Chapter 227: The Vanishing Memory

Amidst the terrifying Tribulation Lightning, Xu Chen's body was constantly collapsing and rapidly regenerating like rotting wood, and his Soul was also growing stronger along with it. He felt as if he were expanding, and at the same time, a desolate and distant ancient aura emanated from within his body, while scenes he had never seen before constantly emerged in his mind.

Vast mountain ranges, twinkling stars, flowing great rivers, violent storms, erupting volcanoes...

In the primeval dense forest, violent beasts with rolling Black Mist and giants with Ancient Runes flashing on their foreheads were fighting.

In the Void, there was ten-thousand-foot radiance, and one could vaguely see the giant shadow of a Demon God looking down upon the human world.

Stars fell, the sky collapsed and the earth cracked, rivers and seas overturned, and blood-color and Black Mist filled the heavens and earth.

The ancient earth was piled with corpses like mountains, which soon decayed and turned into dust and soil.

The earth dried up, plants withered, and the world gradually became desolate and gloomy, until darkness shrouded it all...

Perhaps it was an instant, or perhaps it was a hundred thousand or a million years.

Xu Chen's consciousness gradually blurred in the flow of time, slowly losing its self, lost in these grand, light-like scenes of time.

The phantom of two giant Shells became clearer and clearer, until they were covered in golden lightning, and strands of profound purple patterns slowly emerged, emitting a desolate and ancient aura, as if time had settled for hundreds of millions of years.

Inside the Shell, Xu Chen's figure was gradually completely enveloped by the purple light, slowly turning into a purple light orb the size of a zhang, with plasma churning within.

In the valley where the Feng clansmen lived, the Black Shell Boat that had been parked at the entrance of the cave suddenly shook violently, then flashed and vanished into thin air; when it appeared again, it was already amidst the churning Tribulation Lightning.

The phantom of the golden Shell, over a hundred zhang high, slowly shrank into the Black Shell Boat.

"Boom—"

The third strike of Tribulation Lightning fell.

The black Shell suddenly closed, firmly wrapping the purple light orb that encased Xu Chen inside.

The churning lightning was like a massive ball of plasma, popping and crackling as it rolled and impacted the outside of the Shell, emitting thunder that shook the world.

In Xu Chen's consciousness, there gradually remained only boundless, pitch-black coldness, as if he had fallen into a bottomless abyss, turning into chaos, no longer able to feel his body or any changes outside.

Under the impact of the lightning, the giant Shell phantom continuously shrank into the black Shell; as it grew smaller and smaller, the golden light became more brilliant, and the profound purple patterns on it became clearer.

Inside the black Shell, the large amount of fascia that remained from before was growing crazily, and large swaths of muscle began to pile up and appear; within the blood vessels, golden lightning plasma flowed.

"Thump, thump..."

The purple light orb wrapping Xu Chen began to vibrate, swelling and contracting, starting to pulse like a heart.

And in the center of the purple light orb, Xu Chen's heart was beating in rhythm with the pulse; every time his heart beat, the purple light orb would swell once.

The crisscrossing meridians and membranes of the black Shell began to grow and insert into the purple light orb, fusing with the open acupoints all over Xu Chen's body; the golden plasma flowed like blood through the meridians into Xu Chen's body, and then flowed to the various meridians and blood vessels of the Shell following the rhythm of the light orb.

A large amount of muscle rapidly piled up and grew under the stimulation of the massive plasma, soon wrapping Xu Chen together with the purple light orb; the parts of the Shell that had been burned away by Xu Chen with white Qi previously also began to become plump with flesh and blood at a speed visible to the naked eye.

Moreover, the color was no longer that pitch-black ink color, but a mix of gold and purple, carrying an incomparably magnificent and heavy ancient aura.

Xu Chen had completely lost himself in the cold, pitch-black bottomless abyss.

The only thing he had left was a faint will to survive, remaining with the thought of resisting the Heavenly Tribulation.

The Heavenly Tribulation was still continuing.

The Tribulation Lightning was already in its fifth round.

But there was no longer Xu Chen's figure in the Heavenly Tribulation; replacing him was a black Shell several zhang in size.

However, as round after round of Tribulation Lightning fell and slowly dissipated, the previously appeared hundred-zhang-high golden Shell phantom had completely overlapped with the black Shell body and had been thoroughly retracted; thus, the current black Shell was not entirely black, but covered in dark golden patterns, looking ancient and mysterious, while simultaneously emitting a terrifying aura that changed the heavens and earth, as if a peerless Demon God had descended.

Outside the valley, only five people remained, including Feng Yi, Feng Liu, and Feng Feiyi.

Every person's face was filled with incomparable fear and unease.

Especially Feng Feiyi, whose face was blank as tears constantly streamed down.

Because as this earth-shaking Tribulation Lightning continued to fall, she felt that Xu Chen's aura was disappearing from her memory, and in this process of forgetting, she inexplicably felt an incomparable sadness and pain, as if the person closest to her was about to die, and the entire world was collapsing and being destroyed.

She was already unable to remember Xu Chen clearly; a most familiar memory was being rapidly erased from her mind.

