Chapter 178: Will the Noble Old God Beg for My Mercy?

Chapter 178: Would the Ancient Divine Being, Born of Nobility, Beg Me on His Knees?

At the dimensional boundary floated a grotesque structure, constructed entirely of crimson flesh.

Tendons and blood vessels formed the framework of the red house, while bleached bones bore the weight of each floor, and chunks of meat piled up to form its outer walls.

It had drifted through the void for eons untold, but today, the red house abruptly shuddered to life.

Countless veins erupted from within its fleshy walls, intertwining densely like crimson threads weaving a complete sweater. Swiftly, from the inside out and bottom to top, the vessels assembled into a distinct humanoid form.

By the end, the body was fully constructed—yet its head remained open, an unconscious husk.

The body suspended weightlessly in the void, connected to the red house by an umbilical cord.

The meat walls convulsed heavily as several thicker blood vessels extended from within, lifting the brain hidden deepest in the walls—the seat of the leader's consciousness.

The brain was stuffed into the open skull, jostling twice as it settled, adjusting itself until it fit perfectly.

After so long without a humanoid form, the leader experimentally flexed his hands, taking a few halting steps before his gait smoothed out.

At the dimensional boundary, only the red house, now devoid of its master's consciousness, continued to drift.

A faint, distant horn-blast's resonance, as if issuing a final warning and plea to the leader—but he left it all far behind.

...He did not know he would never return here again.

As a divine being, the leader moved through the void at unfathomable velocity.

As he brushed past certain worlds, cosmologically-aware civilizations capable of observing the cosmos might have glimpsed a red streak flashing beyond the warping, collapsing, and expanding edges of the universe—like a bizarre scarlet comet.

Had the research institute not been destroyed and the passage through the painting sealed, the leader could have arrived far more conveniently, without needing to traverse physically.

Soon, he reached his destination, halting before a devastating field of ruins.

The sight of these shattered walls—not just representing immeasurable resources and wealth but also years of hopes and labor—filled the leader with such despair he nearly retched in despair.

All experimental results had been obliterated, and Truth Key, the lead researcher of the crucial project, had disappeared without a whisper...

He had waited patiently for centuries, hoping only for a method to make himself whole—yet now, it had all proven utterly futile!

Mastering his turmoil, the leader refused to give up, drifting among the ruins in search of any surviving research materials.

His only hope was this:

Had Truth Key's abrupt spiral into madness been caused by a forbidden, groundbreaking discovery?

Just then, a tidal wave of power tore through space behind him, forming a "door."

The leader's heart seized, a sense of foreboding flooding through his veins.

He turned sharply to see a golden-haired man in gray robes step through the door, cradling a lustrous lyre in his left arm, his fingers idly plucking its strings.

Those few notes seemed to pluck directly at the leader's very essence, sending an inexplicable shudder through him.

"Fate Apostle..."

The leader quickly reasoned that Fate could not yet know of his sacrilegious research—there was no reason for a point of no return. Regaining his composure, he greeted, "Has Your Grace come to spread the radiance of the Lord of Fate?"

The Apostle lifted crimson-tinged eyes, gazing calmly at the leader, his lips still curved in a gentle smile:

"Under the Lord's guidance, I have come for you."

"—To deliver your end, in Fate's name."

The leader recoiled in dread.

Knowing the situation was dire, he made no attempt to confront a True God's Apostle head-on, instead fleeing with all his might.

But it was futile.

Against such an absolute disparity in power, the leader was doomed to struggle like a cornered, bleeding animal.

Bryce didn't even need to pursue him physically. Standing in place, his expression still mild, he lowered his gaze and plucked the lyre's strings with the seasoned proficiency of a wandering minstrel.

The lyre's melody cascaded like a waterfall, and with it poured forth a Rank 8 Ability—"Echoes of History."

The power of the past spread, stratum upon stratum of phantoms manifesting over the ruins.

Figures and objects from times long past flickered among the shattered walls, warping the surroundings into a disjointed overlap of "now" and "then," like corrupted footage.

The leader strained to flee, but the silken musical threads ensnared him relentlessly.

With every step, his strength waned further, his movements faltering in temporal chaos—sometimes even reversing, as though trapped in a malfunctioning cathode display, performing a ludicrous, fragmented pantomime.

Worst of all, the leader felt his very existence attenuating.

Like a shadow fading under sunlight, no matter how hard he fought, he could leave no trace upon the world.

"No—!!"

The last tether to reason severed. The leader let out a howl of impotent rage.

It was happening—his greatest fear was coming true!

He was... reverting into a soulless shade!

Frantically, the leader pulled out every artifact in his arsenal, resisting with all his might—but how could a mere "recording" resist the transcendent will pressing the cosmic rewind mechanism from beyond?

No matter what he did, his state continued inexorably devolving—

Back, and further back, to the very moment of his birth.

Far away in the void, the red house fell into utter silence, like a leviathan instantly stilled.

Its blood vessels no longer pumped, its cells no longer divided, its once-vibrant flesh walls now preternaturally motionless, even beginning to wither and rot.

Before Bryce, the leader's humanoid form dissipated entirely, leaving only a lone silhouette on the empty ground—a shadow with no body to cast it, straight out of a nightmare fable.

After a moment's thought, Bryce decided to take the shadow back to his true form for disposal.

