Wu Heng stood at the bottom of the rift, gripping the silver-black fragment.
The remaining mycelium around him still trembled, cowering deep underground, too afraid to show itself. He raised his head and looked north across the rift, toward the deepest part of the mycelial sea—the place where the Mother of Pestilence's collective consciousness resided.
He could sense it clearly: a vast, writhing, decaying consciousness, like a thoroughly rotten heart, slowly pulsing beneath the earth.
It still feared him, yet it remained entrenched there. It would not flee, nor could it flee, because this world was its body, and its body was this world.
Wu Heng raised his right hand, his palm facing north.
The light of the Creation Trait gathered in his palm. It was no longer the gentle silver-white glow from before, but a purer, more primordial light.
The light was brilliantly bright, yet not dazzling, like the warm sun of winter.
He compressed that ball of light again and again, until it became a tiny glimmer no larger than a needlepoint. Then he gave it a gentle push.
"Perish."
The point of light drifted from his palm, moving so slowly that the naked eye could clearly follow its path. Like a firefly, it floated northward, toward the depths of the mycelial sea.
Wherever the point of light passed, the ground cracked open. It was not blasted apart by brute force, but crushed apart by the aura radiating from the light. The mycelium hidden in the soil was swept by that aura and instantly withered, shattered, and turned to drifting ash.
The point of light reached the deepest part of the mycelial sea. After a brief pause, it burst.
There was no earth-shaking explosion, only a soft pop, like a balloon being punctured.
The light spread outward from