Free Web NovelChapter 21.1: From Hell to Heaven!
Everything in sight was bathed in a dazzling, crystalline glow.
The setting sun, broken apart by countless prism-like crystals, scattered into fragments of brilliant warm gold and orange. Amid the shifting play of light, indigo flowed through, emerald green wound silently along, deep blue rose like waves, and dusky violet rippled like a passing breeze.
Everyone forgot how to breathe. The world itself was being distorted and reshaped into this unparalleled, breathtaking scene. It was cold, radiant, and merciless.
In this indescribable beauty lay an ancient, austere stillness. There was no warmth left, as this place was no longer fit for ordinary humans.
“A domain?!” Lawrence cried out in shock.
The Cliff City Security Bureau actually had a second Celestial Being who had reached the boundary of the Transcendence Realm?! And it was that temporary team leader, the one parachuted into the Team North Mount and quietly pushed aside by the Bureau?!
Had he... underestimated her?
No. This feels like...
In a flash of rapid thought, Lawrence came to a realization. “Coloring the world, turning it into a barrier and a dead end... That matrix... It’s you!”
He stared wide-eyed at that emotionless face. The once-beautiful features had lost all color, and her calm eyes showed not a ripple of emotion. There was only the faintest hint of a curve at the corner of her lips, like an illusion, as if she were a masterpiece carved by a divine artisan, expressing the full spectrum of sorrow, joy, anger, and delight.
She resembled a deity within a sacred temple, gazing down in absolute arrogance. The suffering, desire, joy, and sorrow of the mortal world could no longer move her in the slightest.
“...Minerva[1]!”
“How nostalgic.” Wen Wen let out a soft sigh and raised her hand. “It’s been a long time since anyone’s dared to call me that... right to my face.”
BOOM!
Without any warning, her figure appeared right in front of him. Her right hand clenched into a fist and struck out. Shrouded in a crystalline, illusory glow, her hand looked like a piece of exquisite crystal artwork.
Just one punch was enough to shake the entire domain. A thunderous roar echoed, accompanied by shattering noises. In the blink of an eye, Lawrence’s arms, tentacles, and even the bones in his upper body were destroyed. His flesh was torn apart by the explosion.
Amid the howling wind, scarlet blood and chunks of flesh scattered and flew off his fractured frame like wildly unfurling banners. And yet, on that broken face, a mocking smile appeared.
“Haha... hahahahaha! Even a Celestial Being couldn’t kill you? The Federation actually let you live? Your bounty’s higher than mine!”
Countless writhing parasites, like threads of blood, rapidly regenerated from the shattered remains, weaving themselves back together into a dark, twisted face. That was Lawrence’s true appearance.
Even after being gravely wounded, followers of the Vortex were known for their monstrous vitality and terrifying regenerative ability. They had countless ways to keep themselves alive. Even if reduced to dust, for someone like Lawrence, who had reached the Rebirth Realm and had cultivated for years, as long as his parasites remained, reconstructing his body would only take a moment.
More importantly, even Lawrence himself found it hard to believe that Wen Wen had weakened. Before her domain unfolded, she had given off an overwhelming sense of dread. Now, within the scope of the domain, her threat level had plummeted to something merely troublesome.
“This is ridiculous, Minerva. The infamous realm-breaker, the mad dog butcher... Now, you’ve become this merciful?” He couldn’t believe it, almost suspecting some kind of trick or scheme. “You went through all this effort... just to protect those materials?”
Within Minerva’s domain, everything was frozen. All living beings, everyone in Mercy Hospital who had fallen unconscious, and the innocent people caught up in this, all of them were sealed within the crystal. The effects of the Tidefire Calamity and the parasites had been completely cut off and neutralized, including those affecting the unconscious and dying patients. It was as if time itself had stopped. Everyone became stuck in the exact moment the crystals covered them, no matter the state they were in.
The Frozen Domain of the Ruins Path had been expanded to such an extreme extent that it had the power to envelop every single person nearby? Even for Minerva, this was excessive.
Wen Wen stepped forward. Her answer came in the form of an iron fist, powerful enough to smash through a building!
She struck with pure physical matter and pure force. Lightning power erupted from between her fingers as she drove the strike forward, tearing through everything in its path. It blasted straight through Lawrence’s regenerated body, punching a massive hole right through him.
“It’s more than enough to deal with you!”
The Vortex represented life, while the Ruins represented unchanging matter. Wen Wen’s crystalline ability, combined with the top-tier Ruins Minerva matrix created a force that was utterly dominant in direct combat, with terrifying defensive power far beyond her peers.
No sane person would try to go head-on against someone who could turn their entire body into metal and stack offense and defense to the max. Unfortunately, that was true only in relative terms. What was once unreachable, like a sheer cliff stretching up to the heavens, had now become nothing more than a thick, solid wall. Though it was still just as difficult to overcome, it no longer carried that towering grandeur that seemed to stand alongside the world itself, or that overwhelming, unmatched sense of crushing pressure.
