Desolate Era Book 37, Chapter 4 - Eruption

“Capture him.” As soon as Ji Ning had unleashed his heartforce illusions, he had ordered the Sithe Protector to advance.
“On it.” Whitethaw transformed into a streak of light, running through the flaming passageway at high speed. They were less than a million kilometers away, an extremely short distance to the likes of them. Whitethaw had almost instantly charged over to Archon Silksnow, his feet still firmly planted on the ground. He hadn’t flown a single time! He reached out with his great furry right hand, clawing towards Archon Silksnow. But right as he did so…
Swoosh. The blurry-eyed Archon Silksnow suddenly vanished into thin air, a strange vessel appearing in his place. This was an ancient and unadorned vessel, covered with specks of rust and decay that spoke to its great age as well as the tremendous damage it had suffered. Despite that, it was still able to move at incredible speeds. It instantly retreated at high speeds, avoiding Whitethaw’s strike with ease.
“Eh?” Ning’s face tightened. He could sense that when Whitethaw had reached out, Archon Silksnow had still been trapped by the illusions. “Is there someone else here besides Silksnow?”
Inside the fleeing realmship were two figures. The two figures looked absolutely identical; both were white-haired, white-browed copies of Archon Silksnow. One of them had a lost look on his eyes, while the other was quite clear-headed.
“Erupt!” the clear-minded Archon Silksnow commanded.
Boom! Archon Silksnow had long ago set up a masking formation to hide the terrifying trap present, as well as a few other simple formations that would be able to activate the trap. Now that Archon Silksnow actively chose to detonate his formations, they instantly erupted with their full fury! The powerful detonations instantly smashed against the truly deadly trap, causing an absolutely enormous eruption of power.
Rumble… a terrifying burst of destructive power instantly sprayed out in every direction like a dark-red wave of flames. Everything it touched was evaporated, including even spacetime and karma itself.
Although Archon Silksnow had first fled in his realmship before detonating the attack, the dark-red flames almost instantly crossed the ten million kilometers of distance and smashed against the realmship.
BOOM! Not even the realmship was able to continue to fly steadily, with the force of the blast sending it tumbling. As a vessel meant for flying between realmverses, it was extremely valuable and generally only owned by extremely high-ranking Sithe. When Autarch Bolin had assaulted the Stone Hellephant Wall, only two of the many Sithe there had been in possession of realmships.
Autarch Bolin had taken one away, while the other had been destroyed in the fighting. However, only Autarchs were capable of destroying realmships with ease. They were built to be extremely sturdy. Thus, even though the realmship was hit with a terrifying amount of power and was sent careening through the air, it remained undamaged.
……
“Not good.” Ning sensed that terrifying wave of destructive power wash out towards him from hundreds of thousands of kilometers away. The dark-red wave of flames instantly swept through the area with such power that even Ning shuddered.
This wave of power was enough to cause even Hegemons to perish.
“Master!” Whitethaw immediately began to run towards Ning.
Just as Ning was about to defend against it, he noticed something odd. He immediately sent mentally to the Protector, “Don’t panic. It can’t hurt me.”
The massive, dark-red wave of fiery power blasted out in every direction… but it maintained a distance of roughly thirty meters from the ground. Although it blew straight past Ning, it merely swept past him and the ground of the passageway. This region of thirty meters above the ground was completely safe.
Northbow swords at the ready, Ning raised his head to stare at the dark-red wave of flames as it swept through the skies above him.
“So it’s true. As long as I continue to simply walk on the ground, I’ll be perfectly safe.” Ning grinned. “The Sithe were probably worried about misfires, as these traps don’t differentiate between friend or foe.”
“Master!” Whitehaw arrived next to Ning.
“Come, let’s go find Archon Silksnow. Don’t let him escape,” Ning barked. Swoosh! Swoosh! The two continued to run forwards across the surface of ground. Soon, they were able to see the distant realmship bathed in those dark-red flames.
“What!? That vessel remains undamaged despite suffering an attack of that magnitude?” Ning revealed a puzzled look. He carefully inspected the vessel, examining what it was made out of. It seemed to be quite similar to his own realmship part, and the resonance was coming from that direction as well.
