Chapter 241 God of Water (6000)

Torrential rain poured down in sheets.

Beneath the gloomy rain clouds, only the elemental array of Nesser City and the three pale blue pillars of light that surrounded it in the distance, piercing the sky and earth, served as sources of illumination.

But now, one of the light pillars flickered erratically, its pale blue radiance waxing and waning, on the verge of collapse.

Visible around it, smoke billowed, and concentric shockwaves spread in all directions, while at the source of the shockwaves, scorching dust rose into columns amid the downpour.

Beneath the columns of dust, Su Zhou slowly rose from the nearly ruined camp of the Water God's followers, surrounded by the corpses of his enemies. Dizzy, he felt a sharp pain in the bones of his legs, and his internal organs churned and vibrated, slightly damaged.

--Fractured leg bones, some damage to the spine, internal injuries, left eye lens dislocated, temporary blurred vision.

In a brief moment, Su Zhou, analyzing calmly, understood his current condition. He reached out and began to set his own bones.

All was well, much better than he had imagined. With his hyper-regenerative ability, this kind of injury would only take about a glass of water to recover from.

*Glug.* A glass of water's worth of time passed. Regeneration complete.

After all, he always preferred to gulp down water, except when it was hot.

Just then, Su Zhou sensed a gaze locked onto him from afar. While erratically rotating his left eyeball to speed up its recovery, he looked in the direction of the gaze with his normal right eye. The indifferent and eerie gaze was enough to chill his enemies.

"Aha."

As their eyes met, Su Zhou couldn't help but smile when he saw the massive, unicorn-whale person.

Transcendent High-Rank, or even Peak.

In terms of both strength and aura, the opponent was extraordinary—even the aura around them was extremely similar to the Water God's divine power he had sensed earlier in the rain clouds.

Without a doubt, this person was the commander of this camp.

"Found you," he said, and before the words had even faded away, Su Zhou, without the slightest hesitation, burst into action, transforming into a gale of wind and charging toward the still-shocked enemy.

--Currently, Su Zhou's regeneration reserves were at ninety-five percent.

But the moment Su Zhou began his charge, accompanied by cries of resentment and piercing spiritual sounds, countless vengeful spirits and wandering souls, like a tide or storm, transformed into a black wind of death energy and surged toward the youth, who was radiating the light and heat of life like the sun, intending to drown him.

An ordinary Transcendent would likely be flustered when facing the impact of a cluster of hundreds or thousands of vengeful spirits.

But Su Zhou simply drew the Blade of Annihilation and waved it. Several streaks of cyan-blue lightning mixed with the blade light, slicing through the swarm of vengeful spirits and leaving the smell of scorched air from electric shocks in the atmosphere—and in that instant, countless spiritual bodies were ignited by the searing arcs of electricity, transforming into phosphorescent flames floating in the air.

Even under the impact of the torrential rain, these large patches of rising spiritual flames remained bright, like luminous orbs constantly ascending from the ground.

Before the light trails had even dissipated, Su Zhou had already hacked all the incoming vengeful spirits into pieces, leaving only a few stragglers.

Having expected to descend into a world of the dead, Su Zhou had made countless thorough preparations to counter the impact of large groups of vengeful spirits. Although the situation in the Silent Master's world seemed more complicated than he had imagined, at least he could now use the various spirit-banishing techniques he had previously honed for this purpose.

*Whirr.* The sound of ice colliding and grinding came from nearby.

At this moment, the powerful unicorn-whale person had also completed their spellcasting in that short amount of time, condensing the surrounding rain into a massive ice ball over fifteen meters in diameter.

The ice ball radiated extreme cold that rapidly froze the surrounding rain, but it was itself rapidly transitioning from solid to liquid—the rapidly rotating ice ball had transformed into a gigantic ice wheel. Its rotation was so fast that it couldn't maintain its frozen state, but it was still many times colder than freezing and surged with immense cutting and destructive power.

"Haa!"

The enemy didn't hesitate either. The unicorn-whale person immediately controlled the unfreezing river of ice, hurtling it toward Su Zhou with the sound of air being torn apart—and within this raging tide that seemed poised to engulf Su Zhou entirely, there was also an extremely dense curse of resentment, which instantly made it seem like a tide of the Yellow Springs, congealed from the River Styx, carrying the death energy of despair.

At the same time, hundreds or thousands of vengeful souls gathered from who knows where, attacking alongside it.

"Interesting."

But this composite magic that combined ice, cutting, and the curses of the dead didn't cause Su Zhou to show the slightest hint of fear.

He even felt a little nostalgic. Because this was precisely the aura that the Shepherd of Souls had displayed when unleashing their final strike in life.

"A little stronger, and it would have a 'Law-Order: Death Ray' flavor."

