The sky above the Seventh Spire grew darker by the second.
The high-pitched screech of ten thousand Abyssal Shadow Locusts vibrated through the stone cliff like a dentist's drill pressing against an exposed nerve.
*SKREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!*
The sound tore through the air, churning the white clouds of the gorge into ragged gray ribbons.
Down along the garden path, Lord Nether-Bane was in a state of complete spiritual meltdown.
The ancient Ghost King dropped to one knee in the dirt, throwing his arms wide to shield the Sun-Lotus Cabbage with his own skeletal frame.
"Corsairs, assemble the Phalanx of Eternal Mourning!" the Ghost King shrieked, his jaw clattering with frantic energy. "Form the perimeter! Raise the necrotic barriers!"
From beneath the wheelbarrow, the two spectral corsairs scrambled out on all fours.
Their burlap mini-aprons flapped wildly in the rising wind.
With shaking hands, they summoned two pale, translucent shields forged of condensed nether-bone.
"Captain, there are ten thousand of them!" the first corsair wailed, his ghostly form flickering like a dying candle. "Our shields cannot stop a direct dive from an abyssal migration! They eat soul-matter like dried beef!"
"Then let them chew my ribs first!" Lord Nether-Bane roared back, his eye sockets blazing with emerald fire. "If so much as one shadow worm nibbles a single petal off the Sovereign's cabbage, our eternity is forfeit! Hold the line, you scoundrels! Die with your aprons on!"
Beside the porch balustrade, Lyra Ashford stood with her silver rapier pointed straight toward the ascending black cloud.
Her heart hammered against her ribs.
Her eyes tracked the swarm's horrific velocity.
They were less than two thousand paces away, climbing through the upper thermals with the unstoppable momentum of an avalanche.
*Ten thousand abyssal locusts,* Lyra thought, her palms growing damp against the leather grip of her hilt.
*According to the ancient scrolls of the Ashford Clan, three high elders of the Starfall Pavilion were caught by a swarm of eight hundred in the southern wastes. They were devoured down to their spirit marrow before their protective talismans could even ignite.*
*Now, ten thousand beasts are ascending in a single localized assault.*
*No mortal ward can survive that level of concentrated Yin corrosion. Even the great defensive array of the First Spire would crack within twenty seconds.*
She glanced back toward the covered porch.
Felix Vance was still sitting in his deep wicker recliner.
He hadn't stood up.
He hadn't drawn a sword.
He hadn't even bothered to put his straw slippers back on his feet.
Instead, Felix held his obsidian slate with two hands, his thumbs hovering lazily over the glowing glass.
*Look at him,* Lyra thought, her breath trembling with awe.
*The sky is falling, the abyss has opened its jaws, yet Senior Brother’s pulse has not quickened by a single beat.*
*He sits upon the porch like an immortal emperor observing a puddle of muddy water.*
*He does not draw a weapon because mortal blades cannot touch the Dao.*
*He is preparing a divine hex. An ancient cosmic sealing art to turn back the darkness!*
Felix Vance was doing nothing of the sort.
Felix was staring at his AetherDeck screen, deeply, profoundly irritated.
Across the retro pixel display of *Pocket Garden: Cozy Harvest*, an obnoxious red warning box was blinking with frantic urgency:
"Are you kidding me?" Felix muttered, his voice dripping with tired disgust. "A random pest event? I literally planted those carrots three hours ago."
He squinted at the screen.
On the 8-bit map of Solitude Spire, a swarm of tiny black beetle sprites was crawling up from the bottom edge of the display, heading straight for the glowing green cabbage icon.
"Every single mobile game does this," Felix grumbled, shaking his head. "You log in, you set up your automated farm, and the devs immediately throw in an unskippable quick-time event to force player engagement."
He took another sip of warm tea from his white porcelain cup.
The sixty-eight point five degree liquid soothed his throat, but his mood remained thoroughly sour.
"They want me to panic and buy an emergency pesticide pack from the cash shop," Felix scoffed. "Classic predatory monetization. Well, jokes on you, developers. I have four point five million idle coins sitting in my bank."
He tapped the screen, opening the **[Farm Infrastructure & Perimeter Defense]** sub-menu:
Felix stared at the numbers.
"Two thousand coins?" he whispered. "That's it? That's literally forty seconds of offline generation."
He looked toward the garden fence.
Tied to the weathered cedar posts were three pathetic-looking straw scarecrows.
They wore floppy burlap hats, ragged shirts stitched from old feed bags, and had crude smiling faces painted in black soot.
They had been standing there since Felix first transmigrated, gently flapping their straw sleeves whenever the mountain wind blew.
"Look at those sad sacks," Felix said. "They wouldn't scare a half-blind pigeon, let alone a swarm of pixel bugs."