Could it be an actual realmship? Did Archon Silksnow have an undamaged realmship!? Ning was rather stunned by the implications. Both he and Ninedust knew that Archon Silksnow probably had realmship parts of his own, as that was the only explanation for the resonance, but neither of them had even dared to imagine that the Archon might have an actual realmship part! The thing looked damaged, but it was at least serviceable. The price of the realmship was truly incalculable!
“Master, that’s a realmship! I’ve seen them before. My master wanted one, but he couldn’t afford it,” Whitethaw sent mentally. “One realmship is worth twenty of me.”
This was no joke. Whitethaw didn’t have to explain why realmships were so valuable! It must be remembered that it was extremely difficult and time-consuming for even Hegemons to travel between realmverses. Realmships, however, made the passage extremely easy and simple. Any Hegemon would be willing to pay almost any price to acquire a realmship. In fact, four or five Hegemons would be willing to join together into a consortium to buy a realmship! In reality, however, they were never for sale.
Emperor Waveshift was willing to be generous enough to offer the Crimsonwave Temple to his homeland, but he would never have been willing to hand over a realmship. Only Autarchs were wealthy enough to give those things away!
“Silksnow actually has a realmship!” Ning’s eyes turned bloodshot with excitement. “I have to get it! I have to!” Ning had originally simply been wanting to get rid of a potential future threat, but now he felt great desire for the realmship as well.
……
The realmship was sent spinning through the air by the dark-red flames, but it quickly managed to stabilize. The two bodies Archon Silksnow were both on their feet.
“I didn’t expect that Daolord Darknorth’s illusions would’ve reached such a level of power. Not even my avatar was able to resist it. It took a full second before it woke up. Even my true body was trapped for an instant!” Archon Silksnow glanced at his avatar. “How terrifying. Daolord Darknorth is improving at a terrifying pace.” His oily green eyes flashed with cold light. “I have to kill him right away.”
“Unfortunately… things went to hell. My plans were completely wrecked.” Archon Silksnow shook his head. His plan had been to let his avatar wait there by itself, while his true body was aboard the realmship and hiding within an estate-treasure carried by the avatar. He wanted to use his avatar to lure Ning in, while his true body lay in wait.
He didn’t expect that Ning would immediately use illusions to attack. When the illusions struck, both his avatar and his true body were simultaneously trapped by it! Generally speaking, if a true body was trapped by an illusion the avatar would be trapped as well. This was because avatars were weaker to illusions than true bodies were! However, the reverse wasn’t necessarily the case.
In this situation, the avatar had taken a full second before regaining consciousness. Archon Silksnow’s true body, however, had almost instantly woken up after briefly falling for the illusions. By the time Whitethaw had reached out to grab the avatar, Archon Silksnow’s true body immediately made his move.
Only one thought had been in Archon Silksnow’s mind at that time: “I absolutely cannot fight Darknorth in close combat. If I do and he traps me in his illusions, even for a heartbeat, I’ll suffer a heavy wound or even die.”
“Screw it. I’ll set the blast off now.” Archon Silksnow no longer dared to try any other tricks. He was terrified of Ning’s illusions, and so he immediately detonated the nearby trap. Given how powerful that trap was and the fact that Ning was just a few hundred thousand kilometers away, he felt that it was very likely it would be able to kill Ning!
“He’s dead, right? He has to be dead.” Archon Silksnow put away his avatar and then took control over the realmship as he turned to carefully scrutinize the area he had just fled.
Suddenly, two figures appeared. One was a youth carrying a sheath on his back, the other was a furry white creature. These two were moving in pursuit of the realmship at terrifying speeds on the ground, the flames just overhead above them.
“Daolord Darknorth?!” Archon Silksnow was shocked. “He didn’t die?!” The Archon didn’t understand it. He managed to survive the blast because of his realmship, but how did Daolord Darknorth survive? Even top-grade Eternal treasures would’ve been instantly shattered by such a blast. Even Hegemons would’ve perished!
“Flee.” This was the only thought in Archon Silksnow’s mind. He immediately controlled his realmship and sent it into a headlong flight.
“Silksnow, don’t run!” Ning let out a furious shout when he saw the realmship begin to accelerate.
By now, Silksnow didn’t dare to let Ning get close to him. The illusory art Ning had used had truly frightened him, and he was completely focused on using the realmship to throw Ning off his track.