Evil God 38

Shibaliwu Gorge 14

Cheng Mo emerged from the water with Wen Li on his back. He said nothing as he ran forward.

Wen Li lay slumped against him; his arms were draped over Cheng Mo’s shoulders, and his fingers hung down, devoid of all strength.

Through the sodden fabric, Cheng Mo could feel the body on his back turning into bones and skin.

The wind whistled in his ears.

The landscape on either side receded at an abnormal speed; the dark-green peaks, the emerald pools, and the winding wooden boardwalks all blurred like a landscape painting on a piece of cloth.

He couldn’t see a thing.

Or rather, he didn’t want to look at anything.

His entire focus was concentrated on the breathing against his back, breathing that was growing weaker by the moment.

With each step Cheng Mo took, that breath [unauthorized copy]would hitch, making his own heart pound; he didn’t even notice when his sunglasses fell off.

It wasn’t until he had run several miles that he belatedly realized something was missing, but he couldn’t spare the time to look back.

“Cough, cough, cough…”

Suddenly, the person on his back began to cough. Cheng Mo’s heart sank, but he dared not slow down in the slightest.

“How are you holding up?”

After coughing for a long while, Wen Li finally replied in a breathy voice, “I’m fine.”

A lie.

Cheng Mo knew Wen Li was lying without even needing to turn around.

When Duan Zhuosheng had exploded right in front of them, Wen Li had been standing at the very center and suffered most of the impact.

That madman knew Wen Li’s weakness: as a holder of the Knowledge Authority, his perception of knowledge was far keener than that of an ordinary person. Having contamination detonate at close range was akin to being thrown directly into a vat of sulfuric acid.

And even before the detonation, Wen Li had already been blinded by the use of the Eye of Knowledge Acquisition. The brown fluid that had been trickling from his eye sockets seemed to have finally run dry. Consequently, the hand resting on his shoulder had withered into a skeletal state: pale skin clung stolen content to the bone like parchment, and the veins on the back of his hand bulged as if they were about to burst beneath his skin.

Wen Li’s body was composed entirely of knowledge.

From skin to bone, from blood to internal organs, every inch was derived from arcane knowledge gathered from across the cosmos, knowledge that defined the entirety of his existence.

He was a walking embodiment of knowledge, an avatar of the Knowledge Authority, existing in human form.

Yet now, that knowledge was draining away from his empty eye sockets.

It was like a punctured balloon: the air inside was leaking out, and the balloon slowly deflated.

Even in this state, Wen Li remained calm.

He even had the leisure to observe his surroundings.

Those hollow, pitch-black sockets stared at the scenery rushing past, as if he could see something through those gaping voids.

“This place is beautiful… I used to gaze at it through the Eye of Knowledge Acquisition, but nothing compares to the reality of being here in person.”

Cheng Mo’s expression grew even more somber.

“You’re blind. What beauty is there for you to see? Just stay still, keep quiet, and stop fidgeting!”

Wen Li chuckled softly in the wind.

“Old Mo, don’t be so tense all the time. It’s a shame to wear such a scowl amidst scenery this lovely.”

“I’m in no mood for that!”

Wen Li sighed and tilted his head to feel the breeze. “Look at those forests of red leaves on the mountain; come autumn, they’ll turn so red they will look like they’re on fire…”

His constant chatter frayed Cheng Mo’s nerves. “You shouldn’t have come out!”

“But Old Mo, staying in that dark void all the time was just too boring.”

“For years, I’ve watched this place through the Eye of Knowledge Acquisition, but it was always like looking at flowers through the fog. Since this is the end, I figured I ought to see it for myself.”

The word “end” pierced Cheng Mo’s heart like a needle. He hesitated briefly, but immediately regained his pace.

“You still shouldn’t have come out!”

“But Old Mo, I’m running out of time.”

Cheng Mo opened his mouth to argue, but ultimately said nothing.

Wen Li was the holder of the Knowledge Authority.

It was a terrifying power, yet also a dreadful curse; even without actively seeking information, knowledge would spontaneously flood his mind.

