novelraw Chapter 1220 - 620: Mending the Wolf’s Pen After Loss
Chapter 1220 - 620: Mending the Wolf’s Pen After Loss
Boom!!!
Just ten seconds later, the brewing heavenly fire descended, the grand and mighty crimson engulfing everything.
Billowing, sticky flames spread out.
The ruined village, countless spiders, even the massive Disaster Beast sleeping beneath the ground, all were burned to charcoal.
No corpses to be seen, only a desolate wasteland.
Just like the White Country, just like Central Earth.
"After coming here, what I did most was actually these kinds of things..."
Tong Shan shook his head, "Let's go."
Ji Jue started the car, was silent for a moment, then suddenly said, "Brother Shan."
"Hmm?"
Tong Shan in the backseat heard him, looked at him with a half-smile, "You're not going to say it's not my fault, right?"
Ji Jue shrugged, "You've already said it, I'm not good with words, don't have many good lines, just consider it as me comforting you."
"Thank you, I do feel comforted, you're really good at this."
Tong Shan sighed lightly, "Don't worry, I haven't become so arrogant to think this is all my duty, I'm just regretful... watching everything that could have been salvaged, ruined in an instant."
"Truly Tian Yuan."
Ji Jue sighed.
"Yes, that inexplicable sense of mission and incurable sense of responsibility, and, the control desire engraved in the bones, this is Tian Yuan."
Tong Shan shrugged, gave a self-mocking smile, "When looking for a wife, don't find someone from Tian Yuan, even I find it annoying."
"Right, right."
An Ning nodded furiously, "White Deer is fine, Ji Jue, as long as everyone's having fun, I don't mind what we do."
"Haha—"
Ji Jue rolled his eyes, one who says not to look for Tian Yuan is a mother hen who worries about everything, the other who praises White Deer is obsessed with playing with their own cats every day...
Exhausting.
So, they finished one job and set off again.
In the deep twilight, the storm struck again, Little Ox and Horse ran joyfully, disappearing into the wilderness, then, into a new wasteland, new ravines, new bogs...
Gradually getting used to the lifeless desolation.
In a short span of two days, they almost made a full circle around the White Country, mostly in vain, occasionally eliminating a few Disaster Beasts, but without any gratitude.
What they could see were only desolate towns, ruined villages full of vigilance and wariness, and nomadic camps that raised their guns toward them from miles away.
In this rarely-traveled, chaotic wilderness, the savage ecology from four hundred years ago continued, with no generosity or kindness, only indifference and hostility.
Fortunately, Tong Shan didn't have that many tasks.
Most of the time, he just personally confirmed the situation and looked for hidden terrorists and Wolves, for the former, a telekinetic sweep from dozens of miles away was enough.
As for whether they harbored terrorists, just a couple of questions would reveal the truth, since Tong Shan was from the House of Ether, discerning lies was second nature.
As for the Wolves and An Ning, brought along to work.
Unfortunately, there were few terrorists, and not a single Wolf.
Ji Jue felt this trip was mostly a waste of time.
Just considered it a sightseeing tour.
They even took a detour, driving Little Ox and Horse off-road over the highest mountain in the White Country, to look at the mountaintop's millennia-old ice layer and pristine white snow.
Even to the remnant temple at the mountaintop's Sacred Place.
After four hundred years without maintenance, it had long been battered by weather, left in ruins, with only a foundation remaining.
Of course, there was nothing to gain.
In over four hundred years, it's been scavenged who knows how many times, if the foundation could be moved, there might not even be a foundation left...
"It was said that when the Eternal Dynasty still existed, those who were not qualified to enter the Imperial City would, after making achievements, be allowed to bathe, fast, climb barefoot, and upon reaching this point, be able to gaze upon the Imperial City and its tall tower in the center of Central Earth."
Tong Shan stood on the broken tiles with faint patterns, looking up toward the distant land covered by gray gloom and the black sea of clouds.
What he saw was only a towering black rift reaching through heaven and earth.
Like a remnant, twisted scar.
That is the last remnant the Heavenly Pillar Tower left in the world after the fall of the ancient dynasty. To this day, that rift still stands in the center of the present world, hard to dissipate.
The Emperor and the Heavenly Pillar Tower fell into the Vortex from here.
When the preposterous Illusion Dream that governed everything vanished, it left an indelible scar on this reality.
"Quite a sight, isn't it?"
Ji Jue took a few photos with his phone, just for the record, then got pulled into a selfie by An Ning, finished with that, he patted off his pants, ready to leave.
He's no literature lover, couldn't even recite a few classic poems, really didn't have the inclination for such reflections on past and present.
Yet, thinking about the entangled debts with the Eternal Dynasty he carried, he felt a bit like being a deadbeat.
But couldn't escape even a bit of it.
"..."
In silence, he glanced back one last time.
In An Ning and Tong Shan's eyes, that curved, broken fissure was entirely different in Ji Jue's eyes...
In a moment of daze, it seemed like he could see, behind the fissure, the horrific outline of a broken tower, the tower's shadow like a tide, writhing, gradually seeping into reality from the fissure.
But beside the tower's shadow, in an even deeper place, it seemed there was something else.
The only discernible thing, a pair of eerie eyes.
The shifting outline, sometimes like a failed fetus, sometimes like a skinned beast, no matter how it changed, only the hunger and greed in those eyes remained constant.