Urban Plundering: I Corrupted The System! - Chapter 347

Chapter 347: Julian and Group’s Day of Reckoning
From the darker side of the gathering, where even light seemed reluctant to settle, came the final march of presence.

The Voidhowls.

They were not like the rest—not elegant like the Kingswells, not theatrically sharp like the Shadowmires, not cold and composed like the Ravencrofts. They were primordial, the kind of bloodline that felt like it had been bred in the belly of the world’s first nightmare.

And they were led by Robert himself.

He moved like a king who no longer ruled a kingdom but still walked like everything around him should kneel. His suit was deep midnight, a black so pure it reflected nothing—not light, not magic, not memory. Threaded into the cuffs and the collar were muted silver veins that pulsed faintly, like heartbeat lines drawn from ancient monsters. His coat trailed behind him like a shadow that had forgotten how to detach.

His shirt, open at the neck, revealed a tattoo carved in symmetrical runes that wrapped beneath his collarbone, old language humming with restraint.

He smiled.

But it wasn’t the smile of a father in power.

It was a thin, faltering line. One that twitched slightly at the corners—empty bravado dressed up in good posture. The kind of smile men wore when they still had to pretend they weren’t afraid of the child they once dismissed.

And beside him walked his son—the boy bred to follow, bred to become a second him, yet now visibly tighter in the shoulders, flinching at every pulse of magic in the air.

Annabelle, his daughter, was not with them. She was already ahead—walking beside Helena, Vivian, and Evelyn. Her path had long diverged from her father’s, and tonight, it showed.

Still, Robert led more than his children.

He brought with him the rest of the Voidhowl bloodline—eight others, some older branch members. All dressed in varying shades of black and dark gray, they stood like shadows pulled from different nightmares and stitched together under one flag.

But among them, one stood out.

Julian.

He wasn’t standing with Robert. He was near the center of the gathering, among the youth who had once made Parker’s days in the mundane world a living hell.

His face was pale.

He was trembling.

And he wasn’t the only one.

To his right stood Justine Ravencroft, Salem’s eldest son—the same boy who once saw himself as untouchable, invincible. His hands now clenched behind his back, knuckles white, his jaw rigid as he kept stealing glances toward the estate like the ground itself might open and swallow him.

Next to him, the Kingswell cousins, Sebastian and Seth, were whispering behind tight expressions. Once loud, once cruel—now silent and visibly shaken. Their white hair clung to their temples with sweat they hadn’t earned from heat, and their usual smugness had drained entirely.

They knew.

They all knew.

The past had come back with fangs.

And Parker… wasn’t the boy they remembered.

Julian stood at the center of their group, surrounded by young blood from every family—he had once been the unspoken ringleader. The young alpha. The man who had it all. Looks. Lineage. Backing. And yet now, he stood like a candle beneath a stormcloud. Still trying to breathe, still trying to believe this wasn’t going to end the way he feared.

The rest of the Voidhowl youths flanked him like instinct told them to. It was in their blood. In fact, across the entirety of the bloodline’s young generation, there wasn’t one who didn’t defer to Julian. Not by force. But by some primal thread that told them he was the one—the next Voidhowl to rise.

But the day of reckoning had come.

And all of them knew it.

They had mocked Parker. They had spit on his name. Some of them, like Julian, had looked him in the eye once and believed themselves greater.

Now?

Now they watched the air where he had vanished with his daughter in his arms, and the only thing echoing between them was silence.

Not reverent.

Not respectful.

Fear.

The kind that wraps around your bones and doesn’t let go.

While the rest of the gathering still reeled from the silent devastation left behind by Parker’s exit, another presence stirred—unfazed, unflinching, and wholly unafraid.

The Zhang family stood slightly to the side of the main formation, not by exclusion, but by choice. And when the wave of tension spread like pressure squeezing air out of the lungs, remained compounded with no fear but respect.

And then, they shifted.

The Zhang Patriarch, an elderly man with sharp eyes like old steel, reached for the simple string that held his outer cloak. With a flick, the false robes dropped, dissolving midair, revealing the armor beneath—not ceremonial, but sharp. Layered in blackened silver and crimson lining, it bore the scars of real battle. Deep claw marks, half-sealed rune-burns, and the faint shimmer of blood-forged inscriptions shimmered like war memories.

Beside him, his wife, no less imposing, discarded her own veil.

Her hair, once braided modestly, now flowed freely, silver-white and streaked with strands of midnight. She wore a battle robe shaped like mountain wind, the hem reinforced with mythwoven thread, and her shoulders straightened with the silent pride of someone who’d once led armies, not simply raised children.

Their aura wasn’t oppressive like the Shadowmires, nor veiled in laughter like the Kingswells. No, the Zhangs were something older. Pure.

High Humans.

And not just any. Among the monsters of the Origin Families, they were the true High Human Bloodline. The only bloodline that had no beast, no divine, no curse lurking within. Just will, discipline, and unshaken legacy. Their line had walked through fire, through extinction, through betrayal and war—and still stood. They had no wings, no glowing eyes, no tails or crowns—but the air bent around them nonetheless.

Behind them stood their children. Two of them.

Zhang Ruoyun’s father, clad in storm-hardened armor etched with ancestral glyphs, a sword slung across his back not as a threat, but as memory. His posture was quiet, but there was violence in it—disciplined violence.

One wrong step from anyone here, and he would move first.

Next to him, his sister—Zhang Ruoyun’s aunt—wore robes embroidered with sharp spirals and carried a spear carved from silver-bone and dragon-bark. Her eyes were emotionless, save for the occasional flicker of contempt toward the louder families.

And there, standing slightly behind her father, was Zhang Ruoyun’s mother. Serene. Gentle-looking. But no less carved from legacy. She wore a high-collared combat robe with sleeveless arms, her wrists wrapped in protective steel rings, her fingers always hovering near invisible rune triggers sewn into the fabric.

But all of them… were human.

All but one.

Zhang Ruoyun.

She stood a little ahead of them now, near the edge of the pathway, her violet eyes cast upward where the Prince had vanished moments ago with his daughter. Unlike the rest of her family, her blood was not human at all. Her hair was violet, her mask like something sculpted from broken starlight, and above her brow glowed the faint symbol of Yin and Yang, ever-shifting, ever-watching.

She wasn’t just Zhang.

She was something else. Something the Origin Families didn’t quite have words for every time they were in her presence. Her family had never stopped speaking publicly about what she was. Not once. And they stood behind her without hesitation. Not with fear. Not with discomfort.

With pride.

Because no matter what her nature had become—she was theirs.

And in a sea of old monsters, cursed heirs, and divine predators, the Zhangs stood quietly with armor, discipline, and ancient, human defiance.

And everyone knew:

They were the only family here who stood as the vanguard of humanity itself—the sole family entrusted with leading the human side of the Supernatural Community, and the silent guardians of every other mundane human soul beneath the stars.