Chapter 1300 - The Shadow of Lockmarton (1/2)

“Vaporize?” Hao Ren and Lily were stunned. “What do you mean vaporize?”

“We don’t know what’s going on! The monster’s been quiet, but it suddenly screamed and—”

Hao Ren interrupted, “Take it into the city immediately! We will meet you outside.”

It did not take long before they brought the Shadow of Nightmares to the cathedral. Coming together were Lily’s beast guards. With prior understanding reached in the city, the abhumans no longer had to hide outside the city. Their appearance still shocked several clergies in the cathedral. But it was only a minor problem compared to the Shadow of Nightmares.

The monster was indeed vaporizing.

Smoke rose with a hiss as its body gradually turned into gas, and its size shrank slowly at an imperceptible pace. The change was extremely slow, but since it had been going on for a while, Hao Ren could see that the monster was even weaker as it had shrunk by a third compared to before.

Since Shadow of Nightmares displayed a temporary state of sensibility in Fort Raven, it had been in a half-dead state. The sacredness of Sanctum was making it even quieter than ever. But the weakness was not fatal until the vaporization phenomenon happened.

“It has been going on for 30 minutes, and it’s getting worse,” said a monk who was from outside the city earlier. “Before the vaporization began, the thing had shouted some words, but there was no logic in them, and it was not communicable.”

Hao Ren looked up. “What did it shout?”

The monk thought for a moment before saying, “The name of Rockmarton, the Forgotten Abyss, and it repeatedly mentioned the ‘door’ and the ‘seal.’ And also the Infinite Battle, a long battle on the plains. But no history in Collow has ever mentioned about this battle.”

“That’s it?”

The monk spread out his hand. “That’s it. Oh yeah, it spoke not only commonly-used languages but also a few ancient languages, which have almost gone extinct. We could barely understand some of them.”

“The Infinite Battle, the ‘door,’ and Rockmarton…” Hao Ren bent down and examined the smoked meat. “The door and Rockmarton are understandably about the prison, but I can’t wrap my brain around what the Infinite Battle means.”

While saying, Hao Ren carefully reached out into the smoke and touched the monster, which felt soft and disgusting in texture.

A spot on Hao Ren’s right hand, once burned by the blood of the goddess, began to feel hot as some dark-red marks appeared on his hand. The smoke around the monster seemed to be avoiding these ‘sacred marks.’

Hao Ren had noticed this phenomenon. A thought came to mind, and he reached his hand even further than before.

While it felt cold to touch, a series of illusions began to flash across his eyes like a slide show.

He saw that a magnificently bright temple was rising, and twenty-one giant guardians stood in front of a mountain of light and made a vow. These guardians, cast in sacred rocks and steel, were unshakable.

He saw these guardians protecting an ancient prisoner under an order. In the spiritual world, he knew that the prisoner was old beyond imagination, more ancient than the First Borns and the guardian giants.

He saw the guardians cultivating life on the earth, using the order of life to suppress and influence the Chaos.

He saw the fall of the goddess, and all the prior efforts went in vain. Evil struck back, and the Order started to decline.

Images flashed, and fragments of memories fleeted. It seemed that some power was forcibly erasing and weakening these memories, of which Hao Ren could only see the ending parts.

In a barren world shrouded in the dusk, the earth was dry and cracked. The sky was burning in intense heat. A vast shadow was floating behind the clouds with many tentacles and weird limbs dangling and sweeping past. The evil power of ancient times was squirming in its cage, brewing the fire of anger that could engulf the entire world.

On the ground under the shadows, monsters went on a rampage, striking a giant pillar that supported the heavens and the earth. This giant pillar was clean and bright as if it were made of a sterling silver mirror. But the image reflected in the mirror was not the dry earth and burning sky in their surroundings but of another world, which was filled with vibrant lives.

At the foot of the giant column, blood and broken limbs of various monsters piled up into mountains. Vargrotesqueesque and deformed creatures were killing each other in confusion as if they were caught in a perpetual rage. These monsters seemed to be splitting into two factions fighting for the control of the giant pillar. But a killing instinct could be controlling them. Under the will of Rockmarton, they killed all creatures around them.

And then, the illusions disappeared.