Impossible. In a place like this, that little one couldn’t possibly break in—
That bloodshot eyeball, suddenly wrenched apart by Chao Huangmu’s surprise attack, was dyed with shock as Chao Huangmu’s psionic blow struck it head-on.
He had been too much in control before, everything smooth sailing, so naturally, he had overlooked many things.
For example, just earlier, he’d still been high and mighty, planning to toy with Chao Huangmu, to let him taste despair and then absorb his power with ease.
He treated the other races and people of the interstellar world the same way. Moreover, nobody had ever found him—until Chu Zao’s arrow came right in front of him. Only then did he abruptly realize that this supposedly foolproof and impenetrable special space he’d created had actually been broken into by Chu Zao.
This time, Chu Zao drew close, released the arrow, and for the first time, the arrow shot straight into the very place where that eyeball was.
This time, the arrow finally pierced right into the eyeball itself, its dual-colored flames whirling at the tail, continually drilling deeper.
Chao Huangmu was just as stunned, looking up. In that instant, it was silent all around—no sound existed.
It was like an explosion beneath the ocean’s surface—only after a few seconds did the shock surge from below, spreading outward, sending fierce rippling waves. The impact wave in that instant blasted even Chu Zao away, overturning Chao Huangmu as well.
For a while, this entire space, formed by that guy’s special power, underwent the most intense upheaval.
Chao Huangmu took the chance to reach out, just meeting the hand Chu Zao also extended.
Little Chu Zao seemed to freeze for a moment, turning to look at Chao Huangmu. Everything felt like it was collapsing; as soon as they made contact, Chao Huangmu grabbed hold of Chu Zao hard.
In that instant, they heard many voices—all kinds of voices overlapped, as if all those beings whose power had been plundered by this so-called ‘god’ gained a brief chance to breathe and regain clarity.
At this moment, Chao Huangmu suddenly winced at a headache, loosening his grip on Chu Zao’s hand, which Little Chu Zao instantly seized back in turn.
That seductive, plunging voice and imagery of ‘god’ always twisted out from a person’s truest memories.
In that moment, Chao Huangmu’s mental power finally broke through some node; the precise memories he had utterly forgotten finally surfaced again.
In just a few breaths, Chao Huangmu’s mind, linked with Little Chu Zao’s, reviewed all those moments of the past in detail.
“…The Soul Clan’s inevitable weakness and fate that none can resist—the Soul Clan should never exist as we do—”
Yes, Chao Huangmu remembered this sentence, a voice he gradually recalled after reaching the Dragon Realm, part of his childhood memories.
Family fell into madness. His parents had raised blades against him; he had nearly died at their hands.
But this time, things became a bit clearer—after that vicious line, he heard the following whisper, and a cold hand gently touched his cheek.
“But my child—you still have so much you haven’t seen or experienced—”
What?
Chao Huangmu’s eyes widened just a bit.
He did not remember hearing such words.
Before the pollution came, the Soul Clan’s mental power was already the most unstable among all immortal species in the interstellar world.
The struggle continued until shortly after Chao Huangmu’s birth before the entire clan’s bloodline was utterly cut off.
Their unstable psionic power made them more ruthless to those who provoked them than even the famous Crown Clan, leaving their people with scant dealings with outsiders. But as an immortal species, unstable psionics was just one aspect of their power being uneven. With a little more care, it wouldn’t impact their lives much.
Moreover, the Soul Clan was most loyal to their partners; most found contentment with a mate.
Until the pollution came—the Soul Clan, unlike the Crown Clan, did not perish in mass casualties at once, but outbreaks of psionic rampage became ever more frequent.
Being immortal brought its own obvious weaknesses; they never managed to fully integrate their mental power with their bodies—the Soul Clan had researched this and thought perhaps with some stimulus, or by traveling to a special place, they could, like the Crown Clan, achieve an original form besides their human one, thus gaining complete stability of power, no more risk of loss of control.
But they never found the answer; the pollution had already come on schedule. As crises of loss of control grew, many began to slip into self-destruction and madness. Those powers that twisted their cognition and lured them into insanity were gradually taken up by organizations targeting immortals like the Hymn Organization, which finally led the Soul Clan to catastrophic annihilation.
External factors played a big role, but ultimately, it all stemmed from the Soul Clan’s own defects.
When Chao Huangmu was born, things were already severe.
