Chapter 884: Questioning Suffering

Just as in days past.

Before the eyes of all under heaven, Ming Yan Ni took Chen Yan away.

At this moment.

Li Zhiyi stood calmly, watching the young girl beside him with cold eyes, feeling the terrifying malice and evil within her.

The other party had fully hatched; her current appearance was exactly the same as the Mother God in the memories of the Master of Thought-Force.

As if sensing Li Zhiyi's gaze.

The red-haired girl slowly turned her head, her gaze fixed upon Li Zhiyi's pupils like an abyss.

Those scarlet eyes seemed to be cast from billions of deep red universes.

Every tiny speck of blood-colored light was writhing and dividing, containing extreme evil and extreme coldness.

Li Zhiyi felt as if he were falling into an endless, evil chaos, unable to breathe.

But the next moment, Li Zhiyi returned to normal and faintly raised his hand:

"Pay no mind to me, continue the assault!"

His voice fell, shaking heaven and earth.

Outside the Blood Sun Embryo, Shen Keqing and the others' expressions shifted.

After their initial panic and worry, the eyes of the one hundred thousand Evil-Extermination Army soldiers returned to calm.

"Kill!"

Chen Min shouted first, charging toward the ancient divine beast before him.

The one hundred thousand Evil-Extermination Army soldiers soared instantly, charging forward accompanied by bursts of willpower.

Ming Yan Ni looked at Li Zhiyi coldly, possessing none of the expressions that a human should have.

The scarlet within her pupils suddenly surged and swirled.

Boom!

Above Qi Province, endless malice surged out from the Qilong River, as if it had been drained dry.

Xia Hanzhou's figure appeared, currently locked in a great battle with ten eighth-rank ancient divine beasts.

Seeing the surrounding malice dissipate and surge toward the Blood Sun Embryo, Xia Hanzhou's expression changed drastically.

The next moment.

He heard Li Zhiyi's grand voice.

"Today, this General shall see if I can personally sever the head of a supreme ancient divine beast!"

His voice shook, filled with dominance, exploding in everyone's hearts.

Xia Hanzhou's eyes widened as he looked at Li Zhiyi in this moment, and he said nothing more.

In his heart, there remained endless shock.

He wants to slay a supreme ancient divine beast?!

How is that possible?

Li Zhiyi is merely a clone of Chen Yan.

And Ming Yan Ni, this supreme being, has long since transcended above all living things.

Xia Hanzhou instinctively wanted to assemble all of Great Xia's peak combat power to annihilate Ming Yan Ni.

But looking at Li Zhiyi now, he held back.

If Xiaoyang lost the peak combat power confronting the Five-Clan Alliance Army, then Xiaoyang's combat strength would face a deficit.

The five-clan army could directly push through Qin Province, enter Yun Province and Tui Province, and pincer Qi Province!

Shen Keqing looked toward Xia Hanzhou, who was surrounded by ten ancient divine beasts, and saw him slowly shake his head.

The next moment.

Shen Keqing, the Longevity King, the Blood Sword Saint, and others took a deep look at Li Zhiyi inside the Blood Sun Embryo, then charged into the four directions to slaughter the ancient divine beasts everywhere.

Yet, look.

The next moment.

All the malice from within Qi Province transformed into a vast, dark ocean, surging into the Blood Sun Embryo.

The entire blood sun instantly turned pitch black, continuously darkening and condensing, like a black hole absorbing all light and flame.

It hung across the firmament, blocking even the great sun, and the entire Qi Province was plunged into darkness.

Throughout all of Great Xia, countless people watched this scene in terror, speaking with difficulty:

"The malice of the entire Qi Province has been injected into that embryo!"

"It... It wants to make the Evil-Extermination General absorb all the malice!"

"Using all that malice to devour the General, this... this, why don't King Xia Yue and the others go to save him?"

Trembling, terrified voices rang out one after another.

Who could fail to see that Ming Yan Ni intended to use the malice of an entire world of malice to annihilate Li Zhiyi.

The next moment.

Something even more horrifying occurred.

Inside the Blood Sun Embryo, the malice that had filled the entire embryo began to condense, shrinking continuously.

Finally, it transformed into a small sphere with a diameter of three meters.

And the red-eyed Ming Yan Ni stood calmly outside the small sphere of malice.

At this moment, even Xia Hanzhou's eyes flashed with astonishment.

The malice of an entire world of malice condensed into a sphere of malice this size.

Then, how terrifying must the malice within this sphere be?

Li Zhiyi is about to be completely suppressed!

Yet the Nether Nightmare Beast remains expressionless, standing there as if it has suppressed the entire Great Xia human race.

Up to this moment, with her appearance and her strike, Li Zhiyi has had no opportunity to resist.

At this moment.

Li Zhiyi is suppressed by the malicious black sphere, and all the malice of this vast malicious world is crazily pouring into his body.

A strange sensation emerges.

A voice resounds in the minds of Chen Yan, as well as the three newborn bodies of Li Zhiyi, Zhang Huizhi, and Zhao Zhugui.

"Why do you wish to oppose malice, to pay everything?"

A calm voice rings out.

In Chen Yan's mind, a blurred world and a blurred figure appear.

Forever unable to draw near, forever unable to see the other's true face clearly.

Vaguely, it looks like the appearance of the Mother God.

"A person's life is often accompanied by suffering, with death as the end point; even without malice, birth, aging, sickness, and death, the oppression of others, and the deprivation of class have no end."

