Chapter 360 (1/2)

Opening his eyes slowly, Hao Ren found himself in unfamiliar territory.

He remembered what had just happened. He remembered his battle with the gigantic brain. He also remembered why he was seeing this vision—he knew for certain that it was just an illusion, and the source of the illusion was the gigantic brain.

He saw an ocean—crimson in colour, vast, and endless. There were no mountains, no land, no islands. Everywhere he turned he saw a blood-red ocean, undulating under the sky. The sky, which used to be pale and cloudy was dyed red. Hao Ren looked down at his feet, and still all he saw was the ocean… No, that was not actually where he stood, because he could not see his own feet. It was as if his eyes were all that was left of him. He had no idea what perspective he was viewing all of this from, because he could not even see his own shadow on the surface of the ocean.

Hao Ren fretted a little as he discovered that he could move around in this peculiar space. However, his movements felt slow as if he was a bloated, clumsy plankton.

But at the same time, he knew that the gigantic brain in the real world had come to a standstill. Through some inexplicable connection, he could still feel his hand touching the giant brain’s tentacle. His mind was fused with its mind and in this state, the gigantic brain was helpless despite its powerful mind attacking ability. It could only let Hao Ren break into its ancient memory like a mulfunctioned machine.

Hao Ren lowered his head and fell into deep thought. He had an accidental glimpse of the vision earlier and their second encounter validated his suspicion. He tried to stabilise the illusion, but he had no idea how fast time flew in the illusion world compared to time in the real world. So, he coud not be sure when the MDT would wake him up. But before that happened, he seized the opportunity to scan the monotonous and boring world, trying to understand what messages the gigantic brain was trying to convey in its memory.

While Hao Ren was comtemplating the vision, a loud boom from afar took him by surprise. As he looked towards the direction of the sound, he saw a bulge in the red ocean as if something was about to break out of the water. A moment later, a gigantic sphere—red and a few hundred metres in radius burst out of the water and rose into the air.

The sphere was not smooth at all. Its surface was covered with strange lines, giving it a mysterious as well as sacred kind of feeling. There were also some fine, wavy hair and slits, which looked like facial organs on its surface. One could not help but wonder if this was some kind of life form. Hao Ren was in awe as he stared at the gigantic sphere rising into the air slowly. It was like a vanguard of what was to come, because the same noise began to come from all directions and more spheres like the first one rose from the water into the air like dandelion seeds.

Let’s just call them dandelion seeds. Well, seeds with a radius of more than 200 m.

A word suddenly came to mind: sowing.

Hao Ren had a weird feeling and he looked back. A vague figure had solidified from the red seawater and appeared behind him. Its facial features were barely visible, but it was probably a female. It seemed like she was looking at Hao Ren, or maybe she was just eyeing those spheres, or talking to someone or herself.

“Hey… what’s so fun about those faraway places? You really want to go and see the stars…”

A loud crash was followed by the flickering of the red illusion. Then, everything began to crumble as images quickly flashed across Hao Ren’s mind. He saw the cycle of life, the growth of plants and trees, extinction and evolution of species, a group of reptiles raising their claws up on land, a group of deep-sea fish building their habitat on the seabed, a group of apes cautiously holding the first torch, and giant insects with armour leaving behind their own portraits on the rocks.

He saw countless species rising from ignorance and falling again in a loss.

Then, everything shattered in a bang. He had a feeling that he had not seen anything.

His head ached as the deafening whizz of the MDT pierced into his brain. Hao Ren began to feel his own body and the vision before him became even more bizarre. He felt the weight of the gun in his hand while the MDT yelled, “Yes! It stopped!”

Hao Ren instinctively raised his hand, aiming with what was left of his strength. Then, he pulled the trigger.

The chaotic images before him disappeared completely and saw that he was back at the scene of the cult ritual. The barrel of his inspector gun was exuding a bluish-white afterglow while half of the strange gigantic brain had crystallised.