Chapter 338 The Hidden K

Grayish-white text jumped out at the edge of my field of vision.

[Target to be detected: ? (Mysterious and extraordinary) (Dangerous)]

[A bizarre and extraordinary individual with an extremely high compatibility; the pathway is related to the elimination of their presence, and their aura concentration is approaching the limits of cognition.]

Lu Yuan's heart suddenly raced.

The gentle tone and the aura emanating from him were two completely different things.

The aura was so strong that it gave me goosebumps and caused my body to have a physical rejection reaction.

Although he didn't have the same sense of oppression as the guards when he went up the clock tower, his strength was probably above Klaus's.

K's right hand was already outstretched.

With his five fingers spread out, his palm was aimed at Lu Yuan's back, his fingertips less than three inches from his spine. His fingers were very white and his knuckles were long and slender, making him look like an ordinary student.

Lu Yuan's body was running at full speed in an accelerated state, but to K, it was as if he hadn't moved at all.

Just as K's fingertips were about to touch his back...

Something behind Lu Yuan opened its eyes.

A jet-black eye emerged from the shadows behind Lu Yuan, its pupil enormous, almost filling the entire eye socket, so black that the bottom could not be seen.

His eyes darted around and fixed on K.

K's outstretched hand stopped in mid-air.

The smile was still on his lips, but his fingertips did not move forward.

That eyeball didn't belong to Lu Yuan.

It hovered behind Lu Yuan's shoulder, its dark pupils swaying casually, clearly looking in K's direction.

Lu Yuan had seen these eyeballs on the clock tower—those things that floated and sank within the dark aura of the guardians.

Lu Yuan instantly understood that the guardians were watching this place.

K's finger moved.

He withdrew his palm from Lu Yuan's back, and with a flick of his wrist, shifted the direction from Lu Yuan's spine to the wooden figure tucked under his arm.

His five fingers precisely gripped the wooden structure wrapped in the coat, moving with incredible speed.

"Um?"

A voice came from afar.

The voice was old and deep, consisting of only one syllable, but that single syllable swept away all the sounds on the battlefield, landing cleanly between Lu Yuan and K.

Lu Yuan recognized the voice.

They are protectors.

The next moment, the hunched figure in the distance was gone. There was no trace of movement throughout the entire process; it was as if he had vanished.

Then he appeared behind Lu Yuan.

A withered hand reached out from Lu Yuan's shoulder, covered with wrinkles and veins, the bones beneath the skin clearly visible, and the nails grayish-white.

That hand grabbed K's wrist.

K's five fingers hovered less than an inch from the wooden figure, without touching it.

Lu Yuan was unable to move.

From the moment the Guardians appeared, everything in the entire area came to a standstill. The insect swarm froze, the sounds from the distant battlefield vanished, and even the air itself seemed to solidify, so heavy that it pressed everyone and everything, including the light, into place.

Lu Yuan's eyes could still move. He saw that K was also frozen in place, a lazy smile on his face, his wrist held by a withered hand, the five fingers suspended in mid-air, the sharp aura emanating from him completely covered by the guardian's dark aura at this moment.

Only the Guardians are moving throughout the entire world.

Lu Yuanxuan's heart finally settled down. He was just a second-level knowledge transcendent, unable to defeat anyone. His life was so miserable.

The old man moved extremely slowly, so slowly that Lu Yuan could see the curve of every wrinkle on his fingers tightening, and the throbbing of the veins under his skin when his withered knuckles closed.

He was slowly tightening his grip on his fingers.

A dark aura emanated from the old man's shoulder, spreading inch by inch along his arm, crawling towards the spot where K's wrist was gripped. All the black eyes within the aura opened, floating densely in the dark mist, each one staring at K.

The eyeball that had emerged from behind Lu Yuan sank back down at that moment, dissolving into the shadows.

Grayish-white text jumped out at the edge of my field of vision.

[Sanity: -5...66/140]

[Environmental Sensing: High-risk pollution source detected. Please move away immediately!]

K's mouth was moving.

But under the pressure of the domain, K could only move his lips.

"Aren't you afraid of dying?"

The voice squeezed out from that frozen face, tinged with confusion, yet even with a hint of sincerity.

The guardian did not respond. The withered hand continued to tighten.

K had only one thought left in his mind.

The Guardian shouldn't be here, and he certainly shouldn't make a move. K had received clear information that the Guardian wouldn't act.

The reason he dared to move freely in the Tower of Learning and to intercept a second-tier enemy on the outskirts of the insect swarm was because of this certainty.

But the old man's withered hand was gripping his wrist; flesh was shriveling, bones were groaning, and the whole person seemed about to fall apart.

K's expression finally changed; the lazy smile on his lips disappeared, and his eyes darkened.

The next instant, his body disintegrated.

The entire body began to disintegrate from the wrist that was being gripped. Skin and bones, along with the mud-stained dark gray robe, turned into dark gray liquid at the same moment, pouring out from between the guard's withered fingers and splashing onto the gravel ground.

