pjbooks Chapter 81 Ripples of Memories
Chapter 81 Ripples of Memories
The Twelfth Apostle, Soul Scream Morghana, naturally possesses abilities related to the soul.
The soul can see into the past.
Inside this Apostle's Hall, everything is for Morgana's service. At the moment of death of each apostle on each floor, a strange gas silently enters Jiang Chen's body.
Jiang Chen's mental strength was simply too powerful. If it were anyone else, they would probably have been unable to withstand it and their past would have been exposed, revealing their inner fears.
However, she would need some time to delve into Jiang Chen's inner world, but within these hundred layers, it would be enough!
When Jiang Chen stepped into the eleventh floor, his steps remained casual.
The guardian of this level was a colossal apostle projection, its body as massive as a mountain, covered entirely in dark purple scales, each scale inscribed with twisted soul runes. Its roar shook the entire space, and what it spewed from its mouth were not flames, but countless wailing vengeful spirits.
Jiang Chen raised his hand and struck out with a palm.
The palm strike transformed into a golden torrent, engulfing the behemoth along with the vengeful spirits it spewed forth. The behemoth's body disintegrated in the golden light, its scales shattered, its flesh evaporated, and it was utterly destroyed from the inside out.
Level 11, cleared.
But Jiang Chen's brow twitched almost imperceptibly.
He sensed something. A very subtle, almost imperceptible, strange feeling, as if something had gently touched the edge of his consciousness and then quickly receded. He couldn't describe the feeling; it was as if someone had quietly placed a mirror outside the gates of his consciousness and then left.
He then proceeded to crush his way through. The guardians of each level were of varying forms, some as large as mountains, some as small as needles, some capable of creating countless phantoms, and some capable of distorting space to create mazes. But none of them could last more than ten seconds against him.
The strange feeling within him would reappear once after each level was completed.
He began to realize that every time he killed a gatekeeper, what was destroyed by the gatekeeper was not only the body—but also a very hidden fragment of the soul, which quietly attached itself to the edge of his consciousness in a way he had never seen before.
That wisp of debris was so minute that if his divine sense hadn't been honed by a thousand years of bloodshed, he would never have been able to detect it. It did nothing, simply clinging there silently, like a snowflake landing on clothing. And he had already killed twenty gatekeepers; twenty snowflakes piled together, finally becoming a perceptible weight.
Upon clearing the twentieth level, he stopped and closed his eyes. His divine sense surged into the depths of his consciousness, beginning a comprehensive scan.
At the edge of his sea of consciousness, twenty extremely fine grayish-white dots of light floated. They were arranged in an extremely hidden array, and if Jiang Chen had not personally experienced the most advanced forbidden soul technique in the cultivation world, he would never have been able to recognize the purpose of this array.
Soul Mirror Array.
It wasn't an offensive formation, but a probing one. It silently reflected his sea of consciousness. His memories, his emotions, his fears, his obsessions—everything he had ever experienced was being read, copied, and transmitted back to some unknown terminal, bit by bit, under the reflection of this formation.
No wonder Morgiana possesses the strongest mental attack in the entire Apostle realm. Her methods don't rely on overwhelming force, but rather on delving into the depths of the soul, analyzing everything about her target, and then striking their most vulnerable point with the utmost precision.
He could crush all those grayish-white specks of light with his sword domain. Twenty soul fragments were nothing; they couldn't even withstand his true essence for a moment!
But Jiang Chen did not make a move.
Because he knew that fear was the most difficult thing to depict, because your world may never have had anything that truly terrified you, and the fear that Morghana had searched for was perhaps what he longed to see. He wanted to know what his greatest fear was after a thousand years.
The corners of his mouth turned up slightly. It was the same curve that had appeared during Astra's battle, carrying a hint of danger and almost expectant smile.
He withdrew his consciousness, reopened his eyes, and continued walking to the next level.
The 21st floor. The 22nd floor. The 23rd floor.
He continued to crush each layer. With each layer, the number of grayish-white light spots increased. Twenty became fifty, fifty became one hundred, one hundred became two hundred. They grew denser and more numerous at the edge of his consciousness, becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.
He began to sense that the fragments were not merely silent observers; they were attempting to resonate with his memories. It gently touched upon the scene of his first arrival at the Qingyun Sect a thousand years ago—the memory of being bullied by his senior brothers and kneeling in the snow for three days and three nights in the cold. The ripples spread to the second area, where his memories of his first mission after entering the inner sect were sealed. Back then, he was a naive young man, nearly having his neck bitten off by a demonic beast; it was his senior sister, who was on the mission with him, who shielded him from the fatal blow with her own arm. The ripples continued to spread, touching even deeper areas—his despair when he failed to break through to the Golden Core stage, his anger when betrayed by his most trusted friend during the Nascent Soul stage, and the loneliness of his body being shattered by heavenly lightning during his tribulation, leaving only a wisp of his soul drifting in the void for a full hundred years.
All these memories began to tremble slightly upon being touched by that ripple.
But Jiang Chen's expression remained unchanged. He continued to crush the guardians of each level. On the twenty-fifth level was an apostle who could manipulate time, but he shattered the flow of time with a single sword strike. On the thirtieth level was an apostle who could replicate his own abilities, but he blasted it to pieces with ten times the power. The thirty-fifth level was a mental labyrinth woven from countless vengeful spirits, which he burned to ashes with a blazing fire.
After each layer was completed, the number of grayish-white light spots increased, and the ripples touched deeper memories. The trembling he felt when he killed for the first time a thousand years ago, the joy he felt when he was praised by his master for the first time, the fear he felt when he faced a monster alone for the first time, the warmth he felt when his master gently corrected the angle of his wrist from behind while he practiced swordsmanship under the moonlight for the first time—all of these were touched by that ripple.
Jiang Chen accepted everything without question.
The memories of a thousand years in the world of cultivation not only gradually appeared in Morgana's mind, but also allowed Jiang Chen to recall those past events little by little.
As she looked at these seemingly indifferent past events, Morgiana's brows gradually furrowed, because... she seemed to have not found anything that could truly frighten Jiang Chen. Or rather, Jiang Chen's path to godhood, though fraught with difficulties, was mostly smooth sailing, overwhelmingly powerful!