Thinking this, Su Zhou simply unfurled his dragon scales to face the incoming swarm of souls. Grayish-white fluorescent scales reversed out from his body, floating on his skin like a layer of crystal-rock armor.

The dozens of vengeful souls that rushed forward first flowed with black smoke and claws, but these twisted wraith phantoms not only failed to tear even a scratch on the dragon scales, but were completely drawn into them the moment they touched Su Zhou's dragon scales, like stepping into a swamp trap, transformed and absorbed, and finally ejected as chaotic spiritual energy along the grooves.

Even Su Zhou himself was a little surprised by this—the vengeful spirits themselves could actually be regarded as a type of energy and converted by the dragon scales as sustenance? It didn't feel unreasonable, and if that were the case, then the attacks of the vengeful spirits would be negligible to him now.

But he didn't think too much about it.

Because Su Zhou was currently taking a deep breath. Flickering cyan-blue arcs of electricity flowed around his mouth, and vast spiritual energy was swallowed by Su Zhou as if drawn into a black hole.

Then, he exhaled.

As the unicorn-whale person's composite magic was about to arrive, Su Zhou had already condensed more than seventy Storm Seeds around his head, and along with the action of his exhalation, cyan-blue lightning, mixed with columns of hurricane winds that erupted simultaneously, instantly transformed into a raging lightning storm breath, striking the opponent's River Styx tide before it could strike him.

A flash of light disappeared, and the violent sonic waves transformed into shockwaves, scattering a patch of rain. The torrential rain was shattered, and the atmosphere was twisted and fragmented under Su Zhou's simple breath.

The biting cold tide was instantly melted and heated by the scorching electric light, boiling into steam, and a series of electrolytic reactions and violent air explosions shattered the River Styx tide together, and its remaining power did not diminish, but pierced through hundreds of meters along a straight line, shattering countless more vengeful spirits.

"Dragon Breath?! A humanoid dragon?! Are those creatures not extinct yet?!"

At that moment, even the well-informed messenger, who believed nothing could surprise them anymore, couldn't help but be momentarily shocked, even forgetting to think—but even so, their fighting instincts allowed them to turn their head rapidly in a state of thoughtlessness, preparing to retreat immediately.

The enemy's power had already been witnessed, and they were indeed not the kind that could be fought against. Su Zhou could be considered one of the strongest among the Elite Peak-Ranks, even the strongest below the Near-Gods, while they themselves were also powerful, but in front of the other party, they were no different from an infant.

At this time, Su Zhou was six hundred meters away from the messenger.

He couldn't stop the other party from escaping, and not far away, a large number of vengeful spirits and other Transcendent from the Water God's followers were rushing over. If he was hindered, he might not be able to kill the other party, kill this commander.

So Su Zhou smoothly sheathed his blade. He raised the divine object longbow and drew a piercing steel arrow.

Raising the bow, drawing the string, spiritual energy surged from his chest and abdomen, converging along the muscles and grooves of the dragon scales. Cyan-purple flames, like a tide sinking into the ruins, sank into the seemingly ordinary black bow, and one hundred and twenty Storm Seeds surrounded the arrow, endowing it with power.

--Art of Unyielding Shot—Heavenly Storm Arrow.

In that instant, the piercing steel arrow, which was originally just a mundane object, was enhanced to the extreme. Layers of triangular spiritual light patterns filled the arrow shaft, giving rise to dragon patterns.

And the next moment, he released his hand and let the arrow fly.

*Boom!*

Like a ship-borne heavy gun firing, or a volcanic eruption, the air groaned and vibrated, and the immense recoil even shattered a cone-shaped space of rain behind Su Zhou, all the raindrops were evenly shattered by this force, turning into a misty fog.

In an instant, a huge and hideous wound was torn open in the torrential rain, and a thunderous roar sounded, but it could not catch up with the arrow that had already transformed into a stream of light.

The messenger, who had just begun to accelerate their escape, only felt a tremendous impact on their back.

Then, their flesh was torn apart.

Visible at the moment when the stream of light caught up with their pace and intersected with their body, the unicorn-whale person's sturdy body exploded with a bang. Blood and flesh spread forward in a cone-shaped pattern like spray, evenly scattered into the atmosphere, and then carried away by the rain.

The stench only appeared for an instant, and then dissolved in the dark night's downpour.

The arrow, still speeding forward, turned into ashes like a phantom after fulfilling its mission. Enhanced to the extreme by Su Zhou's spiritual energy, it had met its fate of burning out.

At this time, the silent Su Zhou took a step forward, preparing to collect his spoils, the evil soul.

Having entered a true combat state, he was much more serious than usual, and he spoke much less.

However, when he came to the side of the unicorn-whale person's corpse, Su Zhou couldn't help but let out a soft "Huh? Not dead?"

Then, his voice was even more surprised: "Whale person, you're actually a wraith."