But amid internal chaos, everyone separated, no longer living in groups.
So Chao Huangmu’s parents, with him, had peace at first, until even they gradually slid into madness.
In that period, the Soul Clan rapidly disappeared. His father, falling again into psionic madness, chose to end himself with a last shred of reason so as not to harm his wife. His mother, a former clan researcher, in agony, strapped little Chao Huangmu onto a lab table in her final days.
At the extinction’s edge, before that ‘god’ emerged and as all the interstellar world fought the sudden pollution, the last immortals vaguely sensed they were being watched.
The Soul Clan’s unfinished, experimental, even failed technique was tried on Chao Huangmu.
Just so he might grow up a little smoother.
In darkness—flesh pulled apart, drugs injected, psionics suppressed—the clan’s research, driven by irreversible destruction, reached an extreme—
All Chao Huangmu remembered was himself screaming “no”, and the gray sky outside.
His father’s blood filled the air with a bloody odor; his mother, also bathed in blood, bent over holding her tiny child.
“Mu, little Mu—it’s okay, don’t be afraid, the pain will fade, the suffering will be forgotten, none of it will haunt you again—”
Just forget, don’t live on as a Soul Clan anymore— even if you only go on as an ordinary person with strong psionic powers, she had arranged much with old acquaintances so Chao Huangmu could grow in a stable environment. At life’s end, she wasn’t sure if what she did was right or wrong.
But that was the helpless protection for her child after years of struggle.
—Don’t remember you’re a Soul Clan. Don’t think of doing anything now impossible, for your kin’s deaths.
—Don’t remember any of this.
She meant to protect her child from the covetousness lurking in the dark.
Chao Huangmu only remembered his mother’s blood-damp black hair, clammy and cold, falling onto his neck. It was night on that planet, he could see nothing but haze outside; suffocation seized him, his senses warped and twisted, until at this moment—
Hard to say whether the Dragon Realm was in fact the place the Soul Clan had sought all life to stabilize their power.
Before the sun of that source star ever rose, he was sent away, his mother’s last words fading at his ear—
Like a sigh, like a sob.
“My dear, such a pity, we can’t watch the sunrise together today—”
A coldness before him, a chill all around, tears not knowing when drooled onto his hand, Chao Huangmu abruptly came to, thinking—oh, it was all just a flash of memory.
Those scattered, headache-inducing fragments finally strung together into full memory.
He was, after all, a pure Soul Clansman, not a half-breed.
But—now—
Chao Huangmu snapped out of it; it was not the time for such thoughts.
Instinctively, he looked at the hand still gripping his—“Zao Zao—”
He blurted out. All memories rushing back, he felt a bit flustered facing Chu Zao now.
But as all around pulsed with shifting energies, and space shook, everything seemed to accelerate toward collapse. Chu Zao clung to him in this world, finally crashing into his arms, hugging him tight.
Chao Huangmu’s eyes widened, warmth and softness instantly flooding his chest and limbs, the damp, steamy touch spreading over his neck.
A soft sob, quickly smothered.
Zao Zao was crying.
So quiet, so repressed, head not raised, yet unmistakably grieved.
In this collapsing world, for a second, his emotions broke through.
“Brother Mu—”
His voice was hoarse, without revealing any other oddity.
“Zao Zao is here.”
Like all those past practicums against aberrant beasts, Little Chu Zao would come at him, cheerful or disheveled, grinning—“Zao Zao’s here.”
Chao Huangmu squeezed him a bit tighter in this interval, listening as Chu Zao continued: “The Angel Source Stone is gone, it left—followed the angels away.”
This whole journey, Chu Zao had suppressed these feelings, until he met Chao Huangmu, who looked so reliable now, already recovered. Finally, he couldn’t hold it in.
He felt awful…
Because of the Angel Source Stone. Because of Brother Mu.
Chao Huangmu knew this wasn’t the time for words. He just lowered his head, resting his chin on Chu Zao’s soft hair—the collapsing world held a fleeting stillness.
But soon, Chu Zao looked up at Chao Huangmu.
That brief moment of distress and loss of control seemed like an illusion—he gripped his Cupid’s Bow, honey-gold eyes now clear and resolute, no trace of wetness.
Still not fully mature, but growing steadier.
“Is that thing really finished off?”
