Chapter 104: Chapter 104: Silent Night Descends! The Meteor of the Blazing Void!

[Item Status: Blade of the Shadow of Death]

-> Quality: Legendary (Soulbound)

-> Description: After a target creature is successfully executed by the Blade of the Shadow of Death, the residual experience energy contained within its physical vessel will catalyze to birth a special, high-tier summon: the "Death Shadow."

[Summon Detail: Death Shadow]

-> Combat Strength: Directly scales based on the baseline level metric of the slain target vessel.

-> Passive Trait: The summoned entities will continuously absorb ambient experience energy grids and grow progressively stronger with each consecutive kill they claim on the battlefield.

-> System Note: Summons will automatically dissolve and convert back into pure experience points after remaining in a non-combat state for thirty consecutive minutes. Alternatively, the Conductor can actively trigger a fusion state to absorb their properties directly.

-> Evaluation: Outnumbered and alone? With this blade in hand, you will never fear a human wave tactic again!

This was the complete, unlocked data sheet for the pitch-black short sword after Bai Cheng’s grueling, non-stop crafting grind. Although its operational effects weren’t as straightforward or brutally explosive as her previous two legendary daggers, its scaling mechanics were undeniably terrifying for macro-battlefield management.

A weapon capable of spawning an auto-leveling undead army. Its only minor mechanical drawback was that the physical blade itself lacked built-in attack-speed modifiers, making it somewhat clunky to swing in a standard duel.

Of course, operating with a hardcore grinder’s analytical mindset, what Bai Cheng was most curious about right now was the exact baseline parameters of the summoned entity. After all, even among monsters occupying the exact same level tier, actual combat output could vary drastically.

Screeech—!

The sharp, metallic shriek of the heavy brake pads against the iron rails gradually faded into the hot wind. The multi-ton steel locomotive had officially ground to a halt.

Clang—!

The reinforced carriage doors slid open with a heavy mechanical thud. Instantly, three elite employees surged out across the gravel tracks, smoothly deploying into a flawless, pre-synchronized defensive formation.

Even without a single word of verbal communication from Bai Cheng, their tactical division of labor was exceptionally clear.

Zi Yuan drew her long, gleaming phantasmal blade, her silhouette dissolving slightly as she stood quietly guarding the left flank of the train array. On the opposite side, Chi Yan marched forward with heavy, rhythmic strides, planting her massive shield into the baked earth to single-handedly lock down the entire right perimeter.

Up on the roof plating, Lü Duo had already executed a fluid leap to reach the lead carriage deck. Standing tall against the howling heatwaves, a vibrant, emerald-green longbow slowly materialized in her grip, its string crackling with rich wood-element energy.

High above the entire scene, the majestic, azure-feathered Qing Niao maintained a wide aerial perimeter loop. Her golden eyes tracked the horizon, ready to dive-bomb any airborne threats that dared to breach the locomotive’s airspace.

Even though Qing Niao was technically only classified as an Epic-tier employee—appearing somewhat modest and average when surrounded by Bai Cheng’s roster of Legendary and Immortal powerhouses—against ordinary regional mobs, her baseline stats still guaranteed a completely overwhelming mechanical advantage.

"Xiao Cheng, do you think this wave of monsters will actually be enough?" Yu Nian asked, stepping out onto the open-air viewing platform with a slight frown of concern.

She wasn’t worried about the lethality of the oncoming volcanic horde in the slightest; rather, her sole anxiety was that wiping out the entire wave might not yield enough concentrated experience energy to push her current level past its progression bottleneck.

"It should at least be sufficient to force your profile into Normal-level Rank Nine, right?" Bai Cheng mused, though her tone carried a trace of professional uncertainty.

Rumble—!

Another low-lying volcanic peak on the horizon violently ruptured, spewing superheated slag into the air. The roaring beast horde capitalized on the distraction, their massive stone hooves trampling the shuddering earth as they closed the distance to the stationary train cars.

Up in the clouds, Qing Niao completed a swift scanning sweep, transmitting the real-time telemetry back down to the cockpit. Chi Yan immediately translated the intelligence, her deep voice projecting effortlessly across the rumbling plain. "Young Miss! The spatial spawning portals have ceased materializing new entities. The final radar count for this wave locks in at exactly three hundred targets!"

