Pain, like deep ice, traveled back from the place His fingertips touched. The bone ash that made up the undersea beach was incomparably cold, yet it burned His hand.
Flesh melted. Bone burned. The god did not stop.
I have to protect them.
He kept digging, digging without pause. His fingers were ground into mangled flesh, then burned to ash by the scalding bone dust, so He used His wrists, then His arms.
Here, He had ample time to do this. All these appearances were only absurd expressions; the truth was hidden beneath concrete things. He was indeed wounded, but not because He was digging through bone ash.
He was not worried.
Yes. He was not worried.
But He was frantic with anxiety.
Ten million clamoring voices exploded in His heart. Five million said, They're all going to die! Another five million screamed and laughed wildly, Fight, fight, fight!
And He Himself could not hear His own voice.
Who am I? a tiny voice whispered in His heart, yet He Himself could not hear it. The voice continued: Who am I?
Who am I?
Three syllables, simple and plain: lips curving, tongue lifting, then the mouth opening. Yet what they contained was the ultimate philosophy in human history. Few could obtain the answer to this question. Could a god?
He could not even hear the voice.
He kept digging, never stopping. Finally, in the deepest part of the bone ash, He saw a skeleton, a faint glow of Magic Power flickering deep in its dark eye sockets. Then He gripped the skeleton's right hand.
"If you ask for help whenever you run into trouble, you'll never grow up, you know, god."
He Shenyan said it with a smile. He stood beneath a vast blue sky, the sunlight brilliant, the