The domain remained, and the air was still thick and solid, but K's body slid out of that fifth-level suppression, and the liquid flowed rapidly on the ground, converging several meters away.

Lu Yuan's eyes followed the direction of the liquid.

He saw something that shouldn't have been there. As K's liquid flowed across the ground, a very faint, ghostly blue light flickered in the cracks of the stone slabs beneath his feet, exactly the same color as the bronze city inscription that the ring had activated when the war began.

The inscription is making way for K.

The liquid rose again a few meters away, condensing upwards from the ground, and K's figure returned to its original shape in less than a second.

The guardian glanced down at the empty, withered hand, and the black eyeballs floating in the dark aura turned towards the direction where K was about to appear the instant K dissipated.

As soon as K's form was fully formed, the guardian was no longer there.

As before, there was no sign of movement. The old man was simply not there, and then he appeared directly in front of K, less than an arm's length away.

K took a half step back, his body, which had only been in motion for less than a second, instinctively retreating, his lazy and relaxed posture completely shattered.

The guardian stood before him, his hunched figure half a head shorter than K's, but a dark aura emanated from the old man's shoulders, shrouding K in shadow.

The old man's gaze fell on K. Some of the black eyes floating in the air were looking towards the ground, at the faint, eerie blue light emanating from the cracks in the stone slabs beneath K's feet.

The hoarse voice was very low.

"How did you manage to borrow the power of the Bronze City?"

K's expression changed again.

The guardian realized that his escape from the fifth-tier domain wasn't entirely due to his own efforts; the inscription power of the Bronze City had shielded him from some of the domain's suppression at that moment, and the inscription was protecting him.

K did not answer.

The guardian was silent for a moment.

"Never mind." The hoarse voice was flat. "I'll find out for myself."

He stretched out his withered hand, and a dark aura surged from his arm. His black eyes, covered with countless strands of aura, were wide open and staring at K.

The space around K began to condense, and air was squeezed into K's body from all directions. The density increased several times in a few breaths, and the gravel under K's feet was crushed, with tiny stone chips floating motionless in mid-air.

K's smile vanished completely; at the moment the guardian's withered hand reached out, he clearly could no longer hold on.

"Guardians."

K spoke with some difficulty, the space was still tightening, but his voice trembled slightly.

Are you sure you want to kill me?

He looked at the hunched old man in front of him.

"I can assure you, your path will come to a complete end."

The guardian's expression remained unchanged, his withered hand hovering in mid-air, and a dark aura slowly surging around him.

The hoarse voice was neither too loud nor too soft.

"You overestimate yourself and the group behind you."

The guardians no longer concealed their true intentions.

The moment the withered hand thrust forward, a pitch-black aura poured out completely from the old man's body, so concentrated that it blocked out all light. Countless black eyeballs surged out from the black aura, so dense that there were no gaps, layer upon layer, filling every inch of space around K, completely surrounding him from head to toe to behind, all wide open, staring at him.

K was frozen in place.

All the power was focused on him alone.

The body and pathways were frozen simultaneously, and even the power within the body that resonated with the inscriptions of the Bronze City was forcibly suppressed from the outside by the dark aura.

In K's vision, the world turned black and white.

Colors were stripped away from all around; the stone slabs on the ground, the distant insect walls, and the remaining light in the night sky all faded away, leaving only black and white.

The only things with color were the eyeballs; the jet-black pupils stood out sharply in the black and white world.

He was stripped of everything; he couldn't even send out the thought of liquefaction. His pathways were frozen at the root, and every channel in his body related to supernatural power solidified.

The guardian walked over step by step.

The old man's hunched body moved slowly forward in the darkness, each step making a soft rustling sound on the gravel.

K watched him walk over, unable to do anything.

He tried liquefaction and slippage, but all the methods he had used failed. The inscriptions on the Bronze City no longer shone; the faint blue luster was completely extinguished by the dark aura. His body and his means of communication no longer belonged to him.

This is the fifth order.

Lu Yuan's eyes could still move. He watched as the guard walked step by step toward K. The old man's movements were slow, so slow that it didn't seem like he was chasing someone who couldn't escape.

He seemed to be intentionally waiting for something.

The guardians have arrived.

In the direction of the Tower of Learning, the sea of ​​knowledge that had been silent throughout the entire battle suddenly lit up in the night sky.

A burst of light erupted from the sky, and dreamlike colors descended from above. Pure light blazed forth, piercing through the swarm of insects, the dark aura, and the guardian's domain, landing precisely at K's location.

The K in the Guardian's hand evaporated the moment the light touched him.

His body, his aura, his presence—all vanished in an instant, leaving no time for even the eyes fixed on him in the darkness to follow him.

His withered hands were empty once again.

The guards did not move.

He stood there, looking up at the dissipating pillar of light in the direction of the Tower of Learning, a dark aura slowly surging around him.

He didn't kill K. K was taken away.

"You really participated..."