Chapter 177: Destiny
Keeping humans sane at all times is a luxury.
It was as if a highly infectious virus named Fear was spreading through the human world along with the expanding black clouds. When people living in the city noticed the sky in the northwest direction of Magic City, they saw black clouds pressing over the city, huge twisted pitch-black organs and a massive amorphous mass of flesh and blood wrestling and tearing at each other, like a moving pillar between heaven and earth. That blasphemous and abhorrent filth was sweeping toward them like a devastating tornado.
Mad roars, despairing screams, and terrifying scenes visible everywhere were rapidly devouring their fragile human reason. Self-destructive and defeatist instincts were occupying the high ground of consciousness, and mass hysteria and collective self-destruction were constantly unfolding in the city’s streets and alleys.
This city was falling…
Buzz—
Suddenly, a sharp and piercing violin screech rang out, startling nearly all the humans in the entire metropolis back to their senses with this heart-striking sound. Before their fragile nerves could be disrupted again by the anomalous sight at the horizon, a violin melody filled with the fragrance of a witch’s potion drew everyone’s mind “beyond the ninth heaven.” They would find themselves in a grand concert hall, where a great cellist wearing sharp blade gloves awaited their arrival at the center of the stage.
They would temporarily forget the despair in reality and no longer suffer from the cognitive destruction unconsciously spread by the abnormal god. In exchange, they had to listen to the eerie and mad music brought by a mad musician pursuing ultimate music theory.
Survival comes at a price.
The earth was tearing apart, the sky was twisting, light was being devoured, and all vitality beneath the black clouds was rapidly withering.
“Captain Yu… wake up…” Drake looked at the two gigantic abnormal gods fighting destructively and sighed incessantly in his heart. Powerless, he could only slump on the ground, calling out Yu Lianyun’s name over and over, hoping she could quickly recover from the cognitive destruction inflicted by Kong Mo.
Unlike them, this group of mixed outsiders fused with anomalies who could casually discard ordinary concepts of life and death, she was a normal human. They could readily agree to the bait plan proposed by the mad reporter Chen Xiaolin, and Yu Lianyun had ultimately agreed too. If not for her confidence in repelling the abnormal god Kong Mo, she would never have agreed from the standpoint of guarding humanity.
Therefore, Drake was certain that Yu Lianyun had a way to handle this situation.
But right now, even though he knew the solution was with Yu Lianyun, she had collapsed first.
As if hearing Drake’s call, Yu Lianyun, who had been in numb madness, suddenly slowed her twitching movements and crawled up from the ground. She reached into her bosom, her voice trembling as she muttered incantations: “Not belonging to… this era…”
Drake watched Yu Lianyun’s actions in astonishment. Though he didn’t fully understand, he realized she seemed to be reciting some kind of incantation, perhaps to summon something or trigger something.
He looked at Yu Lianyun with expectation. If she could create a miracle, then let him witness it!
As Yu Lianyun’s recited incantation reached its end, she seemed to regain her strength and reclaim control of her body. She stood up, her face pale but her eyes resolute, and drew from her bosom a black goat hoof wrapped in bronze chains. “Get out of this world!”
The moment the black goat hoof appeared, Kong Mo, who was continuously revealing its true form from the expanding black clouds, seemed to smell something terrifying. Its dangling intestines and stomach tensed up, motionless, its pitch-black rotten color darkening even further, showing signs of retreat.
Miss Zhao, manifesting the form of the Gluttonous Daughter, seized this opportunity. Her entire body suddenly split into a massive mouth, its fangs and sharp teeth clamping down fiercely, directly severing the wrinkled intestines and stomach, then madly chewing, crushing, and digesting them.
The severely wounded Kong Mo immediately let out a miserable roar. The parts of its body exposed outside the black clouds quickly retreated behind them, leaving only a lake of stagnant dead water hanging upside down in the sky, with ripples in the lake’s center. Voices of pain, grief and indignation, and resentment continuously emanated from the black clouds.
As the black clouds slowly dissipated, the roars from the dimensional outsider also faded, until the sky cleared to a bright blue.
