewed forth from the pit, punching through the shield and spreading outward. It was precisely because this black mist mixed with the high-altitude clouds that neither the Earth Federation nor the Roman high-altitude sensors had detected this location.

Siren ran wildly along the ridge, while the Nightwalker pursued rapidly behind in a blaze of fire. However, Siren’s speed was significantly faster than the Nightwalker’s flight, causing the pursuer to gradually fall far behind. Yet, every distance Siren covered, he had to stop briefly to catch his breath, which allowed the Nightwalker to close the gap again.

"Base creature, stop running! Surrender quietly so I can capture you! Heh heh, I’m very interested in that sword of yours!"

Seeing that Siren’s resting periods were becoming longer and the intervals shorter, the Nightwalker couldn't help but laugh wildly toward the sky.

Siren gritted his teeth and just ran forward with all his might. Stumbling, he unknowingly reached the very end of the ridge.

Hoo~ A wind as sharp as a blade suddenly swept past Siren’s face, its palpable force carving a deep gash across his cheek.

Siren stood frozen on the ridge, looking despairingly at the bottomless pit ahead.

Abysses yawned on both sides, and the ridge beneath his feet was barely half a foot wide. Looking into the distance, identical ridges stretched out before and behind, to the left and right. Encircled by these twelve ridges was a dark, bottomless pit spanning over two thousand meters in diameter. Pale black gales howled and circled above the pit, whipping up columns of wind, each as thick as a wrist but thousands of meters high. Whenever two of these wind columns clashed while whipping around erratically in the air, they produced a deafening, earth-shattering roar.

Blood dripped drop by drop. That sudden gale had torn Siren’s face and shredded the last shred of hope in his heart.

The Nightwalker’s vast psychic sense detected the anomaly below and he let out a sinister, cackling cry: "Run, keep running, despicable creature, keep fleeing! I covet the sword in your hand, and I desire you yourself. Your soul and your life will become part of me, and as for that sword... I believe it can enhance my destructive power by at least double."

Sighing, Siren raised his right hand, tightly gripping the ancient bronze sword, and forced a dry laugh. "You want this?"

The Nightwalker slowly flew closer, displaying the excitement of a cat toying with a mouse, and spoke smugly, "Indeed, I want this. And of course, I want your soul, your life!"

Siren took a step back, his heel already dangling over the bottomless abyss. A black gust of wind, wrapped in a thin cloud of mist, brushed past his heel, and a dark, malevolent aura slowly infiltrated his body. This aura was far more potent than the Nightwalker’s Black Flame. In essence, if the Black Flame was common iron, this wisp of dark energy was specialized alloyed copper; the difference between them was immense.

Shivering, Siren was astonished to find this dark energy consuming the residual Black Flame within him. Wherever the dark energy passed, the Black Flame shattered and dissipated. Siren felt his body involuntarily undergoing strange changes: the original muscle fibers seemed to become finer and denser, and the fibers were bizarrely interwoven in a manner Siren couldn't comprehend.

Glancing back at the white light enveloping the sinkhole, Siren suddenly felt that the flickering, distorted script within the light looked strangely familiar.

If he wasn't mistaken, this script was documented in the Special Operations Bureau’s top-secret archives. The title of that file, he recalled, should have been something like Vatican Papal Script Annotation!

"Seal, Purify, Expel Evil, Dissolve Original Sin!" Siren compared the divine script flashing in the white light with the annotations in his memory. "What an immense undertaking. These are all the most powerful divine scripts; each one must have required a considerable amount of precious metal to deploy. Ninety percent of them have no corresponding records!"

The complacent Nightwalker was now closing in, less than a hundred meters away. His strange cries grew more grating, more triumphant. He shrieked with maniacal delight, "Despicable creature, I will capture you alive, and then I will torture and trample you in front of all your kin! Hehehe, I will make you live in the most humiliating way possible. Unable to live, unable to die—this will be your punishment for daring to harm my incomparably noble body!"

The Nightwalker howled toward the heavens in near hysteria: "Darkness shall descend! Only the strongest, only those who gather the greatest power, can escape the final darkness and destruction, can usher in the arrival of the new universe, and become the new deities of that universe! I... the supreme Nightwalker, acting under the command of the great Hades, deliver judgment upon you!"

Siren let out a strange, hollow laugh. "I seem to recall, just a few days ago, you were an apostle of Diablo!"

The Nightwalker stared at Siren in astonishment, his eyes wide with confusion. "Is that question strange? Is it hard to understand? Is your IQ really that low? I am the embodiment of cosmic darkness, the apostle of all dark gods, the messenger of darkness and destruction walking the earth! I am the new deity who will ultimately transcend darkness and wield all the power of destruction! When everything is destroyed in darkness, the new universe will be born from my body. I shall be the creator, the guardian, and the final judge!"

Shaking his head, Siren looked at the Nightwalker with pity and sneered, "You are nothing. You are just a raving, fanatic heretic who abandoned the faith of his own race!"

Siren’s words struck the Nightwalker like a firebrand to his tail. He shrieked, "No, I am the true god of the future new universe! I am not a heretic!" The almost-manic Nightwalker, wreathed in surging black flames and overwhelming heat, slammed directly toward Siren’s body. He thrust out both hands, aiming to seize Siren's neck, clearly intending to snap it in one motion.

Siren forced a few dry laughs, shook his head, and rapidly fell backward, tumbling headlong into the bottomless sinkhole. As his body fell, he waved cheerfully at the Nightwalker, "Goodbye. If you have the guts, come down and play... I bet I won't die this time!"

