Chapter 914: The Root of Everything
Right from the start when Hao Ren began to rummage in his dimensional pocket and take out loads of funny stuff, Ha.s.se had been staring at him, unable to make head or tail about what he was doing nor talking. Now, he could not help but ask: “Are you affected by the roulette?”
He thought that Hao Ren had succ.u.mbed to pressure and lost his mind.
Hao Ren finally found a few pieces of paper, which were the labor contract he signed with the G.o.ddess. While lamenting that time flew, he was stunned a little hearing Ha.s.se speaking. “What?”
“Are you going to use these things to sealing the Solar Roulette?” Ha.s.se pointed to the papers in Hao Ren’s hands.
“Never try, never know,” Hao Ren said and nodded matter-of-factly, but he knew it would work. It was not the first time he was using the divine contract to get difficult things done. The stuff that the G.o.ddess gave him always worked like a charm despite them sounding and looking weird.
While Ha.s.se was hesitating whether he should knock Hao Ren out before the Solar Roulette deranged him, Hao Ren already went up to the altar with his labor contract in his hands. Standing beneath the ten-meter Gilded Disc, Hao Ren felt like he would be crushed like a bug at any time if the thing fell. When he held the papers near the disc, the incredible happened.
The disc emitted an incredible sound, as if a sigh, and also the grinding sound of metals that reverberated throughout the hall. When listening carefully, it was as ethereal as an illusion. The Gilded Disc ground to halt slowly and the patterns on it stopped pulsating. All these things went into torpor before the supreme divinity.
The liquid black substance beneath the Gilded Disc faded as the divine contract approached and quickly moved away as if fearing of authority.
Hao Ren was delighted. “It works!”
Ha.s.se looked like an idiot. “What the h.e.l.l is this?”
The poor senior demon hunter tried to rationalize what he saw. He guessed that the few sheets of paper in Hao Ren’s hands were probably filled with some mysterious runes, or that Hao Ren was casting powerful magic with the papers. As a traditional demon hunter, he would instinctively filter anything had to do with G.o.ds out of his mind.
Vivian patted Ha.s.se on his shoulder. “Didn’t I tell you that you should just treat him as a robot cat, and don’t try to rationalize?”
The divine contract had produced an unexpected effect. Seeing that he was able to suppress the black substance on the Gilded Disc and there was a sign of dissipation, he realized that he might be able to do a better job—not just sealing up the Gilded Disc but also cleansing it entirely if the divine power of the contract was strong enough.
He affixed the few pages of the contract on the parts of the Gilded Disc where black shadow corruption was most severe. Unable to find glue, he used his saliva as adhesive.
Ha.s.se had given up thinking entirely and just watched quietly. In this ancient secret realm, on this ancient and mysterious altar, Hao Ren was clinging to the altar and sticking the papers onto the world’s oldest divine artifact using his saliva. The most incredible thing was that it did work in taming the powerful and dangerous object. Ha.s.se felt that it was time for him to retire; the world was changing too fast, and he thought he could not keep up anymore. Perhaps he could work as a janitor at headquarter after retirement, but he did not know if he could still recover from his shattered worldview.
On the other hand, Hao Ren saw his trick worked. On the contract papers with the name of the Raven 12345 on, a soft white light was purifying the tainted Gilded Disc. The shadows dissipated in the air like a puff of smoke; they were not being suppressed or sealed but eliminated.
“I should have thought of this early.” Hao Ren looked at the results with satisfaction.
“You are full of surprises,” Y’zaks said, blinking.
Hao Ren let out a subtle smile, taking that a compliment. At this time, the shadows on the Gilded Disc had almost completely dissipated. Hao Ren glanced at the part that had just finished purification and found something suspicious.
After the black substance disappeared, it left behind some light marks, which were not the previous contaminant, but dark-red stains, some sprinkled liquid that had dried up.
Vivian noticed Hao Ren’s startled expression on his face. “What happened?” she asked.
“I don’t know what it is, the surface of the disc is a bit dirty,” Hao Ren said casually. He could not help himself but reach out to touch them. “It looks like—”
*Boom!*
A loud bang suddenly arose. Hao Ren felt a sense of wooziness as if he was thrown from s.p.a.ce to the ground, slamming down in a whirlpool. After struggling to recover his senses, he opened his eyes and found himself falling in a foreign place.
“Ouch! It hurts.” Hao Ren got to his feet. He found himself standing in magnificent ruins. It was a palace. Ma.s.sive pillars and incredible majestic sculptures were falling around him. The hall covered with red spar was being torn apart by a violent quake. Above him was a colorful crystal dome that had been punctured with a huge hole. Through the hole, he saw fire in the sky and sulfur rain pouring down together with the burning pieces into the world like rainstorms, and there were loud explosions in every direction.
