Chapter Forty-Two: The Lament of the Gods

Luo Longyu pressed forward through the gelatinous mass, descending ever deeper underground. Like the roots of some ancient, colossal tree, the viscous substance extended vastly below the surface—far greater than what the great pit above had revealed. Here, beneath the earth, it seemed as though a mountainous body of jelly was buried, immense beyond comprehension. For several long minutes, Luo Longyu journeyed within it, finding no end in sight, as though traversing the bowels of a world-sized organism.

Along his path, Luo Longyu beheld countless beings encased within the gelatinous substance. Not only humans, but beasts, demons, and even enormous monsters the likes of which Earth had never seen. Interlaced within the jelly, he sensed a neural network as intricate as a spider’s web, flowing and intertwining, endlessly exchanging and merging the genes of disparate species. In the hatchery chambers, these genes were consciously selected and recombined, forging entirely new forms of life—a gargantuan engine of biological creation.

After a full half-hour, Luo Longyu finally burst free from the gelatinous mass and landed in a pool. But the pool was not water—it was filled with a black, viscous liquid, from which the jelly grew, stretching upward to the surface. Standing knee-deep in the dark fluid, Luo Longyu paused in contemplation, then crouched to dip his hand into it. His fingers pierced a thin barrier, as if reaching into another dimension.

Even the pool was not the end; more space lay beneath.

Spurred by this thought, Luo Longyu leapt through the pool, plunging into a vast subterranean cavern filled with surging lava. Rivers of molten rock flowed everywhere, their searing heat oppressive, yet Luo Longyu found comfort as red crystals emerged over his skin, greedily absorbing the ambient heat.

On the cavern walls, he discovered nearly a hundred beings embedded in the stone itself, their bodies fused with the rock. Tubes snaked from the stone into their forms, connecting directly to the pool above. Among them were robust humans, bull-headed men, winged figures, and serpentine beings—a menagerie of forms, each radiating a formidable field of power. Luo Longyu sensed that any one of these beings possessed the might to blot out the sky with a single hand.

Gazing upon these imprisoned titans, Luo Longyu could think of only two words: gods and demons. Indeed, nothing short of gods or demons could possess such terrifying auras.

He examined each of the beings in turn. Amid the roiling lava, he even glimpsed a starship drifting with the molten currents, forged of unknown material impervious to the lava’s heat. Luo Longyu reached out with his crystal-clad hand, grasping the starship, but found it far too massive—the hull extended deep beneath the lava, impossible to pull free. Reluctantly, he released it, but managed to break off a fragment.

He examined the shard for some time, unable to identify its composition. It gleamed with a metallic sheen, but when exposed to a field of force, it transformed into a crystalline substance, almost weightless in his hand. Most astonishing of all, after soaking in lava for so long, it retained no heat at all—as if utterly unaffected by the molten rock. No known earthly material could boast such properties.

Contemplating the fragment, Luo Longyu’s gaze drifted unconsciously to the imprisoned titans, and his mind replayed the apocalyptic visions he had witnessed.

In those visions, two types of starships had waged war—some like gigantic armored beasts, others sheathed in strange energy fields. The wreck submerged in the lava belonged to the latter kind.

A multitude of possibilities surged in Luo Longyu’s mind, leaving him bewildered. He sank to the ground in thought, brow tightly furrowed, nearly petrified by the implications.

After a time, Luo Longyu rose, the Wheel of Corpses manifesting behind him. He leaped before one of the beings—a desiccated figure with wild hair and wide, staring eyes—and activated the Blood-Eyed Wheel, piercing straight into the being’s formidable consciousness.

He found its mind shielded by a luminous barrier. His Wheel of Corpses could not penetrate.

He hesitated, then unleashed the full force of the Wheel, throwing himself wholly into breaching the barrier. The effort was akin to hacking a firewall—his Wheel probed the shield’s defenses, writing code after code and inserting them into the system. The process was painstaking and slow, consuming half a day before a fissure finally appeared in the light-screen.

Through the crack, Luo Longyu beheld a vision that filled him with dread: massacre.

Armies, countless and dense, surged forward—each clad in bone armor, relentless and unstoppable. In the void overhead, bone-armored warships clustered like stars, leaving desolation in their wake. On the other side, starships fired desperately, only to be torn apart in the ensuing inferno. One after another, powerful beings hurled themselves into the fray, undaunted by death. Even as those ahead were reduced to ashes, minced into pulp, or dissolved into glowing mist, those behind roared and charged, again and again.

“Born without freedom, I would trade my life to challenge the heavens and earth!”

“Yin and yang eternal, life and death unending. Dying for life—what joy, what joy!”