He tapped the screen twice.
*Ping.*
Down by the fence, the air suddenly went dead silent.
The violent updraft from the gorge stopped mid-gust.
*CREAK.*
The center scarecrow’s burlap head snapped ninety degrees to the left.
The sound was sharp, metallic, and heavy—like a solid steel bank vault door swinging shut on oiled ball bearings.
*CREAK. CREAK.*
The other two scarecrows followed suit, their heads snapping toward the canyon rim with mechanical synchronization.
Down in the cabbage patch, Lord Nether-Bane’s jaw dropped so wide it nearly unhinged from his skull.
"What..." the Ghost King gasped, his bony claws clutching the dirt. "What is happening to the straw puppets?!"
The ragged burlap feed bags covering the scarecrows began to glow with a deep, molten amber light.
Underneath the coarse fabric, the dry straw didn't burn.
Instead, the fibers turned translucent, crystallizing into rigid rods of spun solar glass that hummed with immense electromagnetic energy.
Their floppy hats tilted back on their own.
From the stitched eye-holes of their burlap faces, two polished golden lenses slid forward with a series of smooth, rhythmic clicks:
*Ch-ch-clack.*
*Ch-ch-clack.*
The three scarecrows no longer looked like clumsy farm decorations.
They looked like three ancient, silent sentinels forged from pure celestial brass, anchored directly into the bedrock of the mountain.
Felix tapped his HUD to inspect the results:
【Target: Solar Scarecrow Mk II (Multi-Shot Turrets)】 【Classification: Automated Agricultural Defense Array】 【Power Source: Sol-Class Core Micro-Tether】 【Targeting Capability: Multi-directional optical lock-on. Tracks up to 50,000 airborne pests simultaneously.】 【Primary Weapon: Pinpoint Solar Needle Lasers (Class 4 Concentrated Photons)】 【Inspector Note: Turns annoying garden pests into sterile, nutrient-rich soil fertilizer. Guaranteed zero crop collateral. Finally, you can stop throwing your slippers at the porch ceiling.】
"Now that's what I call a quality of life update," Felix said, thoroughly pleased. "Automated turrets. No manual clicking required. Just sit back, let the towers do the work, and claim the clear bonus."
Up on the porch railing, Lyra Ashford felt her breath catch in her throat.
She stared at the three glowing scarecrows with wide, disbelieving eyes.
Her sword hand dropped an inch as sheer shock overwhelmed her martial instincts.
*Those scarecrows...* Lyra thought, her mind reeling in pure disbelief.
*They were tied with common hemp twine! They were stuffed with dry summer grass! I walked past them every morning for two months and thought they were mere mortal effigies!*
*They were not decorations.*
*They were dormant Divine God-Slaying Totems!*
*Senior Brother did not craft scarecrows to frighten sparrows. He placed three sleeping celestial wardens at the edge of his realm!*
*Look at the runes flaring along their wooden spines! Those are not mortal carvings—those are primeval solar arrays tied directly into the beating heart of his internal star!*
*He woke them with a mere flick of his finger!*
Lyra’s gaze shifted from the scarecrows back to Felix.
Felix had already set his obsidian slate face-down on the table.
He picked up his white teacup, swirled the golden liquid once, and blew softly across the surface.
*He didn't even stand up,* Lyra whispered in her mind, her heart soaring with awe.
*Ten thousand abyssal horrors are screaming at our gate, and Senior Brother merely adjusted his tea.*
*He treats an apocalypse as nothing more than a minor domestic inconvenience.*
*This is the realm of the Supreme Solar Sovereign!*
Down at the garden fence, the three scarecrows completed their internal spin-up.
*VMMMMMMMMMMMMMM.*
A low, resonant hum rose from the wooden fence posts.
The ground around the garden boundary vibrated with micro-currents of pure solar plasma.
The golden lenses in the scarecrows' eye sockets began rotating rapidly, clicking into precise angular alignments:
*Click-click-click-click.*
Across their woven chests, hundreds of tiny, hair-thin slits opened in the crystallized straw.
Inside each slit, a microscopic bead of blinding white light flared into existence.
Ten thousand shadow locusts crested the rocky lip of the cliff.
The sky above Solitude Spire vanished into absolute, pitch-black shadow.
Their collective screech was loud enough to shatter mortal eardrums:
*SKREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!*
A tsunami of razor scythes, snapping mandibles, and famished red eyes plunged downward, diving straight toward the glowing heart of the Sun-Lotus Cabbage.
Lord Nether-Bane squeezed his eye sockets shut, bracing his skeletal ribs for the final impact:
"FOR THE SACRED CABBAGE——!"
Felix Vance took a slow sip of tea, sighed into the cup, and murmured:
"Fire at will, boys. Don't let them step on the lawn."