Chapter 1281: No One Touched the Relic
Ethan searched for Elira fast.
Not far away, in another culture vat, a tiny figure lay curled up.
Her dazzling Divine Sovereign Moth wings were pressed tight against her body. Her eyes were shut, and fear still clung to her face like it wouldn’t come off.
"Elira!"
Ethan pulled the white orb of energy back into himself.
The power spread through his limbs, refueling what he needed to break down into particles again. But after firing off attacks nonstop—and after merging with Lily—there wasn’t much left in him that he could still draw on.
He had to move. Now.
His body disassembled again.
Black particles slipped around the barrier overhead, passed straight through the culture vat’s transparent outer wall. A thin ring of ripples appeared on the surface of the container, but it didn’t trigger any obvious alarm.
Ethan moved down the narrow aisle between the vats, reached Elira, and pulled himself back into a solid form.
"Elira?"
He crouched and gripped her shoulders.
"Wake up."
He gave her a few gentle shakes.
Nothing.
There weren’t any visible injuries, and the flow of energy in her body was steady. What really had her trapped was the fear still crushing her consciousness from the inside.
Once he confirmed she was only unconscious, Ethan finally let out a breath.
He turned and lifted her onto his back.
Her Divine Sovereign Moth wings drooped along either side of him, swaying lightly with each step.
With Elira on his back, Ethan left the vat and hurried toward the others.
Feylora had already stepped out of her own container.
The second she saw the state he was in, she jogged over and pressed her palm to his arm.
Green life energy poured into him.
The strength he’d burned through began to refill, and his breathing gradually steadied.
"Don’t stop," Ethan said.
With Elira still on his back, his gaze swept across their faces, one by one.
Everyone was awake.
But the light in their eyes still didn’t look completely right.
Wariness, confusion, and the lingering aftertaste of mechanical influence swirled together. Even if nobody snapped right this second, staying in this lab was a terrible idea.
Ethan didn’t bother explaining.
"Out. Now."
He led them straight for the edge of the laboratory.
At the same time, out in the desert, the white energy sphere slammed into the old man head-on.
The desert disk snapped through multiple layers of defense.
Mechanical structures unfolded in front of him—space barriers and energy shields stacking over each other like armor plating.
But this time, not one of them actually held.
The instant the white sphere touched the first layer of space, lightning detonated outward from inside it. The arcs leapt over the edge of the barrier and blew apart the core that kept the structure stable.
The first defense shattered.
The energy sphere kept going.
The second and third shields were pierced in sequence. White light flooded through the disk’s internal channels, and every machine that tried to absorb the incoming power burned out under the overload.
Even at the end, the old man couldn’t believe one strike could wipe out the disk’s entire defense.
When the white light washed over him, his mechanical right eye melted first.
His normal left eye still held a question.
The power they’d been chasing all along—
Was mechanical ascension... really not enough?
The next moment, the old man was obliterated.
His body, his scepter, and what remained of his mechanical framework vanished into the white lightning, leaving behind not a single part that could be pieced back together.
The massive sand-table structure nearby took the hit too.
The circular construct split from the center, the outer rim collapsing in sheets. In the end, only a lonely corner remained, tilted and hanging over the desert like it didn’t know where to fall.
Then the self-destruct sequence kicked in.
Red alarms flared across every surviving facility.
Energy cores hidden throughout the desert and the laboratory went into overload at the same time. Those inhuman devices—culture vats, mechanical test zones, all of it—would be erased completely by the destruction.
Ethan felt that central eruption the moment it happened.
Danger rolled out from deep inside the lab, the shock shaking the vats and the spatial wormholes together.
He immediately gathered the white lightning in front of him.
Power tore a cut through the spatial barrier by force.
Ethan carried Elira through the rift in the world first.The others followed right behind. When the last of them made it through, he snapped the space shut again, sealing off the rising tide of annihilation behind them.
But in the center of the laboratory, one presence still hadn’t left.
In a corner, a small brain—no bigger than a fist—used thin mechanical limbs to tap at a keyboard.
It entered command after command.
The self-destruct program that had already started... stopped.
The red glow died.
The alarms vanished.
The little brain rotated, studying the now-empty lab.
The culture vats were vacant.
Every experimental target had escaped.
It paused in silence for a moment, then set its mechanical limbs back on the keys.
The self-destruct sequence restarted.
This time, it wasn’t shut off again.
After Ethan led everyone away, the entire region began to sink.
The desert floor caved inward toward the center first—then the whole mass collapsed. Mechanical structures thousands of meters deep were buried under the ground as explosions rippled through them, while the surface sand poured down like a tide rushing into a whirlpool.
In the sky, roiling shockwaves expanded outward.
The clouds that had been blocking the sun were shoved far away, and long-missed sunlight poured back onto the land.
When the trembling finally stopped, everything the Golden Kingdom had left behind was buried deep.
The place returned to its original state.
And, at last, it was normal again.
No blessings falling from the sky.
No desire stirred by a scepter.
With the machines gone, the desert that had smothered the earth began to retreat. Green plants pushed up through damp soil. Grass and trees spread until, in the end, it became a forest.
A little monkey appeared beside a pool of water.
It squatted at the bank and cupped clear water in both hands.
Upstream, something drifted in—an ruined mechanical arm.
Silver-white fingers broke the surface, still catching sunlight.
The monkey saw it, and its eyes lit up.
It stepped forward, hit by a sudden, fierce craving. It wanted to scoop the mechanical arm out, make it its own.
Just as its fingers were about to touch the water, a voice called from deep in the forest.
Mom.
Mom was calling it back for dinner.
The little monkey lifted its head, glanced at the mechanical arm one last time... then turned and ran toward the voice.
A whole family clustered around the mother in the middle.
Bright, happy sounds echoed through the trees again and again.
No one looked back at the pool.
The mechanical arm sank with the current, slowly buried beneath mud and fallen leaves.
It would stay hidden forever in the river of history.
Ethan and the others escaped successfully.
To make sure everyone was completely free of the laboratory’s lingering influence, he borrowed Lily’s power again.
Once everyone’s mind and condition fully stabilized, they kept moving forward.
And they all agreed on one thing—
They would never go back to that place again.
"Lily?"
After a while, Ethan leaned against a big tree and called softly.
"Lily."
No answer came from inside him.
Lily had fallen asleep again, just like he’d expected.
Ethan sighed, helpless.
After the rest, Seraphina shifted back into her massive dragon body and carried them as they flew toward the far distance.