Chapter 1510: NO.126: Hollow Echo

NO. 126: Hollow Echo

His body had long been deformed by uncontrolled information mutation, and his crystal core was further damaged in the flesh's turmoil; though he appeared tall and sturdy, that was merely a facade, while inside he was actually more frail than an ordinary person.

This is the alternate universe's Moon-chariot Symbol.

He contacted the domain of monster power in the most unstable, most radical way, and furthermore worshipped the Beast King—the source of all monsters—with the appearance of a devout believer, as if seeking to devote himself wholly to that faith.

Yet he did not truly, like the Beast King, 'shed' his flesh to become a pure essence, stubbornly retaining a human body.

Some followers speculated that he was unwilling to get too close to the Beast King, out of the reverence they felt.

Others among the faithful scorned him, saying he deceived the world and stole a name, his heart still that of a weak human, fundamentally unable to walk the Lord's holy path.

But evidently, under the cult's strict and brutal hierarchy, no matter how those below speculated, they dared not actually ask the High Priest to his face, even though he often appeared affable and easy to talk to.

Since no one asked, it was destined to remain a long-standing mystery.

Taking the step of not being human is truly simple, and discarding the judgment of one's current posture is even easier.

He could easily take that step, but what exactly makes him open his eyes each day to confirm his existence, and what makes him unable to let go of this extremely strained body… he himself does not know.

This abnormality is so obvious, yet he has long grown accustomed to its companionship, especially since this abnormality does not hinder life.

Since it does not hinder life, he naturally leaves it be—this is also the survival wisdom of the Moon-chariot Symbol, who has lived with abnormality for decades, sparing him many troubles his peers would face.

After all, to them, monster power is like the mysticism of the code domain.

——If you see something so esoteric actually running, just don't move!

Because the Federation's officials effectively prohibited and cut off related research, those extremists pursuing monster power, even if they dared to adventure, break the law, and steel themselves to study, have always seen their development crawl along.

Even their continual attempts to immediately ally with those newly transmigrated universe people to acquire their knowledge—resulted only in long-term failure.

This made the already narrow and scattered circle's development even slower; even after the cult formed and the Beast King once gave alms of consideration, the decades of accumulation that should have been added still cannot be said to fully surpass this world.

On the contrary, it reveals a matching bias: the categories in which both sides have developed greatly are completely different, their shortcomings also differ, they can compensate each other to a considerable extent, but even when combined— they remain a leaky bucket, not perfect.

This is also the reason Aomo Lindun wants to promote monster-related industry; his cute little girlfriend has already complained more than once that the Federation's expertise in this area is still insufficient, leaving some of her whimsical ideas without applicable theorems to frame them, and verification from scratch would consume vast amounts of time—something no ordinary high-school senior could manage.

Although the Federation's monster industry has never suffered official suppression, it has indeed been neglected; over the past decade, despite countless efforts to promote it, most have been merely perfunctory, with no great person arising to make it a goal, so the industry's knowledge remains at a stage of only slight accumulation on old foundations.

What would be the result of that?

The result is that Aomo can find tens of thousands of reference books in the horse‑racing industry, hundreds of manuals and dozens of geography‑humanities books in the mercenary circle, and more than ten famous mercenary biographies.

But only in monster research, only in the field where his power lies——

——he can find books such as *Aberrant Dissection*, *Heaven's Gate City Monster Records*, *Monster Local Gazette*, *Introduction to Monsterology*, *Evolutionary Occurrence Biology*, *Wu Xie Chronicle of Divine Beast Biographies*, and *Peaceful Local Gazette* that are decent enough on monster topics, and among them there are even many that are wholly foreign knowledge from other worlds.

Locally available professional books are truly too few.

By contrast, studying *Molecular Biology*, *Paleontology*, and *Morphology* is purely another path.

Although unrelated to monsters, he nevertheless tries to draw analogies from the underlying logic of biological evolution— Aomo often approaches those books with this mindset.

Although there is little practical hope, accumulation is always good.

His innate deductive‑reasoning ability, akin to Sherlock Holmes's principle, is exactly what needs knowledge accumulation as a basis for data retrieval, and most of it is also trivia useless in everyday life—like heating a sodium hydroxide solution and keeping it at 50° to quickly remove dehydrated meat, or that alkaline protease can serve as a meat‑removing tool, though it produces a fermented odor that becomes especially noticeable at high heat…

Such little tricks that ordinary people don't use will always find someone who does.

Perhaps it's for making specimens, or perhaps outright for crime…… Intersections between people are not always pleasant; as a mercenary, Aomo understands this all too well, while as the High Priest, the Moon‑chariot Symbol's understanding is even more extreme.

In his view, any intersection between people is always accompanied by one side being crushed.

Yes.

Human encounters are collisions—either you grind me to dust or I grind you to dust—this is the understanding of the Beast Cult's High Priest, who has endured countless collisions in the pursuit of monster power and still has ground many to dust; strictly speaking, this understanding is not born of the monster path.

He vaguely recalls that this idea arose very early.

So early that he was still a child, so early that he can no longer recall exactly which year, or why.

Perhaps it was because of that awful family, or perhaps because of that figure always leaning on a cane.

Perhaps this hazy memory is precisely the cause of that figure's absence, or perhaps the reverse……

For many years, the Moon‑chariot Symbol has suffered from blurred, missing, and distorted memories, to the point that he often needs to infer roughly when it began.

Frankly, the vast majority of those blurred memories cannot make him urgent, cannot spark the impulse 'I must recover my memories'; only when they involve that figure, that woman, the person leaning on a cane, that theoretically personal entity's memory…… does he feel it important.

Important enough that he has indeed looked back for it.

He knows that person's appearance, knows their bearing in the reports, yet cannot overlay the blur and gaps in his memory.

It seems many things don't match, it seems the most crucial element is incompatible, and though he could go directly to that person, that person is already gone.

She died.

She died at his own hands.

Although he has no memory, thus no visceral feeling, the original reports indeed recorded it that way, and even the other family members stared at him with varying mixes of hatred, jealousy, gratitude, etc., as if the fact truly were so.

He is willing to believe it is true, but if it is true, whom should he seek to claim that missing part?

This question, no one can answer.

Even those in the cult who could serve as doctors or researchers could only reply with 'Perhaps you can recall it yourself' or 'Perhaps you will receive the Lord's grace'—such distant answers that let him wait as much as possible and set the matter aside.

There is no way; he is indeed trying to grow accustomed to it.

He is growing accustomed to the abnormalities clinging to him, which, if they afflicted an ordinary person, might disrupt daily life to the point of inability to care for oneself, and eventually lead to utter madness.

That abnormality, though difficult, is still barely tolerable, because his daily life as the cult's High Priest is always the same monotonous pattern.

Lacking change, there is even less chance to trigger those gap‑related memories, leaving time to layer on a numbing poison.

But now it is clearly different.

He looks down upon that young distant niece, as if gazing at the figure he saw in childhood, his eyes unblinking.

Still not clear enough.

He thinks.

But if he could look a little longer, letting her maintain that momentum……

Perhaps then everything could take shape.