The wind of Mondstadt City no longer carried the sweet crispness of Dandelion wine.
It smelled only of sulfur, rotting flesh, and the searing, acrid stench of the Abyss energy burning the throat. The city once resonant with poetry and freedom was now a slaughterhouse meticulously crafted by the Abyss Order. Keqing stood atop a temporary command post—a residential building that barely retained its structural integrity—her purple eyes sweeping across the shattered streets below, cold as Liyue's winter iron. The Golden Ear Communication terminal clutched tightly in her hand displayed a screen of absolute dead silence. An intelligence blackout had blinded everyone.
On the second day of the "Sharpened Edge II" operation into the ruins of Mondstadt, the price paid in blood and fire was accumulating at a suffocating pace.
Chapter 171