Chapter 142. Devoured by the Heart...
The heart is grayish-purple overall, 3 meters long and 1.6 meters wide, narrower at the top and wider at the bottom, covered with dense black veins, and surrounded by a light layer of black smoke.
With each strand of golden energy it absorbs, its pulse intensifies.
Lin Xiaoxiao hovered about two meters away from the heart, gripping the hilt of the God-Slaying Sword with both hands, and swiftly and ruthlessly thrust it towards the center of the heart.
The sword tip shimmered with seven-colored energy, carrying a terrifying power capable of destroying everything, as it pierced into that enormous heart.
It only penetrated two or three centimeters before the sword tip felt as if it had struck hard metal, and could not penetrate any further.
The black mist surrounding the heart also spread rapidly through the sword and onto her arm after Lin Xiaoxiao's attack.
Even though it was almost completely extinguished by the seven-colored light emanating from the divine power, it continued to spread endlessly, just to block Lin Xiaoxiao's attack.
Meanwhile, the God of Greed, who had been attacking the barrier of the Land of Fallen Gods outside, immediately stopped his attack the moment he realized his heart had been attacked, and roared angrily: "Damn little bug."
Just as He was about to mobilize the divine power within Him, the originally indestructible barrier in front of Him began to twist and change.
It transformed into chains of energy radiating platinum light, like self-aware serpents, rapidly binding His limbs, waist, neck, joints, and other areas.
The god of greed struggled for a while but couldn't break the chains. He roared angrily at the land of fallen gods: "Raphi! I will tear you to pieces!"
The energy pool within the Land of Fallen Gods rippled noticeably, and all the fallen gods still surviving deep within the pool received a divine promise from the goddess of fortune—Raphael:
'For every fallen god who helps to restrain the god of greed for a day and a night, He will reward them with a Divine Healing Star.'
[The Star of Divine Healing: Born in a stormy spatial vortex at the edge of the universe, it is produced only once every ten thousand years. Even if a god is severely injured, using one can heal all the wounds on his body. The drawback is that it cannot heal cracks in the divine core.]
Large and small Fallen Gods crawled out from the bottom of the energy lake, roaring and raising their fists and extending their claws as they pounced on the God of Greed.
The goddess of fortune, residing deep within the divine realm at the heart of the earth, sat on her divine throne, her eyes gleaming with a strange light. Her left hand rested on her cheek, while her right hand gently tapped the armrest, murmuring to herself, "I hope you will not disappoint me."
'dang.dang.dang……' The God-Slaying Sword frantically slashed at the protective barrier outside the giant heart, producing a series of clanging sounds that made one's teeth ache and ears ring.
Thirty minutes ago, Lin Xiaoxiao's God-Slaying Sword was squeezed out of her heart and flung away.
The giant heart was then covered by an indestructible black mist barrier, and no matter how she tried to cut it, she couldn't make a single crack.
She stopped her slashing attack, just as the buff ended, and a notification sound rang out:
[The Fatal Twin Eyes buff has expired. All eye-related buffs will be unavailable for 24 hours.]
Lin Xiaoxiao asked Quan Zhi within her body with a bit of a headache, "The buff is over, how do I break the barrier around my heart?"
Without breaking the barrier, it is impossible to cleave open the heart and obtain the divine core.
Quan Zhi looked into Lin Xiaoxiao's eyes and quickly searched his mind for the information he had seen before. He replied in a deep voice, "Give me some time, let me think."
Upon hearing this, Lin Xiaoxiao didn't dare to disturb Quan Zhi's contemplation and quietly floated in mid-air waiting.
Suddenly, an unexpected change occurred. Countless black mists surged towards her, mixed with fine needles formed from polluted energy. If these needles were to pierce her body, even a deity would be corrupted.
If Lin Xiaoxiao hadn't taken precautions beforehand, she might have fallen victim to the trap.
She channeled her energy, relentlessly resisting the sudden appearance of the black mist, gritting her teeth as she awaited Quan Zhi's reply.
One minute passed, two minutes passed... more than thirty minutes passed.
Quan Zhi remained silent. Lin Xiaoxiao, who had been struggling to resist the black mist, had her eyes covered by a faint gray light and lost their luster. Unaware of this, she was getting closer and closer to the giant heart.
By the time she realized what was happening, most of her body had merged into the giant heart, with only half of her upper body's shoulder, left hand, and head remaining outside.
She clenched her left fist, the light on her hand flashing, and kept pounding on the surface of her heart.
With each strike, her heart devoured her faster, and before the remaining half of her head was swallowed up, she vaguely heard the sinister and triumphant voice of the God of Greed: "Little worm, obediently become my nourishment."
Then came the complete engulfment, and consciousness plunged into darkness.
When Lin Xiaoxiao regained consciousness, she opened her eyes to see a clear blue sky, white clouds, and the unique fragrance of flowers, grass, and trees.
She slowly sat up on the soft grass, looked around, and found herself in a towering forest.
These trees are quite special; their leaves are like emerald glass carvings, and under the refraction of sunlight, their surfaces form a semi-circular light shield that appears and disappears.
