pjbooks Chapter 100 That was a blessing!
Chapter 100 That was a blessing!
At that moment, Balsalon's dark green eye stopped moving. It stared straight at Kahn, and the parasitic lines deep within its pupil suddenly accelerated, like leeches that had smelled blood.
"Three hundred years ago, you descended from the heavens. Black ice flowers covered the entire continent, and humans were crushed like ants. At that time, the Demon God Realm had just awakened from the abyss, and we thought you were going to completely cleanse this planet."
His voice echoed in the void, hoarse and murky.
"But you didn't. You stopped. You left behind thirteen temples of apostles and retreated back to the heavens. You left humanity's most fertile lands, most prosperous cities, and densest populations to them. You only occupied those wastelands, ice fields, deserts, and deep seas—places even demons wouldn't bother to go."
The horn runes on the right half of Balsalon's goat skull were writhing faster, while the eye sockets on the withered old man's face on the left were sunken, and his dark green eyes were churning with confusion and anger that had accumulated over three hundred years.
"For three hundred years, the Demon God Realm has been asking the same question—why? You could have completely destroyed human civilization, so why did you stop? You could have occupied the entire planet, so why did you cower in the thirteen Apostle Halls? You are clearly stronger than us, so why did you give us the fattest pieces while you only gnawed on the bones?"
In the void, crimson and dark gold lights intertwined, collided, and eroded each other. On the circular throne, the silence of the ten apostles stood like a wall, blocking all of Balthalon's questions.
Then, Kahn laughed.
The laughter was soft, as soft as a snowflake falling on frozen ground. But the moment each word landed in the void, the dark red mist surging around Balthalon trembled violently, as if its foundation had been shaken from within by some higher-level force.
"Balsalon," Kahn spoke, his voice still as calm as if stating a law etched into the very fabric of the void, "You've made a mistake."
His amber pupils slowly turned, landing on Balsalon's half-withered, half-skeletal head.
"It's not that we can't destroy humanity. It's that we don't want to."
Balsalon's dark green eyes suddenly contracted.
"Three hundred years ago, the apostles descended upon the mortal realm. Black ice flowers covered the entire continent, and human civilization plummeted from its peak to its lowest point within three days. At that time, humanity was not even worthy of looking up to us. They knelt in the ruins, praying to the sky and kowtowing to the temples we built. They used the blood of their own children to carve prayers on stone slabs, begging us not to destroy them."
His voice remained calm, but every word seemed to lower the temperature in the air.
"Then we stopped. Not because we were merciful, but because we discovered something more interesting—human beings, in despair, can unleash a very special power."
The runes on Balthalon's goat horns stopped wriggling.
"When you demons awoke from the abyss, you were born with the power of the abyss. When we apostles descended from beyond the heavens, we were born with the laws of the void. But humans have nothing. They are born fragile, have short lifespans, are mortal, and possess no extraordinary power. But when we infused a trace of the void's primordial energy into the black ice flower and scattered it across every corner of the human continent—a miracle occurred."
Kahn's lips curled up slightly. The curve was so faint that it caused the dark red mist swirling around Balthalon to recede an inch at the same instant.
"Those humans who inhaled the black ice flower dust began to awaken."
On the circular throne, Mephisto's lips curled into a slight smile. Baal's dark eyes flickered with complex emotions. In Sorgar's pure white eyes, runes began to flow anew. Only Thran remained with his eyes closed, his long, silvery-white hair swaying gently in the void, his posture unchanged, like a meditating Buddha.
"Awakened Ones," Kahn uttered the word, his tone as flat as if reciting a formula that had been proven countless times. "You demons call them Awakened Ones. You think it's because humanity's own potential has been forced out, a power they've evolved autonomously in desperate situations. But you're wrong."
He leaned forward slightly, his amber pupils reflecting Balsalon's rapidly contracting dark green eyeball.
"The power of the Awakened was given to them by us. It was an experiment. We wanted to know—what would happen if a wisp of the power of the Void Source were injected into a species with absolutely no extraordinary foundation? How would they use this power? What form would they evolve into? How quickly could they grow to a level that would threaten us?"
He leaned back on his throne and tapped the armrest lightly with his right index finger.
"The result is quite interesting. Humanity established the Awakened system in less than a hundred years. It took them two hundred years to start challenging the Apostle Hall. It took them three hundred years to produce a Sword Saint who can stand in front of me and whom I find somewhat interesting." He glanced at the direction of the First Apostle Hall, which Ye Wuhen had once challenged. "Although he only made it to the thirty-seventh floor, it is still the best result in three hundred years."
