"Let's go!"
Clad in her Abyss-walker armor, Bai Yuekui flashed into motion, arriving instantly at the entrance to the Spring Eye and standing side-by-side with Goku.
The two exchanged a glance, then leapt in unison toward the spring.
The bottomless spring emitted a crimson glow, instantly swallowing their figures.
"Huh, this place is strange."
In a flash, Goku landed on the ground.
However, the moment he landed, he felt as though he were being squeezed by the surroundings—as if the environment were trying to force him out.
The sensation was much like the effect of a gravity spell.
But the pressure was equivalent to only five times normal gravity; to him, it was nothing.
After all, he usually trained under ten times gravity.
"Just as I thought—without triple-helix DNA, one faces suppression here!"
The moment she entered, Bai Yuekui also sensed a powerful repulsive force emanating from within the Scarlet Miasma. Fortunately, her Abyss-Walker mech was constructed from the shell of a transformed Lusheng beast and possessed triple-helix DNA; this quickly helped her shake off the nauseating repulsion.
"So, this is the inside of the vortex?"
She looked around and saw that she seemed to be standing on a vast expanse of writhing flesh. It was both repulsive and inexplicably terrifying.
Across this expanse of flesh, countless thick, undulating blood vessels were visible.
These vessels all converged on a massive ball of flesh ahead; the substance flowing through them was clearly the "Life Source" harvested from human bodies.
"It looks like the culprit behind it all is right there!"
Bai Yuekui quickly drew her conclusion. Without a moment's hesitation, she piloted the Abyss Walker toward the fleshy mass at supersonic speed.
At the same time, she shouted to Goku:
"The target is that ball of flesh!"
But she had barely covered a hundred meters when her body suddenly became immobilized. Or rather, it wasn't her body that was stuck; the Abyss Walker she was piloting had lost control and ground to a halt.
Just then, a cloaked figure slowly coalesced from the fleshy ground ahead of her and Goku.
"Human, you really never learn. I let you go last time, yet here you are again, courting death. Oh, I forgot—I erased your memory of that event."
"It's you—the Lord of Light and Shadow!"
Upon seeing the figure materializing before her, Bai Yuekui's tone betrayed a hint of surprise, though it was not entirely unexpected.
Thanks to Master Lai's surveillance of the Lighthouse, she had long harbored suspicions about the entity possessing Charles—the Lord of Light and Shadow.
Intelligence reports on Charles revealed that, as a child, he had been surrounded by Phage Beast (Abyssal Beasts); the Lord of Light and Shadow had appeared, driven the beasts away, and merged with Charles.
Consequently, Charles believed the Lord of Light and Shadow to be a god, and himself to be that god's messenger.
With his father Morgan's assistance, he had founded the Church of Light and Shadow to propagate the entity's teachings.
However, her research suggested that anything capable of driving away Phage Beast must itself be a higher-level Phage Beast.
True deities could not exist in this world; there were only life forms from a higher dimension—the Primal Mana Entities.
The true identity of the Lord of Light and Shadow was thus self-evident: it was inextricably linked to the Mana ecosystem.
She even suspected that she and Lusheng might have encountered the Lord of Light and Shadow back when they first entered the Abyss.
Therefore, the entity's appearance did not surprise her; what did surprise her was that the Abyss Walker could be controlled by it.
Fortunately, her greatest asset for this incursion was not the Abyss Walker, but Goku.
"Goku!"
Wasting no words on the Lord of Light and Shadow, she immediately disengaged from the Abyss Walker and called out to Goku.
Who exactly was the Lord of Light and Shadow, and why had it appeared here? Back then, she and... What exactly happened inside the cranial growth?
She was curious about this, but she also understood that the most important thing right now was to destroy that mass of flesh and put an end to the Mana ecosystem.
Once the Mana ecosystem was dealt with, there would be plenty of time to contend with the Lord of Light and Shadow.
"Kame..."
Goku didn't hesitate; he raised his hands, preparing to unleash a full-power Kamehameha wave at the massive flesh-ball.
"You dare!"
But just as he began the move, the figure of the Lord of Light and Shadow vanished—only to reappear instantly behind him.
It thrust its hand directly toward his heart.
The Lord of Light and Shadow was well aware of Goku's strength.
Back at the Lighthouse, he had instantly destroyed the Abyss-Walker piloted by Charles—whose body the entity had possessed.
Later, he had wiped out the Phage Beasts of an entire city, including a Monarch-class Phage Beast.
Just moments ago, outside, he had frozen the Phage Beasts filling the entire canyon and obliterated the hundreds of Monarch-class Phage Beasts stationed to guard the entrance to the visceral fluid pool.
If he were allowed to attack the embryo—which had taken so much effort to gestate—it could truly cause the entire plan to fall apart.
"Oh? Not bad strength!"
His body reacted before his mind did; sensing the killing intent from behind, Goku shifted slightly to dodge the attack and followed through with a whipping kick against the Lord of Light and Shadow.
The Lord of Light and Shadow was sent flying by the kick.
The entity hadn't appeared behind him because of sheer speed, nor because of an ability akin to teleportation.
Rather, the Lord of Light and Shadow had merged its body into the mass of flesh and blood beneath them. ...moving through the mass of flesh, it instantly sprouted from the organic matter behind him.
Otherwise, he wouldn't have failed to notice it at all in the beginning.
However, the speed and power of that heart-piercing strike were truly formidable.
And already surpassed the Monarch-class Phage Beasts found outside.
"Who exactly are you? You are certainly not a human from this planet!"
Absorbing the flesh from the ground to heal the injuries caused by that kick, the Lord of Light and Shadow gazed at Goku, eyes filled with bewilderment.
Humans on this planet could not possibly possess such...
...strength.
For the humans on this planet were, after all, created by him.
250 million years ago, the Mana civilization discovered this planet and breached dimensional barriers to send over a Mana Prime.
The objective, naturally, was to harvest all the "Life Source Matter" on the planet.
Upon arrival, the Mana Prime began spawning Phage Beasts to harvest the Life Source Matter.
She was the very first Phage Beast spawned—and the most powerful one—belonging to the "Avatar Class," a tier above the Monarch-class Phage Beasts.
Yet, upon realizing her mission, she refused to accept an existence defined merely as a tool for harvesting Life Source Matter.
She knew that once the Mana Prime finished collecting the planet's Life Source Matter, she would be reabsorbed—effectively losing her own life.
Consequently, she launched a lethal sneak attack while the Mana Prime was completely unguarded, ultimately paralyzing the Mana Prime's left hemisphere and inflicting severe... ...creation.
Of course, she herself had sustained severe injuries; she was forced to leave her physical body within the "Flesh Pool" to heal, relying instead on her spiritual form to operate in the outside world.
To prevent the "Mana Prime" from awakening, he manipulated the vines to trigger a series of mass extinctions—targeting, in succession, hexapodal insects, reptiles, and giant dinosaurs.
He then used the vines to inject the harvested "Life Essence" into the Mana Prime, gradually transforming its original four-limbed, human-like physique into that of a massive, six-limbed giant.
The Mana Prime originally possessed a triple-helix DNA structure; however, the infusion of Life Essence from Earth's organisms caused a "dimensional downgrade" to a hybrid of triple-helix and double-helix DNA, rendering any future awakening impossible.
It was at this point that he extracted the double-helix DNA of the Mana Giant from within the Mana Prime, thereby creating the human race.
Thus, Charles was not wrong to proclaim himself the "Lord of Light and Shadow" and the creator of humanity.
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