The corpse, broken and tattered, lying on the ground, was already a pile of scattered flesh that no one could distinguish.

But visible on the ground was a semi-transparent, heavily damaged spiritual body that was still struggling to survive.

Like the former Shepherd of Souls, the spiritual body resembled the unicorn-whale person's appearance before death. The semi-transparent, solid spiritual body was covered with crisscrossing cracks, and the source of the cracks was where Su Zhou's arrow had pierced through earlier.

Powerful spiritual energy shocks could not only destroy matter, but also harm souls. The Art of Unyielding Shot—Heavenly Storm Arrow was precisely this kind of arrow technique that condensed vast spiritual power to kill enemies. The reason it hadn't instantly killed the unicorn-whale person was only because the other party's soul was special, and it seemed to have a strange power to maintain its existence. Now, it was still trying to repair its soul.

"Do you Water God's followers even accept wraiths?" Su Zhou lowered his body, grabbed the unicorn-whale person's spiritual horn, and lifted it up like trash. His tone was genuinely puzzled, because there were no ghosts in the mazes of Nesser City, so he didn't know much about the Tartadis world's views on wraiths. "That's quite tolerant."

"Of course I'm a wraith."

The wraith unicorn-whale person, the messenger, in this desperate situation, unexpectedly began to sneer at Su Zhou's lack of common sense through soul communication, without the slightest fear: "Earth-dweller, do you really think that the countless resurrected wraiths in this world are all your dead compatriots? Those wraith monsters resurrected in the mazes are essentially remnants of the last era like us!"

"You can still talk, so you still have some value." Completely ignoring the other party's provocation, Su Zhou indifferently took out a bottle of Holy Water No. 2 from his waist. The extremely strong divine aura overflowed, causing the messenger, who had become a wraith and was full of curses and resentment, to instinctively tremble. Although they immediately suppressed this fear, Su Zhou noticed it and laughed: "As expected, souls with many evils fear holy water."

Su Zhou didn't waste any time. He grabbed the messenger's soul with his left hand, and then drew the Blade of Annihilation with his right hand, rushing toward the pale blue light pillar array that was converting the surrounding lake water into rain—with Su Zhou's strength, killing the Water God's follower mages who maintained the array was only a matter of a few breaths, and even the blade of the Blade of Annihilation didn't have time to be stained with half a drop of rainwater.

Instantly, the waves of the surrounding lake and the torrential rain subsided a lot, causing Su Zhou to breathe a slight sigh of relief.

"Answer my questions."

Afterwards, Su Zhou, having sheathed the Blade of Annihilation, took out Holy Water No. 2 again, calmly speaking to the unicorn-whale person, whose expression was sorrowful, seemingly grieving for the dead mage compatriots: "Otherwise, I'll pour it into your ears."

Although it was a threat, Su Zhou wouldn't waste holy water. At most, he would burn them with his Demon-Devouring Flames, and it wouldn't matter if they didn't speak. He was still in a hurry to turn to other places to destroy the arrays. "First of all, tell me, what exactly is era transition?"

"Heh." The messenger sneered. Su Zhou originally thought that the other party was planning to die rather than submit, and was preparing to burn them to death with the Demon-Devouring Flames and take the evil soul and leave.

But he didn't expect that, after thinking for a while, the other party would directly answer.

"This world, every ten thousand years, will rotate once in a cycle."

The unicorn-whale person's words were calm and fluent, not like those who were lying on the spot, with subconscious hesitation and stammering, even faintly carrying a hint of irony: "Every time the world rotates, the era is destroyed, the world will be filled with gray fog, turning into the underworld, and all the dead living beings and everything in the original world will be recorded as information, and carried by the gray fog to sink into the deepest layer of the earth, giving birth to a layer of mazes."

"And at the end of the next era, the mazes will revive. If there were gods in the previous era, then the gods will also revive. The existences in each layer of the mazes will fight each other, vying for the final opportunity, and the key to the next era, to revive themselves in the next newborn era. As for why this happens, no one knows, and this is everything we know about the event called era transition."

"...You're quite straightforward." Because the unicorn-whale person's answer was too straightforward and direct, Su Zhou couldn't distinguish between truth and falsehood for a while, so he temporarily assumed it was true, frowned, and continued to press: "Then what exactly is the end of the world? You seem to know a lot about it?"

"This world, the core of this era, the Soil of Origin, has dried up."

The reply was equally straightforward, but when speaking of this, the messenger's tone returned to normal, no longer carrying a vague hint of irony: "At the end of the era, the Earth God chose to integrate themselves into the Soil of Origin, extending a buffer time of two hundred years for you."

"Originally, you should constantly enter the mazes, and fight against the creatures of the era represented by the mazes, collect enough resources, and then bring them to the location of the Soil of Origin, extending the life of this era."

