Chapter 231

Wang Zhitao's earth-shattering strike left behind a deathly silence.

Li Hu's mouth hung open wide enough to fit an egg.

He looked at Wang Zhitao kneeling on the ground, dripping as if just pulled from water, then at the distant empty expanse where nothing seemed to have happened.

"Fuck..." he managed to sputter out two words, his voice barely audible, "What the hell kind of upbringing is this? One tougher than the next?"

No one answered him.

Zhang Mei was still trembling, but it was no longer pure fear; as she looked at the Wang brothers, her eyes mixed awe with an indescribable bewilderment.

Wang Zhitao braced himself on the ground, gasping violently, his chest heaving like a broken bellows. He had survived, even turning those deadly things into his own ammunition. But now he was so weak he couldn't muster the strength to stand. He lifted his head and looked at his brother.

Wang Zhitai didn't look at him, nor at the battlefield.

All his attention was focused on the Black Jade Slip in his hand.

His brother's eruption was like a key, picking a lock in his mind.

"Hum..."

The slip emitted a low hum in his palm—not a sound, but a vibration that reached straight to his soul. It grew hot, scorching, as if he were holding a branding iron freshly pulled from magma.

An unprecedented suction came from the slip, but it drew not energy, but... perception.

Wang Zhitai's vision changed.

In his eyes, the crystal cavern filled with madness and chaos was no longer a mere energy storm. Those violent, twisted forces capable of driving any sane person mad now appeared to him as an extraordinary, fragmented-beauty-like... pattern.

They were not a tangled mess.

They had trajectories, directions, strengths. They followed a set of rules—a twisted, alien set of 'reverse laws' utterly contrary to reality.

Like a symphony composed of countless noises and screams, harsh though it may be, it... had a score.

"So that's how it is..." Wang Zhitai muttered unconsciously.

"Brother? What did you say?" Wang Zhitao asked weakly.

Wang Zhitai didn't respond. He closed his eyes.

The instant he closed his eyes, the information his grandfather Wang Shan had forcibly poured into his mind—secrets of the Beast Taming Sect, the truth of the curse, his understanding of high-dimensional energy—ceased to be chaotic fragments and instead became like books found on a shelf, beginning to sort and arrange themselves automatically.

"Guide... rather than oppose."

"Define... rather than destroy."

"To become part of the rule is to master the rule."

These thoughts were not his own; they came from the slip, speaking to him through bloodline resonance.

"Hey, I'm saying, boss," Li Hu looked at Wang Zhitai standing motionless there, his face turning pale, his heart pounding, "Your brother just pulled off a self-detonation—are you planning to sit and ascend now? Can't we change the time and place?"

Wang Zhitai seemed not to have heard.

He extended his other hand, the one not holding the slip, slowly raising it to aim at a nearby churning mass of mutant energy the size of a fist. That energy brimmed with violence and chaos, corroding and assimilating anything that came near.

Li Hu's heart leapt into his throat.

"You're crazy!"

He wanted to rush over, but found himself unable to move. An invisible force pinned him in place—not Wang Zhitai's doing, but... the giant beast Wang Shan at the battlefield's center.

That colossal beast, amidst the bloody slaughter of the monster horde, somehow spared a sliver of attention, using its domain to lock onto Li Hu and Zhang Mei, preventing them from interfering.

It was... watching.

Wang Zhitai's forehead beaded with fine sweat that trickled down his cheeks. His mind was like an overloaded machine, countless formulas and runes flashing, colliding, shattering, and reforming in his sea of consciousness.

Excruciating pain!

A soul-rending, then forcibly stitched, excruciating pain!

This was more perilous than the bodily pain Wang Zhitao endured; a single misstep would scatter his consciousness, reducing him to nourishment for this space.

He tried, using the slip as a bridge, to send a thread of his will into that violent energy.

"Quiet."

He didn't shout it; he simply issued that simplest command in his heart.

The energy jerked to a halt, then surged even more wildly, as if resisting his will. A frenzied bloodlust surged along that thread, slamming into his mind.

"Pfft!"

Wang Zhitai snapped his eyes open, spat out a mouthful of blood, his body swayed, and he nearly collapsed.

"Brother!" Wang Zhitao struggled to rise.

"Don't move!" Wang Zhitai barked in a hoarse voice, yet with undeniable resolve. He wiped the blood from his mouth and closed his eyes again.

If once doesn't work, then twice!

This time he didn't bark orders. He began to follow the energy's 'pattern,' combing and soothing it—like a beast tamer facing a defiant wild animal, not whipping it but first learning its temperament.

"Stabilize."

"Gather."

"... Obey."

His will, amplified and 'translated' by the slip, became a language that the energy could 'understand.'

A wondrous scene unfolded.

Under the stunned gaze of Li Hu and Wang Zhitao, the black energy that had originally bared its fangs and constantly shifted shape gradually ceased its churning. Its internal chaos subsided, its ferocity ebbed, and it finally shrank into a smooth, silently hovering black sphere—like a docile pet—resting before Wang Zhitai's palm.

Success.

He did not, like his brother, turn poison into a weapon.

He tamed the poison into... a servant.

"Roar——!!!"

A roar that shook the entire cavern rang out, but this time it lacked the previous violence and madness.

The colossal beast Wang Shan shuddered violently, tearing apart with claws and teeth the few monsters entangled around it, then slowly turned its mountain-like head.

Those two scarlet beast eyes, like hell's molten lava, swept across the battlefield where flesh and blood flew, and for the first time, truly, they landed on Wang Zhize's body.

Scrutinizing, cold, ruthless…… these emotions were all present.

But this time, within the endless depths of its bestial nature, there was something else.

The same…… approval as when it looked at Wang Zhitao.

One devours all things, one commands the laws.

Li Hu watched two brothers, one swaying on the verge of collapse, the other deathly pale, then glanced at the giant beast that seemed in good spirits, only to feel his scalp go numb.

This old man…… just what is he trying to turn his own grandson into?