He didn’t need to read, observe, or listen; information from every direction would burrow into his consciousness and erode every inch of his flesh and blood.

To remain sane, Wen Li spent years confined within an eternal, void-like darkness.

He relied on a custom-built supercomputer to house his restless, uncontainable thoughts; only in this way could he barely maintain a human form and continue to think with a human mind.

Otherwise, he would have long since been overwhelmed by that endless torrent of knowledge; transformed into a monster driven solely to absorb information, or simply assimilated into knowledge and dissolved into nothingness between heaven and earth.

When the Chaos Evil God had suddenly appeared within Chen Yu, Wen Li had awakened. Through the supercomputer he communicated with everyone, calculating every possibility with meticulous precision, moving invisible chess pieces one after another from within the darkness.

Cheng Mo strongly disapproved of his plan to reclaim the evil god.

The reason was the inherent danger of Wen Li’s own nature.

Once he appeared in the real world– a place exploding with information –knowledge would inevitably converge upon his body and cause his contamination value to skyrocket. For every increment of one thousand, there was a fifty percent chance of losing control. This was the ironclad rule of the Twilight Ruins, and even the leader of Black Fish was no exception.

For Wen Li to appear in the outside world was tantamount to courting his own destruction.

Cheng Mo understood this better than anyone.

“But that is the Chaos Evil God!”

When communicating with Wen Li through that computer, Cheng Mo had detected a fervor in his voice unlike anything he had ever heard before. The purest yearning of a seeker of knowledge.

“A deity that has descended into the real world alive! A living, breathing god of flesh and blood! Don’t you want to see it with your own eyes?”

Cheng Mo did not.

Cheng Mo simply wanted his leader to stay alive.

Yet Cheng Mo knew he couldn’t stop Wen Li; he never could.

Unable to resist the allure of such knowledge, Wen Li ultimately roused himself from the eternal darkness, much like a moth drawn to a flame.

Donning the scenic area staff uniform and wearing a professional smile, he appeared directly before the little evil god.

Posing as a tour guide had helped him avoid immediate suspicion from Duan Zhuosheng and the Evil God Host.

The plan appeared to be proceeding smoothly.

Cheng Mo followed silently behind to protect and keep an eye on Wen Li. Yet, Wen Li not only voluntarily used the Torrent of Knowledge and the Eye of Knowledge Acquisition, but also exposed a weakness to Duan Zhuosheng.

Duan Zhuosheng detonated his own contamination value right in front of him. He had nearly dragged Wen Li down into that bottomless abyss of contamination.

At this thought, Cheng Mo clenched his fists tightly and cursed through gritted teeth, “Fuck!”

Then, he ran even faster.

Faster.

Faster!

Faster still!

Only by returning to Black Fish, to that void of darkness where he had spent so long, and ceasing to receive any external information, might Wen Li stand a chance of survival.

Cheng Mo dared not even imagine what would happen if they didn’t make it in time.

He could only keep running forward.

The Shibaliwu Gorge was vast.

It was dotted with numerous pools, each boasting unique scenery; a full day was required to properly tour the area. After running for quite some time, Cheng Mo reached the edge of the scenic zone, only to suddenly spot a silhouette on the path ahead.

Cheng Mo’s pupils contracted, and he immediately stopped.

He stared at the figure ahead, covered in wounds, clad in tattered rags splattered with foul, unidentified sludge and congealed black bloodstains, with disheveled hair plastered against a grime-streaked face.

Sitting on the figure’s shoulder was a tiny form, the little evil god.

Cheng Mo frowned: “Chen Yu!”

Chen Yu raised his head and glanced at him: “Mm, it’s me.”

The murderous intent in Cheng Mo’s eyes was practically overflowing: “Duan Zhuosheng sacrificed himself just to buy you time to escape, yet you dare to show your face before me and court death!”

Chen Yu, however, frowned as he looked back: “Who lives and who dies… that’s not necessarily set in stone.”

His voice was calm, yet his eyes burned with the look of someone driven to the brink.

“Hmph!” Cheng Mo scoffed: “You think you can kill me? You overestimate yourselves!”

Before the words had even left his lips, he stomped his right foot against the ground.