Balsalon fell silent. The dark red mist swirling around him was more intense than ever before, and the parasitic patterns within his dark green eyeball were frantically swimming, colliding, and splitting. He was processing this fact—for three hundred years, the Demon Realm had believed that the Apostles had retreated, had failed, and had been forced back by some unknown force. They were happy to see it happen, believing that the Apostles' retreat was an opportunity for the Demon Gods to expand. But now he knew. The Apostles had never retreated. They had merely retreated to the position of observers, watching an experiment that had been going on for three hundred years.
"That human named Jiang Chen," Balsalon's voice turned low and dangerous, "is not an Awakened One. His power doesn't belong to the system you gave him. He uses something else—True Essence, Immortal Emperor, the Immortal Cultivation Civilization. He didn't use the Awakening Power that your Apostles gave him at all. He uses power from another universe."
Kahn's fingers stopped on the armrest.
"Yes. Jiang Chen's appearance was outside our experimental parameters. He was an accident. A unique case from a higher-dimensional cultivation civilization. He used the power of the cultivation system to kill our Apostle Hall's guardian apostle. Astra is dead, and Morgiana is dead too. We don't know who will be next."
He raised his eyes, his amber pupils staring directly at Balsalon.
"So you're not here today to question why we failed. You're here to confirm one thing—whether we'll break the agreement from three hundred years ago because of Jiang Chen's appearance. The agreement between the Apostle Realm and the Demon God Realm—humans are the hunting ground, and neither side will interfere with the other."
In the void, a genuine smile finally appeared on Kahn's lips. It wasn't the "something's interesting" smile he had when facing Jiang Chen, but a deeper, more condescending, almost pitying mockery.
"The Demon God Realm wants to take action against Jiang Chen, right? You saw him kill two of our apostles and thought the apostle realm had been weakened, that the balance of power in the hunting grounds was beginning to tilt. So you want to take this opportunity to send out the Demon King's army to test the strength of humanity, and incidentally, to see if we will intervene."
Balsalon did not deny it. He simply stood there, his dark green eyes fixed on Kahn.
Kahn tilted his head slightly, his amber pupils slowly sweeping over the remaining ten apostles on the circular throne. Mephistopheles, Baal, Zorgore, Thrann—all the apostles awaited his decision.
"Jiang Chen is not an Awakened One. His power does not belong to the system we provided. Therefore, the Demon God Realm's actions against him are not within the scope of the agreement made three hundred years ago."
He looked at Balsalon.
"If you want to test him, then go ahead."
In Balsalon's dark green eyes, the parasitic patterns stopped moving at the same moment. He remained silent for a long time, so long that the dark red mist in the void began to slowly shrink and settle.
Then he laughed. The laughter was hoarse and deep, like the hissing of billions of snakes at the same moment, or like the ancient beings imprisoned for billions of years in the depths of the abyss finally smelling blood.
"Very well. The Demon Realm will remember your stance." He turned and walked towards the rift, a long trail of dark red mist trailing behind him. "We will assemble the Demon King's army within three days and launch an attack on the border of the human world. At that time, I want to see with my own eyes—can that human who killed your two apostles stand against the seventy-two Demon Kings under the Seven Pillars of the Abyss?"
He walked to the rift and stopped. The dark green eyeball turned back, scanning the two crumbling empty thrones before finally settling on Kahn.
"There's one more thing. In our Demon God Realm, we don't believe in experiments. We don't believe in observation. We don't believe in your apostles' lofty games. What we believe in is very simple—survival of the fittest. Humans used to be weak, so they were hunted. Now that they have Jiang Chen, they may not be so weak anymore. But only powerful prey is worth the Demon Gods' serious hunting."
His figure vanished into the rift. The dark red light receded like the tide, and the rift slowly closed. The dark red mist in the void was still slowly dissipating, and the light curtain that had been eroded into a dark red color was being slowly repaired by the dark golden power of the Apostle Realm's laws. The clash between the two colors at the edges continued, like a silent tug-of-war that had lasted for three hundred years.
Silence returned to the circular throne.
"Let them go." Kahn's voice regained its timeless calm, his long fingers tapping the armrest one last time. "Perfect, we need a better whetstone."