Chapter 714: I Am Chen Yan

Chen Yan murmured:

"At least shake a little."

Rustle.

A few leaves rustled.

Chen Yan sat cross-legged atop the sea of blood, slowly opening his eyes.

The next instant.

A 【Break】 Saint-Breaking Fruit and a 【Array】 Saint-Breaking Fruit entered his belly together.

This swallow alone consisted of one hundred 【Array】 Saint-Breaking Fruits, each brimming with the profound mysteries of the Blood-Drawing Array.

In an instant, Chen Yan's body trembled, and an endless torrent of memories emerged within his mind.

Memories both strange and familiar.

Chen Yan had long since grown accustomed to the sensation of consuming Saint-Breaking Fruits.

Whether it was a 【Technique】 Saint-Breaking Fruit, an 【Array】 one, or even an 【Intent】 Saint-Breaking Fruit.

Consuming them would always bring Chen Yan memories that were both strange and familiar.

Sometimes a few months, sometimes a year.

Every memory felt as if Chen Yan had experienced it personally.

But this time, the memory was so long, so far-reaching, that a look of confusion and vicissitude appeared in Chen Yan's eyes.

In those strange memories, he walked from the beginning of the world, his bare feet treading across one boundless land after another.

He saw pitch-black battle banners slowly dissipate under the blowing of the northern wind.

He also saw mountains and rivers shift, and malice swallowing continent after continent.

In the earliest memories.

Because he had learned the Blood-Drawing Array, his physical body began to change.

His body gradually twisted and mutated.

But at the very beginning, he was merely immersed in the excitement of gaining power.

"I am learning the techniques of the barbarians to control the barbarians; even the evil arts of the Ancient Gods can be mastered by me."

Though he was worried, he was even more confident.

He was a monster, a heaven-favored child; he could change everything.

Thus, he began to study it more deeply.

As time slowly passed.

While researching the Blood-Drawing Array in a mountain cave, he wanted to go out and clear his mind.

It was too exhausting.

"Bitter cultivation requires not only time but also a sound state of mind; stopping occasionally allows one to go further."

Thinking this, he arrived in the outside world and suddenly frowned.

He discovered that the hundred miles centered around him had become completely desolate.

The mountain grass had withered, yet it was wriggling in pitch-black, as if it had transformed into another form of life.

Within the mountains shrouded by black mist, it seemed as if some viscous, gargantuan creature was lying in wait.

The lake water had long lost its clarity, turning pitch-black like boiling asphalt, constantly spitting out bubbles.

He came to the lakeside and saw his own appearance clearly in the black reflection.

His limbs had long since turned into pitch-black tentacles, and within his mouth and eyes, countless tentacles as fine as needle and thread were constantly drifting.

He had completely changed, turning into the very thing he loathed most.

"This..."

He roared hoarsely, suddenly realizing that what he spoke was not human language at all, but some kind of dark symbols originating from the primordial past.

"I, Chen Yan, am the master of will; how could I become an Ancient God Beast..."

He let out a low growl, and the power of will within his body began to erupt, starting to devour the malice inside him.

Yet, for every inch of malice devoured, more malice was absorbed by him.

The Blood-Drawing Array was no longer an array; it had become a part of his physical body, an organ, or perhaps a bone.

He was an Ancient God Beast, yet not an ordinary Ancient God Beast.

He had obtained a certain channel for evolution.

As long as he continued to instinctively absorb the outside world, he would eventually evolve to that final state.

"Malice, malice, interesting, interesting..."

He laughed wildly:

"Know that I, Chen Yan, am the one who will never submit."

He knew he had made a mistake.

He had done something he should not have done.

But there was no turning back now.

He sensed that the gravitational force erupting from within his body had already expanded to the lands where the human race lived.

And it was still spreading continuously.

He was like a black hole that kept growing, irreversibly sucking in the entire world.

And those humans suddenly seemed as tempting to him as rare delicacies.

He began to migrate north.

Far away from the human world, far away from where living beings resided.

Everywhere he walked, the mountains and rivers began to wither, and the earth began to crack.

With every step he took, the ground corroded into bubbling pools of blood.

With every breath he drew, the surrounding vitality was drained away into desolation.

He became a destroyer of the rules, using flesh and blood as a sacrifice to tamper with the order of heaven and earth.

Deep in his mind, the craving for the flesh and blood of living beings grew ever deeper.

Every time he suppressed the desire in his heart, it was a torment for him.

Pain, pain.

Even the desire that his powerful willpower could barely suppress continued to sprout.

Every step he took toward a more distant place, his pain deepened by one step.

He knew that if he were even one step slow in moving away.

If he were to accidentally consume the life of a human, he would be completely unable to suppress it and would fall entirely into the pursuit of the delicacy.

Across an infinitely distant land, he looked toward the human hearth fires, seeing those faces that were sad, or joyful, or angry, or calm.

That was his race.

That was his original root.

Was it?

As he walked all the way north, until he reached the Far North, until he walked onto the boundless glacier.

He had already turned into a monster composed of endless pitch-black tentacles.

"Take one step back, just take one step."