Whenever the wind blows, these leaves collide with each other, making a tinkling sound, like the sound of glass wind chimes, which is particularly pleasant to hear.
The brown trunk is covered with a smooth surface that looks like solidified resin, and some branches are covered with clusters of red fruits about the size of a thumb.
The grass underfoot was exceptionally lush, but its color wasn't pure green; it included light yellow, orange-red, and cyan... which, combined with the surrounding woods, made it look exceptionally dreamlike.
Lin Xiaoxiao didn't know where she was, nor where the God-Slaying Sword had fallen. She could only cautiously observe everything around her, channeling the energy within her body to create an energy lightsaber, which she held in her hand and carefully explored the surroundings.
After walking for several hours, we encountered several groups of strange-looking monsters that were 5 or 6 meters tall. We dodged them, then passed through the forest, crossed several streams that were only a meter or so wide, and followed the streams upstream.
Finally, just before sunset, standing on a hillside about three kilometers away, I could see wisps of smoke rising from the small village filled with wooden houses, and faintly hear the laughter and shouts of children.
"Al, wait for me! Don't run away! I am the invincible warrior of the tribe, and I will defeat you, you monster!"
"Hehe, I'm not stupid, why should I stand here and let you hit me?"
"Rote, come help me hold down Dete, let's fight back together."
Three children with bronze skin, no clothes on their upper bodies, and strange patterns painted on their faces with white paint, ran out of the small village entrance, playing and holding small weapons.
Their accents were very strange, but strangely enough, Lin Xiaoxiao could understand them.
She stood on the hillside, her right hand, hanging by her side, gripping the lightsaber tightly. Looking at the three children approaching, she asked gently, "Hello, may I ask where this place is?"
The three children acted as if they didn't see her, walking right past her, playing and raising their small weapons as they chased each other towards the forest.
Lin Xiaoxiao looked surprised. She wasn't stupid, and she immediately realized that she had probably fallen into a past illusion.
You need to find and destroy the core of the illusion in order to leave this place.
With this in mind, Lin Xiaoxiao immediately flew to the small village at the foot of the mountain to look for clues about the location of the core.
Upon entering the small village, Lin Xiaoxiao frowned as she looked at the village, which resembled a primitive tribe.
The reason it is called a primitive tribe is because the people walking in front of us all have bronze skin, wear clothes made of animal skin, and their exposed skin and faces are all covered with special patterns painted with a white paint.
Moreover, no technological products were seen in this village, and the indigenous people even used stone pots for cooking.
What's most special is that each of the local indigenous people can carry things dozens of times their own size, and can lift stones weighing hundreds of kilograms with one hand.
By the time Lin Xiaoxiao had explored the entire village, it was already evening.
Under the bright full moon, a large bonfire was set up in the middle of the village, with a skinned, unidentified monster measuring 20 meters long and 3 meters wide on top. Its grease dripped into the bonfire, making the flames below even more raging.
The original inhabitants of the village, regardless of age or gender, gathered around the bonfire, singing and dancing as they waited for the monster to be roasted.
Lin Xiaoxiao stood in a corner with her arms crossed, watching the bonfire party in the village.
For many years afterward, she explored the planet and searched for the core of the illusion.
He simply stood outside the village, watching those three little kids, each a little over a meter tall, play, learn, and grow; watching them go from being young and ignorant to becoming the strongest warriors in the tribe.
On the day of the youngest boy, named Luo Tai, turning eighteen, it was his coming-of-age ceremony.
Lightning flashed and thunder roared, a violent storm raged, and numerous spatial teleportation vortexes materialized out of thin air in the dark sky. After months of continuous torrential rain, countless polluted beasts with tentacles, resembling sea urchins but without spikes, burst forth from the vortexes.
Those strange creatures begin to gnaw on everything in their sight as soon as they land, leaving obvious traces of pollution where they have gnawed.
The indigenous people who first discovered these creatures picked up their weapons and bravely fought back against these creatures that fell from the sky, taking them down one by one with a punch.
The indigenous people were delighted to see that their enemies were so weak, thinking they could quickly deal with these inexplicably appearing invaders. However, things did not go as they wished.
Because those creatures have a remarkable ability: even if they are killed, they will still pollute the surrounding environment and other living things.
Furthermore, after death, the body divides into many tiny follicles. If left in an airy environment for a period of time, these follicles will hatch and become new contaminated beasts...
Upon seeing this, Lin Xiaoxiao guessed that this might be about the past of the God of Greed, and that one of the three boys must be the God of Greed himself.
Over the next few years, she watched as the planet's native inhabitants fought against alien creatures.
Watching this once beautiful and bountiful planet turn completely black from pollution, with its inhabitants falling victim to the contamination and becoming neither human nor ghost, is a stark reminder of the devastation.
In the end, of the hundreds of millions of native inhabitants of the planet, only a dozen or so remained, protecting the boy who had changed his name to Terrote, standing atop the mountain, fighting against countless polluted beasts.
[Terrotai, originally named Rotai, took one character from each of his two childhood friends' names and combined them to form a new name after they died protecting him in the beast tide. He carried on with their hopes and expectations.]
Even Terrote, the chosen one, died on the mountaintop, devoured by the corrupted beasts.
