"They must be close to despair!" Ao Ding, the Black Dragon, sighed before the ice-crystal mirror. "Your Highness was a move ahead after all! Once all their despair turns into Thought Monsters, the ritual can begin."
The Dragon Lady smiled and looked toward the Great River Water Lord, only to find his expression grave.
"What still troubles Your Highness?" she asked softly. Then she glanced at the cavern and froze.
“Where did that Thought Monster go?” Ao Ding looked over too. He narrowed his eyes as if sensing for it, then stared in shock. “It’s truly vanished!”
On the mirror’s surface, the fragments of the Thought Beast were gone. Only Chen Cuo remained.
The three of them fell silent.
Suddenly, the Great River Water Lord gave a quiet sigh and swept his sleeve. A ripple spread outward.
Silence filled the ice cavern.
Only the sound of falling ice-crystal shards remained.
“Well...” After a while, Zhang Jingbei coughed lightly, breaking the silence. He looked at Dugu Xin. “You were certain it couldn’t be Annihilation? Then what was that...”
Dugu Xin did not answer. He and Qiwu Huaiwen stared fixedly at Chen Cuo, as though they could see right through him.
The Meng brothers and the two from the Sword Sect were staring at Chen Cuo as well. The brothers frowned deeply, while the other two exchanged a look that said they had expected this.
“Thought Beasts are beasts from Beyond the Mundane. They’re born from a kind of shared belief, a shared thought, entrusted to the Netherworld by the human world and given form Beyond the Mundane,” Ling Mei explained, cold sweat covering her brow. “But... why would one appear here? It truly makes no sense.”
"It makes perfect sense," Chen Cuo said suddenly. "Before, I only suspected it. Now I'm