"Just eat one, eat one, have a taste, you haven't tasted it yet, have a taste of that flavor."

"Just one, just one, just one, just one, I beg you, just one!!!"

Countless voices rang out in the depths of his mind.

Yet he never stopped.

Until one day, he suddenly discovered that those mutterings were actually coming from his own mouth.

"Just eat one!!!"

He roared toward the sky:

"One, one, one, one, one, one, one!!!"

He roared like a madman:

"You are no longer human, you are an Ancient God, what harm is there in eating one Zhou Lu?"

He paused.

"Who is Zhou Lu?"

Countless tentacles swayed from his body.

"Who is Zhou Lu?"

"Who am I?"

He could not remember clearly; he had lost the memories belonging to a human.

"Zhou Lu..."

Countless tentacles writhed and swayed.

At one moment, he suddenly remembered vaguely.

"Zhou Lu is me..."

"Zhou Lu is me!!!"

He shouted excitedly, remembering the memories of his time as a human.

That was a memory he had never spoken of, but had always buried deep in his heart.

"I have a name, my name is Zhou Lu!"

"I am Zhou Lu, I go to school in Green Mountain Town, I even got into the Town Martial Class!"

"My younger sister is named Zhou Jiayi, my sister is still in school, she has a classmate named Chen Yu...

Why do I remember the name Chen Yu, it's so familiar..."

His thinking became chaotic.

"Jiayi is a formation genius, she has a teacher I don't really like.

Jiayi won a scholarship and bought me a bottle of Vitality Drink; I secretly put it in her schoolbag, wanting her to drink it.

But she left it for me..."

"If I walk one step too slowly, Jiayi will be hurt..."

He murmured, continuing to walk toward the north.

However, an ice wall blocked him.

An infinitely tall ice wall.

"Why..."

He whispered aloud:

"Why does even the world want me to consume humans..."

He growled, as he sensed the malice within his body about to spread into human territory.

Boom!!!

He smashed a fist against the ice wall, and a crater was punched out by him.

Boom!

Boom!

Boom!

He climbed along the giant crater toward the top of the ice wall.

"I, Zhou Lu, am absolutely not a person who yields easily!"

"I, Zhou Lu, am of the Human Race, and the Human Race is me, Zhou Lu!"

"What Zhou Lu has faced, no one else of the Human Race will ever have to face again!"

"But I didn't succeed..."

"But I have always failed, I have been failing all along..."

"Why..."

He roared aloud, nearly crazed.

Sometimes, even he himself did not know what the words he spoke actually meant.

He kept climbing, scaling the ice wall that had no summit at all.

Finally, at a certain moment.

He climbed out of the world.

There was no air, no gravity.

He kept climbing, until one day, he could no longer even see the existence of the world.

Yet the ice wall was still there.

His malice was still trailing downward along the ice wall.

He let go of his grip, turning into a drifting piece of dark matter, floating slowly through the universe.

His consciousness was at times clear and at times chaotic, occasionally recalling the vow beneath the ice wall.

He saw bright morning stars one after another, and saw magnificent and strange worlds one after another.

He was all alone, drifting.

Time lost its meaning.

He did not know how many days he had been drifting.

The Blood-Drawing Array continued to grow within his body, having long since transformed him into another kind of existence.

But he no longer had any attachments.

He no longer devoured the vitality of worlds, and that evil within his body could no longer obtain power.

He had won.

He began to dispel the evil within his body, and he began to study the Blood-Drawing Array once more.

The Blood-Drawing Array, which seemed to possess vitality and had become a part of his body, also seemed to begin changing.

Dead silence.

Dead silence.

Until a certain moment, all the evil and chaos within the Blood-Drawing Array perished completely.

It turned completely into another array.

Without the evil and chaos of the Ancient Gods, it was an array belonging solely to him, belonging solely to the Human Race.

And he, too, had reached the end of his life.

Dying together with him in this boundless darkness.

The evil vanished completely, and the Blood-Drawing Array transformed into the purest of arrays.

It also gradually withered and dissipated within his body.

"I won..."

At the moment his consciousness was about to be destroyed, he whispered.

"Until the very last moment of my life, I remained of the Human Race..."

The flickering starlight was like a silent funeral; he had withstood all temptations.

He turned into a dried corpse, turned into a speck of dust in the universe.

He revealed a smile.

He had never felt happy about creating a brand-new array.

What made him happy was that he had never bowed his head to evil.

It was just that...

In the world, no one had ever seen the birth of this powerful array.

This was a powerful...

God-level array!

Powerful and magnificent.

The Blood-Drawing Array, under the cleansing of his countless years and his research, had changed completely.

It was a pity, a pity that such a powerful array ended up drifting through the universe with him, unknown to anyone.

Except for...

Himself.

Above the sea of blood, Chen Yan slowly opened his eyes.

An endless sense of vicissitudes flashed across the depths of his eyes; it was as if he had truly experienced that struggle and pain lasting for countless years.

Those roars were as if they were truly words he had spoken himself.

No wonder the Saint-Breaking Tree was not nervous at all.

Chen Yan lowered his eyes.

"This technique shall be called..."

"Eternal Calamity Blood Reversal."