In the profound darkness underground, a strange giant snake was moaning in pain.
Meng Luo's plan was very well-thought-out; by sacrificing his own body to get rid of it, he successfully took the Totem over. His Totem was now no longer restrained by the limitations of the Totem Deprivation technique and was capable of devouring all the other Totems of the Desolate army.
While the serpent was originally jet-black, each of its scales was now a brightly glowing crimson iris, his body constantly writhing, laughing while also howling in unceasing pain.
So much grudge had accumulated inside the serpent and fused themselves with the Totems they originated from. While the other Totems inside the snake were in conflict, they were also supporting one another; this was similar to the Desolates in the past, as every individual was out to hunt the others, but they were all members of the same race contributing to the same greater goal.
Meanwhile, at the forehead of the serpent, a crimson iris larger than the rest was opened wide, inside of which a certain consciousness was in confusion.
「 Who am I? 」
「 Meng 37? Meng Luo? Or the Desolate Spirit? 」
「 It doesn't matter now, because it hurts so much! 」
After the world's foundational consciousness began to favor Negary, the Desolate Spirit had gradually fallen from its position as a world spirit. As more of its authorities were stripped away by Negary, it gradually became the first God of the Ancestral Wild.
Countless individuals had always wanted to enter the Ancestral Wild and remain inside, but they all failed because of the world's hidden restraints. Ironically, the Desolate Spirit had actually managed to achieve this before anyone else by falling from a higher position.
After that, it fell into the pit that Meng Luo had accidentally dug.
Because the serpent had devoured too many Totems, a large number of Desolate consciousnesses suddenly became unprecedentedly close to one another, causing their connection to the collective subconsciousness to also become wider than ever before.
As a result of this, the Desolates' God, who had fallen all the way from being the world's spirit to its current state, didn't even get time to rest in the Ancestral Wild before it fell again, falling from being a God in the Ancestral Wild to becoming an earthbound serpent god.
The force of the descent then proceeded to destroy the firm structure that Meng Luo meticulously created, pushing him down from the heightened position that the beast tooth had helped him ascend to, forcing him to bear the full brunt of the grudgeful consciousness below.
Due to the beast tooth's uniqueness, this process didn't cause Meng Luo to completely lose himself and instead fused him with the Desolate Spirit. Meanwhile, the Totem that was created from the fusion of countless devoured Totems became his mortal Divine Form.
The serpent had now surpassed its restraints as a Totem and become a super lifeform similar to the Source Energy fruits created by the Moon Tree. Additionally, due to accumulating so much negative consciousnesses, it was born with a disposition towards the side of chaos.
In fact, the serpent had already obtained a Seed of Truth not too long after its conception. With countless Desolates having their Totems forcefully stripped away from their bodies, the friction of their souls being entangled combined with the accumulated grudge had manifested as excruciating pain that filled every last bit of the serpent's being.
「 Pain is created from conflict, a natural reaction of either the mental consciousness or the physical form conflicting with outside influence that they can't accept. But then, which one is 'me'? 」
The serpent continued to writhe in pain underground. Both its body and mind were constantly conflicting with itself, causing its entire body to be in increasingly more pain.
「 Transmit this to more people, the more the better! They should all have to feel this pain that I feel! 」hundreds, thousands of bright-red eyes opened all at once, observing the consciousness of living beings from an aspect of Reality that few would be able to witness.
Within this aspect, there existed an ocean of consciousness similar to that of a maelstrom. The serpent god was at the very bottom of the maelstrom, using its own venom to dye this maelstrom completely black. Each drop of water within this maelstrom, if viewed from a different aspect, would appear as a passage that connected to one head snake.
Only a few hundred weak strands of white threads were lingering at the border of this maelstrom, with a large number of others being within a different collection of consciousnesses within the same aspect of reality.
The serpent wanted to head outside of the maelstrom and enter the neighboring ocean of consciousness, but a golden eye had slowly opened to greet it. Being struck by the golden eye's gaze, the serpent sank back down into the depths of the maelstrom.
Pained screams of suffering spread all over this ocean of consciousness, which continued to attack the remaining white threads that hadn't been infected.
…
"Guh!" Yun Yi suddenly uttered a pained grunt and handed the trunk in his hand to Po Nan.
The snake eye within the trunk suddenly manifested a lot of veins that rapidly moved around, one of them even manifested into a mouth that madly tried to break the trunk from the inside.
"What's the matter?" Po Nan stepped on the trunk and controlled his Cede to form transparent blades that cut off the veins.
As the black blood spilled, more snake heads emerged from within, forcing Po Nan to cut them up over ten more times before they became withered. However, some black aura could clearly be seen moving within the snake eye.
"It's nothing, the target had just suddenly lashed out. The power of the attacks just abruptly got stronger, so I was caught a bit off-guard" Yun Yi opened his eyes again and replied.
Just now, that monster had unleashed a huge amount of power through the tiny passage connecting to his subconsciousness as if it wanted to force the passage open.
One's consciousness was complicated, as countless waves of information are constantly flowing and intercepting one another, then finally result in 'thoughts', but it was also intricate, as every small flow of information could affect your final decision.
Only those who had achieved a Pathway and fully encompassed their existence within their Pathway would be capable of grasping their every thought and be omniscient of the information contained within.
Of course, Pathway Entities would not constantly maintain a state of omniscience over their own thoughts. This was because being totally omniscient of oneself and one's thoughts wasn't necessarily a good thing. When all of your thoughts were within your grasp, you'd find that they would form a closed loop that all of your decisions wouldn't be able to escape from no matter how hard you tried.
For normal people, the amount of information within the consciousness of a Pathway Entity would be more than enough for them to resolve any and every problem that might occur anywhere in any world, but to a Pathway Entity, this state would only hinder their improvement.
Because of this, unless absolutely necessary, Pathway Entities would always have their thoughts stay in an active state, constantly absorbing more information into their consciousness and organizing it to expand their closed loop.
During a battle between Pathway Entities, unless it was a curb stomp, they had to constantly exchange information with their surroundings on a literal information battlefield. Such battles were competitions to see who would be able to better process between known and unknown information, discern between the truth and lies, as well as their ability to release such information.
Knowing the importance of consciousness and thought, Yun Yi would not underestimate the informational attack from his subconsciousness. He couldn't discern clearly what every last bit of his thought was capable of, so he could only do the bare minimum and isolate the chaotic information outside of his own consciousness.
The Desolates' collective consciousness ocean was as good as done, information of the serpent's pain had continuously infected, polluted, and pulled more Desolates into the abyss of suffering.
Only the few Desolates whose thought process had already changed enough to affect their own subconscious and became isolated from the Desolates' collective consciousness ocean were able to escape the infection.
"Let's hurry and find that guy. If we allow him to keep sending this chaotic information, I think I'm going to actually go insane after a while" Yun Yi massaged his aching forehead.
