# 445
Chapter 445 – Requiem
“Requiem…” Baili Pangpang murmured when he saw the skull.
Baili Xin cupped the skull in both hands and poured every ounce of mental power into it. Scarlet pinpricks glimmered in the empty eye-sockets, like a pair of bloodshot eyes slowly opening—utterly grotesque.
The jaw unhinged. Within the fleshless mouth, a half-living tongue quivered.
A woman’s voice drifted through the air—plaintive, shrill, the lyrics indistinct. Her song seemed to circle them, now far, now near, impossible to locate.
The instant it sounded, Lin Qiye felt his life-force being ripped away. He looked down: his palms were slick with blood, countless granules oozing from his skin and falling like sand.
An Qingyu, the berserk Cao Yuan, and Baili Pangpang suffered the same.
Only Jialan stood unaffected.
“Turn to dust…” Baili Xin whispered, eyes glacial.
……
“Requiem… so that’s Requiem?”
Far from the battlefield, Ninth Seat stared at the skull, scalp prickling.
“What is it?” Shen Qingzhu’s brows knit tight.
“Forbidden Ruins Sequence 033—Requiem. With nothing but a song it can turn every living thing besides the user into sand.” Ninth Seat’s gaze never left the crimson bone. “Forty-odd years ago a woman possessed it. Her life had been so tragic she grew twisted and vowed to repay society.
She broke into a pop concert, hijacked every speaker, grabbed a mic and sang half a song…
In less than fifty seconds, everything alive inside the stadium and within three kilometres—six-thousand-plus people, countless insects, birds, cats and dogs—became a twenty-ton dune of yellow sand.
By the time the Night Watch arrived, the woman had already killed herself…”
Shen Qingzhu’s face behind the mask darkened further. “If hearing it causes petrifaction, just don’t listen.”
“Not that simple.” Ninth Seat shook his head. “Requiem works by using sound frequency to shatter cellular structure. Plug your ears all you like—if your body is in the transmission zone, you turn to sand.
In a way, this indiscriminate, city-scale killer is more terrifying than a nuke.
Looks like Baili Xin is staging a comeback after all…”
Shen Qingzhu narrowed his eyes at the figures beginning to granulate inside the hall and slowly raised his right hand.
“With me here, he flips nothing.”
Snap—!!
A crisp finger-snap rang through the air.
……
Inside the hall.
Every molecule of air on the 166th floor was sucked away; the black flames snuffed out, and the eerie song lost its medium, cut dead.
Suffocation slammed down on everyone.
This is—
Lin Qiye’s petrifaction halted. He whipped his head toward Baili Pangpang, who stared back in identical shock.
That fleeting snap, the sudden vacuum—it reminded them of someone…
Someone who should be dead.
But there was no time to dwell.
In the vacuum, Lin Qiye spun toward the stunned Baili Xin. The brief taste of sand and the instant silence told him how the relic worked.
Before they all suffocated, the artifact had to be destroyed!
Space-magic flashed beneath his feet; he reappeared behind Baili Xin.
Still dazed by the inexplicable void, Baili Xin hesitated. When he finally reacted, it was too late.
The golden spear had been seized by Baili Pangpang, the Fire Demon Flask quenched by vacuum, Requiem silenced—his last defence was the black sand drifting around him. Just as he tried to swirl it behind his back, an ancient sword swept down.
The blade of Prayer Abyss sheared through the arm holding Requiem and sent it spinning away in a jet of blood.
Under kinetic control, the severed limb—and the skull it clutched—shot straight toward Jialan.
Baili Pangpang’s lips moved soundlessly in the vacuum; the next instant, Qian and Kun inverted beneath his feet. The crimson skull was torn from the disembodied hand and slapped into his own grasp.
He slammed his palm under the jaw, snapping the mouth shut. The bleeding glow in the sockets dimmed, died, and the skull fell still.
Whoosh—!!
Air rushed back into the 166th floor.
The whole sequence had taken less than four seconds. Lin Qiye and the others sucked in grateful breaths, hearts still hammering.
Without that sudden vacuum, even if they had realised what was happening and tried to snatch Requiem, it would have cost thirty seconds. At the rate they were turning to sand, half their bodies would have been gone…
A squad of cripples.
Baili Pangpang clutched the skull, eyes bright, scanning the hall for a familiar silhouette—
A cyan streak tore across the sky, faster than a fighter jet, carving a straight white scar overhead. It shot through the shattered windows, the glow fading to reveal a young man in a dark-red cloak striding toward the centre.
Lin Qiye and the rest turned.
Baili Xin, one arm gone, stood in a pool of his own blood. His eyes narrowed at the newcomer.
“Ye Fan guessed right,” the youth said, surveying the devastated hall before fixing on Baili Xin. “You really gave us a ‘pleasant’ surprise… Baili Xin.”