Chapter 1499
Will everything come to an end?
The world decayed at that moment.
Because Pereira decided to give up.
As people often say, there are gains and losses; you gain something and you lose something in return. But can the reverse be true as well? If you are willing to lose something, you can gain what you want: losing principles can give you power, losing your bottom line can give you freedom, and losing emotions... can give you a new self.
Not the version of myself that has been transformed and reshaped by this world, but the earliest version of myself, the version that didn't need to consider what ideals and beliefs were, didn't need to agonize over what killing and turning against each other were, and didn't even need to think about what emotion and reason were. As long as I followed the guidance of my instincts, I could naturally find the meaning of my existence.
In the history of mortals, no moment has ever been as long as this one, freezing the instant into eternity. Many regard time as an inviolable law, an insurmountable chasm, believing that mortals, who always struggle against fate and conquer death, can never contend with the mighty passage of time. Yet what is happening today only proves that time is merely a plaything in the hands of the strongest, to be molded at will.
When a single thought arises, space and time become still.
The girl knelt curled up in the mud, her long, withered hair clinging to her pale face like dry grass. Only her hands, clenched tightly against her chest, revealed the heart beneath her palms, now utterly cold from the memories of the Thai Air Force and cracked and shattered by self-loathing. Her knuckles, grimaced from the excessive force, showed her a profound realization: she had finally become the very thing she had once feared most.
The groans of mortals are not far away, but at this moment, no one is willing to listen.
"……what."
Pereike heard it all—the screams of the plague laws awakening within her bloodline, the jubilant dance of countless calamities in the void, and the final sigh from her own soul. Now, that sigh was transforming into a silent decay, spreading to every corner of the tormented world, withering life, fading civilization, and causing the all-seeing eyes of the Mystic King, Ovira, to freeze abruptly. A profound, yet still painful, sorrow welled up within her, a sorrow she had foreseen from ancient memories, a sorrow she could not prevent—familiar yet filled with despair.
The phantom dragon roared, its wings spreading to blot out the sky and temporarily block out the torrential rain. Vast magical power gathered around it, forming a chilling vortex, yet not a single attack was directed at Perec, for she knew that the fall of a god was unstoppable, just as the return of royalty was irreversible. Even a mortal, once determined to awaken, would not be deterred by any external storm, let alone a high-ranking enforcer of the laws.
The only thing Ovira could do, and was doing, was to construct an isolating barrier at all costs, sealing the invisible, yet ever-growing plague factors within a limited space and time. With each flow of magic, purifying the invisible miasma, a scale would peel from the sacred and majestic dragon, like dust-like fragments drifting from the worm-eaten pages of an ancient book. Even though she understood the laws of nature, forcibly isolating a law-level plague still came at a great cost. Ovira knew it was futile, but if she didn't do it, the impending demise would only be swifter.
The person afflicted with the plague remained unmoved by Ovira's resistance, simply gazing silently into the void. Perhaps she was seeing scenes from long ago, those things that she once knew so well yet hated so much, now returning unstoppably, for it was destined that a person who had forgotten the past would be subjected to an even more violent impact when the old days reappeared.
"—"
It defies description; it was a mournful cry that abruptly silenced everything, a putrid and sticky call, like millions of mosquitoes gathering into a cloud in the sky, or thousands of ants drifting into a sea on the earth. This was the messenger of misfortune, bringing the message of death. Life was coming to an end, the body began to fester, and the soul gradually decayed. Only by facing death with equanimity could one gain its favor.
On Pere's body, the long robe once stained with medicine and blood decayed without wind. On the exposed surface of her skin, countless fine yet filthy, dull yet glaring, ancient and malevolent yet new as if newly born, lines were gradually appearing. These were symbols of worldly calamities and plagues; for every famine and plague that claimed countless lives, countless memories were recorded. One, ten, a hundred, a thousand? Or tens of thousands, even hundreds of millions—the list was endless.
It should be said that all living matter and breathing beings have suffered from disease and plague, even a grain of dust, a breath, a rain, or even an entire continent; their decline can be predicted and observed. Therefore, for every life and civilization in the universe, at this very moment, converging on this battlefield, are as many pathogenic factors as there are. Billions of pathogens, like calamities with their own will, gather into fog, converge into miasma, and finally surge into a mighty plague tide, flowing unstoppably from the beginning of life to the end of death, instantly engulfing that trembling figure.
They are the trajectory of decline, the measure of elimination, and the trials and selections that constitute the cruelest standards of evolution. They once lurked silently in the shadows of all things' bloodlines, following certain specific rules, quietly usurping a country, overthrowing a civilization, and even wiping out a race. Later, the only will that could control them disappeared, or rather, voluntarily relinquished its control over them, preferring to live in this world as an ordinary healer rather than as a witch spreading plagues.
The monarchy, a symbol of disease, lives only to save others. Perhaps she feels this is the path she has chosen, but isn't it a betrayal of the laws she wields?
Thus, these beings, disliked by mortals and now despised by their masters, were forced to accept their fate. They were no longer invincible, but enemies in the eyes of mortals—enemies that could be studied, analyzed, and for which corresponding treatments could be found, and of course, killed. Once upon a time, mortals proudly proclaimed that they had conquered disease: dragons left ancient books containing information on Stone Scale Disease to gather dust in the Great Archives; the Mirror Elves had long forgotten the terrifying plague known as Glass Disease; and humans tirelessly proclaimed to the world that they were the most tenacious race on Mirror Star, having successively defeated the Black Death, the Plague, Malaria, and other calamities, asserting that disease could kill ten million people, but could not subdue the soul of a race.