"Resources?" Su Zhou asked in confusion.

"What is soil? Soil is corpses. Throwing the souls and corpses of the slain creatures into the Primal Abyss of the Soil of Origin can extend the life of this era. As long as you continue to kill, the era of the earth can continue to extend."

The messenger replied with some regret: "It's just a pity that you encountered the cutoff of the magic tide, lost all of this inheritance, and no one knows the location of the Soil of Origin, nor does anyone know the knowledge about the era left behind by the gods."

"Your tone towards the Earth God." Su Zhou couldn't help but raise an eyebrow. He strangely said, "Doesn't seem like a follower of the Water God."

Hearing these words, the unicorn-whale person instead looked at Su Zhou strangely: "All gods are worthy of respect. Our father god has also done the same thing for us—on the contrary, why don't you respect the Earth God?"

But it was obvious that the messenger didn't care much about whether Su Zhou respected the Earth God or not. They simply shook their head and said with emotion: "Back then, when our Water Era dried up, turning into the earth, our father god also chose to self-destruct, turning into scattered lakes on the earth, so that our bloodline descendants could continue to the next era."

"Therefore, when our father god revives, preparing to compete for the protagonist position of the next era, we will also spare no effort to seize victory for him!"

Saying this, their tone turned sinister again. The messenger stared at Su Zhou with a sneer, not caring at all about the fact that their life was being controlled by the other party: "The reason why we are massacring you earth-dwellers on a large scale is to make the end of the era come as soon as possible, so that the essence of the next era will appear as soon as possible—in that case, our father god, who is better prepared, can easily defeat all competitors and lead us to the future."

Everything became clear.

After listening to the unicorn-whale person's explanation of these two questions, a complete schematic diagram immediately appeared in Su Zhou's mind, and almost all the missing pieces of the puzzle were filled in.

--Why did the Earth God disappear?

--Why are there mazes in this world?

--Why is the environment in the mazes so strange, and so many monsters are bred?

All the questions had corresponding answers.

But the clearer he was about the answers to these questions, the more Su Zhou's anger couldn't help but begin to burn. He frowned, and met the fearless messenger's eyes: "So, you just follow this cycle, competing for the position of the protagonist of the era by killing other intelligent lives, instead of thinking about how to exchange experiences and knowledge with the civilizations of other eras, striving to interrupt this cycle, or to make an era last forever?"

"This rare rebirth, this rare opportunity to cross eras and communicate with different civilizations, you use it to kill each other?!"

"Otherwise?"

The messenger asked strangely: "Is there any other choice? Different eras are natural enemies, do you really want to live in a water era that is all sea?"

"Ah, I forgot, you earth-dwellers probably can't understand the magnificence of the sea!" They even began to mock maliciously, unable to understand the true meaning of Su Zhou's words.

Incorrigible. Su Zhou didn't say much to such stubborn individuals. In his arm, spiritual power began to gather, and the Demon-Devouring Flames were burning, beginning to devour the unicorn-whale person's broken soul.

But, in these raging flames, the messenger's soul was still laughing.

"God, father god is about to arrive! Haha, the reason why I said so much is to delay your time!"

"Earth-dweller's powerhouse, you can't escape!"

In such mad laughter, the soul of the unicorn-whale person, the messenger, was burned to ashes, leaving only a dark blue evil soul that appeared in Su Zhou's hand, shaking with cyan-blue water waves.

"Madman."

Holding the other party's evil soul, Su Zhou couldn't help but murmur. Afterwards, he silently raised his head. Just as the messenger had said before, Su Zhou sensed that from afar, an incomparably vast and majestic spiritual power fluctuation was coming.

At this moment, a melodious whale song came from the distant horizon.

*Whirr——* The torrential rain intensified.

In the sky, water light like a sea tide appeared. The dark and gloomy sky was gradually dyed by the spreading pale blue water light, and countless ice crystal fragments flickered with cold light high above, turning this night's cloud curtain into a noctilucent cloud, and rippling like an ocean.

*Boom——* Along with the sound of the clouds breaking, an incomparably huge blue whale, almost like an island, tore apart the sky and the torrential rain with an incomparably majestic posture, and a vast pressure descended upon the world.

【Water God · Lord of Ocean Currents Tamboursa】

The huge whale god did not pay attention to the human youth who was looking up at him. Instead, he raised his head and let out a high-pitched cry, forming a rhythm like a song.

Then, in Su Zhou's suddenly changing expression, the waves and rain that had calmed down a lot because a pale blue light pillar had been destroyed, immediately returned to their original state.

Even more turbulent and undulating than before!

Sudden surges arose, dark clouds covered the sky, the gale howled, and the torrential rain poured down.

The end of the world seemed to be at hand.

Yesterday's second update was a bit long and slow to write.

I will continue to update more tomorrow, please ask for a monthly ticket~