“Vivian?” Hao Ren called out to his teammates. “MDT?”
His voice vanished in this chaos, and no one answered him. His shared mind connection with the MDT had also gone silent.
“Y’zaks?” Hao Ren ma.s.saged his forehead and staggered over to a place that looked a little level. “Ha.s.se?” he continued to call them out.
Suddenly the palace wall in front of him came down with a boom. When the dust settled, his jaw dropped.
There was a red ocean before him. A vast expanse of flame was burning on the sea, and he was standing on a mysterious palace that floated on the water. Right now, the palace was collapsing and sinking into the ocean.
Towers and megaliths fell apart from the palace, dropped into the red ocean. Hao Ren stunned to realize where he was.
It was the moment where the G.o.ddess of Creation fell. He was on the Star of Creation.
Something seemed to be calling him. He felt an urge. He did not know where he was going, but he just followed his instinct, turned around and ran deeper into the palace.
He went through numerous burning doors and weaved pa.s.sed many bodies of guardian giants. He also saw the treacherous sons in armors, some of them were still fighting the guardian giants in this part of the palace which had not collapsed. Hao Ren did not stop. He ran as fast as he could through the field of chaos as if a voice was hurrying him.
Those guardian giants and treacherous sons seemed to have not noticed Hao Ren was there. They were occupied in killing each other and did not stop the intruder.
Hao Ren went through the last door that was about to collapse.
He saw the scene that had changed the fate of countless souls 10,000 years ago.
A huge Gilded Disc stood at the end of a long hall. In front of the Gilded Disc, there was a female figure, her face unrecognizable and seemed to be shrouded in a layer of eternal mist, but she was the most prominent existence in this s.p.a.ce. When Hao Ren saw the woman, all the flames and destruction around him were gone. He quickly realized that the woman was none other than the G.o.ddess of Creation.
A warrior wearing a gold-red armor stood silently opposite the G.o.ddess of Creation.
They seemed to be talking, or they could be in a silent confrontation. Hao Ren felt that he had a problem with his eyesight, his vision was becoming blurry, and everything around him seemed to be shaking.
In his shaking vision, he saw the warrior held a long sword in his hand. The sword was dark and inlaid with bits of light, like pieces of the universe.
The warrior thrust the sword at the G.o.ddess of Creature.
Hao Ren felt that his consciousness was on the verge of dissipation, but he still used all his strength and lunged forward. He reached to grab his weapon but found that the dimensional pocket did not respond. So he caught anything that he could; he did not know what it was. It could be a stone or a piece of metal, which was extremely hot. Or it could be something else. He used all his might to throw the burning debris at the warrior in gold-red armor. “You f**king stop!” he shouted.
The burning piece of debris dissipated in the air like a phantom, and the dark sword of the warrior had pierced through the body of the G.o.ddess of Creation.
The G.o.ddess seemed not to have any ability to fight off the attack. She staggered a bit, slowly leaned against the Gilded Disc and fell while looking in the direction of Hao Ren.
Hao Ren had realized that he only saw an illusion, an image of 10,000 years ago, but he was still convinced that the G.o.ddess of Creation was staring at him. That gaze spanned across s.p.a.ce and time, even across reality and illusion. At the moment the G.o.ddess of Creation was murdered 10,000 years ago, she stared at the direction as if she knew someone was coming in the fantasy.
The gaze of the G.o.ddess was giving him gooseb.u.mps. Then he heard a faint voice coming into his ears. “Forgive.”
The G.o.ddess finally fell, and at that moment when the deicide happened, the divine came.
The body of the warrior, the G.o.d-killer, disappeared into a beam of light in an instant. Then, many light columns rose in other parts of the palace, and the treacherous sons were turned into light particles before they had a chance to react.
The longest ten-meter distance in his life finally ended. He was too late and had not managed to see the face of the G.o.d-killer and the G.o.ddess of Creation. He came under the Gilded Disc and found the bodies of the killer and the G.o.ddesses were gone. Everything was gone, leaving behind only red marks on the Gilded Disc.
The blood of the G.o.ddess was splattered on it. It was the most significant evidence of the crime in the universe.
The blood slowly dripped, bit by bit, slowly turning dark. The place began to quake, and there were many sorrowful roars of the guardians in the air. Hao Ren closed his eyes. He felt that the Star of Creation was slowly falling apart under his feet and heading down the path a supernova phenomenon that would light up the entire universe.
The extinction had begun.