Chapter 49
[Holy shit, Brother Pineapple, what's wrong? You're not about to explode, are you?!]
[Brother Pineapple, why is your black Qi spreading so far?!]
[Brother Pineapple, don't scare me! You've really gone dark! The guys were only joking with you. Don't go dark!]
[Only now do you remember you were joking with Brother Pineapple?! What were you doing when he was spewing black Qi earlier?!]
[Benefactor, calm down. How about reciting the Samsara Reincarnation Sutra a couple of times?]
[The Supreme Purity Sutra works too, bro!]
Yet Big Pineapple remained unmoved by these comments.
The next moment, terrifying black Qi erupted, instantly withering every plant within a thousand meters.
A Second-Tier Transcendent possessed the strength to shatter mountains!
Technological civilizations could already colonize space at level two.
Compared to that, the ability to shatter mountains truly fell far short.
But discussing strength without accounting for time was nothing but playing dirty.
After all, the Asura Clan had not even existed for two hundred years yet.
A Second-Tier Transcendent civilization in just over a hundred years-truly terrifying!
Although there was only one of them, with Big Pineapple's current strength, he could string up the Ultra Civilization and give it a beating if it had only had the same amount of time to develop.
His pitch-black body emerged in midair, his blood-red eyes striking terror into the soul.
He had finally emerged from that world of nothingness!
Although he still could not leave this place, he could finally affect the outside world.
But why? Why had it come so late?!
If it had happened sooner, if I could have affected the outside world before Yu Ji arrived, things wouldn't have turned out like this!
Even being able to say a single word to my son before he died would have been enough!
Why? Why?!
Why did things have to turn out this way?!
"I hate this!!!"
Big Pineapple's roar sounded like ten thousand ghosts wailing, stirring up gust after gust of chilling wind.
Along with his roar, ripples spread through the black mist, shattering rocks and withering all things.
[Brother Pineapple, stop shouting! We're scared!]
[Brother Pineapple, we sympathize with you, but have you thought about your parents?!]
[Ever since you became like this, they've been watching you in front of their screen. You really have no idea how much it hurts them to see their son turn into this ghostly wreck!]
[Zhang Qiancheng, snap out of it!]
[Exactly, Brother Pineapple. If you keep going like this, you really won't be human anymore!]
"Human? Humans are supposed to be trapped here?!
Humans are supposed to endure endless torment?!
Humans are supposed to watch their wives kill themselves right in front of them after they die?!
Watch their sons spend their entire lives in guilt over some bullshit promise?!
If that's what being human means, then I refuse to be human anymore!!!!"
Big Pineapple's roar rang throughout the Ant Nest Mountain Range, his berserk power destroying everything around him.
Faced with Big Pineapple's roar, the livestream fell silent.
Without suffering another's pain, do not urge them to be kind!
Merely watching everything Big Pineapple had suffered had filled them with despair.
But Big Pineapple had experienced all of it himself.
From the panic of first transmigrating to the high spirits of becoming the A-Shura King.
Back then, he had still been a boy who loved showing off!
Only after the ant queen escaped had he begun to grow more levelheaded.
The choice presented by the senior transmigrator had been even harder for him to make.
In the end, outside forces had cut off his retreat, and he had truly shouldered a king's responsibilities.
Ten years of famine, the Mosquito Clan's disaster, the ant queen's scourge!
For the Asura Clan, he had gone to assassinate the ant queen. Although he had failed to kill her, he had successfully bought the Asura Clan twenty years, ultimately dying in battle.
Each incident, each deed-any one of them alone could already be called a legend.
Up to that point, despite the twists and turns and hot-blooded struggles, his life could still have been called one without regrets.
Yet after his death, the tone had changed abruptly.
However imposing he had been in life, he was just as wretched in death.
Trapped in one place, unable to leave, like a soul forgotten by the world.
He could not communicate with the outside world or affect anything in it, trapped within that tiny cage.
In the end, he had watched his wife slit her throat right in front of him.
He had watched his child spend his entire life in guilt.
If this happened to anyone, who could possibly avoid going mad?!
[Boom!]
Big Pineapple threw a punch. Something ahead seemed to block his way, preventing his fist from passing through the transparent space before him.
"Let me out!!!"
[Boom!]
His eyes blood-red and his entire body pitch-black like an evil ghost, Big Pineapple frantically hammered the transparent wall before him.
The livestream fell silent. Even the psychology experts and professors specially invited by the national teams did not know what to say.
They even felt a trace of resonance themselves.
It was too miserable, too hopeless!
Sometimes, they even wondered how Big Pineapple had managed to hold on until now.
Even Big Pineapple's father turned his head away, his eyes red, unwilling to look at his son as he was now.
Yet one person in the livestream was still posting over and over.
[Son, don't be like this. It breaks Mom's heart...]
[Son, it's your mother. Please answer me!]
[Son, Mom just wants to talk to you.]
[Son...]
"Aaaah! You damned heavens, let me out!!!"
[Boom, boom, boom!]
Roar after roar, punch after punch, yet he could not stir even the slightest ripple.
