98: Chapter 98 The Flame

The order had been given.

But only the players responded.

The Romance of the Science Guy had entered working mode; there was no more fear in his eyes, only an endless waterfall of data.

He even published a real-time updated shared spreadsheet in the alliance channel, with a simple and brutal title: "creation furnace Energy Gap and Existing Asset Conversion Rate Estimate."

On it, every divine artifact, every spirit vein, and the cultivation level of every survivor were coldly quantified into a string of numbers.

In the eyes of the native cultivators, this string of numbers was no different from a devil's ledger.

"Lunatics! You bunch of mad demons from beyond the heavens!"

An old cultivator with white hair and beard, a Supreme Elder from an ancient sect in the Central Sacred Land, had his dao robes in disarray, and his hand pointing at Outlaw Zhang San trembled like a candle in the wind.

"We cultivators seek longevity and cultivate the Great Dao! How can you treat our life's cultivation fruits as firewood and turn the inheritance of our ancestors into ashes! This is a betrayal of the Dao! It is self-destruction!"

"Betrayal?" Outlaw Zhang San didn't even look at him, staring only at the dead, silent creation furnace, his voice terrifyingly calm. "When your 'Dao' cannot even keep you alive, then it is just a fart. What we need to do now is survive. Use your 'Dao,' use our 'lives,' and use everything we can to survive."

His words carried no trace of worldly emotion, yet they were more hurtful than any insult.

The elder's face flushed red with anger, and unable to catch his breath, he nearly collapsed.

Panic and resistance spread like a plague through the camp of native cultivators.

They could accept dying heroically and returning their souls to the heavens and earth, but they could not accept being treated as resources, having their value calculated on some cold spreadsheet, and then being thrown into the creation furnace without leaving a trace of their existence.

Just in this dead silence, where tension was high and hope collided fiercely with despair, a figure slowly walked out from the camp of the native cultivators.

It was the Ninth Prince.

He was still wearing the cloud-patterned brocade robe that symbolized his status as a prince of the Sacred Land, but it was already tattered and stained with blood and dust.

His face was haggard; the spirit that once belonged to a chosen one had been worn away by the winds and frosts of the apocalypse, leaving only exhaustion and numbness.

Everyone's gaze instantly focused on him.

The players thought he was going to represent the native forces for a final stand.

The native cultivators hoped he would step forward and refute the crazy ideas of those "foreign demons from beyond."

However, the Ninth Prince just walked silently, passing through the confronting crowds, step by step, until he stood directly in front of the blood-colored interface, All Things Return to One.

He didn't look at the players, nor did he look at his fellow countrymen with their complex expressions.

He only lifted his head, looking up at the World Heart that was breathtakingly magnificent yet devoid of life.

His eyes were so hollow that they seemed capable of swallowing all light.

"I was once the Ninth Prince of the Sacred Land."

He spoke, his voice raspy like two rough stones rubbing together, yet it clearly spread throughout this void space.

"I once possessed the most noble bloodline in this world, the top-tier cultivation techniques, and the most abundant spirit veins. I once thought that the 'Dao' we adhered to was the eternal, immovable foundation of this world. I once... despised you."

His gaze finally turned to the player camp.

In that gaze, there was no hatred, no disdain, only a complex emotion of having experienced the vicissitudes of life and seen through everything.

"I despised your vulgarity, your madness, and your lack of reverence for life and rules. When you broke through the Chen family, stirred up the Demon Realm, and even caused massive waves in the Sacred Land, I only felt that you were a group of... 'anomalies' that had to be eliminated."

"Until the apocalypse arrived."

The Ninth Prince's lips curled into an arc of extreme sorrow.

"My kingdom is gone. My relatives, my people, turned into distorted monsters in the scarlet turbid currents. The 'Dao' I believed in became a deadly poison. Everything I was proud of turned into the most ridiculous joke in the world overnight."

Scenes flashed through his mind.

The burning Sacred City, the unspeakable "black sun" in the sky, fellow disciples twisting into bloody, mangled monsters before him, and him leading the remnants like stray dogs, fleeing toward the "Pure Land" built by the players that he had once looked down upon the most.

He remembered when they, these defeated remnants, arrived, the expressions on the players' faces mixed with the excitement of "Holy shit, a big NPC is here" and the disgust of "Tsk, another mouth to feed."

He remembered that during the first time they coordinated to resist the wave of aberrations, he was still focused on formations and spiritual power coordination, while the players were already shouting "For the Ancestors," throwing out a bunch of strange artifacts labeled with the "a popular chinese chili sauce brand, used here as a symbolic name for the weapon" trademark, yet capable of exploding with sky-filling holy light.

