High Martial Arts: Martial Soul Great Sage Equal to Heaven, crushing all races.

Meanwhile, in Shanghai.

This place has become a veritable hell.

Xia family territory.

The once towering buildings have been completely destroyed.

The asphalt road arched upwards and cracked. Rough vines broke through the earth's crust, their surfaces covered with barbs, like living giant pythons frantically weaving through the streets.

Xia Buxiu, the patriarch of the Xia family, sat cross-legged on a piece of dead wood at the highest point of the clan's territory.

His lower body had become completely tree-like, connected to the giant tree.

Countless roots have penetrated the underground pipe network of Shanghai, spreading out from the sewers and frantically drawing nourishment from the city's inhabitants.

A girl in a school uniform stumbles and runs through the ruins.

A vine silently emerged from the shadows, wrapped around her ankles, and hung her upside down in mid-air, its barbs piercing her skin.

Before the girl could even cry for help, she turned into a skeletal, dried-up corpse and was carelessly tossed into the fire by the roadside by vines.

Such tragedies were happening simultaneously in various corners of Shanghai.

The Xia family warriors, after being transformed into demons, completely lost their humanity.

Their eyes were bloodshot, their skin had bark-like textures, and they brandished weapons, slaughtering their former compatriots without restraint.

Besides the Xia family, the hidden strongholds of the Demon Worship Cult have also been fully activated.

Crimson blood sacrifice arrays lit up in several important squares.

The captured civilians were forcibly pushed into the formation, their screams and blood-red light intertwining to create a surge of demonic energy that continuously weakened the energy shield of the Demon City.

A corner of the chaotic battlefield.

Behind the louvers of the ventilation ducts in a partially collapsed office building.

The bodyguard codenamed "Shadow Three" lay there quietly.

The red light on the tactical recorder was flashing regularly.

On the street below, Xia Ming, the vice president of Shanghai Martial Arts University, was personally crushing the throat of a resistance fighter.

Blood splattered on his face, but he didn't care. Instead, he showed a morbid fanaticism and kicked the corpse into the blood sacrifice array next to him.

Shadow Three's breathing rate remained at four times per minute, and his heart rate dropped to its lowest point.

His hand remained on the short knife at his waist, but he did not move.

Dozens of civilians are being slaughtered below.

If he jumps down, he might be able to save them.

But he can't.

This is an ironclad rule left by Li Changqing a century ago.

The duty of the secret guards is not to save people, but to record things.

The Xia family has been operating in Shanghai for a century, deeply rooted and intricately intertwined.

Simply killing a few ringleaders is not enough to completely eradicate this cancer.

Even after the war, they might turn around and use their connections in the capital to escape punishment.

Their crimes must be thoroughly exposed to the light of day.

We must obtain irrefutable, irrefutable evidence.

To eradicate a malignant tumor, one must remove it completely, root and all.

The current forbearance is for the thunderous blow in the courtroom later.

To ensure that the blood of those who died was not shed in vain.

Shadow Three stared intently at the horrific scene below, his eyes burning with suppressed rage.

The tactical recorder clearly preserved Xia Ming's every move and every boastful word.

"It'll be soon..." he murmured to himself, "When the general returns, you will all be dead."

The general he was referring to was not Feng Qingyang.

It was that eighteen-year-old boy who could shatter the shoulder blade of a sixth-tier white tiger with a single blow.

That acting general, Feng Mo, who doesn't follow the rules and only relies on force.

Ying San knew that Feng Mo was currently making rapid breakthroughs in the secret chamber of the Jade Face Sect.

Once that prodigy emerges from seclusion, the seemingly hopeless situation in Shanghai will be turned around.

The third civilian refuge passage in the eastern district of Shanghai.

The mournful echoes of air raid sirens swirled over the burning city.

The air was filled with a mixture of ozone, gunpowder smoke, and the smell of burning entrails.

The soldiers of the Demon Slayer Division's Divine Machine Battalion who remained behind had bloodshot eyes.

The heavy energy cannon's barrel was already overheated and glowing red-hot; the coolant had long since run out, and firing a few more shots would risk causing it to explode.

But they still mechanically loaded and fired, blasting the low-level monsters that tried to break through the defenses into pieces.

The formation masters of the Xuanwu Camp sat around the back of the defensive line.

Blood kept gushing from the noses of several young array masters, dripping onto the array plate.

They are overdrawing their martial spirit power to desperately maintain that crumbling local protective shield.

On the front lines of hand-to-hand combat, the reserve members of Shanghai Martial Arts University had fought to the point of running out of ammunition and supplies.

Kim Jong-il's left arm was bent outward at an odd angle, with bone fragments piercing his combat uniform.

He held the heavy alloy shield aloft with his right arm; the shield's surface was covered with deep claw marks that revealed bone and pits corroded by acid.