Bai Cheng raised a disappointed eyebrow. She had intentionally ordered the emergency stop precisely because she wanted to draw out a massive, server-wide horde; otherwise, she wouldn’t have bothered wasting boiler pressure to halt the locomotive.

And then, Chi Yan delivered a secondary, rather underwhelming update.

"Furthermore... these demonic beasts possess incredibly weak individual power indices. Your subordinate cannot detect a single trace of an Elite-grade aura across the entire charging wave."

Bai Cheng’s face instantly darkened. "Then they really are just garbage-tier mobs."

The oncoming horde didn’t even match her own base level!

"Alright, since the metrics are this low, let’s just leave the entire cleanup operation to Qing Niao and Lü Duo," Bai Cheng sighed with a wave of her hand, her hype completely deflating.

After all, both the archer and the aerial scout were currently sitting at the Elite-grade tier and urgently needed to farm low-grade essence to scale their attributes. A cluster of standard, Normal-level demonic beasts posed absolutely zero statistical threat to Bai Cheng’s current operational setup.

"Oh, but do me a favor and catch one alive before you wipe the field," Bai Cheng added as an afterthought.

Chi Yan, who had been preparing to pivot back toward her defensive node, paused. Raising a single, heavily armored palm toward the sky, a massive pillar of crimson fire suddenly erupted from the earth beneath the charging vanguard over a hundred meters away.

The roaring flame jet arced gracefully through the superheated air, violently slamming a flaming, screeching avian beast straight out of the sky and dropping it right onto the gravel paths in front of Bai Cheng’s boots.

The strange creature was already half-dead from the kinetic impact, but its crimson eyes still flared with an unhinged, rabid fury. It thrashed desperately against the dirt, baring its stone fangs in a futile attempt to lacerate the enemy in front of it. It wasn’t intimidated by Chi Yan’s towering Immortal pressure in the slightest.

Bai Cheng’s gaze sharpened as she observed the erratic behavioral pattern. This absolute absence of survival instinct was the documented psychological override caused by the environmental Ash Rain mechanic.

Chi Yan stepped forward, casually bringing her massive iron boot down to pin the thrashing monster firmly into the bedrock. "Young Miss, its primary core node is located in the lower left quadrant of its chest cavity."

Staring down at the black-and-red avian abomination, which closely resembled a mutated prehistoric pterodactyl, Bai Cheng gripped the sleek, matte-black hilt of the Blade of the Shadow of Death. Without a single frame of hesitation, she drove the dark steel straight through the creature’s armored hide and into its core.

Skreee—!

The monster let out a single, strangled wail. With practically zero remaining resistance, its limbs went completely limp against the gravel, its HP bar instantly zeroing out.

The exact second the death state registered, a thick, ethereal wave of faint blue energy began to seep out from the cooling carcass, swirling lazily through the superheated air around the corpse. Within a blink of an eye, the blue mist condensed, manifesting into a levitating, pitch-black silhouette suspended half a meter off the ground.

The freshly birthed Death Shadow resembled a spectral figure draped in a sweeping, tattered wide robe. Its entire physical form was composed of undulating, pure dark energy—looking like a highly stylized, ghostly hybrid of a premium shadow demon and the convenience store boss she had recently liquidated. It possessed zero biological features, its hood framing nothing but a pitch-black, swirling void.

Its singular weapon was a massive, heavy chain coiled tightly around its ethereal right arm, forged entirely from condensed, high-density shadow particles.

"The aesthetic isn’t bad at all, and it functions as a natural aerial unit," Bai Cheng nodded approvingly, expressing genuine satisfaction with her new legendary toy. "Go. Liquidate the incoming targets."

With a simple flick of her wrist, she issued the command. Turning on her heel, she walked back into the secure cabin alongside Chi Yan and Zi Yuan.

Seconds later, the heavy steam engine roared back to life, the gears engaging as the train began tracking forward once more.

