Chapter 308: 304 Heart

"Don't go! Come back!" As Wang Zheng suffered the gnawing of ten thousand toads, he let out this silent roar. It was not that he did not wish to make a sound, but that a mutated toad had bitten off his vocal cord area in one gulp. He could not make a sound, and could only watch with hateful resentment as that man, deeply favored by the Toad-Frog God, departed right before his eyes.

As his body was torn to pieces, his body was also rapidly undergoing unexpected mutations. His flesh and skin were accelerating in regeneration and transformation, but not in a normal direction, rather in the direction of deformity; his appearance was converging toward those mutated toads that were tearing him apart.

Wang Zheng's eyes revealed intense hatred and anger, "How could the person favored by the gods be him, and not me?"

"Living like a coward in such an era that has gone astray, must my ideals and my collection be hidden away in such fear?"

"Every day I must pretend to be righteous and 'upright' in thought, and even force myself to teach 'wrong' concepts to those guys who yearn for wrong ideas. Why am I the one who has to live so tiredly!?"

"Clearly I possess the power to correct all of this, why are you unwilling to listen to my request!?"

"I am more devout than him, I am more proactive than him. Why is the one who possesses the Blessing him, and not me? By what right!?"

"…Croak! Croak! Croak!"

After a burst of hysterical, silent roaring, Wang Zheng completely transformed into a deformed frog-man who had shed his human skin. His consciousness was almost entirely gone, yet he retained his obsession with Fang Mu.

To be precise, it was actually a strong craving for the power of the Blessing entwined upon Fang Mu.

A similar scene also occurred in another person who had once crossed paths with Fang Mu; he was the old village chief, the person Fang Mu had sought help from in Wenya Tun during his second life.

He had personally informed Fang Mu of the method to get rid of the Blessing and handed it over for Fang Mu to carry out himself. This seemingly kind and amiable village chief, however, had extremely suspicious anomalies about him.

His son was one of the frog-men who had crazily hunted him in Nong Mountain. The paulownia wood box he gave Fang Mu was almost the root of the evil; inside it was stored the Nail Hammer capable of opening the Gan'ying Aperture that resonates with gods. And that Nail Hammer was clearly taken away by his son, who was ostensibly an Enforcer, yet the Nail Hammer had somehow ended up in his hands.

The method that old man told Fang Mu to lift the Blessing was not entirely incorrect; he simply had not considered the possibility of Fang Mu surviving, nor the huge price his words and actions would bring upon himself and his clansmen.

That pair of Nail Hammers harbored the great power of another transcendent god, and the believers of the Toad-Frog God must maintain a noble purity. This purity was so strict that they had to distinguish which side of her they worshipped: those who yearned for favorable weather and natural greatness worshipped the bright, clean frog, while those who yearned for power, wealth, and depravity worshipped the ugly toad... As long as a person deeply favored by the Toad-Frog God brought this pair of Nail Hammers before the Toad-Frog God as an offering, the enraged god would confiscate the gift upon him.

But what the old man did not expect was that what was bestowed upon Fang Mu was not a Blessing. It was just like how humans cannot distinguish the good and evil of gods, because gods do not possess good or evil, and what was imposed upon Fang Mu was merely a form of attention, a mark, a signal.

Rather than calling it a Blessing, it would be more accurate to call it a Curse, as Fang Mu himself described.

The evil old man with the wrong line of thinking thought that Fang Mu's appearance meant a once-in-a-millennium opportunity and era had arrived; that divine love could be transferred, and divine blessings could be upon him, or upon oneself. Thus, he wantonly opened altars for evil rites and held large-scale offering ceremonies, never expecting that his actions held no secrets from that god, and everything was laid bare.

The Toad-Frog God unleashed her fury upon that group of humans who had gone astray, burying the lives of those several hundred people in Nong Mountain.

…

Through the eyes of the Toad God, Fang Mu saw fragments of a story he had never seen before, and he, whose emotions were gradually becoming numb, also grasped some of the Toad God's meaning.

She had never cursed or blessed him; it was simply that Fang Mu, as a human, could not bear the attention of a higher dimension.

As for the abnormal events that happened to him, it actually made no difference whether she was there or not, because he would eventually pick up that hammer, that Nail. She was more like an outsider accidentally trapped in his destiny. The resistance she could offer was to accelerate the cycle in Fang Mu, completing Fang Mu's awakening. Fang Mu read a trace of the other's thoughts in one of the Toad God's eyes, which approached humanity.

"What destiny do I have, and what do I need to awaken to?" Fang Mu asked the other.

He still harbored doubts and refused to jump out of human logical thinking.

If he had not changed that heart, he would have died on that day in 2013, and everything would have ended.

Without changing that heart, he would not have gone to find the owner of the heart, and thus obtained that diary.

Without that diary, he would not have gone to pursue the forbidden secrets hidden within the diary, searching for the traces of the Toad-Frog God.

Without searching for the traces of the Toad-Frog God, he would not have gone to that Forest Cabin and obtained that pair of Nail Hammers.

Without that pair of Nail Hammers, he would not have fallen into the cycle of time...

…

He had only obtained that pair of Nail Hammers because he was looking for her; where then did the entanglement of destiny come from?

The Toad God gazed at him calmly, drawing out with some invisible force the Rune Stone embedded with half a piece of Black Jade from Fang Mu's body. At the same time, a flash of light shot out from her body and landed on the Rune Stone—it was the other missing half of the Black Jade. The moment the two pieces of Black Jade were joined together, the Rune Stone presented a bizarre scene, accompanied by a strange beast roar that drilled into Fang Mu's marrow, knocking his soul into tremors like a wooden stake striking a great bell.

That language, which he had never been in contact with, automatically translated into a voice he had once heard. The young man dressed in white was smiling and asking him: "Are you really not dreaming?"

Fang Mu's spirit, which had been tending toward dead silence, once again felt panic. He struggled in the Toad God's restraints, screaming as he wanted to escape.

That bold conjecture, which he had never imagined and dared not imagine, was like a deadly poison, gnawing away at his reason bit by bit.

"How can I determine that Fang Mu is my first life?" Fang Mu questioned himself in a breakdown, screaming crazily in the dark abyss.

His questioning was hoarse and desperate; he wished he could close his eyes tightly, seal his ears, hold his breath, with only his mouth exerting force, until finally, only a roar of pure venting remained.

"Who am I exactly!?"

"Chaos..." Li Yuning sat cross-legged beside Lin Ling, reading intently. The rocking sound of Lin Ling's rocking chair could not disturb her focused reading. She asked curiously, "Without the five senses, what does she rely on to live?"

"Doesn't she still have a heart?" Lin Ling smiled as he drank tea and stroked the cat.

"Then, once she has been enlightened, is she truly dead?"

"Hee hee, he just admitted it from the bottom of his heart."