The Nightwalker lunged for Siren, but his reaction speed was inferior to Siren’s; how could he possibly grab him? Watching Siren shatter a few layers of thin black mist, his body gradually vanished into the sinkhole covered by white light. After staring blankly for a moment, the Nightwalker suddenly let out an owl-like screech: "Heh heh heh, I have no guts? I shall be the true god who rules all, and I have no guts?"

Whoosh! The Black Flame surrounding the Nightwalker expanded to nearly a thousand meters in radius. He resembled a small black sun, trailing a line of black fire as he plummeted in the direction Siren had fallen.

Thousands of thin wind columns above the sinkhole suddenly converged on the Nightwalker like leeches drawn by the scent of blood. Hundreds of wind columns, like whips being wielded by an unseen hand, struck the Nightwalker with lightning speed. Waves of dark, malevolent energy flooded over him. The Black Flame on the Nightwalker’s body was sliced away in chunks, as if it were butter beneath a sharp knife. With just a few quick strikes and coils, the carved-away Black Flame was transformed into energy for the wind columns. In the blink of an eye, the Black Flame covering the Nightwalker's body was entirely devoured.

"Impossible!" the Nightwalker screamed in panic and despair. "It is I who devours all, who destroys all!"

Three wind columns lashed the Nightwalker’s body, drawing three thin streaks of blood. The external wounds were minor, but the dark energy contained within the wind columns, like countless greedy little mouths, began to swallow the Black Flame energy within the Nightwalker piece by piece. The Nightwalker was terrified beyond measure. He desperately ignited a trail of fire and flew upward. Countless wind columns doggedly pursued his body, chasing him higher and higher, continuously draining his energy, until the Nightwalker, battered and humiliated, collapsed onto a ridge. Only then did the wind columns lazily recede.

"What the hell is this place!" the Nightwalker shrieked. "That brat is done for, completely finished!"

Flailing wildly on the ridge for a moment, the Nightwalker unwillingly poked his head back over the crest, trying to see what was happening below.

Pfft! A black wind column shot down like an arrow, piercing accurately through the Nightwalker's Adam's apple and emerging from the back of his neck. The Nightwalker convulsed, and his strength ebbed away like a tide being pulled by the wind column. The Nightwalker let out a miserable scream, struggling frantically, bouncing erratically on the ridge. He managed to tear open half his neck, escaping with grievous injuries toward the rear.

In the span of just two breaths, the Nightwalker not only suffered severe physical damage, but three-tenths of his internal energy source had been drained. His life force had also taken a massive hit. At this point, the Nightwalker staggered and could barely stand steadily.

"Damn place, damn place!" The Nightwalker managed to summon a faint wisp of black fire and fled desperately into the distance. Along his path, splatters of golden blood spewed from his torn neck marked his retreat.

Siren chased downward rapidly. The dark, evil energy that had invaded his body was slowly transforming it. After absorbing all the Black Flame, the now several-times-stronger dark energy began to draw upon Siren's own power. His psychic strength, his internal force, the life essence residing in his muscle tissue—all were continuously consumed by this dark evil energy. Gradually, Siren’s body became coated in a dull black glow. The wind columns sensed the dark power flowing within Siren but dared not approach him.

Unlike the unfortunate Nightwalker, Siren smoothly passed through the thin white light barrier and plunged into the depths of the sinkhole.

The sound of wind roared in his ears, and his eyes registered only pitch darkness. The darkness had condensed into something nearly solid. Siren felt like a fly trapped in amber—unable to breathe, unable to think, unable to move. His physiological functions seemed to halt in this boundless gloom.

During his continuous descent, a flash of white light suddenly appeared below him. A light curtain materialized ahead. However, this light curtain was even more dilapidated than the one above; the thin membrane had dozens of holes the size of water vats. Thick black gas, accompanied by a bubbling sound, continuously jetted upward from below, forming a suffocating black curtain that drifted toward the sky.

Continuing his fall, Siren passed through ten more light curtains, but these were progressively more ragged than the ones above. Especially the lowest one, which was barely clinging to existence with only a few thin strands of light remaining. Here, the dark energy had solidified into transparent black crystals, large chunks of which floated in mid-air. Dragon-like black gases snaked in and out of the crystals with a dull roar. Siren’s body slammed painfully against several crystals, causing him to cry out involuntarily.

These crystals were incomparably hard, and the dark energy within them was shockingly potent. As Siren made contact, massive amounts of dark energy surged into his body, as if a normal person were being electrocuted. Every cell in Siren's body vibrated, his nerves were stimulated, and his body instinctively shed tears.

After falling for an unknowable length of time, Siren suddenly saw shimmering water waves below. He hurriedly mustered the last bit of residual strength in his body and propelled himself upward, barely managing to counteract the downward momentum. With a loud thud, water splashed several feet high as Siren plunged into the liquid, but in less than the time it takes to flick a finger, he surfaced again.

"What kind of monster is this?" Siren floated wretchedly on the pitch-black, semi-transparent surface, staring at his surroundings in horror.

The bottom of the sinkhole was a lake over five thousand meters in diameter, and Siren was precisely in the center. A long, long time ago, this lake must have contained water, but now the lake liquid had been eroded by dark energy and transformed into a strange, viscous substance resembling molten glass. This substance had enormous buoyancy; Siren could even walk upon its surface. Within this substance was stored potent dark energy, but perhaps due to the inherent nature of the liquid itself, the dark energy here was gentle and tranquil, not actively invading Siren's body.