Up on the roof deck, Lü Duo’s fingers smoothly released her emerald bowstring. Thrum—! Several glowing green arrows instantly transformed into piercing streaks of light, ripping through the dense smoke. The projectiles tore clean through the vanguard of the charging horde, instantly impaling and executing dozens of demonic beasts in a single synchronized shot.

Up in the clouds, Qing Niao executed a tight banking turn. Flapping her massive wings, she unleashed a devastating hail of razor-sharp, glowing arrow feathers that rained down across the plain like a tactical cluster strike. Every single feather accurately tracking a mob’s weak point, pinning their skulls firmly into the burning earth.

Both employees operated with high-tier Elite parameters. Even without drawing upon their ultimate skills, clearing out a wave of standard Normal-level trash mobs was as simple as breathing. Plus, given that both assets specialized in massive ranged area-of-effect output, Bai Cheng had zero intention of keeping her train stationary just to watch a one-sided slaughter.

As the armored locomotive steadily reached its maximum cruising velocity, its massive heavy-duty cowcatcher violently plowed straight through the remaining flanks of the encirclement, crushing dozens of stone-skinned monsters beneath its wheels without losing a single kilometer of momentum.

Bai Cheng’s mouth twitched slightly as she monitored the combat logs from her console. "Seriously... way too weak."

Losing every ounce of interest in a battle that had devolved into an absolute macro-farming script, she withdrew her final crafting material from her inventory pouch—a rugged, unrefined weapon template—and focused all her mental processing on leveling its parameters.

[Material Tracker: Survival Dagger]

-> Current Forging Experience: 0 / 1,000

Bai Cheng’s posture instantly froze, a deep scowl settling over her features as she processed the mechanical requirement. "One thousand manual, perfect-form weapon swings?!"

"How long is it supposed to take me to max this damn thing out?!"

However, drawing upon her extensive experience as a veteran min-maxer, she understood that the more tedious and structurally demanding an item’s leveling methodology was, the more game-breaking its unlocked post-max characteristic would inevitably be.

Refusing to waste another second of travel time, she planted her boots into the cabin deck, gripped the handle, and began executing rapid, flawless slashing motions into the empty air, completely immersing herself in the grind.

"Time to sweat!"

Unbeknownst to her as she lost herself in the rhythmic tempo of the grind, the world outside the iron cars had completely shifted. The scorched sky had transitioned into an absolute, pitch-black darkness.

The ominous Ash Rain had begun to fall from the clouds once more at some unspecified point during her training session, and the exact moment the last of the three hundred demonic beasts was liquidated by her archers, the ambient noise of the plains vanished into a dead, suffocating silence.

On the primary tactical monitor adjacent to her console, four massive, blood-red characters suddenly flickered into existence, pulsing with an eerie, rhythmic light:

[SILENT NIGHT DESCENDS]

"Young Miss..." Zi Yuan’s spectral voice suddenly drifted through the cabin, her tone laced with a rare edge of tactical alert.

Bai Cheng snapped out of her training loop, freezing her knife mid-swing as she quickly rushed over to peer through the thick observation glass.

At this exact moment, the entire bedrock of the mountainous valley was trembling violently. Countless jagged, expanding ravines were tearing open across the plains, and torrents of incandescent, superheated molten lava began to surge upward from the deep mantle, transforming the desolate valley floor into a network of flowing, crimson rivers.

Bai Cheng’s eyes widened as she realized that every single volcanic peak on the horizon had simultaneously triggered a catastrophic, full-scale eruption. Colossal clouds of toxic black ash were rolling across the upper atmosphere, completely blotting out the stars and any remaining ambient visibility.

The sky above was pitch black, while the earth below was dyed a terrifying, luminescent crimson by the reflection of the exposed magma.

Under the crushing shroud of the [Silent Night] event mechanic, the Lava Volcano grid had transformed into a literal depiction of the end of days!

Suddenly, Bai Cheng’s pupils violently contracted into pinpricks.

The thick, heavy ash clouds directly above their moving train cars were violently blasted apart by an immense kinetic force. A colossal, roaring fireball composed of pure molten rock and superheated plasma smashed clean through the upper atmospheric layers, hurtling straight down along a terminal trajectory locked dead onto her locomotive!