He remembered a player who was arguing tactics with him one second, and the next, in order to plug a gap in the defense line, smiled and shouted at him, "Your Highness, watch closely, this is called 'art'!", then rushed into the pile of monsters without hesitation and detonated himself.

He couldn't understand it at the time, even feeling it was blasphemy.

Until that moment, he realized in a daze.

This group of foreign anomalies, it wasn't that they didn't revere life.

They were just practicing the "protection" in their hearts in a way he couldn't possibly understand.

Every death of theirs, every resurrection, every charge without counting the cost, was not a game, but the "Dao" they had chosen!

"I once asked your leader," the Ninth Prince's voice became low, "asked him, what do you fight for?"

He looked at Outlaw Zhang San.

"He told me, to... flip the table."

Outlaw Zhang San was expressionless, just looking at him quietly.

"Now, I understand."

The Ninth Prince slowly turned around, facing all the panicked native cultivators, his back straightened at this moment, as if he had turned back into that peerless, elegant Ninth Prince.

"Everyone, we have no way out. The Evil God will not show mercy because we adhere to the tradition, and Fairy Yunshang will not grant pity because we give up resistance."

"We always thought that saving the world was the responsibility of 'heroes.' But these visitors from beyond have taught me one thing—when the world is about to be destroyed, every living being that still wants to survive has the qualification, and the responsibility, to become the handful of firewood that ignites hope."

His gaze swept over the Sacred Land elder who was still sternly berating him earlier.

"This is not a betrayal of the Dao. This is using ourselves to forge a new path that can allow this world... to survive!"

As his voice fell, he no longer hesitated, resolutely taking that step.

One step, stepping into the coverage of the blood-colored halo of the All Things Return to One system.

Hum—

The entire space seemed to emit a low, mournful cry.

Everyone held their breath, staring fixedly at that figure.

Light rose from beneath the Ninth Prince's feet, like mercury pouring onto the ground, instantly swallowing him.

That was not a warm holy light, but a cold light of decomposition that seemed capable of analyzing all things.

The first to be stripped away was his cultivation.

Strands of brilliant law threads were forcibly pulled out from his limbs and bones, like a reversed river of stars, merging into the huge creation furnace.

His Qi Refining, Foundation Establishment, Golden Core... his life's fruits of the Dao were all reduced to the purest energy at this moment.

Following that was the golden mark on his forehead, symbolizing the royal bloodline of the Sacred Land.

It flickered violently a few times, let out a mournful cry, then shattered inch by inch, turning into wisps of more pure, more ancient source energy, melting into the light.

The data stream in The Romance of the Science Guy's eyes had turned into a blinding red storm.

"Warning! High-concentration bloodline source sacrifice detected! Energy levels are climbing exponentially!"

"Warning! 'Emotion and Memory' module activated! Extracting spiritual energy!"

Inside the light curtain, the Ninth Prince's figure became translucent.

Countless fragments of light and shadow flew out from his fading body, dancing around him.

Those were his memories.

It was the warm touch of being held in his mother's arms when he was an infant.

It was the annoyance of being punished to copy classics after he cut down his father's favorite spirit bamboo during his first sword practice as a youth.

It was the high spirits of riding horses with his brothers in the royal hunting grounds when he was a young man.

It was the heart-wrenching pain of witnessing the destruction of the Sacred Land and the wailing of his people.

...

These memories, these emotions, all the precious things that constitute why a "person" is a person, were now being ruthlessly crushed and refined by that cold light, turning into the most dazzling spiritual flame, soaring into the sky!

Skillful Hands Mending covered her mouth tightly, tears uncontrollably streaming from her eyes.

She felt as if she could feel the love, hate, and enmity belonging to the Ninth Prince being forcibly stripped away.

That was not lines of code, that was... a living person being completely "deleted."

Finally, when all the light and shadow had burned out, the Ninth Prince's almost completely transparent phantom showed a relieved, liberated smile toward the players.

His mouth shape seemed to say two words.

Thank you.

The next instant, the light flared brightly!

His existence, along with that last phantom, was completely erased.

From the past, to the present, to the future.

In the long river of time, there was no longer such a person as the "Ninth Prince."

Dead silence.

Absolute silence.

Just in this dead silence, that creation furnace, which had always been motionless like a stubborn rock, suddenly...

Gently, it trembled.

Thump.

Like a giant's heart, after sleeping for eternity, for the first time, it emitted a faint, yet soul-shaking... heartbeat.

Following that, in the pitch-black, abyss-like core of the furnace, a bean-sized, golden-red spark ignited out of thin air.

It was very weak, very small, as if it could be extinguished at any moment.

But it was shining.

In this eternal night shrouded in despair, it lit the first handful... of firewood.