That figure speaks calmly:

"Malice is special, yet not special.

Malice is merely one kind of suffering."

The figure slowly raises a hand, light and flame flowing out to transform into a figure.

That is an infant.

He is born; his mother resents him, and even before he was born, his mother tried various means to induce a difficult labor.

Yet he was born nonetheless.

The family is destitute; he has three older brothers and four older sisters, and the family cannot afford to raise him.

Therefore, he is sold by his mother to a blind man.

That blind man makes him act as his eyes, punching and kicking him in his daily life.

He cries day and night, able only to sleep in a straw shed.

He always looks at the sky with eyes full of tears, wondering why he is so miserable.

Later, he grows up, the blind man dies, and he is free.

He meets friends and meets a girl he likes.

He begins to work, diligent and conscientious, yet he is cheated out of all his property by a friend.

He has felt resentment, yet he gritted his teeth and started again.

Working hard, he earns money again, finally earning enough for the bride price, and marries that girl.

But that girl runs away, and all his bride price cannot be recovered.

He cries, sobbing at the injustice of fate.

Later on, he marries after all and has children.

Yet he toils day and night, only to be looked down upon by his children; the children even refuse to let him pick them up, fearing being seen by classmates.

He remains silent, living on.

Later, he gets divorced.

The children leave.

He just lives like this, living on, until one day, the grown child returns.

He watches the child become attentive, beginning to take care of him.

Yet he cannot feel happy.

Because he is about to die, and the respect the child shows him is only for that sum of his money.

He reflects on his life, feeling that perhaps it would have been better if he had never been born.

He wants to burn his last bit of money, but in the end, he cannot bring himself to do it.

That is the money he earned by risking his life.

He dies.

Chen Yan watches quietly; this person has died just like that.

"Is he very miserable?" the blurred figure speaks:

"But in the human world, there are many, many more who are more miserable than him.

This time, I will give him a different life."

The blurred figure points again.

The light and shadow on that person flow, and he is reborn.

This time, he has a mother and father who love him.

He has a happy childhood.

However, one day.

His father goes into the mountains, and when he returns, there are wounds on his body that only come from close contact with malice.

His father looks at him and his mother, and finally, one day, goes into the mountains again and does not return.

His mother misses him day after day, her hair turning white, losing the vitality of life.

Tears well up in his eyes, and he enters the deep mountains to search for his father.

He searches for a long time.

He finds him.

That was a monster hiding in a stone cave, trembling incessantly, its entire body covered in eyeballs and tentacles.

"Go quickly, go quickly..." the monster said with difficulty, struggling to restrain its own desires.

He stood there blankly, as if the world had collapsed.

He returned home like a living corpse.

However, only a cold corpse remained in the house.

He did not know why his mother would starve herself to death.

He only knew that he had lost everything.

He knelt on the ground, begging the heavens to explain why they treated him this way.

He lived on in a daze just like that, fortunately meeting a very good friend.

To him, they were truly very, very good.

Even more fortunately, he had a girl he liked, who also liked him.

They accompanied each other, swearing to spend the rest of their lives together.

They had a child.

The child was very well-behaved.

However, a small-scale war caused by Ancient Divine Beasts broke out in the mountains near the village.

He and his brother were conscripted into the Military Martial Guard.

One day, they entered the mountains.

He watched as comrade after comrade died; he watched a monster covered in eyeballs and tentacles eat his friend right before his eyes.

He fell into despair.

He returned home in that same dazed state, only to discover something even more desperate.

The Ancient Divine Beasts had slaughtered the village.

His wife had not managed to escape in time, and only a mangled body remained.

He broke down, wanting to end his life amidst endless wailing.

However, he heard crying coming from the rice jar.

It was his child, who was only three months old.

The child had survived.

"If I die, what will happen to my child?"

He struggled, forcing the words out with difficulty.

Finally, he survived and began to raise his child.

The child was very well-behaved, tall and sturdy, and very respectful to him.

Yet he gradually grew old, always sitting at the doorway, hoping to see his wife's figure appear.

"Dad, find me a mom," the grown-up child said.

"I think Auntie Wang at the head of the village..."

As the child was speaking, they suddenly heard a siren sound echoing through the village.

The Ancient Divine Beasts were rioting.

Just like him in years past, the child joined the army.

He pulled at the child, refusing to let them enter the Military Martial Guard.

"Dad, protecting our home and country is my responsibility!" the child said.

Just like that, amidst daily worry.

He finally received the tragic news.

A massive monster covered in tentacles and eyeballs had devoured the entire squad the child was in.

When he heard this news, he stood there, expressionless.

He could no longer shed any tears.

He took out a knife and drew it across his own neck.

The knife was too dull, and only a bloodstain appeared on his neck.

Then.

Crack.

Crack.

He kept cutting, as if he could not feel the pain.

Until a squelching sound rang out.

He died.

The light and shadow dissipated.

The blurry figure looked at Chen Yan:

"In his first life, there were no Ancient Divine Beasts, yet he had nothing and suffered a lifetime of misery.

In his twentieth life, there were Ancient Divine Beasts; he had many things, but lost them one by one, suffering a lifetime of misery.

You..."

The blurry figure seemed to reveal a playful glint:

"Which of these two do you think is more miserable?"

She walked over slowly, her figure flickering beside Chen Yan.

"If suffering and happiness could be calculated with numbers, the total value of the suffering in their two lives is actually the same."

Even to the point that, in this second life, he possessed much love and care that he had never possessed in his first life.