bookbashuk Chapter 146 A Storm Begins from the End of a Floating Stream
Chapter 146 A Storm Begins from the End of a Floating Stream
"What we consider 'normal'..."
Her voice was trembling.
"That is the anomaly in the long river of time."
"The rising and setting of the sun, the changing of the seasons, the continuation of cause and effect—things that everyone takes for granted—are all artificially prescribed and forcibly maintained by some force...an illusion of order."
"But true time is chaotic. It is disordered. Past, present, and future exist simultaneously, overlapping each other, without sequence or cause and effect."
"The Calamity... is the true nature of that chaos."
"It never 'appeared'."
"It's always been there."
"It was just blocked by that 'nail'."
She looked up at the black sun.
"And me."
"The End Star God,"
"Using his power, he manipulated time again and again, and finally... loosened that nail."
"My time travel is the biggest anomaly in itself."
"I forcibly embedded a consciousness that does not belong to this world, a soul from the 'outside', into this timeline."
"From that moment on, the nails started to loosen."
"Every subsequent time rewind, every rewriting of fate, every reversal of cause and effect."
"They're just hammering that nail again."
"Until it completely falls off."
"Until the other side of the three thousand worlds, it flooded into reality like a torrent."
She closed her eyes.
Li He stood beside her, his long robe motionless on the windless wasteland.
Everyone assumed that the rising and setting of the sun was a matter of course.
He said softly.
"And I, guided by the end, became the first person to discover this anomaly."
"In my dream, I gazed at the desert behind the sun."
"I have seen the true face of time."
"Then......"
He smiled.
A relieved, desolate laugh, like the autumn wind sweeping through withered leaves.
"I hid the secret in my poems."
"In the eastern sky grows the Ruomu tree, beneath which rests a dragon holding a candle."
"I will cut off the dragon's feet and devour its flesh."
"To prevent them from returning in the morning, nor from resting at night."
His voice echoed in the final vision.
"In the three thousand worlds, I did not personally sever the dragon's feet every time."
"But in the long history of every world, there was a man named Li He who was the first to forge the sword to slay the dragon."
"Each time, it was 'The End' himself who told him—time is different."
"Each time, he condensed this understanding into the same poem."
"The Short Days of Suffering"
"Every word of it is a knife."
"Every sentence is a sword mark slashing towards the Candle Dragon."
Nihoshi opened her eyes.
In the sky above the End of the World, the colossal shadow of the Candle Dragon began to stir.
The black chains wrapped around it made a grating, screeching sound.
It is struggling to break free.
It is awakening.
All three dragon heads turned towards the planet simultaneously.
Her six vertical pupils, like six mirrors of an abyss, perfectly reflected her figure.
At that moment, a violent tremor ran through Hoshino's chest.
She lowered her head.
In the very center of her chest, the void that had long devoured her life force like a black hole, the wound left by the conflict of fate was beginning to change.
An ancient, fiery power, like magma deep within the earth's crust, surged from the edge of that hollow.
That power was steady and profound, like an unmoving mountain range, like a starry river that never dries up.
immortal.
The legacy of the Dragon Ancestor.
The cause and effect of the eighteenth path of destiny is now complete.
Immortality then split into abundance, and the destiny of abundance was thus completed.
The moment the true form of the Candle Dragon was fully revealed in the final vision, the "immortal" factor remaining within the Star of the Demon finally found its source.
Those fragments of dragon genes scattered in her blood, like lost wanderers hearing the bells of their homeland, frantically converged towards the emptiness in her chest.
The black hole is shrinking.
It shrinks at a rate visible to the naked eye.
The power of immortality is like a dam, blocking most of the abyss that devours everything.
For the first time in a very long time, Hoshino felt that her body had regained a long-lost sense of completeness.
"I see."
A slight smile curved her lips.
Bitter, yet relieved, like a weary smile after solving a long-standing puzzle.
"Li He".
She looked at that thin, retreating figure.
"In that moment when you looked into each other's eyes in the desert behind the sun, you became the first person in the world to understand the truth."
"You hid the secret in the poem."
"And that poem traversed three thousand worlds and countless timelines, becoming the first sharp sword against the Candle Dragon in every world."
Li He did not turn around.
His figure has begun to become transparent.
