Chapter Ninety-Four: In the End, He Still Was Not Steady Enough
The entire city seemed to fall into a deathly silence at that very moment.
The rain, which had already ceased, began falling again without anyone knowing when, splashing down in sheets and veiling the human world.
The Dream Travelers battling through the night all stared fixedly in one direction.
There, a beam had originally been blasting into the heavens, releasing an energy so violent that every Dream Traveler’s dream-spirit senses trembled in fear.
It had looked as though it might bring a world-ending catastrophe upon Jinling City.
Yet for reasons unknown, that beam, before it could fully bloom, began to wither and die.
It broke apart inch by inch, scattering into the night.
The imagined calamity never arrived.
One after another, the Dream Travelers let out long breaths.
The crushing pressure that had weighed upon their dream-spirit senses vanished all at once, and many of them only then came to themselves, discovering that they were soaked through from head to toe.
No one could tell whether it was rain or sweat.
...
On a ruined street, Tang Nai, the city’s Dream Traveler Association president, stood with a sword as a crutch and stared blankly at the vanished pillar of light.
In his dead-gray eyes, a spark of fire seemed to rekindle little by little.
“It’s gone?”
Tang Nai murmured.
An expression of utter disbelief crossed his aged face.
How could it be gone?
Wasn’t that the power of a small divine core exploding?
Once unleashed, it should have been like a psychic nuclear bomb, erasing an entire city.
Jinling itself might have been reduced to a silent ruin tonight.
But...
The expected storm of energy never came.
The mushroom cloud of dream-spirit power that should have erupted within the mental world never appeared either.
It was as though an invisible hand had clamped down on that beam, crushing and extinguishing it bit by bit.
Jinling...
Was saved!
Tang Nai suddenly let out a long breath, and his whole body relaxed at once.
His eyes held relief, lingering fear, and the aftershock of near disaster.
“Thank goodness...”
His body swayed slightly, the gratitude of having survived by a hair’s breadth washing over him.
As for who had stopped the detonation of the small divine core, who had saved all of Jinling City...
Tang Nai did not concern himself with that for the moment.
Instead, his gaze slowly shifted toward the elegant Black Dragon King in the distance, and a thread of cold killing intent began to surface in his eyes.
“You... stay here.”
Tang Nai said coldly.
As the words fell, countless strands of sword energy burst from around him.
He stepped down once, and sword qi surged up from the earth like thunder erupting from a clear sky, vast and overwhelming, surging like a cyclone to smash toward the stunned Black Dragon King, who had been staring toward the hospital.
Only when the attack was almost upon him did the Black Dragon King jolt in fright and recover his senses.
In a panic, he threw up a desperate defense.
Blood sprayed as the sword energy shredded him, and he became utterly disheveled in an instant, no longer bearing even a trace of elegance.
“How is this possible?”
“That was the power of a small divine core... it carried a trace of a true god’s will!”
“And it was actually suppressed?”
The old Black Dragon King’s face was filled with terror.
“I miscalculated... This place is still unsafe. It’s too dangerous!”
His expression darkened.
Still, he was deeply curious about how this had been done.
Had it been Du Fang?
Had the small divine core simply dispersed on its own?
Or...
Had someone shattered it?
If it was the first, then fine. But if it was the second...
Damn it!
Run!
The Black Dragon King’s dream-spirit sense swept outward.
At once, behind him, a pitch-black phantom of a black dragon appeared. It had flesh wings that spread wide like those of a giant bat, blotting out the city.
A pair of scarlet eyes emerged.
Like eyes in the dark night.
They looked toward the hospital ten kilometers away, crossing time and fear, and stole a glance.
At the hospital.
On the rooftop.
A silver-haired youth had his eyes closed in bliss, his entire body trembling faintly. The last wisp of white energy from the small divine core drilled into his nostrils and vanished into nothing.
What the Black Dragon King’s dragon eyes saw was exactly this scene.
“!!!”
The old man felt every hair on his body stand on end.
And then the thing that made every pore in his body seem ready to explode, every nerve screaming danger, was this:
The silver-haired youth, still wearing that expression of intoxicated satisfaction, slowly opened his eyes.
Golden pupils.
As if flames were burning within his soul.
As if they were incinerating the world, burning through space and time.
And those emotionless eyes met the Black Dragon King’s gaze through the void.
The two stared at one another.
Ten kilometers away, on the shattered street, the elegant Black Dragon King raised a hand and slapped himself across the face, tears silently streaming down.
“Serves you right for being nosy. Serves you right for looking!”
“He saw you now, didn’t he?”
The Black Dragon King was filled with remorse.
In the end... he still had not been steady enough!
Tang Nai gripped his sword and glared with anger at the Black Dragon King, whose hide was thick and whose flesh was hard as iron.
But just as he was about to strike—
The Black Dragon King howled, the black dragon phantom behind him spreading its flesh wings and violently flapping them.
In Tang Nai’s eyes, the Black Dragon King actually shot straight up from the ground and fled in utter panic!
He flapped those flesh wings madly as he escaped beyond Jinling City!
...
On the hospital rooftop.
Du Fang, with silver hair, slowly opened his eyes.
He parted his lips slightly and burped, and a trace of heat and searing force warped and annihilated the space before him.
Beside him, Zhang Changlin stared in utter confusion.
Even the will of the white mask floating in the night stared dumbly, mouth agape, full of disbelief.
Both of them were stunned.
The small divine core...
Had been eaten?
That was a small divine core, a terrifying psychic nuclear bomb capable of silently killing every living thing in a city!
Why had it been eaten clean?
And that expression of pure satisfaction...
What on earth was that?