Chu Zao glanced around. Behind him, behind Chao Huangmu, white and black wings beating, dodging through an ever more unstable, collapsing world.
“Seems not yet.”
Chao Huangmu also spoke, assessing the scene.
Chu Zao thought so, too. How could a threat to the interstellar world for millennia be solved with just one arrow?
Especially since the space was still caving in, but—
“I’ve wounded him. We can find him.”
Chu Zao tightened his grip on Cupid’s Bow, eyes shimmering as he searched.
All around was chaos and danger; Chu Zao had lost track of Xi’s location.
But—
“We’ve come this far—we need to keep going.”
After that brief emotional lapse, Chu Zao spread his wings, leading Chao Huangmu toward the direction of the arrow.
Meanwhile, farther away—
A massive eyeball hovered mid-air, roaring in fury—a single arrow piercing its center.
Chu Zao’s psionic power coiled around it, crackling, leaving the ‘god’ helpless to destroy it.
Vast pollution leaks ceaselessly from him.
He roared in anger, finally shedding his arrogant disdain, scanning everything in his special domain—
This scan made him realize not only Chu Zao and Chao Huangmu were here—there were other bugs, too.
One of them was far from a threat, even carrying deadly poison, with the next cycle of antivenom approaching—just leaving it a bit would soon be fatal. And—that damned Crown Clan member.
Only now did the ‘god’ realize with shock: Amos had, somehow, already closed in, passing through one interdimensional corridor after another, bearing down on him.
Damn, damn—
A lapse of attention and so many pests scurried in—
Damn it!!!
The ‘god’ howled in anger again. Monster after monster, made up of countless eyeballs, ballooned and quickly took shape, hurling themselves at all of them.
And just when he was so weak, the Crown Clan had found a way to resist his pollution.
He now realized that Amos handled his pollution far more deftly, as if some fundamental change had occurred in the Crown Clan—their eyes across the stars opening in an instant.
He observed the awakening of the Crown Clan’s home planet.
Pollution across the interstellar world rebelled once more—already-chaotic fronts of aberrant beasts and monsters turned even more chaotic, and although the home planet’s revival lagged, it still stubbornly held out—for ‘god’ to devour such a forceful immortal species’ power base would be a massive undertaking, impossible to finish quickly.
Now, having devoured so much power, for the first time the blade touched his throat—he felt crisis.
He needed—a further evolution.
Amidst a sea of voices near the eyeball, he no longer fixated on pulling out the arrow from his eye; instead, his form began to bloat uncontrollably, growing dozens of times larger in an instant, making Chu Zao’s arrow appear tiny.
Above his head, pollution condensed continually, vaguely forming—a ring.
It looked somewhat like the Crown Clan’s coronet.
He had devoured countless powers.
Not just civilizations, not just enduring races, but now he could even find greater routes of evolution.
Among all the interstellar’s peoples, the greatest power, no doubt, was the Crown Clan.
But even having devoured them, even after losing all basic biological signs, their power and minds still struggled instinctively, so that ‘god’ could never fully assimilate or move on to the next path.
Now, with danger at hand, he dared not keep assimilating—losing so much energy made him terrified—a variable he’d never encountered after destroying so many civilizations.
At last, at this point, the ‘god’ opted for forced evolution, intending to exterminate all the bugs who’d intruded upon his domain.
In the sky behind ‘god’, countless blood-red eyes opened.
Meanwhile, Amos had traversed endless corridors; the little light-fish of mental power growing ever dimmer.
A foe appeared ahead.
Those warped monsters tried to slow Amos’s progress.
Chu Zao and Chao Huangmu, too, hit similar obstacles.
Outside, among the stars.
Feeney’s arrows pierced rows of suddenly-appearing monsters and incomplete aberrant beasts.
Voices came at his ear.
“Your Highness Feeney, countless uncontrollable monsters and forces are emerging around the Holy Cas Empire. His Highness Meilun and others are fighting back. The Holy Chalice Clan is in position. His Highness Joshua is commanding other nations to resist and defend. Other lords are heading to places His Highness Frey has determined must be attacked for further strikes. His Majesty Amos and the young lord are still missing.”
Feeney acknowledged, drew his bow again and aimed at the unending swarm.
Light soared skyward, outlining his cheek—he gave a cold laugh, madness skirting his gaze.
