It was only then that I realized I seemed to have made a tremendously serious mistake.
Zhuang Cheng had said that his flames were his spirit. What I had understood from that was that, while idle, his spirit was merely an ordinary spirit. Only when he activated his superpower would his spirit serve as fuel for the flames—or directly transform into flames itself.
But what if that wasn't the truth?
Zhuang Cheng was a superpowered individual who could freely transform between himself and flames. What if his spirit wasn't ordinary while idle, but already possessed the property of blazing flames—in fact, what if it was closer to "flames mimicking the form of a spirit"...
Then wouldn't what I had done be as foolish as sticking my hand into a furnace that was already operating?
Reality had even surpassed the metaphor. At that moment, I experienced a hallucination of seeing the sun.
The instant I activated my supernatural ability against Zhuang Cheng, I felt as though I had collided head-on with a blazing sun. Destruction, death, being reduced to ashes, vaporization and sublimation... I saw all those endings with horrifying clarity.
At the same time, many questions I had been unable to understand in the past were suddenly answered. For example, why Zhuang Cheng had said that he had never encountered anything strange before.
He hadn't been lying. He probably truly had never encountered anything strange.
Strange things attracted one another—that was common sense in the human world. But even that stale bit of common sense couldn't restrain a true powerhouse. It might even produce the opposite effect, causing other strange things to keep their distance.
Strange things that acted on instinct would avoid him out of fear. Strange things with intelligence would unconsciously avoid paying attention to him. Even strange things that appeared purely as phenomena would brush past him because of some unknown law.
I could now understand why I couldn't sense any fluctuations of magical power from him. It wasn't because he possessed some special attribute, but because we weren't on the same plane. Just as a two-dimensional existence couldn't perceive or interfere with a three-dimensional one, unless what I sensed was the flames that were fragments of his spirit—or unless he deliberately lowered the level at which he existed—I would never be able to sense fluctuations of magical power coming from him.
When you're in the mountains, you don't know the mountains. To me, he was an existence far too immense, while to him, I was an existence far too insignificant. He probably couldn't sense my fluctuations of magical power either, just as he had remained completely unaware when I attacked his soul earlier.
This was clearly the realm occupied by the Great Wuchang...
Wait... why hadn't I been burned to death yet?
I finally came back to my senses. The hallucination had already ended. Zhuang Cheng stood before me, seemingly still waiting for me to make my move.
"What is it? Aren't you going to attack?" he asked. "If you don't come over, I'll come to you."
As he spoke, he took a step toward me. I couldn't help retreating while hurriedly examining my spirit and supernatural ability.
I immediately understood why I was still alive. Before I could be burned to death by the illusory sun, the activation of my supernatural ability had stopped on its own.
The illusory sun needed only an instant to burn me to death, but the time between my ability's activation and cessation had been even shorter than an instant. It was like how a mantis shrimp could produce a momentary temperature exceeding that of the sun's surface, yet be unable to cause any truly destructive damage. Contact lasting less than an instant couldn't kill me. That wasn't the real problem, though. The problem was why the ability had stopped on its own.
It wasn't because Zhuang Cheng had used magical power to block my ability, nor because my ability had any sort of protective mechanism. It was simply because the ability's duration had ended.
The amount of time my supernatural ability could imprison its target in the dead-end illusion depended on how many emotions the target's spirit would produce toward that illusion, like the emotions I had felt at the time. And if the ability ended on its own immediately after coming into contact with the target... that meant, it meant...
Before his magical power could shatter my supernatural ability, his spirit had already overcome it...
"No! No way! I refuse to admit it... I refuse to admit it!"
A furious rage from who knew where made me scream wildly and lose all dignity.
"What are you refusing to admit?" he asked, looking puzzled.
The contact with my ability had been far too brief. He seemed to have no idea that my ability had even activated.
I ignored his reaction. Instead, I went all out—beyond what I was capable of—and manipulated every shadow around me that I could control.
Countless shadows surged madly from cracks and corners, transforming into blades and shooting toward Zhuang Cheng from every direction with the force of ten thousand arrows being loosed at once. He manipulated the surrounding sea of flames into waves, sweeping away the shadow arrows from every direction. But this was merely my feint. At that moment, I had even seized control of the shadows on the floors below.
The instant he focused his attention on the attacks he could see, the floor beneath his feet shattered as shadows surged upward like a tide, swallowing him in the process.
The shadows vanished at once. Zhuang Cheng, who had originally been in the middle, had disappeared without a trace. He had simply vanished from the world.
He hadn't dodged my attack. I had directly transferred him to the Shadow World.
Exiling a target to the Shadow World brought me no benefit, so I had never thought of using this move against anyone before. I hadn't even managed to recall this application immediately earlier.
But now, I only wanted Zhuang Cheng dead!
By all rights, even he should have been unable to think or survive in a world without any concept of time or space, much less return!
However, what happened next completely shattered my hopes.
Zhuang Cheng appeared again. As a streak of fire flashed through the air, a humanoid figure made entirely of flames appeared above a space filled only with layers upon layers of crisscrossing reinforced concrete.
I couldn't understand how he had returned, and could only hurriedly gather all the surrounding shadows, transforming them into a giant serpent that attacked him. But I knew perfectly well that this seemingly imposing attack was all show and no substance. Against him, it was even more futile.
He merely raised his right hand and made a downward-slashing gesture toward the shadow serpent.
I had no idea what had happened. I only saw an incomparably dazzling flash of fire before my entire body was engulfed by an explosion. The shock wave sent me flying into the distance like a leaf battered by a violent storm.
The explosion blasted me outside the unfinished building, even sending me higher into the air than the building itself.
With my view upside down, I saw an astonishing waterfall of flames surging upward against the flow, cleaving the entire unfinished building in half down the middle!
The shadow serpent and everything else had vanished completely, while deafening explosions rang out without end.
How could anyone fight such an absurd opponent? If I escaped into the shadows as soon as I landed... he would definitely catch me...
No. Even if I could get away...
I...
Scene after scene from my past life surfaced in my mind one after another.
As a boy, I had yearned for a magical world of strange phenomena. As a young man, I had knelt in despair in a dead end. In middle age, I had abandoned my conscience and slaughtered others in pursuit of power...
The past words of Monster Maker also wove through those memories:
—When you truly despair from the bottom of your heart and resign yourself to fate, believing that you are powerless to change the outcome...
—The Seed of the Heart will leave you.
The final image fixed in my consciousness was the expression on Zhuang Cheng's face as he remained completely unaware that my supernatural ability had ever activated.
I closed my eyes in utter emptiness.
The Seed of the Heart that I had nurtured until now vanished from my body like a fleeting illusion.
The power permeating my entire body lost its core and began to run wild. From within, it tore my body into pieces...
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