That vast, icy voice delivered its final judgment in the depths of every soul. What it brought was not a deafening roar, but a dead silence that stripped all meaning away. Time, space, even thought itself were crushed to powder before that will.
An Mu felt his tactical thinking being forcibly peeled away. Every countermeasure he had conceived, every plan based on experience and logic, instantly became as laughable and powerless as a child’s scribbles. He wanted to issue orders, only to discover that even the very concept of “opening his mouth” had become unbearably heavy.
On Lan Ce’s lenses, streams of data incomprehensible to ordinary people flickered madly, but his face was paler than ever. His voice was laced with terror. “Impossible to analyze… impossible to model… Its very existence is negating ‘laws’! We… we aren’t facing an energy body. We’re facing a living ‘concept’!”
“Enough crap!” Mo Fei was the first to forcibly break free from that spiritual pressure. There was not so much complex logic and analysis in his body, only the purest anger and courage. He let out a beast-like roar. Every muscle in his body swelled to its limit in an instant, the rock beneath his feet shattered with a boom, and his entire body shot forward like a cannonball out of the barrel. Carrying an unstoppable momentum, he raised his battle-axe and smashed viciously toward the monster’s true body atop the altar.
And yet, the monster did not even move.
In the instant before Mo Fei’s battle-axe was about to touch it, among the hundreds of enormous, emotionless eyes on its body, one merely turned slowly, aiming its pupil at Mo Fei.
No beam of light. No shockwave.
Mo Fei’s forward charge came to an abrupt halt, as though he had slammed into an insurmountable wall. More terrifying still, he felt the strength within him, strength enough to shatter steel, rapidly “disappearing.” It was not being canceled out. It was not being reflected. It was being erased from the conceptual root. The attribute known as his “strength” was being denied by that eye’s “gaze.”
“Pfft—” A mouthful of blood sprayed from Mo Fei’s mouth, and his whole body flew backward like a kite with its string cut, slamming heavily into the distant rock wall. Whether he lived or died was unknown.
“Mo Fei!” An Mu’s eyes nearly split with rage. He forcibly broke free of the spiritual restraints and rushed over in a single stride to help Mo Fei up.
Mo Fei’s entire body was limp, his aura weak to the extreme.
“The struggles of insects are meaningless, though they do make for an amusing appetizer.” That ancient voice rang out once more, filled with mockery and playful interest.
As its words fell, the enormous black roots planted throughout the entire cavern began to thrash madly. Like giant pythons come alive, they surged toward the remaining three members of the squad from all directions. On every root, more eyes opened and more sharp mouths spread wide. At that moment, the entire cavern turned into a contracting stomach, intent on digesting them completely.
“Bai Yu! Use A-Wan’s power!” An Mu roared hoarsely. At the same time, he shielded Mo Fei behind him, raised the specially made handgun in his hand, and fired madly at the roots rushing toward them. The bullets carried purifying energy, bursting into clusters of faint white light on the roots, but they could only slow their advance slightly.
Lan Ce also endured the stabbing pain in his brain, thrusting both hands into his pockets and rapidly deploying device after device. A protective formation unfolded before him, forming layers of energy barriers. But those barriers, strong enough to withstand an all-out strike from a deep-level spiritual nightmare, were like paper before those roots, pierced through with ease.
Despair drowned everyone’s heart like a tide.
Bai Yu stood at the center of the storm, tightly gripping the wooden ladle in his hand. The gentle halo formed from A-Wan’s lingering obsession had already expanded to its maximum, forming a spherical domain ten meters in diameter as it struggled to resist the corrosion of those roots.
At the boundary where light and darkness met, a sizzling sound of corrosion rang out. The holy radiance was being contaminated at a speed visible to the naked eye.
He knew they would not last long like this. A-Wan’s love was the ultimate form of protection, but what it faced was an ancient existence that fed on the despair and resentment of an entire village over a hundred years, one that had even surpassed all of that. This was no longer a simple clash of energy, but the collision of two worlds.