"Step back! Civilians go first!" His voice was hoarse like sandpaper scraping, and he spat a mouthful of blood onto the ground.

A peak-level Tier 3 armored rhinoceros demon beast charged forward with its head down.

Kim Jong-il did not retreat, knowing that behind him lay the entrance to an air-raid shelter crowded with the elderly, the infirm, and the disabled.

A dull thud resounded.

Kim Jong-i, along with his shield, was thrown more than ten meters away and crashed heavily into an abandoned armored vehicle.

The alloy shield shattered completely.

He vomited a mouthful of blood and struggled to get up, but his legs wouldn't obey him at all.

Chu Qiulan leaned against a nearby bunker, her lungs gurgling like a bellows.

Her martial spirit power has been completely exhausted.

The once-proud Dragon Soaring Fist can't even produce a phantom image of a mudfish now.

She watched as another Tier 3 Riftwind Wolf crossed the defensive line, opened its massive maw filled with fangs, and pounced on a mother holding a baby.

Chu Qiulan bit her tongue, trying to squeeze out the last bit of potential, but her body felt as heavy as if it were filled with lead, and she couldn't move her legs at all.

Despair spread along the defense line.

At the critical moment.

A blinding purple flame fell from the sky.

The high temperature causes severe refraction of the surrounding light, and the air to become distorted and deformed.

The purple flames struck the back of the Wind-Splitting Wolf with pinpoint accuracy.

Without the slightest pause.

The Rending Wind Wolf didn't even have time to howl before it instantly turned into a handful of ashes.

A tall figure emerged from the purple flames.

Yun Wanrou.

She and the fifth-level warriors of the Divine Machine Camp and the Xuanwu Camp, under Feng Mo's orders, returned to the Demon Capital to provide assistance.

At this moment, her mentor uniform was tattered and she had a deep, bone-revealing wound on her left shoulder, but her aura had reached its peak.

A terrifying and ferocious image of a drought demon loomed behind her.

Purple corpse fire surrounded him, incinerating all the mutated vines and monsters that approached.

"Professor Yun!" Jin Zhengyi's eyes lit up and he roared.

Yun Wanrou didn't turn around, but instead threw out several bottles of high-level healing pills, which landed precisely in the arms of Chu Qiulan and Jin Zhengyi.

"Take your medicine, regulate your breathing, leave this to me." Her voice was cold and unyielding.

The image of the drought demon stomped its foot hard on the ground.

The purple ring of fire spread outwards in a circular pattern from her center.

Dozens of low-level demonic beasts within a radius of several hundred meters, along with the spreading Xia family tree vines, were instantly reduced to charcoal upon contact with the ring of fire.

Single-handedly, he managed to stabilize the defense line that was on the verge of collapse.

But Yun Wanrou knew in her heart that this was just a temporary fix.

Her injuries had not yet healed, and forcibly activating her Dharma form severely depleted her vital energy.

Even more deadly, at the far end of the street, the figure of a fifth-order demonized warrior had already appeared.

The energy shield above Shanghai is dimming at a visible rate.

Once the protective shield is completely shattered, the beast horde outside the city will be able to advance unimpeded.

The communication channel was completely silent.

No good news came from other lines of defense, and no one called for reinforcements.

Because everyone knows there's no more support.

Those who are capable are all fighting desperately on their respective fronts.

General Feng's fate is unknown in the East Sea, and General Feng has not yet returned from the Jade Face Sect.

Chu Qiulan swallowed the pill, forcibly suppressing her surging blood and qi, and stood up again.

She picked up a broken knife from the ground and walked to Yun Wanrou's side.

Kim Jong-il used a strip of cloth to tightly bind his broken left arm to his chest, picked up a steel pipe with his right hand, and limped after him.

The remaining dozen or so freshmen, along with the soldiers who had lost their arms and legs, all silently gripped their weapons and rejoined the gaps in the defensive line.

No one complained.

No one asked where the reinforcements were.

This is the essence of Shanghai.

In the most desperate moments, the people of this land always unleash their most primal and brutal ferocity.

Since there is no way to retreat, then we shall fight to the death.

Yun Wanrou looked at the students beside her, their faces covered in blood, still somewhat childish but with resolute eyes, and her throat bobbed slightly.

She raised her head and looked in the direction of Jade Face Mountain.

The sky there was faintly tinged with a breathtaking crimson-gold light.

Although the light was faint, it carried an unruly and violent will that seemed to want to tear the sky apart.

She knew that the boy who could turn the tide was about to emerge from seclusion.

"Hold on a little longer." Yun Wanrou activated her martial soul power, and the corpse fire of the Drought Demon Dharma Form surged again, meeting the charging fifth-tier demonized martial artist. "The sky is about to brighten."