Seeing the train pass through the spatial rift and about to completely break out of the barrier's range, a sinister flicker finally crossed those cold, giant eyes watching from deep within the Mist Source Core.

The leader of the organization in the shadows—the existence calling himself the "Lord of Abyssal Echo"—finally stopped hiding.

The dark red energy swirling at his fingertips suddenly solidified from illusory to real, silently seeping into every strand of pink mist and sea breeze.

"Trying to leave?"

A raspy, overlapping voice rang out from all directions, as if the mist of the entire sea was whispering.

In the next second, the scene outside the lingering dark red barrier suddenly distorted!

Bai Cheng and the others felt the light and shadow of the silver-white rift in front of the train suddenly collapse and rotate, replaced by a boundless, dim yellow world.

Yellow sand filled the sky, and the fierce wind whipped up grit like blades.

Towering ancient stone palaces floated in mid-air, their colonnades and spires looming in the sandstorm, like ruins of a divine realm forgotten by time.

The train was now in the center of this strange space; the tracks beneath the wheels had vanished, leaving only shifting sands.

"Spatial displacement... no, we've been forcibly dragged into some kind of domain!" Bai Cheng turned her head sharply, a pale golden luster flickering urgently in her eyes.

She sensed that this space was no illusion, but a temporary battlefield forcibly opened based on the laws of sand and dryness.

"Watch out for the sand!" Yu Nian suddenly cried out.

Amidst the yellow sand, countless grains of sand condensed and took shape, transforming in an instant into figures similar in appearance to the leader.

They were clad in dark yellow robes with blurred faces, each figure floating in the sandstorm, wielding spears or scimitars condensed from grit.

Clones. 𝑓𝘳𝘦𝑒𝑤𝑒𝘣𝘯ℴ𝘷𝘦𝓁.𝑐𝑜𝑚

Hundreds, even thousands of ❀ Nоvеlігht ❀ (Don’t copy, read here) them, silently surrounded the train in the center.

"Manipulating sand and stripping moisture... that is his true ability." Frost spread from Leng Ningxue's fingertips, but she found that all the moisture in the surrounding air was being rapidly drained; even the ice crystals she condensed were quickly cracking in the sandy wind.

Before she could finish, all the clones moved simultaneously.

They did not charge in a chaotic mess but formed a formation-like encirclement, pouncing on the train and everyone from all sides.

Sand spears were hurled like a torrential rain, each strike carrying corrosive and heavy penetrating power.

"Protect the train itself!" Zi Yuan's long blade left its sheath, its light shattering several sand spears like a stream of silk, only to find that the shattered clones instantly reformed in the sandstorm.

Qingniao's lightning wings unfurled, and electricity swept out like a net, blasting a group of clones into sand, but the scattered sand condensed again as soon as it hit the ground.

"They can regenerate endlessly... unless we exhaust the sand in this space!"

Bai Cheng leaped onto the roof of the train and pressed her hands down, causing silver-white spatial ripples to vibrate outward.

She tried to twist the local space to tear the clones apart, but found that these sand clones were perfectly integrated with the entire desert domain; for every one destroyed, the domain's energy was replenished by a fraction.

"We must find the real body or the core of the domain!"

During the battle, everyone gradually noticed: though the clones were numerous, they were intentionally focusing their attacks on the bottom of the train and the power cabin.

The leader's true goal was still to paralyze this sole mobile base.

"He's stalling for time," Bai Cheng's gaze sharpened. "Waiting for the so-called Purifier to reach the real sea... we must end this quickly!"

She suddenly closed her eyes, pouring all her perception into the sea of sand beneath her feet.

Amidst the turbulent energy flow disturbed by the countless clones, she captured an extremely subtle fluctuation.

The energy of all the sand clones radiated from a single point deep beneath the desert.

"Three hundred meters underground, something is controlling the entire domain!"

