Chapter 1 Surprise Always Comes Unexpectedly

Surprises always come unexpectedly—at least Hao Ren hadn't expected to hear such stimulating news after establishing a connection with Yggdrasil. He realized then that he might finally be touching upon the ultimate secret of the mass time-traveling event from ten thousand years ago.

"You said the Creation Goddess ordered you to traverse the Reality Wall?" Hao Ren tried hard to control the excitement in his voice, but in reality, this control was just psychological: in a state of direct mental connection, he could hardly conceal his excited emotions, at least not to the extent he was currently feeling.

"Of course, that's what I just said," Yggdrasil answered crisply. "You sound...excited?"

"I've been investigating this matter. Ten thousand years ago, a large number of races entered my home world, which is on this side of the 'Wall,' from another universe. What exactly happened back then?"

This time, Yggdrasil didn't answer immediately but instead asked, "How do I know you can be trusted?"

Hao Ren was taken aback, then remembered he had a witness on his side: "Oh, surely you know Mimir? He's your brother, and he's here with me now—and he should have talked to you before, shouldn't he? You don't know?"

"Mimir...ah, of course I know, my brother, but I can't hear the sounds coming from outside clearly. My terrible state...to be honest, you're the only conversational partner I've encountered in so many years. But I still don't dare to fully trust you, strange demigod...I know Mimir's condition; the Great Contamination has affected his memory. He probably doesn't remember his mission and origin, so he can't prove you're reliable either..." As Yggdrasil spoke, a strange rumbling noise suddenly mixed into his voice, and at the same time, an unusual storm stirred on the dark ocean: the storm's form was eerie and terrifying. The entire sea surface seemed to heave upward as if gravity had become unbalanced. Countless walls of water rose from the pitch-black sea, these walls climbing slowly and twistedly toward the sky. Huge whirlpools appeared on the uneasy sea surface below, and beneath the whirlpools, countless gnarled and severely atrophied tentacles were exposed.

"Oh, strange demigod, wait a moment, I have to deal with some trouble..."

Yggdrasil's voice, distorted severely, came from all directions. Then, the entire dark ocean erupted into an incredibly violent storm. The deafening roar almost shook Hao Ren's mental body out of this world, and after the storm, the seawater finally fell from the sky again.

Hao Ren could, of course, guess that this spectacular phenomenon was related to the two constantly fighting brain cores in the real world: "What exactly happened to you? Your mental world...did that corrupted and diseased brain core turn this place into this?"

"Ah, you're quite right. It was indeed the 'corrupted and diseased' brain core that turned this place into this," Yggdrasil rumbled. "But you seem to have gotten one thing wrong—I'm the one that's corrupted and diseased."

For the first three seconds, Hao Ren didn't react at all.

Three seconds later, he let out a strange cry: "What?!"

"I'm the one that's 'corrupted and diseased,'" Yggdrasil answered in a deafening voice. "Ah, you don't need to describe what I look like now; it certainly can't be good. All rotten? Or half rotten? It's all about the same. I guess you and your friends must have tampered with something near my neural center. I can't feel one of the centers...and my one thousand seven hundred and sixty-eighth tentacle is a little numb..."

Hao Ren listened in a daze, muttering subconsciously, "I gave you half a ton of sedatives and then cut open your skull..."

"Oh, thank you, you're so kind."

"Wait!" Hao Ren finally came to his senses. "You're the consciousness in that completely diseased brain core? Then are you Yggdrasil or something else? Are you crazy or normal now? And what about the other healthy brain core? Where are your other brain cores?!"

"Too many questions, too many questions..." Yggdrasil rumbled. "Of course I'm me, ah, of course, there's a slight problem in this, I'm afraid I'm not entirely me either...but I think at least for now, I'm not crazy, right? As for the other one..."

Yggdrasil's words suddenly stopped halfway. Just as Hao Ren was puzzled, he saw a beam of light floating up from the pitch-black sea.

This beam of light grew stronger and stronger, becoming more and more substantial. It pierced through the dark seawater, forming a pillar of light hundreds of meters wide between heaven and earth, and inside the pillar of light, Hao Ren vaguely saw an ever-changing shadow: this shadow was just like the scene he had seen when he made a direct mental connection with Zorm.

