Chapter 204: Final Chapter (Part 1) “The resentment has dissipated.”…
The day I decided to die seemed no different from any other day.
The sky was just as sunny as usual.
The sky is clear and bright.
In the sycamore forest of Nanling, the newly born phoenix chirps and chirps. Their down feathers are not yet fully grown, and they have not yet transformed into human form. They huddle like balls of fur in nests on the branches, with their tender yellow beaks raised, eagerly begging for food from their parents.
The clear and melodious chirping penetrated the lush green leaves and reached the capital of the Burning Sea King.
The yawning demon vendors slowly set up their stalls and busied themselves preparing various snacks to be sold at the night market.
The sizzling sound of fried dough, the gurgling sound of stewing broth, and the rustling sound of spices being crushed, mixed with trivial chatter and laughter, added a rare bit of liveliness and warmth to the usually gloomy and solemn atmosphere of the royal capital.
Everything is filled with a recurring tranquility.
It seems that the order established by the Way of Heaven has existed since time immemorial and will continue forever.
Just before stepping into the teleportation array, Jiu Zhao lowered her eyes again, carefully looking down at this world that belonged to her.
Warm, lively and noisy.
And ordinary joys, and vulgar struggles.
It may seem insignificant, but it is the significance of her final choice.
The formation began to flow.
The intricate seal characters beneath his feet gradually lit up.
The entire view was swallowed up by a huge ray of light.
In the blink of an eye, a cold wind carrying the smell of a rotting corpse rushed into the space, almost suffocating Jiu Zhao.
The teleportation array completed its mission and the light went out completely.
Between heaven and earth, the only source of light is the omnipresent karmic fire.
Plants, birds, animals, insects, and anything related to life cannot possibly survive here.
That nauseating smell of dead things seemed merely an illusion, a deterrent to further exploration. But only Jiu Zhao understood that it truly existed, emanating from the deepest recesses of the earth's crust. It was the aura emanating from Xumo Luo, the sinful core that condensed countless grievances.
It is like a greedy and unlimited stomach, constantly sucking/absorbing every bit of negative emotion growing in the hearts of the demon people, grabbing powerful strength from it, and then swallowing out the tempered resentment to erode the sky and the earth, and distort the rationality of people's hearts.
The teleportation array can only reach the surface of this realm of death.
Jiu Zhao raised his feet and walked towards the entrance to the center of the earth according to the guidance of the qionghuang in the spiritual platform.
As she gradually approached, the quietly suspended flames suddenly became violent and rushed to her shoes, trying to kill the uninvited guest.
Jiu Zhao was not afraid.
She quickened her movements, from walking to running.
He flew over the scorched earth like a nimble swift, and then jumped without hesitation into the crack in the ground where the fire was the most intense.
An extreme coldness far exceeding the coldest he had ever experienced suddenly descended, engulfing Jiu Zhao from head to toe.
Separated by a thick shell, the underground world is still occupied by karmic fire.
Moreover, Jiu Zhao truly felt that the closer they were to the core of resentment, the stronger the power they released.
If she hadn't had the help of the ancestor god Qionghuang, she would have mastered it long ago.
I'm afraid that if I enter the crack in the ground, I won't be able to survive for a moment and will become a speck of ash in this endless hell.
In absolute silence, Jiu Zhao held his breath, released a stream of karmic fire from each of his palms, transformed it into a defensive barrier, and flew downwards with determination.
Finally, after touching a piece of void that seemed to be real, she was forced to stop and could not move forward any further.
The overwhelming fire in front of him suddenly parted, and a wriggling black shadow slowly crawled out.
Jiu Zhao couldn't describe what it looked like.
Like unadulterated ink, thick and sticky. Disgusting tentacles extended from within at all times, grabbing at small fragments of resentment floating around, then suddenly retracting. Although it had no mouth, Jiu Zhao could hear a clear, crunching chewing sound.
Another wave of increasingly strong stench came.
Jiu Zhao frowned and made a retching sound from deep in his throat, even louder than the shadow's eating.
