Chapter 39 - The City-Wide Spirit Breach
The prison broke at 12:41 a.m.
Not completely.
Enough.
A wave of black qi spread beneath Riverside City.
Every old ward flickered.
Spirit creatures appeared across downtown.
Traffic lights failed.
Phones lost service.
Ordinary people thought it was an earthquake and blackout.
Cultivators knew better.
Night Class split into teams.
Maya protected the hospital.
Jace took the subway.
Trevor guarded an evacuation center despite technically not being a club member.
Eli rode his delivery bike through the city because roads were blocked.
The system generated quests faster than he could read.
[RESCUE CIVILIANS]
[REPAIR WARD NODE]
[DEFEAT CORRUPTED SPIRIT]
[DELIVER INSULIN TO 8TH STREET]
That last one was not even cultivation.
Eli did it anyway.
The Beggar’s Loop drank city energy constantly.
Heat from fires.
Motion from cycling.
Electricity from damaged street lines.
His qi refilled faster than it emptied.
At 2:17 a.m., he defeated a spirit hound using a parking meter.
At 2:43, he carried two children out of a collapsed convenience store.
At 3:05, he repaired a ward node using instructions from Elias.
Then the system chimed.
[QI GATHERING VIII]
He had advanced twice in one night.
Dangerous.
Unsustainable.
Necessary.
At 3:20, Maya called.
“Eli. The hospital ward is failing.”
“How long?”
“Ten minutes.”
He looked at the hill separating him from the hospital.
His bike chain snapped.
The system displayed:
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[OPTIONAL QUEST: RUN.]
