An Understated Dominance Novel (Dahlia & Dustin) by Marina Vittori updated 2025-26 - An Understated Dominance Chapter 2671

Chapter 2671

“It’s one of the people who landed before us,” a guard whispered, his voice trembling.

An older, more seasoned guard knelt beside the corpse, his brow furrowed. “He’s been dead less than a month,” he said gravely. “The wound… isn’t from any weapon or beast I’ve ever seen. It’s too clean—like an energy beam pierced straight through him in an instant.”

Before anyone could respond, Logan suddenly stiffened. His eyes sharpened, locking on the half-buried wreckage of a bronze tripod a few steps ahead.

“Careful—!”

He hadn’t even finished the warning when several faint hissing sounds sliced through the air. Thin, almost invisible beams of light-gray energy—no thicker than a strand of hair—shot out from behind the bronze debris like venomous snakes, streaking straight toward the nearest guards!

They were impossibly fast—faster than crossbow bolts, faster than the eye could follow.

Logan’s reaction was instinctive. The moment he sensed the attack, his fingers came together like a blade. A burst of sword energy flashed behind him and streaked forward, intercepting the gray beams midair.

“Pfft… pfft… pfft…”

The collision made a faint sizzling sound, like water hissing on fire. The beams disintegrated under his sword aura—but not without resistance. Logan felt the lingering energy, cold and corrosive, like poison gnawing at the edge of his consciousness.

“What in the world was that?!” a guard cried, drawing his weapon.

All eyes turned toward the wreckage.

The ground behind the bronze tripod trembled—then three small mounds of earth suddenly split open with a dull pop. From within, three strange creatures crawled out.

Each was about half the height of a person, their bodies formed from dark brown soil and stone, veined with pulsing dark-blue lines that shimmered faintly, like ancient circuitry.

They had no visible heads—only a single, red, crystal-like eye embedded atop their torsos. Beneath that, several thin, flexible tendrils writhed like living whips. The gray beams had come from those tentacle tips.

“What are those?” Grace murmured, her eyes wide. “Mechanical puppets? Or… some kind of beast?”

“Neither alive nor dead,” Logan replied, his tone calm but cold. “They’re alchemical constructs—‘reverberations’ of the battlefield. The lingering resentment of fallen souls fused with ancient mechanical formations that still function. Monsters like these exist only to eliminate intruders.”

As if to prove his words, the creatures’ single red eyes flared brighter. Their blue circuit lines blazed, and dozens of gray energy beams erupted from their tentacles in a relentless storm, filling the air with sizzling death.

At the same time, they began to move—jerky, clumsy, but fast—spreading out in an attempt to flank the group.

“Defensive formation! Protect the young lady!” shouted the captain of the guards.

In an instant, the soldiers raised their shields, forming a tight circle around Grace. The metallic clang of beams striking steel filled the air. Sparks and gray smoke erupted wherever the beams hit. The fine steel shields began to pit and corrode, the metal edges hissing and deforming.

Logan moved like a phantom, his form blurring. In the blink of an eye, he appeared in front of one of the one-eyed creatures.

The monster reacted instantly. Its red eye flashed, and several beams shot out point-blank toward Logan’s face.

But he didn’t dodge.

His left hand flashed out, fingers glowing faintly green as they sliced through the air. He caught the invisible beams between his fingers—and crushed them. The energy hissed once, then vanished.

A heartbeat later, Logan threw a simple, direct punch. No flourish. No technique. Just raw, devastating force.

Boom!

His fist struck the creature square in its crimson eye.

The monster froze. The blue lines across its body flickered violently, then went dark. Its rocky frame lost cohesion, crumbling to the ground in a heap of soil and stone. Only the red crystal eye rolled free—dull, cracked, and lifeless.

The other two monsters hesitated. Red light pulsed rapidly within their single eyes, as if they recognized the threat. Then, almost in unison, they turned and began retreating, trying to burrow back into the ground.

“Not a chance.”

Logan flicked his foot, sending a broken piece of armor into the air. With a twist of his wrist, he infused it with true energy and hurled it like a throwing blade.

Swish! Swish!

Two flashes of light tore through the air, striking the monsters squarely in their crimson eyes.

The result was the same. Both constructs convulsed, their energy lines extinguished, and their bodies collapsed into dust and rubble.

Silence settled once more.

The guards lowered their shields, staring at the corrosion marks and pitted steel with pale faces. Even these minor echoes of the ancient battlefield were deadly. What would await them deeper within?

Logan crouched and picked up one of the broken red crystals, turning it over in his hand. A faint pulse of mixed energy—neither purely spiritual nor purely mechanical—still lingered within.

“The energy structure is strange,” he murmured. “A fusion of resentment and earth essence. Whatever created these… was far from ordinary.” His gaze shifted toward the distance, where the shadows thickened.

After that encounter, the team grew even more cautious.

They advanced slowly, following Logan’s lead, and soon faced several more waves of “reverberation” monsters—some shaped like the one-eyed stone constructs, others drifting like spectral energy forms that screamed into the mind.

Each time, Logan acted swiftly and decisively, his strength keeping the team intact.

As they ventured deeper, the battlefield remnants began to change. The broken bones and rusted weapons grew sparse, replaced by fragments of carved jade and shattered architectural ornaments. Here and there, dried spiritual springs and twisted roots of long-dead plants jutted from the ground like brittle veins.

The air grew denser with a faint spiritual aura—peaceful, almost pure—but it was tangled with something darker, something cold and murderous that refused to fade.

Finally, after passing through a jagged “forest” of shattered jade pillars, the landscape opened up before them.

A massive crack split the mountain ahead, as though an invisible blade had carved it apart. From within the rift, pale spiritual mist flowed gently, hinting at a hidden world beyond.

At the mouth of the crack stood a colossal bronze gate, nearly ten meters high.

The door was shut tight, covered in intricate carvings of suns, moons, beasts, and swirling clouds. Ancient vines—withered to a dark golden hue but still unyielding—twined through the cracks, binding it shut.

Above the lintel, two enormous characters were engraved in the same ancient Cloud Seal script they had seen before.

Even through the erosion of countless years, they remained clear—radiant with lingering power.

Xuanpu.