She didn't want to stay any longer and was about to take action -
The black shadow suddenly flashed and transformed into her appearance, even the disgust in his eyes was exactly the same.
"Are you really willing to die here?"
All eyes, black in color, with no white in them, were fixed on Jiu Zhao. Xu Mo Luo spoke, like countless resentful whispers buzzing in her ears, "How many of the subjects of the two tribes you rule truly respect and love you? Is it worth dying for them?"
It tried to pry open a crack and sow the seeds of instability so that it could completely erode this powerful body later.
But before he could finish his words, Jiu Zhao's fist had already brought with it an unstoppable momentum, fiercely shattering the false illusion.
"Stop talking nonsense," she said in an unusually firm voice. "Whether I'm willing or not, you will die today!"
With one successful strike, the illusion disintegrated easily and returned to black shadow.
Taking advantage of this gap, Jiu Zhao condensed the natal feather given by Wu Jiu at his fingertips and quickly pressed it against his forehead.
The phoenix feather seeped in and turned into a warm current to protect her spiritual lifeline.
Jiu Zhao calmed down, immediately withdrew his defensive force, and madly absorbed the overwhelming resentment into his palm.
"You don't know your own limitations!"
Xu Mo Luo immediately sneered.
It has been entrenched in the center of the Burning Sea for tens of thousands of years. In the past, immortals and demons had sensed the threat and come to eradicate it.
But in the end, those people all became its food, contributing to its continued prosperity.
Jiu Zhao will not be an exception.
The resentment is endless. How much can she bear alone?
Xu Mo Luo then released more tentacles.
Each tentacle is attached with the most original resentment. The tentacles extend forward, leaving only a few inches at the top and then more grow out.
Black snake-like tentacles surrounded Jiu Zhao, some even actively drilled into her palms and launched an attack on her spiritual platform -
Trying to take her from the inside out and make her his own.
The resentment penetrated into his body and quickly captured the negative emotions buried deep within Jiu Zhao.
Despite the severe pain of his skin being frozen and his soul being corroded, Xu Mo Luo did not forget to continue to provoke her with slanderous words, trying to lure her into giving up resistance as soon as possible.
“How pitiful…
"If you died here today, would anyone know? Would anyone really care?
"It was your father, your lover, your ministers, those who surrounded you and whom you placed your trust in, who let you down!
"They are the ones who deserve to die the most—
"Come, as long as you become one with me, the three worlds will crawl at our feet -
"Everyone who has hurt you will die in the most tragic way!"
Jiu Zhao did not respond.
The natal feather on the forehead blooms with brilliant light, always guarding the clarity of the mind.
However, the resentment in Xu Mo Luo was too strong, and every successful resistance was equivalent to the loss of a phoenix's life.
The price to pay is huge.
No matter what happens today, I cannot take a single step back!
She gritted her teeth, endured the inhuman pain, and regardless of her body's limit, she once again accelerated the speed of absorbing resentment.
…
After a long time, he saw that more than half of the resentment stored in himself was consumed, but Jiu Zhao's absorption speed did not slow down at all, and was even faster.
Xu Mo Luo finally felt fear.
The existence before him was not here to seal it, but to perish with it—
As long as the green mountains remain, there will be no shortage of firewood.
Fighting to the death is just a customary rule adhered to by those pedantic old stubborn people in Sanqingtian.
After several thoughts and self-consolations, Xu Mo Luo quickly figured out the current situation. He decisively gave up all the tentacles that were attacking Jiu Zhao, cut off his arms to survive, compressed his body into the size of a fist, and rushed towards the surface of the ground!
It wants to escape from this madman and find a new place to parasitize!
Even if you can't escape, you can still grow stronger by devouring the demons living on the earth!
Realizing his intention, Jiu Zhao endured the severe pain that almost tore her apart, and chased after him with a brilliant light.
Two beams of light, one in front and one behind, suddenly smashed through the narrow crack in the ground, returned to the sky above the Burning Sea, and then penetrated the clouds and rushed straight into the sky.