The frayed rags of his robe unfurled into tentacles, sinuously undulating through the air to drag the shadow into the darkness beneath his feet.

Another spatial tear rippled as the Apostle stepped through the abyssal gateway and vanished.

...

In the crimson meeting room, the oil painting on the wall suddenly rippled.

Under Ernos's control, all painted portals were opened wide for the witches, and a figure with red hair and green eyes emerged from the oil painting, stepping into the conference room.

Previously, Elius had always struggled to locate the lingering consciousness of the old god.

Because countless threads of fate were chaotically intertwined within the walls of flesh, the destinies of different beings overlapped so closely that it was impossible to distinguish which belonged to the leader and which to the hidden consciousness behind the scenes.

The interlacing threads wove a natural barrier that concealed the existence of the black goat.

Though, as far as Elius knew, this old god was born without reason—or even thought—merely a powerful body driven by instinct to stir the fates of all beings, dominated by the scepter's inclination, the innate instinct of the Fate Domain for self-preservation still allowed it to appear deceptively clever when necessary.

The superiors of the Fate Domain always naturally chose the path most favorable to themselves.

And what was the best way to hide oneself under the watchful eyes of Fate's current incarnation?

—Of course, to use one anomaly to mask another.

All along, it had deliberately erased the possibility of the leader leaving, precisely borrowing the other's chaotic and fragmented fate to conceal its own revival!

But now that the leader had vanished, its location was completely exposed to Elius's gaze, with nowhere left to hide.

The witch's dark green eyes shifted as she reached out, brushing aside the leader's broken, dim threads of fate, following the remaining intact ones forward without pause.

Stopping before a fleshy wall, her arm plunged straight into it. Wherever she passed, the flesh rapidly atrophied and putrefied, collapsing into a tunnel just wide enough for her arm to pass through.

At the end of the tunnel, a black goat's horn hovered.

The base of the horn was about as thick as a bowl's rim, spiraling upward into a sharp point, its surface covered in countless gnarled, labyrinthine grooves that exuded an eerie beauty.

The moment Elius's fingertip touched the black horn, it trembled and emitted a low hum. The hollow, spiraling interior of the horn functioned like a warhorn, pushing out a powerful force with a resonant buzz.

The red house was the first to be affected. The supporting bones inside creaked, and all the fleshy tissues rotted and collapsed in an instant, forming an escape passage behind the black horn.

Amid the urgent sound of the horn, tiny black particles dispersed from its surface, rising like a swirling ground mist that coalesced into the phantom of a black goat.

The black goat leaped up as if startled, bolting blindly into the vast void, running forward.

In a flash of recollection, a distant memory surfaced before Elius's eyes.

Long, long ago, before Yi Fengchu had became a god, he too had once gazed upon the shadow of the black goat.

But back then, the black goat had been far larger and more imposing than now, stretching like an insurmountable mountain range at the end of the River of Fate. Its terrifying, overwhelming power dragged down the fates of all beings, surrounded by unceasing wails.

—Such a towering and formidable black goat had still died by his hand.

Now, what Elius faced was merely a fragment of the old god's revival, a single stray horn...

The outcome of the struggle was foregone.

Returning from the memory, Elius pursued at her leisure, her dark skirt fluttering behind her like the reflection of a swaying serpent's tail.

In the void, the shrunken phantom of the black goat raced swiftly, darting past countless small worlds and attracting covert attention from all directions.

Nearby divine beings and high-level ability users noticed the commotion, some curious, others cautious, casting their eyes toward the scene.

At the center of attention, Elius even found time to plan a final performance before the curtain fell.

Her fingers dug into her left eye socket, and without flinching, the witch wrenched out the sinister goat-pupiled eyeball, crushing it in her palm.

Blood welled from the empty socket like a tear of sorrow, yet her face broke into a beatific smile, as if embracing something long-awaited... embracing the freedom and release she had prayed for.

—Here, in the eyes of the world, stood the puppet of the old god, boldly proclaiming her rebellion against her "master."

"Yes, you granted me new life," Elius said to the black goat's phantom. "But even so, I refuse to be your puppet or vassal."

Black goat: ???

If it had any true capacity for thought, it would have spluttered in disbelief:

Do you hear what you're saying?

Right now... who's chasing whom?

But the black horn had no self-awareness, no emotions. It was like a glitching mechanism, dumbly confronting a situation it couldn't comprehend—a sudden performance that had dragged it into the role of the villain.

Without the support of the old god's power, the witch's body gradually disintegrated, her hazy form scattering into a fluttering swarm of black butterflies, their wings adorned with beautiful dark green patterns that refracted stardust sparkles even in the void.

As the butterflies beat their wings, they looked like myriad emerald eyes blinking softly, reminding the hidden onlookers of the witch's final smile.

"I was born to be companioned by endless calamity. Whoever forces me to kneel, I will drag into this maelstrom of chaos and ruin."

"—Even if it is the once-almighty deity."

Before the goat, the butterflies seemed beautiful yet fragile, but their numbers were vast. Their wings brushed against one another, forming a living shadow that carried unprecedented, reckless, desperate courage as they surged toward the old god.

Amid the fluttering wings, the onlookers heard the witch's mirthful voice fall.

She used a deceptively sweet tone, and a reverential title, yet asked a blasphemously bold question:

"I wonder—when brought to bay, would even the venerable old god stoop to pleading for mercy from this lowly creature?"