Chapter 57
"And I," he said, his voice no longer cold like ice, no longer hot like fire, but warm in a terrifying way—warm like a plague creeping beneath the skin without you realizing it until it is too late, "am Ling Xu. The manifestation of the Cancer plague that resides within both humans and Gods. I will burn all civilizations, just as the Cancer plague once infected entire civilizations mercilessly—without caring whether those infected were Gods or not. I will burn everything, until nothing remains, until nothing can remember, until nothing can regret."
He gazed at the billions of cultivators frozen before him, and within his third eye, pulsing with a grayish-green light, was reflected a death they could never escape—because the Cancer plague recognizes no Dao authority, no level of cultivation, no shield, no spell, no prayer.
The Cancer plague knows only one thing.
Hunger.
And after pausing for a single moment—a single second that felt like half an eternity, where billions of Supreme Dao Dew cultivators stood frozen not by spells but by a fear they had never felt since first stepping into this realm—Huan Zheng and Ling Xu turned to look at each other.
It was not an ordinary glance that lasted only an instant, but one that endured for two full seconds, two seconds in which everything around them seemed to stop breathing, two seconds in which without words, without whispers, without complex Qi vibrations, they both agreed that there was no point in hiding anymore, that there was no point in pretending to be small in a world that had already decided to hunt them, that it was time for the world to remember who they truly were.
Not fugitives.
Not disturbers of order.
Not monsters to be exterminated.
But executioners counting down the time of execution.
"LISTEN, ALL OF YOU!" they shouted in unison, Huan Zheng's heavy and absolute voice blending with Ling Xu's warm yet horrifying tone into a frequency never before heard in the history of the infinite multiverse, a frequency that tore through layers of reality, pierced the walls of universes, and reached every corner where beings still breathed, thought, and felt fear.
"THIS ULTIMATUM WILL NOT END WITH THE CIVILIZATION OF THE GODS! BUT ALSO THE WORTHLESS HUMANS WHO CALL THEMSELVES THE SUPREME COURT OF HUMANITY!" Huan Zheng continued, his voice shaking the very foundations of Dao that had been considered unshakable for thousands of years, causing the judges seated upon their golden thrones in the distance to feel their seats tremble as if the earth beneath their palaces had suddenly remembered that it could move.
"AND EVEN THE SINGER—NUMBER THREE—ALONG WITH THE SILENT ONE—NUMBER ONE—WITHIN THE THREE WHEELS OF CULTIVATION!" Ling Xu added, and when the names "Singer" and "Silent One" left his lips, his third eye pulsed so rapidly that its grayish-green light turned pure white, like lightning striking a sky that had never known rain, like a final warning before the end of the world.
"YOU TWO, WHO ONCE STOOD AT THE PEAK WITH HUAN ZHENG, WHO ONCE WITNESSED HUMAN DEPRAVITY YET CHOSE SILENCE—YOU WILL ALSO BE HUNTED. ONE BY ONE. WITHOUT MERCY. WITHOUT EXCEPTION."
As the final shout still echoed through every corner of the multiverse—still felt in bone, in marrow, in the deepest recesses of consciousness—Huan Zheng raised his left hand.
Not with a lazy motion as usual, but with a firm, absolute movement that declared he was not joking, not threatening, but acting.
And what he did could not be described simply as "freezing time"—because those words were far too simple to capture what happened next.
Not only was the concept of time forced to stop moving, but also the concepts connected to it—cause and effect, beginning and end, birth and death, memory and oblivion—all froze along with it, like a river suddenly turning to ice, yet this ice did not merely cover the surface, but seeped into every molecule of water, every atom, every subatomic particle, until all that remained was a silence deeper than the void, a silence where nothing could move except the two beings standing at its center.
"Now, Liu Xin!" Huan Zheng said, without turning toward Ling Xu—because he did not need to, because he could feel the pulse of Ling Xu's third eye beside him like a second heart that never stopped beating—and Ling Xu, who understood, who had been waiting from the very beginning, who had prepared himself since Huan Zheng began speaking of the ultimatum, screamed.
Not an ordinary scream from the mouth, but one that erupted from his third eye, from the vertical slit on his forehead that had long been hidden beneath bandages, that had only faintly pulsed during teleportation and talent absorption, that had been waiting for the perfect moment to fully open.
And when that third eye opened—truly opened, without hesitation, without restraint, without leaving even the slightest room for doubt—the consciousness of the Cancer plague that had long resided comfortably within him became confused.
Not confused out of fear, for the Cancer plague knows no fear, but confused because for the first time, it did not know where to go, what to do, what to become, because Ling Xu gave it no command, no direction, no limitation.
Ling Xu simply let it be free, let it be hungry, let it crawl out of his body like a flood that no dam could ever restrain.
And the threads of Cancer began to coil—not wildly as before in the sea city, when Ling Xu still did not understand what he was doing, when the plague had to be forced out through anger and pain and blood, but now with full awareness, with clear purpose, with horrifying pleasure.
And the targets were not only the cultivators frozen before them—billions of bodies still standing in their positions, eyes wide open without time to be shocked, mouths half-open without time to scream—but the entire cosmos, every universe, every reality reachable by Huan Zheng's Qi radiation that continued to flood the boundless multiverse.
Stars began to grow flesh—not dead, pale flesh, but living flesh that pulsed, warm, writhing like newborn infants searching for their mother's breast.
Planets lost their perfect spherical forms, once a pride of creator gods, now becoming masses of flesh clinging to one another, embracing, whispering in a language that neither humans nor gods nor any beings could ever comprehend.
Black holes, once the terror of intergalactic travelers, became nothing more than small wounds upon the surface of an ever-growing mass of flesh, one that continued to coil, to expand, to devour everything around it without ever feeling full, without ever being satisfied, without ever saying "enough."
To be continued…