Atop a bone-armored warship stood a towering figure, robed and wreathed in writhing tentacles, looming amidst billowing clouds. With his appearance, even the roar of heaven and earth seemed subdued.

His turquoise eyes were cold and merciless, surveying the carnage below with detached disdain. He spoke, voice dripping with contempt: “Hmph… So these are gods? In the face of the Void, you are doomed to extinction.” As he extended his hand, chaos reigned—time froze across the battlefield, and a crushing force swept like a millstone, grinding all—gods and void legions alike—into dust. The floating megacity collapsed, torrents of flame rained from the sky, consuming earth and heavens, leaving only nothingness.

Suddenly, the towering being seemed to notice something. He whirled, staring straight at Luo Longyu. Those turquoise eyes brimmed with annihilation, and an overwhelming will blasted Luo Longyu backward; the Blood-Eyed Wheel flickered and faded.

Luo Longyu cried out, clutching his eyes as he crashed against the stone wall, tumbling to the ground, dazed and battered.

Now, at last, he understood. These powerful beings were once the gods, these monstrous forms the mighty of the prehistoric age—and that age was the Third Epoch!

Within the void slave legions, each bore the genes of gods. The Void fused the genes of gods with those of existing life, then implanted their own, thus creating incomparably powerful Voidspawn!

That towering, tentacled figure was so fearsome it terrified Luo Longyu. Even glimpsing the past through a god’s consciousness, he had been detected. This meant that even at the end of the Third Epoch, the Void had foreseen that someone might one day uncover these secrets through the corridors of history!

“Even if you have destroyed the gods, I will never let you steal their last shred of dignity!” Luo Longyu roared, gathering searing corpse energy into a blade of blood-crystal, and slashed wildly at the tubes connecting to the bodies of the gods.

Blood light flared like a rainbow, cutting through the lava-filled depths. Tube after tube was severed, and, deprived of their connections, the gods’ bodies crumbled instantly to dust, their power dissolving into the void, never again to be exploited.

Above, Kong Yuxuan and his companions, who had waited in the cave for hours, were just about to descend when the ground began to tremble violently. The hatcheries withered and collapsed at visible speed, the corpses within falling lifelessly to the ground. The earth began to cave in; the cavern would not last much longer.

“What’s happening?!” Rong Fei’s face drained of color as chaos erupted around them.

Below, Luo Longyu seemed possessed, his blade relentless as god after god was reduced to ash. Before one body he paused—there lay a woman in white, serene and peaceful, bearing a striking resemblance to his missing mother, Xuanyuan Qianqian. The sight brought a pang of longing.

He hesitated for three seconds, then with another furious cry, severed every tube connecting to the woman. Her perfect features withered rapidly, turning to bone, then dust, vanishing into the void.

With the gods gone, countless bodies within the jelly, their fusion and evolution unfinished, writhed and perished. Some Voidspawn, on the cusp of completion, clawed their way into the cavern.

Kong Yuxuan’s group, preparing to retreat, saw scores of Voidspawn erupting from the pit. Without hesitation, they attacked as they withdrew, sword-light and divine radiance rending the earth.

At the cave mouth, Mu Yimian and her companions watched in horror as the ground convulsed and collapsed. Kong Yuxuan’s group leapt out, Rong Fei unleashing a sword technique that fragmented into thousands of blades, flooding the cave with deafening roars. Blood surged from the entrance, painting a scene of carnage.

“What happened?!” Ye Lan shouted.

“We’ll explain later—retreat now!” Kong Yuxuan quickly sealed the entrance with a flurry of hand-seals.

The crown prince hefted the unconscious Yue Ying and vaulted aside, while Luo Mengxuan cried, “Sister, where’s Luo Longyu?!”

“Forget it, we have to go!” Kong Yuxuan dragged her away without argument, fleeing into the distance.

Below, Luo Longyu stood amid the collapsing stones, and in the chaos, he seemed to see nearly a hundred spectral figures arrayed around him, smiling and waving farewell.

“Death, decay, rebirth, sprouting anew—the path of corpses opens, the origin of all things, the gods now gone, the cycle unbroken.”

“If yin and yang should return, even if the sky is stained with blood, I would not regret it. The road is long, the current vast, but all things return in time.”

“Descendant, march toward the future—forward!”

The figures roared, the gods cried out, their indomitable will fused into his soul. The iron blood of struggle surged in his heart. Luo Longyu watched as the shadows faded and vanished, grief overwhelming him. He did not know what horrors had once occurred, but he knew that the fight to survive had never ceased.

This was a requiem for the gods—a final, desperate struggle to forge a clear sky. The end of the Third Epoch, the gods’ final chapter…