Chapter 170 - Vol2 Ch68: Confronting what the heart earnestly seeks
Chapter 170: Vol2 Ch68: Confronting what the heart earnestly seeks
“Before we were turned into worms, that fleshy eyeball gave off a large amount of light, I assume it was this light that caused our perception to be become messed up like this”
Chang Xia recalled the situation at the time, where the eyeball floating in the sky let out immense light that shined on the ground below, when they reawakened from that light, they had already turned into worms.
“Let’s first move towards the border, perhaps our perception would return to normal once we leave the range of that eyeball” Fang Ze said in a deep voice: “Also, help me pull Zhang Zi Jie”
Originally, this grassy field was supposed to conceal them, created by Fang Ze through borrowing He Qiao’s powers, he didn’t even consider that it would end up trapping them inside.
The group started moving towards a certain direction, but other than grass, all they saw were other worms. These worms all had distinct faces as they greedily consumed the green grass around themselves. When Fang Ze’s group tried to ask them the way, all they got in response were dry, completely nonsensical answers.
“The price of meat went up again, we won’t be able to afford meat anymore, we can only eat grass” a worm with the face of an aunty was consuming grass nonstop as she muttered some incomprehensible words.
“Eating grass will make you grow stronger, eating meat is heresy!” a worm with a bald-headed face was preaching to a group of smaller worms, then bit off a huge chunk of grass. Despite being a soft-bodied creature, that worm somehow grew masculine outlines.
“I’m telling all of you right now, you’re all actually living on top of my head! I’m the Creator God of this world, the God of the great grassy plains!” a worm with a miser-looking face had a yellow blade of grass in its mouth, calling out to everyone around: “This is my Great General grass, anyone want to have a taste?”
“Hah, a world without monsters, full of food, and without strife, how great this is” an old worm sighed emotionally: “This is truly heaven”
Worms of all shapes and sizes filled this imaginary world, only Fang Ze’s group who weren’t eating grass appeared completely out of place.
Despite being eaten so much, the grass would always instantly regrow, no matter how far Fang Ze’s group tried to go, they still couldn’t leave this area.
If there really was no other way, through muscle memory alone, Fang Ze could exercise his Authority and summon an asteroid, the impact of which might be enough to completely destroy this illusion.
However, as their senses were messed up, there was no way for him to determine the size, trajectory, and aim of the asteroid. Without any computation, the asteroid might end up killing them instead.
It was the same with using Disasforce, randomly releasing a lot of Disasforce would only end up with casualties from friendly fire.
Fang Ze shook his long worm head. Having a worm’s senses was still interfering with his own perception, but with some time to adjust, he had managed to separate himself from this chaotic perception.
After all, he had achieved the second stage of [Origin] release. If he had the appropriate mysticism knowledge, this level of illusion wouldn’t have affected him in the first place, however, everything came to him too quickly. When it came to utilizing his soul’s power, he might not even reach the level of a witch’s apprentice, but the essence of his second stage of release still existed.
Thanks to this, Fang Ze quickly noticed a few differences, some of the things in front of his eyes had transformed into different sceneries altogether.
They were individual thoughts, thoughts that weaved and combined together to form this ridiculous world of worms.
“I got it, to get rid of this illusion, we need to cause the foundation of this world to crumble, and since thoughts are the foundation of this world, we simply need to change the thoughts” Fang Ze quickly told everyone what he found out and soon came up with a solution.
“Then, we need to deny their thoughts?”
With so many worms around them, they could only try to convince each of them one by one.
“Eating wild grass isn’t good for you. You want to eat meat, just that your financial situation doesn’t allow it. Running away from your problem isn’t right, you can try to work and improve your living conditions, furthermore, trust in the government. Social standards will only improve over time, you won’t fall to a state where you can’t even eat meat” Fang Ze tried convincing the aunty worm.
But the aunty worm was still muttering the same thing, that meat was too expensive, she can’t afford meat, so she could only eat grass.
Fang Ze moved his worm body and touched this worm, only to see a completely different scene from far away.
Within the chaotic city, law and order had thoroughly collapsed. Those who had released their [Origin] became the ruling class, hoarding resources for themselves, while the government had completely given up on the infected people.
They now consider gems, jewels, gold, and other precious metals to be currency, while zombie germs that could be refined to create Biomass Gear became a precious commodity above all else.
Lucky survivors who were originally civilians like this aunty here weren’t brave enough to fight, and since she wasn’t good-looking, she couldn’t even sell her body in exchange for goods. For survivors like her who could only hole themselves up in safe zones, they truly had no choice but to eat wild grass to survive day by day.
“Don’t worry, we will surely defeat the origin of this calamity, end this Great Cataclysm and return the world to normal order!” after Fang Ze sincerely transferred this thought, the aunty worm finally vanished.
Everyone else also felt their surroundings to change, as if some sort of limitation had been released. They could now faintly sense their human abilities, and do things that worms couldn’t do.
The worms no longer needed to wiggle on the ground bit by bit, they could move around through leaping, using various means to convince the other worms to give up their thoughts that had created this illusion.
The muscular bald worm was weak, so he had been constantly treated badly and bullied by others. He wanted to become stronger, but didn’t actually have the means to do so, which ended up with his notion of eating grass to grow stronger.
The miser-looking worm didn’t have to eat grass every day, but he also didn’t have the courage to go out and fight, so he holed himself up inside a safe zone. His daily expenditures up to now had been earned through his wife selling her body, which caused him to feel regret, anger, and shame. He couldn’t win against his fear of monsters, but couldn’t give up his previous living standards in order to eat grass either.
The old man worm was currently alone without anyone to care for him. His body was already giving up on him, and there weren’t too many kind people in this apocalyptic setting who’d be willing to take care of an old man, so he could only stay in place and wait to die.
Besides these people, there were numerous others who gave birth to various thoughts in this place. Due to their own circumstances, they had thoughts that were more or less related to worms that fed on grass, each of those thoughts forged the foundation for and became a part of this illusory domain.
Fang Ze’s group could only try to change these thoughts through their own influence, encouraging these people to change themselves. As they released more worms, Fang Ze’s group found themselves capable of using more of their powers.
While Fang Ze was having some success trying to persuade a feeble teenage worm to be more courageous, he noticed that the worm started to tremble, then went back to eating grass without a care for Fang Ze’s words.
As he turned around, he saw a large spider in his vision, with its head replaced by Negary’s upper body. Immediately when he saw that, Fang Ze knew who he was, and what he represented in this illusion.
A spider represented the hunter, the dangers of the end of the world, the fear of monsters, the suppression of the strong over the weak, and an entity that these worms dare not retaliate against.