She was weak, too weak. Even if her raw power still remained at its original level, her mind had already crumbled into utter weakness.
“The Ruins Path has no need for the human heart!”
Crack!
Cracks appeared across the crystal glow. Thick, dark blood slowly seeped out from the gash in her abdomen, dripping to the ground with a sizzling sound as they bloomed into sharp, cold crystal flowers.
“I’m curious...”
Lawrence raised his regenerated limbs. Between the writhing tentacles, a hidden blade extended from the flesh, slipping out from a blind spot. The bizarre blade was completely black, with faint patterns flickering across its surface in the reflection of the crystal light. It vanished once more into the darkness, making it impossible to fully see its shape.
As he licked his elongated tongue, tasting the scorching, stinging blood, Lawrence grinned.
“The divine creation, Duskbane, that’s said to pierce through any fortress in the world, or Minerva’s defense. Which one is stronger?”
Lawrence’s wailing screech was abruptly cut off. Under the shattered crystal light, blood seeped out from between her closed fingers, but the blood quickly transformed into something harder than steel. It crystallised, spread, and locked into place, binding everything in its path.
“Just a piece of junk scrap metal?” Wen Wen asked. “That’s what you’re counting on?”
She lifted her other fist and clenched tight. The very next moment, a surge that could shake the entire hospital erupted outward. Crystalline growth spread and burst from the ground like a violent tide, expanding in every direction.
With just one punch, she kicked up a storm. Blood splattered, and flesh burst apart. Lawrence, struck head-on, had been reduced to a shattered, skeletal frame. In what was left of his cracked skull, a ferocious fire still burned in his eyes, overflowing with ecstasy and excitement.
He blocked it!
“Hahaha... hahahahahaha!”
He stretched out his hand right in front of Minerva’s fist. What remained of it was only half a set of bones, but new flesh and tissue were rapidly regenerating over those bones.
It was completely different from his fragile human body of the past. This was something far more complex than any skin, muscle, or tissue in the mortal world. And within it pulsed a trace of something rich, sweet, and crimson. It was brilliant and dazzling, like a blazing red light.
Just that one drop was enough to instantly forge a new vessel capable of standing toe to toe with Minerva once fused into the body!
“I’ve done it! I’ve succeeded!”
Lawrence threw his head back and laughed maniacally. The flesh at his back split open as tendrils unfurled like outstretched arms, reaching for the branches hanging down from the colossal tree in the sky above. He seized them, linking them and draining them dry. He greedily drank in this miraculous nourishment, the brilliant product refined from endless death and suffering.
“Among all living things, the pinnacle of existence is the dragon,” he chanted reverently, repeating the ancient scriptures passed down within the Dragonrite Society as he lost himself in the beauty of this transformation. “Destruction and calamity are its breath. Pain and despair are its blood.”
Now, dragon’s blood was flowing in from hell, and the transformation had begun. He would evolve, and he would ascend. He would be reborn through dragon blood!
Amid his manic laughter, Lawrence felt the Vortex Cultivation Method falter for just an instant, seemingly caused by some type of disruption. However, it quickly returned to normal, as if it had only been an illusion.
Only deep within the tangle of roots of the giant tree, the tip of Ji Jue’s little finger twitched ever so slightly in his sleep, as if he was convulsing or was caught in a futile struggle in a nightmare. It felt like, all of a sudden, he had plunged into the deep sea, struggling to breathe. In an unprecedented cold and suffocating darkness, Ji Jue fell into a nightmare with no end in sight and drifted along with the current, sinking deeper and deeper.
What met his eyes was only crimson. What reached his ears was a constant echo of wailing in his mind, as if tens of thousands of people were crying at the same time, voicing their sorrowful cries and futile screams while they struggled and fought. In the end, exhausted, they let go and fell into the abyss, never to return. freewebnoveℓ.com
What remained were only bones and tears. Those tears gathered into an ocean, and the rising tide swallowed everything in a sea of cries.
Through the haze, it felt as if someone grabbed his collar and screamed in desperation, “Why did you kill me? Why?! I’m just a worker, I’ve only been here a few months! I’m innocent!”
Before Ji Jue could respond, the phantom faded away. In its place appeared a tired, disheveled man covered in coal dust, banging again and again on the door in front of him.
“Where’s the money? Where’s my money? Boss, didn’t you say you’d pay my wages today?!”
The iron door stood there, unmoving. No one answered.
“You’re all liars! You’re all lying to me!” The man, driven to desperation, cried out and raised a hammer. “I’ll fight you to the death!”
He smashed the door open, and a gunshot rang out. Everything came to a sudden halt as the illusion disappeared.
1. Minerva is the Roman goddess of wisdom, strategic warfare, arts, crafts, and medicine, equivalent to the Greek goddess Athena. She symbolizes intelligent, strategic thought rather than brute force. ☜