Of course Big Pineapple had seen his mother's words.
But he did not know how to answer.
He only felt an overwhelming agitation inside. He only wanted to destroy everything before him.
If he could not destroy everything, then he would destroy himself!
[Prajnaparamita...]
[Boundless Heavenly Venerable...]
Countless scriptures once again flooded the livestream.
Although they did not know whether it would help at all, this seemed to be the only method they currently felt might be of some use.
Upon seeing the dense black mist over the Ant Nest Mountain Range, Zhang Baoguo did not hesitate at all. She immediately selected three thousand Asura clanspeople to accompany her to investigate.
Although the Second-Generation Shura King had spent his entire life at war, he had never neglected the Asura Clan's development.
Because he had always kept his father's words firmly in mind: be a good king.
He had bravely slain enemies abroad while encouraging childbirth, planting, and herding at home. Even amid years of continuous warfare, the Asura Clan's population had grown to eight hundred thousand.
In fact, his approach had already been the most correct one for that era.
The ant queen's reproductive ability far surpassed the Asura Clan's. If Little Pineapple had not kept pursuing and attacking them, chasing at their heels and killing them-
And if his father, Big Pineapple, had not severely injured the ant queen once, then any chance for her to recover would have let her crush them to death with a troop-spamming strategy.
As for the mosquitoes?
They simply could fly and survive in a vacuum. Otherwise, given Zhang Aimin's temperament, he could have slaughtered them to extinction.
Three days later, Zhang Baoguo finally reached the Ant Queen Mountain Range. She looked in bewilderment at the mountains within the black mist, which seemed to have been ravaged by an earthquake and a sandstorm.
What exactly happened here?
Why did it become like this?
And what was this black mist?
Zhang Baoguo stopped. An Asura clansman was about to scout ahead for her, but she stopped him outright.
"Go catch a mosquito and put it inside. Let's see what happens."
The Asura man was puzzled. He did not understand why the king wanted to do this, but he knew the king was surely the wisest.
A short while later, a dozen or so Asuras brought over a captured mosquito.
For the Asura Clan of today, dealing with the mosquitoes that had nearly wiped them out when they were just getting started was child's play.
With their transcendent abilities, two people could kill one.
A dozen or so could even capture one alive outright.
And this was not capturing one after leaving it half-dead, but capturing it unharmed.
Moreover, because they were large and easy to carry, Little Pineapple had even used mosquitoes as marching rations many times.
It had to be said, these things truly had it miserable. They had only enjoyed a few years of glory before the Asura Clan rose and during the mosquito plague that caused countless Asuras to starve to death. Afterward, their lot had been nothing but misery.
That was also why, after seeing their situation, Su Mo could not even be bothered to curse at them.
If the mosquitoes outside had not all been males, Little Pineapple would even have wanted to farm them.
Because mosquitoes could survive even by eating dirt. But none of the mosquitoes he captured could reproduce, so he had abandoned the idea.
The Asura clanspeople threw the mosquito into the black mist.
"Mosquitoes deserve to die!!!"
A furious roar rang out, and everyone clapped their hands over their ears.
The mosquito that had just been thrown inside exploded on the spot, turning into a cloud of bloody mist.
Seeing this, the Asura clanspeople immediately shielded Zhang Baoguo behind them, staring solemnly at the black mist ahead.
This thing was far too terrifying.
A mosquito had exploded merely from being thrown inside.
Although they could now kill mosquitoes easily too, this was not how they did it!
Zhang Baoguo frowned, pushed aside the Asura soldiers in front of her, and looked into the depths of the black mist.
Others worried for her safety, but she had heard it perfectly clearly just now. Someone inside had spoken!!!
In this world, only their Asura clanspeople could speak!
Although he was not certain whether whoever was inside was actually an Asura, being able to speak meant they could communicate!
As long as they could communicate, that was a good thing.
"I am the Shura King's grandchild, Shura King III. May I ask which senior is within, and whether you could come out for a talk?"
Zhang Baoguo used her transcendent power to carry her voice far away, all the way to Big Pineapple's ears.
The reason she called out this way was that the A-Shura King was the faith of the entire Asura Clan. Others might have little notion of him as the new king.
But her father and her grandfather-no member of the Asura Clan could possibly not know them!
Still frantically pounding the invisible wall before him, he abruptly froze.
A trace of clarity even began to appear in his blood-red eyes.
The Shura King's grandchild!
Shura King III!
My grandson came looking for me?
But no, that's not right. Why did that voice sound like a woman?!
At this thought, the eyes that had just regained a trace of clarity turned blood-red once more.
A furious roar spread in every direction.
"You dare lie to me!!!"
The already devastated mountain range collapsed completely beneath his roar.
Every Asura present clamped their hands tightly over their ears. They could not imagine it: they had not even entered the black mist's range, yet they were already suffering such a terrifying attack.
What would it have been like if they had gone inside just now?
Then, just as everyone was covering their ears, Zhang Baoguo shouted once again, "I am the Shura King's grandchild, the current Shura King III. My father is Zhang Aimin!"