The moment Bai Cheng opened her eyes, Qingniao had already dived down like a bolt of lightning, her Thunder Spear condensing into a spiral drill-like form and plunging fiercely into the sand she pointed to.

Boom—!!!

The sand sea exploded into a giant pit, lightning tore through the ground, and a dark yellow figure was forced to rise from the sand.

That was the leader's true body.

He wore a sand robe with dark gold patterns, his face hidden in the shadow of a hood, surrounded by a constantly flowing sandstorm vortex.

"To think you could force me to reveal myself... you indeed have the qualifications to make me take you seriously." The leader's voice was low, and with a wave of his hand, the entire desert responded.

The sandstorm suddenly intensified; countless grains of sand turned into giant hands, spears, and vortexes, closing in to kill from all directions.

Even more terrifyingly, the moisture in everyone's bodies was rapidly fading, their skin began to crack, and every breath was filled with scorching sand dust.

"His ability is continuously absorbing moisture... we won't last long in this domain!" Yu Nian's face turned pale; her vines had already snapped due to dryness.

Bai Cheng exchanged glances with the others; they had to break the situation in one strike.

Qingniao, Zi Yuan, and Leng Ningxue all unleashed their full power at once.

Qingniao summoned heavenly thunder, channeling the power of lightning into Zi Yuan's long blade;

Leng Ningxue squeezed the last of the moisture from her body to condense an extremely cold Absolute Zero Ice Ring, temporarily freezing the flow of the surrounding sandstorm;

Yu Nian used her remaining life force to stimulate seeds, blooming a brief oasis in the desert to interfere with the domain's energy cycle.

At that moment, Bai Cheng compressed her spatial power to a single point at her fingertip.

She wasn't attacking the leader, but locking onto the Spatial Anchor of this desert domain—the hub the leader used to maintain the connection between the domain and reality.

"Now!"

Qingniao and Zi Yuan struck the leader's true body together, lightning and blade light intertwining into a storm of destruction;

Meanwhile, a silver light flashed from Bai Cheng's fingertip!

"Spatial Stripping."

Crack.

A soft sound like shattering glass.

The scene of the entire desert palace suddenly distorted and faded; the yellow sand, palaces, and clones receded from everyone's sight like a tide.

They were back above the Emerald Sea mist zone; the train was still speeding forward, and not far ahead, the dark yellow figure of the leader was suspended in the air.

Only now, the sandstorm around him had dissipated, his robe was torn, and Qingniao's Thunder Spear was lodged in his chest; his aura was rapidly withering.

"We won..." Zi Yuan lowered her long blade, panting slightly.

But Bai Cheng stepped forward with a frown.

She reached out and pressed her hand against the leader's forehead, her perception seeping into his core, and then her pupils contracted.

"Wait... this isn't the true body."

She looked up at the leader's corpse, whose aura had completely vanished.

That body was rapidly turning into sand, finally becoming a pile of lifeless, ordinary grit, with only a dark red crystal rolling out from the sand, emitting intense fluctuations of emotional energy.

"This is just a high-value clone," Bai Cheng gripped the crystal, her voice heavy. "A substitute cultivated with real flesh and blood and a massive amount of emotional energy, even carrying most of the original's combat capabilities... but it's a puppet after all."

Memory fragments remaining in the crystal flashed:

In the deepest part of the Mist Source, in a black palace condensed entirely from emotional energy, the true leader still sat upon his throne.

Dozens of similar dark red crystals floated before him, each connected to a harvesting node in a different area of the Emerald Sea.

And this defeated clone was merely a tentative pawn he had cast out, both to stall for time and to evaluate the upper limits of Bai Cheng's group.

"Our movements and abilities have likely all been transmitted back to his true body by now."

Bai Cheng crushed the crystal and looked toward the distance where the mist was even denser.

There, it seemed as if a pair of eyes, deeper and colder than before, were silently gazing at them through the vast sea of mist.

The train continued forward.

But the true decisive battle was clearly still at the end of the mist.