As an observer, Lin Xiaoxiao frowned involuntarily as she watched everything unfold, wondering if she had misunderstood.
This Terrote is not the god of greed; he is just someone with the same name, an insignificant person.
But if it wasn't the God of Greed's past before he became a god, then that doesn't make sense either.
Before she came to this illusion, she was swallowed by that giant heart. If this wasn't her past, then whose was it?
With these questions in mind, Lin Xiaoxiao stayed for over two thousand years. During that time, she searched the entire dark planet many times but couldn't find a way to leave.
Just as she was on the verge of a mental breakdown, a special seven-colored light emanated from the summit of Terrote where she died, and a new nameless deity was successfully born from the pollution.
At the moment the new deity was born, seven-colored light shone across the entire planet, and all the polluted beasts instantly turned to ashes.
A deity whose face is obscured, clad in a flowing robe of light, comes to receive the newly born gods and guide them to the Divine Alliance.
Before the two gods left, the deity who came to receive them glanced thoughtfully in the direction of Lin Xiaoxiao before withdrawing his gaze, entering the teleportation vortex, and leaving.
The scene shattered and disappeared into darkness after Terrote's departure.
When the surroundings lit up again, Lin Xiaoxiao found that she was in a magnificent palace. On the empty palace bed lay the handsome god named Terrotai.
His forehead was covered in cold sweat, his face was contorted, and his body was trembling uncontrollably: "Father, Mother, don't die, Al, run, run! Det, are you stupid? Run!"
As the roar resounded, Terrote sat up abruptly from the bed, his chest heaving rapidly, his face deathly pale, his eyes wide with terror, and then he collapsed, clutching his head in despair.
And so, Lin Xiaoxiao followed Terrote, watching Him gradually integrate into the God Alliance, rising step by step from the lowest-ranking nameless deity to become a renowned powerhouse within the God Alliance.
He also witnessed his encounter with the goddess of fortune, Raphael, during one of his missions, and his innocent love for the high goddess.
Everything was progressing well, until Terrote learned the truth about the destruction of his home planet: 'The Divine Alliance habitually brings calamities upon discovering intelligent planets.'
'Then, in the guise of a savior, a phantom descends upon the planet, selects agents, and harvests faith power in large quantities.'
But they didn't expect that Terrote's native planet was so weak, and it was destroyed in less than ten years.
Even more unexpectedly, such a weak planet would give birth to an unnamed deity.
The formation of deities is irregular, according to records once collected by the Divine Alliance:
The most common method is to become a god through faith: through millions of years of offerings, one gradually develops a divine personality, obtains a divine position, and finally achieves divinity.
{Another method involves hunting down gods, seizing their divine cores, using the power of faith to forcibly attain godhood.}
{A slightly less common method is: natural deification (becoming a deity inexplicably after thousands of years of nurturing, example: Terrotai), and deification by chance (becoming a deity inexplicably and cleverly due to certain opportunities)...}
Upon learning the truth, Terrote went into hiding, attempting to take revenge on the God Alliance. Unfortunately, he was discovered and imprisoned in the Abyss Dungeon.
In order to escape, He voluntarily inherited the position of the god of greed, a taboo among the gods.
Over the next tens of thousands of years, Terrote, who became the god of greed, hunted down thousands of gods and destroyed tens of thousands of newly born stars of faith, causing the God Alliance to repeatedly fall into crises of cutting off the power of faith.
Ultimately, the higher gods of the Divine Alliance devised a plan, using the goddess of fortune, Raphael, as bait to lure Him to a planet where newly discovered intelligent species were found, and through some kind of scheme, He was forcibly sealed away...
Lin Xiaoxiao, who had watched the whole thing from beginning to end, finally understood why their planet had produced so many native gods in just a hundred years.
It turns out that all of this was a scheme by the God Alliance, with the aim of destroying the God of Greed along with this newly formed star system.
But they never expected that their cleverness would backfire, as the native deities on this intelligent planet were using the resources they had secretly provided.
As the planet was about to perish, it not only used all sorts of strange traps and schemes to kill hundreds of gods, but also attempted to launch a counterattack on the star system where the God Alliance was located... It also used sacrifices to imprison the God of Greed and the Goddess of Fortune, using them as energy for the planet that was about to explode...
Quan Zhi's voice suddenly appeared in her mind, growing louder and louder: "Lin Xiaoxiao, wake up, wake up quickly."
Under the call of this voice, Lin Xiaoxiao's consciousness gradually sank into the chaos of darkness.
When her thoughts returned, only ten minutes had passed. She found herself in a narrow space enveloped by a large black mist, her lower legs already transformed into energy and disappearing into the mist.
Her voice was very hoarse, and her tone of voice was very strange, as if she hadn't spoken for a long time: "Jun, Quan Zhi, now, what, situation?"
Quan Zhi noticed Lin Xiaoxiao's abnormality, but had no time to pay attention to anything else. He quickly explained the current situation: "You are currently inside the heart of the God of Greed. If you wake up any later, you will become the God of Greed's energy nourishment."
"You must find the Divine Core before you are overwhelmed by all the energy."
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