Chapter 593 - 52: Heart of Decay and Seed of Revival
Chapter 593: Chapter 52: Heart of Decay and Seed of Revival
After all, Altonia was only a Third-tier Domain, merely acquiring Fourth Tier power with the aid of an external object. His personal understanding of Rule Power was lacking and was fundamentally different from true Fourth Tier powerhouses like Abbas.
This predetermined the outcome of the battle from the very beginning.
Sure enough.
In every encounter, Altonia was left in shambles. His seemingly invincible Power of Decay looked clumsy and ineffective against Abbas’s exquisite and ever-changing space rules! He was like a brute giant beast being toyed with and dismembered by a peerless swordsman wielding a Divine Weapon!
Finally,
“Puh—!” Under the dual assault of another space fracture and gravity singularity, Altonia could no longer hold on. He violently spat out a large mouthful of viscous, foul-smelling dark red blood! The blood hit the ground, instantly corroding a deep pit in the rock, emitting billowing black smoke.
In his chest, the forcibly fused Heart of Decay beat more violently, as if it could explode at any moment! The backlash began!
He was not truly Fourth Tier; his body and soul could not fully bear the ultimate Power of Decay. Under Abbas’s precise and powerful space rule strikes, his forcibly maintained fusion state began to collapse!
“No… it shouldn’t be like this… I am the Rules… I am God…”
Altonia’s voice became hoarse and shattered, filled with unbelievable fear and confusion. His single eye, covered in dark red flames, flickered wildly. Amidst the frenzy and madness, it seemed as if a seam had been torn open by intense pain and impending destruction.
Just at this moment of impending collapse, Altonia’s twisted body suddenly stiffened. That dark red flame in his eye, which had been burning with madness, suddenly dimmed as if doused by cold water, and even… flickered out momentarily.
Replaced by a profound sense of an awakening from a prolonged nightmare…
Confusion and Clarity!
Suddenly, he slowly lowered his head, staring at his body, filled with cracks, oozing filthy blood and pus, rotting and disintegrating. Yet, as if seeing through this body, he gazed into a distant past.
The lush green wheat swayed under the sunshine… Clear streams flowed through orchards… Apprentices meditated under the white tower… He lay over a tidy laboratory bench, nurturing a seed full of life with hope… That initial, pure intent to make the world a better place…
“Ha…” An extremely faint sigh, filled with endless exhaustion and bitterness, escaped from Altonia’s nearly unrecognizable mouth. This sigh no longer carried any madness, only a kind of perceptive desolation and… deep regret.
He laboriously turned his head, almost entirely shrouded by roots, his gaze passing over the vigilant Abbas, finally landing on Lynch, guarded behind a prism of spatial crystal. That gaze was complex to the extreme, containing jealousy and unwillingness, but in the end, it all transformed into a faint, almost pleading… entrustment.
“Sa… phi… ros…” His voice was as hoarse as sandpaper scraping, each word consuming enormous effort, yet it pierced through the hum of space rules so clearly, “I… was wrong… completely… wrong…”
“Decay… is not the end… Rebirth… is the destination…” His claw-like hand painfully lifted, pointing to his quickly disintegrating chest, oozing dark red filth, “Take… take it… complete… my… unfulfilled… path… let… abundance… return…”
With this final breath, full of endless regret and expectation, the enormous rupture in his chest, where the frenzied Heart of Decay resides, the violent dark red light miraculously began to retract and compress! As if a force originating from the deepest part of his soul was forcibly suppressing and stripping away the endless decay.
Under Abbas’ calm, slightly scrutinizing and complex gaze, at the core of that filthy heart, a faint but incredibly pure, infinitively vital green light burst forth, like a new sprout breaking through the thick layer of sediment of a billion years!
It emitted the most primal essence of life, containing the meaning of perpetual circulation, nurturing all things.
This little green light seemed to possess its own spirit, lightly detaching from that heart, rapidly losing its luster, turning dead and ashen. Ignoring the spatial barriers, ignoring the whistling snow and wind, carrying a kind of unwavering resolve, it floated slowly and steadfastly towards Lynch, who was protected by the spatial crystal wall.
It was only the size of a fingernail, weak as a flickering candle in the wind, yet what it radiated was the light of “Rebirth”—concentrated from the last untainted intention deep within Altonia’s twisted, buried soul—a seed of resurrection!
This was indeed the final untainted intention deep within Altonia’s soul, the unblemished core that had never truly been extinguished!
“Never… forget… the intention…”
Altonia, with the last flicker of conscious thought, wished to utter this final adage, to impart the lesson hard-won through life to another. Yet, the decaying power had thoroughly consumed his battered shell, the last syllables cruelly stuck deep in his throat.
Bang!!!
A dull explosive sound, like the earth’s heart ceasing to beat, erupted without any warning!
Altonia’s forcefully melded, already hollowed and burdened by the Power of Decay, twisted body, along with the Heart of Decay that lost its core brilliance and instantly turned into lifeless gray stone, disintegrated altogether, like rotten wood weathered by a billion years, suddenly struck by an invisible giant hammer, in front of Abbas and Lynch!
No expected catastrophic energy self-detonation, no final crazed counterattack.
Only the sky filled with dark red ash brimming with a strong stench, like countless despairing moths caught in the chilling wind atop the peak, dispersing everywhere, vanishing in an instant within the lead-gray, snow-heavy sky that he himself had turned into a wasteland and decay.
Everything returned to silence.
At the lonely peak, only the incessant cold wind sighed between shattered rocks, swirling up the remaining snow foam.
The ragged void fissures torn apart by spatial rules flickered weakly, healing slowly like wounds on the earth. The shattered ground, littered with massive corroded pits, silently recounted the intense battle that had just occurred.
Only that tiny, incredibly resilient, pure green light silently hovered in front of Lynch, like the heart of a star awoken after a billion-year slumber, emanating warmth and infinite potential, illuminating the shocked and complex face of the young wizard, igniting a small spark of “Rebirth” on this silent battlefield.