Bai Yu’s gaze swept over Mo Fei, who had collapsed to the ground, and An Mu and Lan Ce, who were struggling bitterly to hold on. A hint of resolve flashed in his eyes. He still had one final trump card.
“If ‘protection’ isn’t enough…” he murmured to himself, his gaze becoming incomparably firm, “then I can only use ‘destruction’ to carve open a path!”
He closed his eyes and sank all of his mind into the deepest part of his soul. There, besides A-Wan’s warm sea of light, there was also a black abyss filled with knowledge and rules.
“Hei Yan!” Bai Yu called out in his heart. “Time to work!”
From the abyss of his soul came a soft laugh, carrying a trace of laziness and arrogance.
“Oh? You’re finally willing to let me out? I thought you were going to cling to that pitiful little obsession of yours and get crushed into dregs along with your companions, little Bai Yu.”
“Cut the crap!” Bai Yu’s will was as firm as iron. “I need your power!”
“As you wish.”
In the next instant, an indescribable agony exploded from Bai Yu’s soul.
He felt his existence being forcibly split in two. One half was Bai Yu, warm, emotional, and carrying hope. The other half was cold, rational, and held dominion over knowledge and destruction… another him.
A pure black shadow slowly rose from behind Bai Yu, gradually condensing into solid form.
It was a young man who looked seventy to eighty percent similar to Bai Yu, but whose temperament was completely opposite. He wore a well-tailored black formal suit, with a faint smile full of intellect and superiority on his face. In his hands, he held a thick ancient book, and where his heart should have been was a hollow that seemed capable of devouring all light.
After Bai Yu’s soul had been repaired, Hei Yan’s power had also recovered considerably.
His appearance brought with it an aura completely different from the chaotic, evil pressure of the “Mountain God.” It was a pressure born from absolute order and absolute reason, as if he were a walking library, the embodiment of rules.
“Tsk, tsk, tsk.” Hei Yan looked around, his gaze finally landing on the terrifying monster atop the altar. He curled his lip in disgust. “What an ugly aggregate. And here I had thought you were so impressive. Stuffing so much resentment and so many low-grade souls haphazardly into a single shell is like a lousy chef dumping every rotten ingredient into one pot. Truly… utterly lacking in beauty.”
The “Mountain God” seemed to sense this newly emerged threat as well. Its hundreds of eyes all turned toward Hei Yan at once, and for the first time, a trace of gravity entered that ancient voice. “What… are you? There is no scent of ‘fear’ on you.”
“Fear?” Hei Yan looked as if he had heard a joke. “Fear is born only toward the unknown. And now that I have seen you, I understand one thing: an existence of your level is not yet enough to make me feel the ‘unknown.’”
He turned to look at Bai Yu. At this moment, Bai Yu’s face was deathly pale, and his body was on the verge of collapse. Maintaining both A-Wan’s power and Hei Yan’s existence at the same time was a devastating drain on him.
“Hey, little Bai Yu, can you still hold on?” Hei Yan asked.
“I can.” Bai Yu gritted his teeth and forced the two words through them.
“Good.” Hei Yan nodded in satisfaction, then fixed his gaze once more on the “Mountain God.” “Then let us give this esteemed ‘god’ a little pruning of His disorderly garden.”
Before his voice had even faded, Hei Yan extended his slender fingers and lightly opened the nameless book in his hands.
“Bai Yu, use A-Wan’s light to purify the area beneath my feet!” Hei Yan’s voice clearly entered Bai Yu’s mind.
Without the slightest hesitation, Bai Yu immediately drew upon the holy power within the wooden ladle, turning the area where Hei Yan stood into a pure domain of light.
Standing in the light, Hei Yan smiled and tore a blank page from the book. He held the page in his palm and chanted in a cold yet rhythmic voice, “With knowledge as ink, with rules as brush. I hereby declare: the roots of all things shall return to the soil.”
