Chapter 211 Possible World 1
My power continues to rise relentlessly, and the enormous flaming spear I unleash now is far more powerful than ever before. Although I skipped the compression phase in pursuit of speed, it may already be close to the level required to forcibly break through the "portal armor."
While I had previously damaged Silver Moon's soul, she repaired it all. However, I don't believe this repair was truly effortless. There must be limits to repairing a soul with supernatural abilities.
Just like Asahi, she can use the power of resurrection to restore her soul, but she still has difficulty mobilizing her power from time to time due to the deterioration of her soul's condition. The same is true for the demon hunters in the independent reality space. Although the power of restart has resurrected them countless times, their souls still face the crisis of collapse due to the countless deaths in the past.
I think it might be because my attack on Silvermoon's soul wasn't deep enough. She was undoubtedly severely injured by me before, but since she was able to heal, it means my power didn't penetrate to the essence of the soul. My understanding of the soul is still too superficial. It doesn't matter, superficial is superficial; I'll make up for the shortcomings with power. This is my specialty; not using it effectively would be truly foolish.
Whether such a fierce attack would kill Chang'an and Yinyue together, I can only try my best to input the thought of "stopping when the opponent's soul is destroyed to the point that they can no longer maintain a conscious mind" into my flames - I don't know if such a subtle adjustment will work, and even if it doesn't, there is nowhere to seek justice.
I have no choice but to bite the bullet and give it a try. Allowing Chang'an to be occupied by Silver Moon for an extended period of time will definitely have extremely bad consequences.
As for whether the giant flaming spear would be canceled by her before it could hit, it's unlikely. I just saw that she can't instantly remove a massive amount of power, and she probably can't instantly remove my attack either. Ultimately, her absurd superpower is driven by magic.
Since we all share the same source of power, there's no reason for her to manipulate me, an enemy who is at least of equal strength, at will. She must also abide by certain common principles.
Or perhaps her supernatural power can even trample on those principles? It's not entirely impossible. Trampling on worldly norms is a fundamental nature of magical power. However, as counter-evidence, her "death decree" just now failed to kill me instantly.
Just as I unleashed my massive flaming spear, in my eyes, although there was still some distance between us, her outstretched hand inexplicably touched my body.
No, she didn't actually touch me; it was just that I had that feeling. In my conscious perception, her outstretched hand seemed to traverse the distance of time and space between us in an instant, touching my soul. And in that very moment, she burst into flames. I immediately and instinctively understood what had happened.
She's trying to interfere with my mind. Lu You once described my mind as the sun; if he attacked me with malice, or if I attacked him with malice, the person attempting to interfere would be instantly annihilated.
Naturally, I am now filled with hostility towards Silver Moon, and the self-immolation that occurred to her is proof of this hostile backlash. But she is not a relatively low-level mental interferer like Lu Youxun; she is a fully-fledged demon. Even after my automatic counterattack in the mental realm, she did not die immediately. In fact, like Chenlong who was favored by the power of the Reboot in the past, she managed to cling to life by manipulating reality. And the invisible hand that touched my soul unleashed a strange power.
If nothing unexpected happens, what she wants to do to me is to create illusions.
Her illusionary power is strong enough to become reality, but no matter what, illusion is illusion. "Being able to become reality" is just a manifestation of its power. Making enemies fall into illusions is probably her forte.
In the blink of an eye, I unleashed a further burst of flames on a spiritual level, the massive flaming spear just a hair's breadth away from striking her. However, she was faster than me, almost abnormally fast—perhaps this was the normal speed she used when employing illusionary powers. More importantly, unlike me, whose attack required a physical process, her power acted directly on me, ignoring space. Thought is always one step ahead of matter in motion.
The giant flaming spear fell into empty space as if it had been thrown into the clouds. When I looked up again, I found myself on an empty street, and even the giant flaming spear had disappeared.
The sky was dark, and I stood alone under the streetlights, surrounded by corpses dressed in various ways, their deaths gruesome, and blood flowing like a river.
Is this an illusion created by the Silver Moon?
I immediately wanted to escape the illusion, but unfortunately, I had absolutely no experience in this area. Although I couldn't recognize where the street was, it looked undeniably real. The distant sounds of city noise were incredibly lifelike, and the pervasive smell of blood was unmistakably real. Why did all these corpses lying on the ground die here?
