Chapter 85
Not one or two, but ten attacks burst forth from her body like a flood no dam could restrain, ten attacks each representing her long journey as a cultivator—a journey that began in a dark, damp cave where an old man in worn robes granted her an intact Humanity Star, a journey that carried her across land cities, sky cities, and endless universes, a journey filled with blood, fire, tears, and deaths that never truly died.
"Lower Star!" Ling Xu shouted, and the first wave erupted from her third eye, which burned with a grayish-green light—a wave carrying memories of the days when she crawled across the ground with wounds covering her body, of nights when she slept on moss with the same recurring nightmares, of moments when she learned that the world was cruel and no one would save her but herself.
"Common Star! Singular Star! Supernatural Star!"
The second, third, and fourth waves followed without pause, carrying memories of the cities she had destroyed, of the enemies she had slain, of the fragments of Star she had painstakingly gathered just to ascend one level, then another, then another, until she no longer cared to count how many deaths she had left behind.
"Bright Sky! Bright Sky Old! Luminous Lantern! Luminous Lantern Old! Radiant World! Radiant World Old! Anti-Star!"
The fifth through eleventh waves surged relentlessly, bringing with them memories of the Heavenly Longitude she had perfected in silent meditation chambers, of crystals she had fused through suffering beyond words.
"One Falling Crystals! Two! Three! Four! Five! Six! Seven! Eight! Nine! Ten!"
The twelfth through twenty-first waves burst forth with such force that the black flames around them were instantly extinguished, the remaining bone walls crumbled into dust, and the cracked stone floor collapsed into a crater ten meters deep beneath their feet.
And as the culmination, as the crown of all the attacks she unleashed, Ling Xu poured out her entire current realm—Leg of Humanity, the lowest realm within Humanity yet enough to make countless universes tremble like frightened leaves.
"Seed! Root! Branching Vines! Leaves and Fruit! Dew! And the Leg of Humanity—NOW!" Ling Xu roared, and the final twenty-two waves merged into a single overwhelming force that struck The Silent One from all directions—from the front, the back, the sides, above, below, and even from the unseen gaps between space and time—an impact that should have been enough to shatter the palace walls of the highest Gods, to split oceans in two, to make stars fall from the sky like an endless meteor shower.
But The Silent One did not move.
He merely stood at the center of the storm of attacks crashing upon him from every direction, with the same satisfied smile still stretched across his lips, with dark blazing eyes that never blinked, with a body completely uninjured.
Not even slightly—no scratches, no bruises, no blood—like water flowing over smooth stone, like wind passing by an unmoving statue that cares nothing for cold, heat, or storm.
"Is that all?" The Silent One said, his voice no longer flat as when he admitted his role as the mastermind, no longer sharp as when he mocked the Singer's love for Huan Zheng, but bored—deeply bored—like someone watching a dull circus performance, impatient to leave.
The Silent One stood within the ten-meter crater formed by the combined attacks of Ling Xu and the Singer, his robe tattered by the corrosion of the green flute, his body still unscathed despite being struck by twenty-two consecutive waves that should have toppled the palace walls of the highest Gods.
And he let out a breath—a breath like someone who had just woken from sleep on a hot afternoon, a breath strangely similar to Huan Zheng's when he was too lazy to care about anything—but beneath that laziness lay something different, something older, heavier, more absolute, like a mountain that had stood since before time itself was named.
"You know, The Singer—and you too, Ling Xu," The Silent One said, his voice no longer bored, no longer sharp, but flat, empty, like the surface of a lake untouched by wind or life for far too long—and when he blinked for the third time that night, something terrifying happened.
In that fleeting fraction of a millisecond when his eyelids opened and closed—too fast for any naked eye to catch—he emitted an aura so exact, so identical, so indistinguishable from that of the God of the Vast Cosmos, a deity whose mere body could crack the heavens and reverse the seas, a God who once protected all gods and goddesses before choosing to detonate himself and leave the universe in chaos that never truly healed.
"Only you, Ling Xu, can match the potential of the power I possess now. Not The Singer with her melodious flute, not The Lazy One with his irritating indolence, not anyone else but you. Only you. Because you—you are the vessel of the same Cancer plague that once made me—or rather, a part of my former self—swear to eradicate it the moment I encountered it."
Hhhh!
The silence that followed The Silent One's words struck like a wet slap across the face of every being still breathing within that artificial hell.
Huan Zheng, who moments ago still stood with his hands in his pockets and his usual lazy expression, now let his hands fall to his sides, unable to conceal his shock; his half-lidded eyes opened wide for the first time in thousands of years, and within those widened eyes shone something neither The Singer nor Ling Xu had ever seen before.
Fear—not fear of death, for he had faced death too many times to fear it—but fear of betrayal deeper than anything he had ever imagined, fear that his own brother, his own companion, the being who once sat beside him in the bamboo pavilion at the edge of the universe, who listened to The Singer's songs without complaint, who helped him stand when he fell on the battlefield, was not The Silent One at all, but something else—something that had infiltrated The Silent One's body since the end of the Harmony Conflict, since the heads of Gods and Goddesses began to be torn off by barbaric humanity.
To be continued…