Chapter 58
The cultivators did not remain idle.
How could they remain idle when living flesh began to grow upon the stars they worshiped, when the planets upon which they had spent tens of thousands of years building civilizations transformed into writhing masses that whispered to one another in languages they had never heard, when the black holes that had served as their final bastions of defense shrank into small wounds on the surface of an ever-expanding, insatiable mass of flesh.
From those still crawling at the Star Foundation to those standing at the peak of the Supreme Dao Dew, from those whose eyes still burned with the fire of idealism to those whose gaze had long grown murky with thousands of years of political intrigue, they began to attack.
Not with war cries as they once had in the days before the Harmony Conflict, but with desperate silence, with attacks launched without sound, for their throats had grown too dry with fear to produce anything more than faint, meaningless tremors.
"They are fighting," Ling Xu whispered, his voice neither surprised nor shaken, merely flat like the surface of a lake long undisturbed by wind, "after hiding for so long behind the authority of the Dao and the assemblies of the universe, they finally remember that they have hands to wield swords and feet to stand."
Huan Zheng, standing beside him, did not respond.
He merely smiled—a smile neither warm nor cold, but empty like the space between stars already consumed by flesh.
Yet Huan Zheng did not remain idle.
A moment ago, he had been standing with his hands in his pockets, shoulders slouched and eyes half-closed as usual. Suddenly, he multiplied the aura of his cultivation foundation—already having broken into the Realm of the Head Humanity, the highest realm unreachable by anyone except a few individuals and the three Wheels of Cultivation—over and over again, without limit, without end, like numbers endlessly dividing themselves in darkness, never finding a point at which they could stop and say, "enough."
Then, with a madness that made the resisting cultivators feel their knees melt—not by fire, but by something far more terrifying—Huan Zheng drew in a deep breath.
Not an ordinary breath that merely filled the lungs with air, but a breath that inhaled all fear, all despair, all remnants of hope lingering within the chests of every being across the boundless universe.
And after that, he exhaled.
Not an ordinary exhale that merely stirred hair or dry leaves, but an exhale that was long—so very long—as though it gathered all time that had ever existed and never existed, all space that had ever been created and never been created, all meaning that had ever been born and never been born, and compressed them into a single force released from his mouth.
"Zhao Wei, you—"
Ling Xu did not have the chance to finish his sentence, for as Huan Zheng's exhale reached every corner of the multiverse without exception, the entire cosmos—every infinite region, every reality that had ever existed or never existed—felt a wind sweep across it.
Not an ordinary wind blowing from one point to another, but a breath spreading everywhere, reaching all places without exception, with no wall able to block it, no authority of the Dao capable of denying it.
And every region touched by that breath—every star overtaken by flesh, every planet turned into writhing masses, every black hole reduced to a wound, every universe still budding and endlessly giving birth to new realities—was instantly set ablaze.
Not burned by fire born of wood, gasoline, or ancient spells wielded by high deities, but by fire born from the exhale of a lazy man who suddenly remembered that he was still one of the three Wheels of Cultivation.
And more terrifying still, the fire seemed to multiply its own burning capacity—like a malignant tumor that not only kills healthy cells but teaches other cancerous cells to kill faster, more efficiently, more cruelly.
What began as flames consuming dry grass on dying planets suddenly engulfed entire worlds—their atmospheres, their cores pulsing with magma and life.
Then the fire evolved, burning through the vastness of space, consuming stars that once served as beacons for intergalactic travelers, devouring constellations whose names had been immortalized in a thousand myths and a thousand prayers.
And then, with an insatiable hunger, unstoppable madness, and unforgivable hatred, the fire succeeded in burning an entire universe within an infinite multiverse.
And that was only one region, while Huan Zheng's breath occurred everywhere at once—in every corner, every crevice, every reality still daring to call itself "existent."
Strangely, terrifyingly, impossibly—the breath was created without disturbing the web of Cancer threads that had begun to entangle all realities, without interrupting the growth of living flesh spreading across every surface, without disrupting the ritual of absorbing talent and potential that Ling Xu had initiated from the very first moment the Cancer outbreak was unleashed.
Instead, fire and flesh worked together—fire burning the rigid, flesh softening the pliant; fire destroying the old, flesh constructing the new; fire cleansing the unnecessary, flesh nurturing what was needed.
And as a result, the entire universe and multiverse—no matter how endlessly they multiplied—instantly mutated, transforming completely into a single space where living flesh, part of the Cancer, existed, pulsing in rhythm with Ling Xu's heartbeat, breathing in sync with Huan Zheng's exhale, moving with a consciousness no longer separable from the three of them.
The lazy one, the goddess who had lost her eyes, and the plague that never truly died.
"The cultivators who resisted," Ling Xu said, his third eye scanning the surroundings at a speed even light could not match, his voice soft yet clearly audible within what was once called the multiverse, "most of their bodies are severely burned."
He paused for a moment, observing how flames still licked the silk robes once worn with pride by Gods, how living flesh crept up the legs still struggling to stand, how screams that never escaped their mouths became faint vibrations upon the ever-growing surface of flesh.
"But they did not turn to bone, Zhao Wei. Nor did they fully mutate into part of the Cancer flesh. They are like… half-cooked food. Still warm. Still pulsating. Still waiting to be devoured."
Huan Zheng did not reply with words.
He merely turned toward Ling Xu, and in his eyes—no longer lazy, no longer half-closed, no longer concealing anything—Ling Xu saw something he had never seen before.
To be continued…