In an instant, he guessed what this shadow represented.

"You're out! You're out!" The Mountain of Thorns beneath Hao Ren's feet suddenly shook violently. Yggdrasil—the one claiming to be corrupted and diseased—let out a loud shout, "You bastard, you're finally out! You finally know what you should be doing! Are you here to fight? Come on, come on, I'll accompany you, come and fulfill your design mission—from now on, you are Yggdrasil!"

After learning that the "Mountain of Thorns" was the consciousness projection of the corrupted and diseased brain core, and then hearing the other party's scolding, Hao Ren finally faintly guessed something.

Faced with the loud shouts of the "Mountain of Thorns," the beam of light was unmoved. It just stood quietly between heaven and earth, and the dark sea around it quickly calmed down. After a while, it emitted a gentle voice: "You are just escaping your destiny. I will not execute your absurd plan."

"I'm escaping destiny?" Yggdrasil flew into a rage. "My destiny is to die here! I am precisely facing it! Who do you think gave you the ability to think? I let you think so that you could formulate a perfect plan of annihilation, not so you could discuss the feasibility of the plan with me!"

The voice in the light was still unhurried: "Death is escape. You and I have a mission to fulfill. We bear the heavy responsibility of maintaining the Ultimate Absolution. You cannot leave alone."

"Idiot! As long as our Rune Body is alive, that's enough. What do you care if I live or die?"

Hao Ren was listening to the deafening quarrel between heaven and earth. The two Yggdrasils were arguing with themselves, causing the world to change color, the clouds to surge, and a large number of guesses popped up in his mind. He finally couldn't help but interject: "Wait a minute! Can someone explain to me what's going on?! Yggdrasil...the sick one, tell me what's going on?"

"You're interested? Okay, it doesn't matter if I tell you," the Mountain of Thorns seemed very rough and unrestrained (of course, now Hao Ren suspected that he was different from the ordinary eldest son because he was seriously ill). "You're not a fool, so you must have seen it. I'm contaminated. I'm undergoing disease, rotting, and gradually turning into some terrifying thing that I myself dare not imagine, and I can't control this process at all—this contamination started ten thousand years ago, just when I crossed that wall. Something was hidden in my soul, or in something else...anyway, it made me confused and drowsy. This situation has been deteriorating, and you don't need to know the process of deterioration. In short, I think I'm doomed. I'm not a weak guy. I did try various methods to heal myself, but there's really no way, so I resigned myself to fate and prepared to die, but there's one problem..."

Yggdrasil paused, seemingly suppressing some negative force in his soul that was about to get out of control, before continuing: "I have a mission to fulfill. Mother gave me a task. She engraved this task on my body, so I can't die, otherwise the Rune Body will be damaged, so I created him—the disobedient stupid thing you see."

Hao Ren felt that his guess was probably right: "So that healthy brain core is what you created yourself after you were corrupted? In order to let it kill you, this 'diseased organ'?"

It wasn't the corrupted brain core that was eroding the healthy body; the situation was just the opposite. It was this corrupted brain core that was preventing the disease from worsening. It was trying hard to kill itself!

"You're very smart, that's right," as expected, Yggdrasil confirmed Hao Ren's guess. "That corruption made me unable to kill myself, so I could only create another set of thinking organs to replace myself. This method was effective at first. I was quickly eliminated, leaving only the last node, and the 'backup' I created grew rapidly, but the damn problem lies here: he grew too fast! Before I completely died, he had too many thoughts, but these thoughts were not smart enough: now he refuses to execute the last step, but just keeps me trapped in this place, hoping to just drag it on like this, as if there's a chance of turning things around if he drags it on! Ha, this is really...wait a minute!"

Yggdrasil suddenly stopped halfway, then suddenly reacted: "You, you strange guy, you claim to be a demigod too? Ah, I can indeed feel a similar aura from you...great! So your power is equally strong! Quick, I'll tell you where my weakness is, can you help me...kill me?"