Kong Mo was expelled from the world, just like its fate the last time it appeared in the human world, as if this was its destined and reincarnating tragic fate that even an abnormal god could not escape.
A hundred years ago, the mad scholar known as Ye Gong, in Jinma Mountain, used the “goat hoof” of the envoy of the Inverted Creator, the offspring of the Black Goat of the Woods, and bronze chains stained with the blood of the Transcendent of All Things, to create the old seal specifically designed to counter and repel Kong Mo. As long as it was paired with a specific incantation, Kong Mo could be completely expelled from the human world.
The miracle created by human ancestors was prospered once again by their descendants.
Witnessing Kong Mo’s pathetic retreat with grumbled curses, Yu Lianyun laughed in relief.
“…Everyone okay.” Yu Lianyun collapsed to the ground again. Her brain’s thinking was sluggish, unable to handle more complex thoughts, but she still remembered to check on the others’ conditions.
“Hehe.” The massive flesh mountain rising from the ground vanished without a trace, leaving only a fading coquettish laughter. Miss Zhao left, carrying Xin Junmao protected inside her body.
Drake patted the parched earth, making a sound to prove he was still alive. His gaze turned to Li Duojin, whose limbs were a bloody mess of flesh, and the shriveled Chen Xiaolin beside him. He was slightly stunned and fell silent.
Yu Lianyun also saw this scene and silently closed her sad eyes with a sigh.
Li Duojin and Chen Xiaolin, death.
Yu Lianyun could sense that Kong Mo was no longer here, but a terrifying being was still peeping at everything from cracks invisible to people. It reached out, taking away the precious souls of Li Duojin and Chen Xiaolin, but she was powerless to stop it.
The magic array was destroyed, the sacrificer dead, and the sacrifice vanished as well. This ritual was no longer perfect. Though the perfectionist Inverted Creator would no longer descend, it still took two human souls and scattered evil seeds into this world—evil biological spores.
The spores would parasitize all things, becoming kin outsiders walking and hiding in the human world…
…
In that dark, damp forest space surrounded by netherworld wails, a massive multi-eyed “tree” with a thick twisted trunk growing something like black goat hooves stood amid the forest. A pair of long tendril-like organs covered in tiny suction cups and fine barbs extended from the giant tree’s body, tightly grasping two soulless spirits.
A Black Goat of the Woods growing something like Zheng Yu’s cheek on its trunk grinned ferociously upon seeing the two souls. “You’ve come, you’ve finally come too!”
Then all the “trees” in the silent dark forest emitted the trampling sounds of goat hooves, along with intermittent strange goat bleats.
The black giant tree, the mother of the Black Goat of the Woods, the Inverted Creator, watched the male and female souls with cold yet inclusive eyes, then wrapped its “vines” around their bodies.
Boom! Boom!
Suddenly, two massive red fire tokens streaked through the air, pinning the vines in the void. Li Duojin and Chen Xiaolin’s souls were each bound by a pair of shackles on their hands and instantly pulled away from the dark forest, vanishing into a vortex that suddenly appeared in the dark forest’s dimension.
The giant tree roared endlessly at the black vortex, but a young man with a smiling Buddha-like expression walked out from it with hands behind his back, seemingly unaffected by the roars that could shatter all vitality and make space tremble and shatter.
“Too noisy.” Lin Ling waved his hand casually, slapping the giant tree along with its dimension flying to the edge of the universe, leaving behind a fog of chaos. It turned out that behind the dark forest dimension closest to the universe’s center, there was actually a chaotic mist glowing with eerie scarlet, black, and starlight.
Er er ying ying… ah…#￥@#
Meaningless sounds emanated from the chaos mist, like the instinctive cries of an infant awakened from slumber.
“Shut up and keep sleeping.” Lin Ling smiled kindly, but his words carried an unquestionable coldness.
Upon hearing this, the chaos mist indeed quieted down.
“Heh, that old bald donkey told you to be his successor, and me… hehehe, to be your nanny. But I haven’t had enough fun yet, so sleep a bit more.” Lin Ling chuckled softly as he walked back into the black vortex.
The chaos mist continued to slumber, ignorant and unaware.
End of Volume Five
