Hearing this, a glimmer of hope rose in everyone's hearts.
"I'll hold it off..." Hubert rasped. "You... go destroy the core!"
But the pollution around them was too dense. Aside from Yu Xing, everyone else could barely move.
Aiven laughed.
"That's right. Go ahead." His voice was full of mockery. "Touch that gemstone. It'll absorb your life, your soul, all your suffering... then turn it into even more delicious despair to offer to my Lord."
Yu Xing was a very reasonable person.
As Aiven's eyes suddenly widened—heaven only knew how Yu Xing could tell, when his eyeballs were two rotating stars—Yu Xing walked toward the center of the vortex.
His steps were steady, neither hurried nor slow, as if he were out for a stroll.
Aiven sensed something was wrong. Starlight pollution surged toward Yu Xing, but when it touched his skin, it evaporated instantly, like water dripping onto a red-hot iron plate. The starlight tendrils trying to coil around him were absorbed and assimilated the moment they touched the Ghost Tree's branches.
Clearly, Yu Xing had the upper hand over Aiven.
Aiven's smile froze.
"You... you can absorb the starry sky?" His voice wavered for the first time. "How is that possible... That's my Lord's blessing... Only believers can withstand it..."
Yu Xing had already reached the spot beneath the gemstone.
He looked up at the gemstone, where molten starlight flowed across its surface, then reached out and gently cupped it.
The gemstone settled into his palm.
Dark red light flared, swallowing Yu Xing whole. The cracks on the gemstone's surface spread wildly, and molten starlight surged out from within like a living thing, trying to burrow into Yu Xing's skin.
Normally, any living thing that touched it would immediately suffer a mental breakdown and have its flesh melt.