The page in his palm ignited without flame, turning into specks of black ash.
At the same time, those black roots surging madly toward them all came to a halt just before they were about to step into the domain of light.
They seemed to have been seized by the throat by an invisible force. Their originally frenzied movements stiffened, and then, under An Mu and Lan Ce’s shocked gazes, the tips of those roots began to petrify rapidly, finally turning into piles of lifeless black powder that rustled down onto the ground.
Hei Yan had modified the “rules” of this area, forcing those roots to follow their most primitive destiny—“returning to dust.”
“An insect with a bit of interest…” A trace of anger finally entered the “Mountain God’s” voice. It seemed not to have expected its power to be dissolved in such a manner.
More roots surged in from every direction, and the enormous eyes on its main body also began to flicker with dangerous light. Attacks containing negative concepts such as “distortion,” “decay,” and “chaos” poured down toward the two of them like a torrential rain.
“Protect!” Bai Yu raised the wooden ladle over his head. The light of A-Wan’s lingering obsession transformed into a translucent white dome, blocking all of the attacks outside. Every attack that landed on the barrier stirred up rings of ripples, and Bai Yu’s body trembled violently along with them. More and more blood spilled from the corners of his mouth.
“Well done, little Bai Yu,” Hei Yan praised, the pages in his hands flipping rapidly.
“Next, it’s our turn.”
He tore off another page. This time, he did not chant. Instead, he lightly flicked the page toward the “Mountain God.”
The paper traced an elegant arc through the air. It seemed slow, yet it ignored the distance of space and instantly pasted itself onto one of the huge eyes on the “Mountain God’s” true body.
“Archive,” Hei Yan said softly.
That enormous eye trembled violently. Immediately after, a formation composed of countless runes actually emerged within its cold, merciless pupil. The formation spun at high speed, and the eye withered at a speed visible to the naked eye. In the end, it became a pure black symbol that was sucked into that thin sheet of paper.
The page drifted back into Hei Yan’s hand. On it, there was now a lifelike image of an eye.
“Roar—!”
For the first time, the “Mountain God” let out a howl of pain. It was no longer that vast voice, but a true roar mixed with Lin Sheng’s resentment. Losing one eye did not greatly affect its power, but the sensation of being “archived” and “analyzed” made it feel an unprecedented sense of offense.
The entire cavern trembled violently because of its rage.
Bai Yu and Hei Yan, one white and one black, one defending and one attacking, were like twin stars relying on each other in the storm amid this apocalyptic scene, launching an intense confrontation against the god that had descended into the world.
Bai Yu used A-Wan’s love and hope to construct an absolute defensive line, purifying all filth. Hei Yan, meanwhile, used his knowledge and rules to continuously analyze, weaken, and steal the other side’s power.
The battle fell into a brief stalemate.
“This won’t do,” Hei Yan said to Bai Yu while easily dealing with the attacks. “This thing’s power is endless. It is connected to the resentment throughout this entire space. We can’t afford a battle of attrition.”
“What method do you have?” Bai Yu asked with difficulty.
“A method… naturally, I have one.” The corner of Hei Yan’s mouth lifted into a confident smile. Once again, he turned his gaze toward the monster’s core, the place where Lin Sheng’s body was.
“When I ‘archived’ that eye just now, I read a bit of its ‘information’ along the way.” Hei Yan’s gaze sharpened. “This thing’s foundation of power is extremely unstable. It has not perfectly fused with Lin Sheng’s soul. It is more like a crude form of ‘body snatching’ and ‘parasitism.’ It is doing everything it can to maintain this fused state, and the resentment of that boy named Lin Sheng… is the ‘anchor’ that roots it in this world.”
Hei Yan paused, and a light that seemed to see through everything flashed in his eyes.
“At the same time, that is also its fatal weakness!”