High in the sky, Jiu Zhao looked down at the mountains, rivers and cities that had become tiny below.
She would never allow Xu Mo Luo to become desperate and plunder the lives of innocent creatures below to replenish himself.
Don't hesitate!
Don’t even create opportunities for them!
In a flash, Jiu Zhao's eyes suddenly became firm.
Her figure continued to grow taller and longer, revealing the huge and gorgeous phoenix original form.
The wings suddenly spread out, colorful light flowed, shining like the sun and the moon.
“Clang!!”
After the sound of the phoenix's cry that pierced the clouds and split the rocks, she folded her wings and swooped down, opened her huge beak, and swallowed the dark shadow that tried to blend into the skylight into her stomach in one gulp!
Time stood still for a moment.
Immediately, indescribable pain exploded in her limbs and bones!
Xu Mara did not die immediately.
He released his power to the extreme at the cost of burning his own essence, hoping to win a chance of survival from the flesh-and-blood cage forged by Jiu Zhao himself.
Resentment raged and rampaged.
It tore apart Jiu Zhao's internal organs and froze her blood piece by piece.
The colorful light surrounding the phoenix gradually dimmed, and even more terrible was that her feathers were also replaced by black at a speed visible to the naked eye.
Jiu Zhao opened his phoenix beak once again, but what came out was a shrill and twisted scream.
She rolled and struggled, stumbled and flew sideways in the thick and dark clouds. Her graceful body was forced to swell and deform because of the crazy impact of the resentment, as if it was a piece of porcelain that was stretched to the extreme, covered with cracks, and about to explode.
The vitality of the natal feather is also declining and is about to collapse.
The whole process is extremely long.
It seemed like tens of millions of years had passed.
Only the last wisp of unchanging obsession in his heart supported Jiu Zhao's mind on the verge of collapse:
Eliminate it completely.
…
Until a critical point is reached.
The black shadow that was trapped in the body and was still fighting hard, let out a last sharp howl full of unwillingness, fear and disbelief, and then exploded with a bang, shattered into countless pieces, which were captured, decomposed and burned to ashes by Jiu Zhao's original power.
Jiu Zhao's phoenix body was so heavy that it could no longer flap its wings.
Looking at the pitch-black phoenix feathers, she seemed to smell the scent of rotting dead things again.
This time, the one who died and rotted was not someone else, but herself.
Vitality quickly drained from the veins, and the yin and yang fires, which had absorbed the core of resentment, were eager to find an outlet to release the overloaded power.
No, I can't fall behind.
Below are her people...
A faint thought emerged in his mind, reminding Jiu Zhao of the consequences of allowing himself to fall.
She struggled to open her eyes that were about to close, looked up at the sky, and squeezed out a little more strength.
The sound of wings flapping in the wind drowned out the beating of the heart and pulse.
Ho, ho…
Jiu Zhao exhaled thin hot air from his half-open phoenix beak.
A little higher.
A little higher.
High enough that it won't hurt anyone.
It was a place that even the clouds had never visited.
It's warm and peaceful there.
Just herself.
It was as if I was back in my mother's arms again.
Mother.
Jiu Zhao murmured the name.
In a trance, her wings turned back into bare arms, and she stretched out her strength towards her mother who was smiling at her in the void.
…
The phoenix, which was completely black and could even be described as ugly, stopped struggling.
Like returning to the warm arms of its mother, it floats safely in the sky.
A golden flame suddenly appeared from her heart, and then spread like wildfire, completely engulfing its hideous body.
People in all three realms seem to have a sense of it.
They all looked up at the same time and saw the falling snow.
At first there were only a few petals, but soon they began to fall like flowers from the sky.
Snow often occurs.
Just like day-to-day life, it will not arouse anyone's interest.
But the snowflakes were pitch black.
An ominous color fell between the eyebrows and eyelashes, unexpectedly showing a slight warmth.
…
The resentment has dissipated.
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