The end-time horizon is collapsing.
All the fragments were rushing towards the planet, like a movie rewinding, pushing her toward the exit of the real world.
"Go."
Li He's voice came from all directions, like a lingering echo in the wind.
"The sword to slay the dragon has been placed in your hands."
"The rest..."
"Let's see how you, the last king, will handle this."
Hoshi's eyes snapped open.
In the golden pupils, the clock's final ticks abruptly stopped spinning from their limit, and the numbers on the dial became clear again.
Everything in the real world floods the senses in the same instant.
The air inside the driving core was sweet and pungent, yet scalding hot.
Sunday's golden chains were still creaking, binding the frozen three-headed clones.
And in front of the main body, which was bound by chains, Casey's face was still smiling.
Tears still clung to her eyelashes in those cloudy eyes.
"I saw it."
"It's a whisper," said Hoshino.
She withdrew her right hand.
Right at this moment.
The power surged like a flood bursting its banks, spreading from her chest throughout her body.
Golden light emanated from beneath her skin, tracing the veins to create a complex and dizzying pattern, like a star map covering her entire body, with each node corresponding to a destiny's authority.
Eighteen stars lit up at the same time.
boom------!
The aura of the final star god is fully released in the driving core.
The oppressive aura was like a tangible gravitational field, pressing everything within a 30-meter radius toward the ground.
The metal floor caved in beneath her feet, the lumps on the walls cracked and popped, and the three-headed clones, held in place by Sunday's chains, shattered like glass under the oppressive force.
But the main body did not break.
The smile on Casey's face vanished.
Instead, there is an ancient fear, one that transcends the realm of human understanding...
All three heads opened their mouths at the same time.
"roar------!!!"
The roar carried with it the dual destiny of abundance and fertility, and the shockwave cracked the chains of Sunday.
Immediately afterwards, the main body began to expand.
It expands at a speed that completely violates the laws of physics.
The bones protrude from under the skin and are then enveloped by newly formed muscles.
The muscle ruptured the epidermis, only to be covered by an even thicker layer of keratin. The keratin cracked, revealing the scarlet tender flesh beneath, from which new bone spurs immediately grew.
Within ten seconds, the original body swelled from a two-meter-tall humanoid monster into a giant fleshy ball with a diameter of over twenty meters.
The fleshy mass burst through the ceiling of the driving core.
It cracked the deck of the Starship.
It punctured the ship's hull.
"Boom! Boom! Boom!"
The entire P45-class strategic ship was crushed like a flattened soda can under this force, breaking apart from the middle.
Seawater flooded in. Metal fragments flew everywhere.
And that lump of flesh is still growing.
It burst out of the sea.
It broke through that amber-colored sub-space barrier.
Under everyone's watchful eyes, its form began to undergo a qualitative change.
Scarlet muscle fibers extend upwards like a tree trunk. Bones pierce the body surface, branching and bending, transforming into thick branches.
Dark red buds bloom at the tips of the branches, with golden sap flowing from them.
Red, forged from flesh and bone, exuding the dual destiny of abundance and fertility...
Ruomu.
In the eastern sky grows the Ruomu tree, beneath which rests a dragon holding a candle.
Ruomu in Li He's poem.
The sacred tree that controls the rising and setting of the sun.
Its canopy pierced the clouds, and its red branches and leaves stretched out in the high sky like a giant, open blood-red umbrella.
The "flower buds" bloomed under the sunlight, releasing a large number of scarlet spores that drifted with the wind into the sky above 4546B.
"go out!"
Ye Xing grabbed Xing and San Yueqi beside him, and a golden shield condensed around the three of them.
The seawater automatically made way under her power, and the three of them shot out of the broken hull like a golden cannonball.
Sunday and Xilian followed closely behind.
The moment the five people surfaced, they looked up.
That Ruomu tree had grown to a height that was utterly hopeless.
It stretches over three thousand meters from sea level to above the clouds. The trunk's diameter is comparable to that of a small city, and its roots extend deep into the seabed, turning the entire area of seawater a dark red.
And at the very top of the tree canopy.
The black sun was being gradually enveloped by the branches and leaves of the Ruomu tree.
The voice of the star.