Now is not the time to delve into the background of this illusion. Without a solution, I'll try a brute-force approach first. I immediately wanted to manipulate flames to destroy everything in front of me. Perhaps the Silver Moon is attacking me in the real world right now, and doing so would allow my body in reality to perform the same action.
However, right now I'm like a deflated lighter. I've made the motion to light it, but I can't see a single flame.
My superpowers disappeared?
This is truly a disaster. Without my superpowers, I can't imagine breaking through the illusion of a Grandmaster-level demon—wait, calm down. My superpowers might not be malfunctioning; perhaps Silver Moon has cast an illusion on me that I "cannot use my superpowers."
From another perspective, the one who was driven to the brink of despair might not be me, but Silvermoon.
Such mental interference would also cause her considerable harm. Even if she could continuously repair herself using her reality-altering abilities, since she is currently casting a continuous illusion, she would inevitably suffer constant burning. Regardless of how painful this state is, my power has now reached a very high level, and I don't believe she can infinitely repair the immense damage I've inflicted.
In addition, although this is just my vague intuition, she seems out of sorts right now.
The previous nuclear explosion seemed to have exposed this side of her to some extent. It must be admitted that a nuclear explosion is indeed very powerful, and in her initial expectations, it seemed capable of posing a significant threat to me. However, as a manifestation of her godlike ability to "turn illusions into reality," it seemed somewhat like bluffing.
Is it because she's not using her real body right now that she can't unleash her full power? If that's the case, why is she still determined to fight me to the death instead of retreating for now? Even if I have reasons to keep her here, she doesn't have any reason to kill me as soon as possible, does she? At least I find it hard to believe that she's such a stubborn person.
Just then, I heard footsteps behind me. Turning around, I saw the person step into the area illuminated by the streetlights and emerge from the darkness.
This person wore a brown-black bamboo hat and a raincoat of the same color, carried a black and red scabbard on his back, and held a gleaming sword in his hand, looking like a knight-errant who had stepped out of an ancient martial arts drama.
The person standing before me was Zhu Shi.
She looked at me with a sorrowful expression, then at the blood-soaked scene around us, and then pointed her sword at me.
"...That's the end, Fallen Witcher—Zhuang Cheng," she said.
Am I supposed to fight my friends in a fantasy world? What a terrible fantasy world!
The moment this thought crossed my mind, it stirred up a storm, and a series of ambiguous memories surfaced in my head—
All the disagreements started more than a year ago, on that night when they were tracking the immortal monster.
At the time, Mazao was still missing. In order to obtain clues about Mazao, I hesitated whether to follow the immortal monster for an extended period while watching him kill innocent bystanders. Meanwhile, Zhu Shi failed to devise a method in time to sever the immortal monster's connection to the Seed of the Heart using the power of Mount Buzhou and obtain its head. Ultimately, I chose to follow the immortal monster, even forcibly preventing Zhu Shi from killing it. This led to a rift between Zhu Shi and me.
Just like the broken windows theory suggests, once a breach is made, it's impossible to undo the damage. From then on, to satisfy my desire to explore strange events, I didn't care how many innocent people I dragged into them, most recently causing the annihilation of over 90% of a town's population. Zhu Shi tried to stop me many times, but all attempts failed.
My existence and deeds alarmed the Luoshan headquarters. The Great Impermanence "Fazheng," who led the ruling faction, judged me as a "fallen demon hunter," while Zhu Shi joined the ranks of those who were to punish me.
She seemed to think of herself as half of my guide into this strange world, and that I became who I am today partly because of her poor guidance.
Filled with self-reproach and a strong sense of righteous indignation, she reappeared before me.
—What kind of settings are these?
Is this my setup in this illusion? Is there really such a fickle person as "Fazheng"? How did I end up becoming a fallen demon hunter?
Although I was surprised, reason told me that this wasn't impossible. When I was tracking the immortal monster, I did consider a tailing plan that involved watching the target kill people, although I ultimately abandoned that plan because Zhu Shi came up with a better approach in time. Otherwise, with my mind filled with the thought of "I must find Ma Zao as soon as possible," I don't know what I might have done.
And this "Fallen Witcher Zhuang Cheng" is another possibility for me.
(End of this chapter)
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