A wave of potent earth power poured into the soil. It radiated from where he stood and a several meters long and bottomless fissure tore beneath his foot.

Amidst the tremors, Chen Yu grabbed a nearby rock outcropping and jumped with the agility of a cat, thus dodging the powerful attack.

But before he could even steady himself, Cheng Mo rushed over.

Cheng Mo clenched his right fist Read on and, with a force capable of splitting the earth and shattering mountains, slammed it into Chen Yu’s chest.

The punch was too quick and too heavy; there was no time to mount a defense, and the blow landed on Chen Yu’s chest. At that moment, Chen Yu seemed to hear the sound of his own sternum shattering; then, like a kite with a broken string, he was sent flying backward.

As a cloud of dust billowed into the air, he spat out a mouthful of blood.

Yet, Cheng Mo did not press his advantage. He didn’t even spare Chen Yu a second glance. Instead, with Wen Li lying on his back, he immediately changed direction and ran forward without looking back.

His goal had never been to kill Chen Yu, but to return Wen Li to Black Fish.

Compared to Wen Li’s life, killing Chen Yu was worthless.

“Trying to run?”

Amidst the swirling dust, the sound of Chen Yu coughing up blood suddenly rang out. He sounded gravely injured, and the patter of dripping blood accompanied his ragged breathing.

Cheng Mo’s heart skipped a beat, and he reflexively took a step back.

He looked up to see a gigantic, translucent blue octopus descending from the sky.

It was the Deep Sea Domain.

The octopus’s tentacles blotted out the sun. Just as Cheng Mo tried to step aside with Wen Li on his back, a colossal tentacle flew directly at him; he dodged, but failed to notice another tentacle latching onto Wen Li.

With a sudden coil, the tentacle snatched Wen Li from his back and hauled him into mid-air.

“Damn it!!”

Cheng Mo roared in frustration and reached out to grab him, but the remaining tentacles bound his limbs in a suffocating grip.

“Get lost!!!”

In his rage, the surrounding mountains seemed to answer a summons; they began to quake. Amidst the tremors, boulders and rocks hurtled toward the giant octopus.

A thunderous rumble shook the air, which triggered a chain reaction in the surroundings.

One by one, the translucent blue tentacles shattered and disintegrated into specks of blue light that drifted away on the air.

But it was already too late. Wen Li’s body traced an arc through the air before falling to the ground. His gaunt frame rolled twice across the rubble-strewn earth before coming to a halt; he lay there like a discarded ragdoll.

Standing right behind Wen Li was Chen Yu, who [visit our site]had just struggled to his feet from the bottom of the crater.

Chen Yu wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth and pushed himself up; the deep indentation in his chest rose and fell with his labored breathing.

Then, he bent down and hauled Wen Li up from the ground; the emaciated man felt as light as a feather.

“Wen Li!!!”

Cheng Mo charged like a madman, his eyes fixed solely on Wen Li’s frail, withered body held in Chen Yu’s grip.

He unleashed another punch charged with the power of the earth; as the blow struck, that elemental force surged across the ground in its wake.

The might of this punch was even more terrifying than the last, threatening to pulverize Chen Yu and the cliff face behind him into dust.

But just as that destructive force was about to reach Chen Yu, everything was abruptly halted by a single command.

“Stop!”

Cheng Mo’s fist froze in mid-air.

As the dust slowly cleared, Chen Yu was [Read on]revealed kneeling on one knee; one hand held Wen Li’s gaunt body in a vice-like grip from behind, while the other clutched a rough, heavy steel rebar.

It was unknown where he had obtained the rebar, likely a leftover from highway or bridge construction. It was rusted, yet one end had been ground to a razor-sharp point that glinted with a cold light.

That sharp tip was currently pressed against Wen Li’s sunken chest.

An inch further, and it would pierce through his heart.

Chen Yu look at him from behind Wen Li’s shoulder; blood still stained the corner of his mouth, but his eyes were as dark and brooding as the sky before a storm.

“Take one more step,” he glared at Cheng Mo, “and I’ll drive this straight through his heart.”