"The Ruomu tree holds the Zhulong (a mythical dragon), and the Zhulong holds the sun and moon. Once it completes this process—"
"4546B will be plunged into eternal darkness."
"The calamity will spread from this planet to the entire galaxy."
At this critical moment.
The sound of Sunday rang out.
It's very light.
But it was like a thunderclap.
"Dominix".
He read out a name.
"For us—"
Open your arms on Sunday.
"Reshaping the world!"
boom!!!
Conquer the Star God, descend.
A golden shockwave swept outwards from Sunday in all directions.
The sea was flattened. The clouds were torn apart. Even the amber-colored sub-space barrier developed numerous cracks under the impact of this force.
at the same time.
Xi Lian's body also underwent changes.
Her long pink hair fluttered in the still air, and the blue-purple gradient at the ends suddenly lit up, like a nebula being ignited.
Countless translucent points of light appeared around her, each carrying a complete memory, from countless reincarnations of Onpharos, from the past she had watched over for countless eras.
Deep within the blue pupils, a diamond-shaped light pattern slowly lit up.
The imprint of Fuli.
The authority of the Star God of Memory.
"All memories deserve to be remembered♪"
Her voice was soft yet firm, like a requiem that had traversed billions of years.
The power of memory transformed into strands of silver threads, flying from her fingertips and weaving into a vast network covering the entire sea.
That network locked onto every cell, every fiber, and every life node of Ruomu that was proliferating wildly.
"I remember everything about you."
Xi Lian's eyes deepened.
"Your origins, your evolution, every division and fusion of yours."
"Memorizing it means... it can be rewritten."
The two star gods made their appearance at the same time.
The combined pressure of conquest and memory was like two invisible mountains pressing down on the entire 4546B.
The moment the divine power was released, Hoshino suddenly wrapped his arms around Hoshino and March 7th beside him.
The protective golden shield expanded to its limit, completely enveloping the two of them.
"Get down!"
She yelled.
A clash of powers at the level of star gods is like the end of the world for mortals.
however--
Click.
A crack appeared on the protective shield.
The cracks spread at a visible speed, like a spider web.
A counterattack from Ruomu.
The dual factors of abundance and reproduction erode the protective barrier like acid, thinning the golden film of light every second.
"I can't hold on any longer!"
March 7th, a startled cry.
Just as the shield was about to shatter.
A streak of light flashed across the sky.
A silvery-white arrow, like a shooting star.
Light shone through the cracks in the subsurface barrier, carrying a scorching heat wave that made the entire sea surface boil, and accurately struck the main trunk of the Ruomu tree.
boom--!
The trunk of the tree broke in the middle.
The giant tree of flesh and blood, thousands of meters tall, was like a giant cut in half at the waist, its upper half covered with a canopy that blotted out the sky, crashing into the sea.
"What?!"
Hoshi suddenly looked up.
At the gap in the shattered subspace barrier.
A figure hovered high in the sky.
Her silver hair gradually turned green, and her high ponytail fluttered wildly in the starlight.
The hem of his blue and white trench coat unfurled like a battle flag, and a pair of emerald green eyes burned with a fighting spirit powerful enough to incinerate the stars.
She held a huge bow in her right hand.
A blue serpent of light coils around the bow, a symbolic energy entity representing the "hunting" destiny.
Soaring into the sky.
Yao Qingtian struck the general.
She was enveloped in a pale blue halo, within which a huge, illusory arrow of light could be vaguely seen, aiming at the falling remains of Ruomu.
Lan's gaze.
The authority of the Star God briefly descended upon this fox-man warrior.
"The Three-No General: No Worries, No Regrets—"
Feixiao drew his bowstring taut.
A blue arrow of light condensed and took shape, the energy density at its tip distorting the surrounding space.
"Invincible."
The arrow leaves the bowstring.
A silvery-blue streak of light pierced the sky, like a river of light that stretched across heaven and earth, completely penetrating the fallen Ruomu tree trunk from its roots to its crown.
Ruomu exploded.
The countless fragments of flesh and blood were evaporated by the aftershocks of the hunting arrows, turning into a crimson rain.
However, the most crucial part of those fragments, the heartwood of Ruomu, a fist-sized, crimson crystal radiating an eerie light, veered off course during its fall.
It did not fall into the sea.
It was swallowed by something...
....................................