“Already gone mad, right? You should experience a taste of this, too—”
Arrow after arrow flew at monsters bloated with aberrant beast powers.
Interstellar strongholds everywhere were beset.
Where once they’d been helpless against the pollution, now those monsters, trying to devour and recycle the powers extracted from aberrant beasts, could be slaughtered to suppress the spread of pollution.
All the more so with the Crown Clan’s revived home planet boosting their might.
With Chu Zao’s psionic power piecing them together, their coronets were gently fused by the power of the home planet.
The less-restrained powers became more precise, increasingly damaging to ‘god’.
It was a chain reaction, like a domino fall sparking off from the start of this invasion, accelerating to explosive collapse.
The ‘god’ could never have predicted this outcome.
While evolving rapidly, he saw and felt it all—and at last was afraid.
He tried to speed up, to shake Chu Zao’s psychic anchor—detaching even if only by gecko-tailed escape, he had to flee this starfield fast.
The monsters blocking Amos were trivial for him to deal with.
On the path of that colossus, monsters were shredded one after another into bloody mist; in a flash it was impossible to tell if the blood belonged to Amos or to them.
Until the mental power’s little fish finally faded, and Amos reached the last door.
Chu Zao and Chao Huangmu had also located the forcibly evolving ‘god’ by following their psychic link.
“What’s that?”
Chu Zao hadn’t yet relaxed, gripping his arrow, aiming—yet what he saw above ‘god’s’ head, that gathering ring of energy, brought a strange sense of recognition.
Especially familiar to Chu Zao—those patterns resembled the coronet patterns of the Dwight family among the Crown Clan.
All Crown clansmen bore their own psychic coronets, yet every family had distinct patterns.
That familiarity, and the blood-red eye bursting open from the fleshy mass—disregarding its bizarre appearance, this being was clearly imitating the Crown Clan—evolving per the power of the devoured Crown Clan.
And he had a template, most likely a Dwight Crown Clansman.
—How dared he?
It was almost an insult to the Crown Clan.
Chu Zao gritted his teeth and let his arrow fly.
Behind Chao Huangmu, his psychic dragon also leapt out.
Confronted with ‘god’ now on high alert, such power was blocked midway, unable to press the attack.
Elsewhere, Chu Zao’s arrow in the eyeball was being slowly crushed; ‘god’ prepared to leave, to retreat into the shadows again—
No matter how much power the monster had absorbed, Chu Zao and Chao Huangmu alone couldn’t shake it—though Chu Zao’s power now countered pollution, he could only make the monster sense danger and prepare to bolt.
But as the monster donned the coronet, something imperceptibly began to change.
On the far side of the space, Amos, having lost his bearings, now reverted to human form, slaying monsters by the handful and groping forward.
Which way?
Amos held his psionic longsword, when suddenly, his coronet seemed to be brushed, the blade flickered in his hand, voices broke out, noisy and confused, until only one voice remained, as if awakened.
‘Amos—’
Amos stopped.
He looked sharply in one direction.
‘This way.’
The voice was cold, stricter and harsher and more emotionless than any, but Amos knew it well.
He recognized the voice.
And then, this voice even seemed a little mocking—a tone rare among the Crown Clan: ‘Tell me, why is your psionic weapon so banged up? Didn’t you maintain it? Did rats gnaw at it?’
—It was the previous Holy Cas Emperor, Emperor Clansis, who perished a few hundred years ago when his coronet shattered amid the pollution.
Why here?
But at this time, Amos suddenly recalled a certain moment.
It was when leaving the Angel Realm—his suffering, broken mother Solan had told Chu Zao something while still tormented. Chu Zao, in tears, had related her words unclearly—roughly: Clansis is not here, Clansis was not with those other suffering Crown Clan souls clinging to the homeworld.
A Crown Clansman as powerful as Clansis would not have been easily wholly devoured.
Then—where was the last remnant of Emperor Clansis’ psionic consciousness, lost in pollution?
Now, it seemed, the answer was found.
But it was hardly an answer to gladden anyone.
Perhaps, as ‘god’s’ blood-red eyes watched the interstellar world again and again, another crimson gaze watched through them as well, waiting to be awakened.
Amos pressed forward without pause, his face ever-cold as he answered dispassionately.
“I’ll pass that on to Zao Zao—your opinion of your grandson. Of course, he probably won’t be pleased.”
‘…’