Zhang Changlin was trembling all over.
In that one night, it felt as though he had experienced every joy and sorrow in human life.
He stared at the silver-haired Du Fang.
So unfamiliar.
So bizarre.
But...
That didn’t matter!
Zhang Changlin’s heart was surging with ecstasy. All fear, all despair, had vanished without a trace at this moment.
Because Jinling had been saved.
“Damn... this little Du, no, Brother Du, no! Lord Du, just how many hidden cards does he have? He’s hidden them way too deep! What in the world is the fallen god inside Du Fang?”
Zhang Changlin was so shocked with delight he could hardly breathe.
It was beyond imagination.
He had actually seen a small divine core explode—and then seen that explosion snuffed out!
As if someone had pinched out the flame of a white candle.
That was a small divine core, not a candle!
To accomplish such a thing...
Perhaps only those few human Dream Travelers at the very peak of the association, the ones who controlled domains, could do it.
Most importantly!
Lord Du was now a member of his team!
What had Zhang Changlin ever done to deserve this?
“I think... I really should consider retiring.”
This captaincy was more than he could bear.
Zhang Changlin muttered under his breath.
The silver-haired Du Fang slowly straightened.
He looked toward the black eyes in the void that were fading away in the night.
“Who are you?”
“Who the hell are you?! Impossible! The small divine core detonated, so how could it be snuffed out?! Is that something a human can do?”
The will in the white mask screamed from the void.
Full of disbelief.
He felt as though his entire worldview had been shattered and rebuilt.
The white mask stared fixedly at Du Fang.
His whole body trembling.
“You are a fallen god? No... you are not a fallen god... You carry a great secret... the true secret of my divine-core organization, the secret that can bring true nuclear peace to the world!”
The white mask seemed to have realized something, becoming fanatical and excited.
“I will come for you. We will come for you...”
Its will seemed to have discovered a new continent.
“This era needs purification, needs nuclear peace... You are the key to nuclear peace!”
The white mask’s will began to grow transparent bit by bit, as though it were about to vanish.
Yet silver-haired Du Fang withdrew his gaze from the disappearing black dragon eyes and slowly looked at the fading white-mask will.
“I let you go?”
He said lightly.
The next moment, he raised a hand and grasped.
The white-mask will, whose form had been dissolving, suddenly stilled.
Then, at a visible speed, it began to solidify once more.
“This...”
The white-mask will was completely dumbfounded.
He had intended to leave.
After all, with the small divine core shattered, his sliver of will could not endure for long and was almost due to dissipate.
But why had it not dispersed?
Why, instead, was it becoming more solid?
It was as though even more of his will had been drawn in from his true body and pulled into this fragment...
What the hell kind of joke was this?
Draining me through the network?
Silver-haired Du Fang slowly restrained that white-mask will.
Under compression, the white-mask will became a sphere.
Du Fang sniffed it, and a flash of disgust crossed his golden eyes.
“The scent of Envy... filthy.”
He was irritated.
Waking up only once, and still not managing to eat his fill.
That left him in a rather bad mood.
Then Du Fang flicked a finger.
The white-mask will split in two and shot toward Lolo and Little Pig Qiqi.
Lolo and Little Pig Qiqi had just been lamenting that there was no more small divine core to eat.
They had not expected an unexpected delight to follow.
Both of them swallowed the white-mask will that silver-haired Du Fang bestowed upon them.
“It carries a little bit of the God of Envy’s scent. Rather poor quality. A bit nauseating. No wonder Master didn’t eat it.”
Lolo stuck out her tongue, also looking somewhat disgusted.
Little Pig Qiqi, on the other hand, ate very happily.
“Moo-oo, moo-oo.”
As if telling its little master that if she didn’t want it, she could spit it out and give it to it.
But then Lolo tilted her head and smiled at Little Pig Qiqi.
This pig had been fattened up quite enough.
Little Pig Qiqi immediately stopped feeling happy.
It could only use all its strength to step on the horse-faced creature beneath its feet, which lay there like a lump of rotten mud, while the horse-faced one let out weak, powerless groans...
Enough already.
If you keep stepping, I’ll really die for you.
...
After dealing with the white-mask will, silver-haired Du Fang turned his golden eyes back toward the night.
There, the black dragon eyes had vanished.
Just now, had something... been spying on me?
Du Fang looked into the darkness.
Even the night itself seemed to tremble.
Then, toward the endless dark, toward the place where the black dragon eyes had disappeared, he slowly uttered one word.
“Kneel.”
...
The black dragon phantom spread its sky-covering flesh wings and flapped through the void.
All around it, the scenery howled backward in retreat.
The Black Dragon King was filled with terror. He had lost even a trace of elegance.
Elegance... what mattered was living!
Suddenly, the flesh wings he was violently beating trembled.
A faint voice exploded in his ear.
The Black Dragon King’s pupils contracted.
The next instant, the black dragon phantom around him burst apart and vanished.
His body fell from the sky like an upended radish.
He crashed to the ground, rolled several times, and ended up covered in mud.
Yet the Black Dragon King did not dare cry out in pain, nor did he dare let a tear fall.
He immediately scrambled up from the ground.
Facing the direction of the hospital.
He dropped to his knees without the slightest hesitation.
Both hands raised high.
He cried out loudly,
“O great existence, I shall be your loyal servant!”
“You are lightning, you are light, you are the myth of the heavens!”
“Please accept my submission and prostration!”
Then he threw himself fully to the ground in worship.
His forehead slammed hard into the earth.
A dull thud rang out, souring the teeth of anyone who heard it.
His whole body lay pressed against the cold, rain-soaked ground.
Devout.
And very sensible.