In the Material Plane, Er Dongsheng stopped abruptly in the thick white fog, his expression darkening.
He could no longer sense Mephisto!
Their minds, which had always been linked through the Ink Spirit Flame's mysterious passage, had been completely severed!
"What happened?"
He could hardly believe something could break the connection between them.
It was unthinkable!
It was as though something had erased the mind of his other self.
Terrifying!
"Was that Purgatory? What exactly is it?"
In the last image Er Dongsheng had seen, a pitch-black flame shone brightly in a dim space filled with blood.
The Ink Spirit Flame?
Or perhaps...
Inside the enormous heart—
Endless scarlet blood surged.
A mysterious presence resembling another Flame of Destruction gradually moved onto Mephisto's forehead.
Wisps of something insubstantial seeped from it and burrowed into his brow.
Even asleep, he seemed to feel pain. His brow knitted tightly.
Thump... thump... thump...
The heartbeat continued to echo slowly through the space, beating at the strange pace of once every thirteen seconds.
Thirteen seconds?
What an eerie number!
In a daze—
Scene after scene rose in Mephisto's mind.
White light flashed, and he slowly opened his eyes.
"Where am I?"
As he looked around, a familiar feeling welled up inside him.
It was still that mysterious hall, the majestic place where myriad gods had once gathered: the Pantheon.
Two figures sat silently at opposite ends of a huge conference table, one to the south and one to the north.
Blue flames blazed around one of them, and an aura of devastation swept outward.
He was noble and elegant. His presence seemed capable of crushing the ages, as though the entire starry sky trembled beneath him.
His features remained blurred, impossible to make out clearly.
That familiar figure, that familiar aura, this familiar place.