Chapter 135: Awakening the Feminine Within

The fourth cycle.

Perhaps having gained courage from its own cycles, the Primordial Ghost, whose intelligence was simple and whose nature was extreme, took the initiative and sought out Lan Yi and the others during the fourth cycle. It wanted to replicate the method it had once used to grow stronger through repeated cycles and defeat the humans of this world, only this time against the psychics. The tone of this cycle was no longer the apocalypse of ghosts, but a resurgence of ghostly energy.

The ghosts that gradually emerged consciously launched attacks against the psychic cultivators.

And some humans—

humans destined to become ghosts—

relied on the wills rekindled during the previous cycles, together with the so-called inheritance of the dead, or memories of reincarnation, and became ghost tamers. These half-human, half-spirit beings were far more capable of controlling psychic power than the Obsession-Bearers, and could wield abilities approaching the level of laws and concepts. Before the Obsession-Bearers had time to react, they were eliminated by the powerful ghost tamers.

In this cycle, the Obsession-Bearers were completely wiped out without making so much as a ripple.

The ghosts targeted them relentlessly.

The Obsession-Bearers found themselves running out of strength and collapsing with startling ease, to say nothing of the backdoors hidden within their obsessions.

At first, the psychic cultivators were misled by this gradual progression. They assumed that this artificial divine realm was a world experiencing a resurgence of ghostly energy, and that humanity’s suffering could be ended simply by exterminating every ghost. The five psychic cultivators displayed their various abilities and created safe zones to shelter the survivors amid the sweeping resurgence.

Then came the cleanup.

Lan Yi’s Mystic Thunder Shield, Wang Aojia’s Killer-Whale Slaughtering Fist, Li Yang’s Radiance of the Great Sun, and Lin Cheng and Juno’s large-scale mental storms sent the battles between them and the ghosts raging through the atmosphere. For seven days, the sun vanished from the sky. The entire heavens were filled with thousands of miles of smoke and ash, thrown upward by the shock waves of their clashes!

They slew flood dragons, tore demons apart with their bare hands, hammered the Five Warlike Ghosts into pulp, crushed the officer-generals beneath their palms, and hurled the Kraken into outer space to roast it like a skewer of squid!

By the time this batch of vicious, ghost-bred monsters had nearly exhausted the psychic cultivators—

the Final Ghost descended.

And then the Final Ghost died.

Once again, Lan Yi blasted it apart. Its death was indescribably惨烈. Even with the restoration of the cycle, being hunted down on the lunar surface by an unreasonable thunder-dragon sparrow, then bitten to death one mouthful at a time, was enough to leave a lasting impression. After realizing that this cycle had failed to achieve its goal, Lan Yi carved the character for “Lan” into the far side of the moon. But the sensation of being eaten alive by an apex predator remained utterly terrifying.

The Primordial Ghost was still a ghost.

Thus, simple-minded and emotionally extreme, it became afraid.

But fear did not make it give up.

The fifth cycle began.

This time, it changed tactics. After being beaten until it was forced to reveal what lay within its heart, it attempted to use a time crystal to create a Daylong Prison. Its plan was to study Lan Yi, discover his weakness, and then find a way to shatter his Daoist heart, ultimately allowing it to feast upon this delicious, scalding, deadly delicacy.

Delicious Lan Yi!

It was coming!

A person trapped alone within a Daylong Prison, after trying everything that could possibly be tried, would very likely descend into depravity and madness. Before long, they would become like the burned-out ashes of Artificial Divine Realm 2055, with every behavior and emotion growing either extreme or numb. Eventually, on some particular day, the Primordial Ghost would seize its opportunity and materialize the terror that person least wished to confront.

But what about Lan Yi?

When he discovered that he had fallen into a Daylong Prison—

he offered almost no resistance at all, allowing the Primordial Ghost to manifest the greatest fear within his heart. Exultant beyond reason, the Primordial Ghost, now in female form, charged into Lan Yi’s opened mind at a gallop, like a mud cow plunging headlong into the deepest abyss of the sea.

What was Lan Yi afraid of?

It was a fascinating question.

In any case, when the Primordial Ghost saw, with utter bewilderment, that the greatest fear in the depths of Lan Yi’s heart was Lan Yi himself, staring back without expression, its entire being fell apart.

Why would a human being’s greatest fear be himself?

Was that… was that right?

Was it?

It had tried to manifest the greatest fear of Old Demon Lan in order to use it against him.

The moment the Primordial Ghost did so—

it exploded.

It was as though it had suddenly lost all restraint and rushed at him just to blow itself apart. This time, the detonation was even more complete. It could no longer feed upon the psychic power of the cultivators. Even after the cycle restored it, gaps appeared in its memories, its strength broke free of all control, its obsession plunged into violent turmoil, and its negative emotions ran wild. It developed all manner of aftereffects simply because it could not bear to face Lan Yi.

It was like a reeking bitch posing and preening, only for an enraged brute to slam it into the ground in utter amazement, seize it by the skull and drag it close, then beat it over and over with overwhelming force. Finally, with a fully charged punch, he blasted the annoying cur straight into the hospital, where it could enjoy the deluxe package of a lengthy stay and half-paralysis.

And so…

the sixth cycle began.

The Primordial Ghost shut itself away completely. It had been beaten into total withdrawal.

It did not want to see anything.

It did not want to do anything.

The weaknesses of ghosts were exposed in full at this point.

They were vengeful, sinister, evil, treacherous, and willing to use every means imaginable. But extremity had two sides. Once subjected to overwhelming suppression and assault from every direction, a ghost would inevitably sink into a despondent mood, abandon itself, and rot in place—an utterly unreasonable reaction in the eyes of outsiders. It would refuse to care about anything, even when the enemy had already reached its doorstep and was striking it in the face.

It could be said that—

without the cycle, the ghost would actually have been easy to deal with.

Yet the existence of the cycle made the ghost impossible to contain. Artificial Divine Realm 2055 was slowly worn down until almost everyone had become a concentration of extreme emotions, barely maintaining a human shape.

And even the reincarnators of the present, upon encountering this cycle, found themselves somewhat helpless.

It was like a tiger trying to devour the heavens—there was simply nowhere to bite.

Among the many abilities, time was supreme and space was king. These two powers were transcendent in their might, binding people completely across two different scales. Without a way to counter them, without a means of dealing with them, the only option was to stay far away. Otherwise, one would merely add to one’s own troubles.

“…All right. Ground Command, we have a new problem. How do we sever the cycle?”

After packaging the data from the most recent cycles and transmitting it to the satellite in lunar orbit, Lin Cheng asked the ground command center, or more specifically, Juno, with a touch of helplessness.

He clearly had no solution.

They had neither the Two Realms Mountain, nor the Divine Land Quantum Main Tower, nor Kunlun’s Ruins of Return. They did not even have the Rainbow Bridge. Their cultivation had not reached the realms of Refining the Void or Creating a Star River, so they possessed no effective and controllable means of interfering with spacetime. Expecting the few of them alone to sever the spacetime cycle of an entire world was simply asking the impossible.

Lin Cheng had already tried to overestimate Lan Yi as much as possible.

Yet judging from the performance of the previous cycles, Old Demon Lan seemed to possess the ability to retain sensations and guide the others, but he clearly could not preserve his memories of the cycle.

If he could not even retain his memories—

then he certainly had no way to sever the cycle.

“What else can we do? Take a group of people and run to Mars. As for everyone left behind, slaughter them all. Do that for a hundred cycles or so, and we can at least say the remaining humans have escaped their suffering.”

Wang Aojia’s voice joined the conversation.