Just like an inexplicable sadness in a dream, heart-wrenching but not knowing where the sadness came from, she could only feel that in the boundless pitch-black and coldness, a blurred back gradually sank into the boundless abyss, drifting further and further away, as if taking away her most precious thing.

"Who is he? Who is this back? Why does he want to leave me? Wuu wuu..."

For no reason, Feng Feiyi was heartbroken and suddenly burst into loud sobs.

Feng Yi and the others, who were already terrified, were startled by Feng Feiyi's crying and turned their heads together.

Feng Yi frowned, grabbed his sister's shoulders, shook her hard, and shouted, "Why are you crying? The benefactor will definitely be fine!"

Feng Feiyi wiped her tears blankly and sobbed, "I don't know why I'm crying either. Who is the benefactor you're talking about?"

Feng Yi didn't know whether to cry or laugh and said loudly, "Are you stupid? The benefactor is Xu Chen."

"Who is Xu Chen?" Feng Feiyi still asked blankly.

Feng Yi was stunned for a moment, looked at his sister carefully, then turned to look at the sixth Tribulation Lightning that was falling, and frowned, "Are you scared silly? Xu Chen is that Mortal World clansman who saved you and brought you back! Not only did he wake many of us from hibernation, he also restored our clan patterns and Divine Pattern Battle Techniques. He is very dangerous now, and I know you are very nervous and scared, but don't worry, the benefactor will definitely be fine. He will definitely pull through, and might even become even more powerful."

"Xu Chen... Xu Chen..."

Feng Feiyi looked up at the clean, pitch-black barren earth and the blood clouds churning in the sky, as well as the blinding golden lightning plasma that crashed to the ground, her face full of pain.

She struggled to pursue the back that was drifting further and further away and disappearing in her memory, while repeating a familiar yet blurred name over and over, as if wanting to recall who he really was.

And under her constant painful recollection, the blue cross mark between her eyebrows also began to emit a faint light, flickering non-stop; some scenes regarding Xu Chen began to emerge from the depths of her memory, the figure of a thin young man slowly becoming clear from a blur, and then turning into dust amidst the sky-filling lightning. No matter how she recalled, as long as it was a scene regarding this youth, it would be destroyed and disappear in the lightning.

Watching these scenes that were constantly being reduced to ashes under the impact of the lightning, Feng Feiyi's expression became even more painful; she tightly covered her temples, as if she could never reconcile this strange young man's figure with that vaguely familiar name.

Slowly, blood began to seep out from her eyes, ears, mouth, and nose.

"Feiyi, what's wrong with you?" Feng Yi discovered that something was wrong with his sister, and hurriedly held her shoulders with both hands and shouted.

"Who is Xu Chen? Why can't I remember anything! You guys go save him quickly, he must be about to die!" Feng Feiyi wailed.

"Feng Yi, Feiyi seems to be scared out of her wits; you should send her back to the cave first!" Feng Liu stepped forward and reminded him with a stern expression.

"No, I'm not going back, I want to save him!" Feng Feiyi's face was covered in tears as she broke free from Feng Yi's hands; a pair of red light wings unfolded behind her, and she held the Giant Fork high, turning into a stream of light and rushing toward the place of the lightning tribulation.

"Sister, be careful!"

"Feng Feiyi!"

Feng Yi, Feng Liu, and the others were instantly terrified, their faces twisted.

Although they all felt that Xu Chen was in extreme danger, this lightning was too terrifying; not to mention that they dared not touch or come into contact with it, even if they were to wake the old Witch Lord, he might not necessarily dare to go up and try.

They did not know what a Heavenly Tribulation was.

But their powerful Soul and the ancestral markings inherited within their bodies told them that this power of heaven and earth was not something any of them could contend with.

Once they rushed up and were touched by the lightning, they would inevitably be reduced to ashes.

Feng Feiyi rushed up without hesitation; although they also wanted to rush up and stop her, a sense of extreme rationality within their hearts blocked their impulse, and they could only shout while watching Feng Feiyi turn into a streak of red light, plunging into the lightning like a moth to a flame.

The golden Tribulation Lightning, resembling plasma, landed on Feng Feiyi and easily scorched her tight leather outfit into ashes.

The terrifying pressure, like a ten-thousand-jun giant mountain, made her feel as if she were stuck in a quagmire within the plasma, every step extremely difficult.

Almost the moment she entered the Tribulation Lightning, she had already stepped into the land of death, with almost no means left to save her life.

This Heavenly Tribulation pressure was simply not something she, a wild human with strength equivalent to the Zhenyuan Realm, could resist.

From the instant that incomparably vast aura of life appeared, the power of the Heavenly Tribulation had already reached a terrifying fifth rank.

A Tribulation Cloud with a diameter of over five hundred zhang, if placed in the Mortal World, would be of an intensity that at least a True Spirit Realm Great Cultivator could resist.

Yet in Minghuang, the power of this Heavenly Tribulation was magnified countless times over due to different rules, manifesting the intensity and aura of an ancient Minghuang Heavenly Tribulation, which was even greater and more terrifying than the power of a Heavenly Tribulation in the Mortal World.

(End of this chapter)