Perhaps they've all forgotten how many civilizations and races perished in cruel plagues during the most ancient and primitive times. They simply died out, yet some acted as if they never existed. But there's no need to explain; thereafter, the power of plague, like decaying vines, coiled and climbed, infiltrating every crevice, always a shadow of civilization's progress, silently awaiting its opportune moment. It will eventually come, because everyone knows that no one can completely sever ties with their past, let alone a young girl's power. They are the only beings in the world with eternal souls; though they die, they are also reborn, and eternity means… they will always return to the very beginning.
Thus, it seeps in, erodes, rots, expands, and withers...
The speed was so slow that it exceeded the limits of what the human eye could tolerate. Each germ shimmered with a unique, dark luster. Some were scarlet like spots of septicemia, some were eerie green like pus from gangrene, some flowed with the burning heat of high fever, and some were frozen with the icy chill of shivering. In the end, what was wrapped up was a cocoon of disease that could not be measured by volume or contained by the soul.
A completely different force is settling and fermenting within it, no longer the immature, hesitant, and ridiculously pitying pity for mortal life it once was, but a pure, cold, yet infinitely destructive force. It is the divinity of the plague monarchy itself awakening... or perhaps awakening.
For the first time, the colossal dragon phantom, coiled like a mountain, trembled almost imperceptibly. In the eyes of the Mysterious King, reflecting the truth of all things, the gray-purple cocoon was deeply reflected, along with the endless decay: In glorious times, the dragon, with its resilient body and will, conquered the threat of Stonescale Disease, relegating the disease to the margins of history; in dark times, the Mirror Elves were nearly wiped out by the torment of Glass Disease, the surviving members etching fear into the memories of the Origin Stone; in an era of cataclysmic change, a group of mushroom people struggling to survive in the underground world mistakenly worshipped evil as a god, thus suffering a curse, from which a new race was born…
Ultimately, it even traces back to the moment of life's birth. This is not surprising; all laws ultimately trace back to that moment, for it was also the moment the goddess created creation. No one witnessed that scene firsthand, but when the goddess sowed the first seed of life, all the necessary laws were naturally born. Destiny began to turn from that moment; darkness embraced all things, mystery witnessed knowledge, and a selection mechanism called "plague" was born. The mortal world became the vessel for cultivating disease, and living beings were destined to struggle, though that was by no means the gods' intention.
……
Inside the cocoon of disease, time lost its meaning, and space lost its scale. Pereike floated in the decaying center formed by her own disease-causing factors. Her consciousness, freed from the constraints of her mortal body, drifted in the endless river of suffering. She witnessed the struggle and annihilation of life, the resistance and collapse of civilization, and countless beings coughing, feverish, convulsing, and perishing in the torrent of disease. The suffering she witnessed, the extinction she saw, was far greater than what Ovira could only watch helplessly as the plague spread from the outside of the cocoon: cells ruptured under the erosion of pathogens, the immune system collapsed in its frenzied counterattack, and the genetic code was distorted by mutation; ancient tribes were decimated by the plague, leaving only ruins and skeletons; hospitals were overflowing with festering bodies, and doctors futilely tried every known treatment…
Her consciousness expanded infinitely, seeping and spreading along every type of pathogen. The horrific scenes of countless worlds and the cries of countless lives washed over her senses like a torrent. Cold death statistics, scorching gasps of pain, the collapse of grand civilizations, and the extinguishing of tiny hopes intertwined to form a vast, all-encompassing gray net. These heavy and tainted memories of the plague forcefully washed over the girl's soul, attempting to cleanse her of any unwarranted pity and hesitation, molding her into a true deity. Just as Ovira might have thought, divinity is the qualification to execute selection, while humanity can only be selected. As a deity of plague, the girl obviously has more to decide, and therefore, she should naturally possess the characteristics of impartiality and ruthlessness. Only in this way can the laws of evolution be ensured not to be desecrated, which is also a manifestation of cosmic balance.
Pereira resisted this change—yet had no choice but to accept it.
Because she knew that this was a price she had to pay.
"Ah..." A sigh rang out from the cocoon, symbolizing the arrival of a new life.
The cocoon rots layer by layer, like the most rotten mushroom umbrella disintegrating in the rain. Peeling back the layers, one can see the veins and blood vessels, where what lies layered and dim is not disease, but fate.
Pereike slowly opened her eyes. Her pale, long hair moved without wind, the ends of which were covered with fine fungal strands. Its color seemed to inherit the first layer of gray-white that appeared when all things decayed, and it still exuded an aura of death. Her once clear, emerald eyes, which reflected herbs and hope, were no longer clear. Instead, they had become murky and distant, like an infected nebula, containing the roots of all diseases, past and future.
Her body began to swell and mutate, because the plague needed to manifest the fear of existence, to be omnipresent like the laws of nature, to proclaim its equality. So the tiny figure collapsed and reassembled in the rain, constantly becoming larger and more grotesque, eventually becoming the source of the disease on the entire battlefield. It even made people feel that the struggle of life, the decline of civilization, the extinction of races, and even the end of the world were all repeating themselves in this process.
Countless pathogenic factors wove themselves into the shape of a butterfly. This butterfly of death, lurking in the shadows of history and reincarnated countless times, now exists as large as its host, yet seems to encapsulate even greater pain and despair. Its shattered wings fluttered slowly behind the girl, like a rotting wind sweeping across a desolate field. One wing represented life, a vibrant afterimage of life's struggle; the other represented death, reflecting the eternal silence of life's demise. If life and death are predetermined, why do people always endure pain and torment? Perhaps it's because they are too stubborn, unable to let go? Clearly, by simply giving up, they could find themselves again, spared the harshness of the world, the ravages of heat and cold, and the uncertainty of their physical and mental well-being.
All struggles, the end of all things, the disease of equality, death of equality, elimination of equality, demise of equality...
All of this will come to an end here. (End of Chapter)