From the end of the world

Chapter 672 VS Xuanming 4
After saying those words, Xuanming underwent an astonishing change.

He was currently injured, and logically he should have been getting weaker, but reality was rapidly moving in the opposite direction. The magical energy fluctuations around him actually began to intensify, like a bonfire being filled with a large amount of flammable material, the fire growing larger and larger, bursting forth with rolling heat waves.

Orange flames surged from his palm once more, brighter than before, gradually approaching incandescent white. Even those observing with mental perception felt their consciousness being stung as if by a blinding glare. Simultaneously, he no longer cautiously maintained a considerable distance from me, but actively closed the gap, unleashing the flames from his hand like a cannonball.

His attack speed and accuracy both increased significantly. Although still within my control, it became quite difficult. I tried my best to dodge his attacks, then attempted to counterattack by launching a series of large fireballs. He didn't dodge at all, raising his hand and punching my fireball.

In the instant following the violent explosion, he passed through it and struck me in the chest with another palm strike. I hadn't expected him to suddenly switch to such a violent style after abandoning his stealthy ambush tactics, and I couldn't react in time. His palm didn't directly touch my star-like body; instead, at close range, a massive burst of flame erupted from his palm, blasting my entire body to pieces and sending me flying.

I felt a sudden darkness engulf me, unable to distinguish up from down from left from right. It felt like someone had struck my skull with a brick with all their might, causing considerable damage to my true spirit. However, Xuan Ming would not stop his attack just because I was weakened. To prevent my true spirit from being directly attacked while undefended, I immediately reverted to my corona form. The moment I opened my eyes, I saw Xuan Ming's next attack coming right in front of me.

Should I dodge or parry? I had no choice but to charge forward like a fireball. Xuanming's attack struck me again, but this time he didn't manage the distance well and was blasted away.

However, he remained on guard. I felt that he had used his fire power to defend against the attack. Although I couldn't escape unscathed, I couldn't deliver the final blow. I quickly reverted to my solar form, feeling my consciousness becoming somewhat scattered; Xuanming was also further injured, his body covered in burns and festering wounds, blood constantly flowing from them, yet his magical energy fluctuations did not decrease, but instead grew stronger.

I gradually came to understand why he became stronger.

The physical and mental strength lost due to injury is merely a loss for other powerful individuals, but not for Xuanming. The blood of the Great Impermanence that flows out becomes fuel for his own flames, and his accelerated breathing due to pain and exhaustion acts like a bellows, making the flames burn even brighter—all that is lost will return to him in the form of power, strengthening his strength.

Therefore, the more wounded he is, the stronger he becomes.

He launched another attack, his movements becoming faster and his attacks more powerful. I fought back, but inevitably found myself at a slight disadvantage.

"Is this the true essence of fire that you speak of?" I asked.

“The essence of burning is sacrifice,” Xuanming said. “Something must be given up in order to obtain the heat needed for survival. And manipulating the power of fire is to burn oneself and bring hope. This sacrifice will become the flame that illuminates the world, passed down from generation to generation. This is our civilization.”

"Does your so-called sacrifice include sacrificing others besides yourself?" I asked.

"Do you find me repulsive and stubborn?" Xuan Ming said calmly. "If you think that every problem always has a perfect solution, that's just a naive wish. The reason why history tells you that no matter how desperate the predicament, as long as you don't give up, you can always find hope for the future is simply because those histories that couldn't continue didn't have the opportunity to be presented to you and tell their success stories."

"Sometimes we are destined to face a fork in the road. Choosing the left will result in losing something important, choosing the right will also result in losing something important, but if we choose nothing, we will lose everything. Any competent problem setter will leave a key to solving the problem while setting the challenge. However, the world we live in is a problem without a problem setter."

"Is there a third way that we can find if we spend more time searching? I don't know, but the countdown is closing in every second. If a real path has appeared before us, even if it requires sacrificing our conscience, we must seize the time and take the first step."

As he spoke, he launched wave after wave of deadly attacks on me. While retaliating, I asked in return, "Then why don't you support the Evangelical Fellowship's plan to exterminate humanity? Although it will destroy civilization, it is a more practical way to save the world and the human race."

"Saving humanity through the destruction of civilization is putting the cart before the horse. I will use the Divine Seal to save mankind," Xuanming said. "Do you know why the Gospel House did not choose the path of the Divine Seal?"

"Why?" I followed up with the question.

"We are built upon a flawed history of humanity," Xuanming said. "If the Divine Seal were used to correct this flawed history, we ourselves would be corrected. With bad luck, we might simply disappear; with good luck, we might live in another history with different personalities. That would be tantamount to spiritually killing us. "If it were for the continuation of civilization, the Diviner might be prepared and willing to accept this, but Yama would never be willing. In his view, the continuation of his own life is the highest priority; the priority of civilization and race is secondary. If anyone attempts to use the power of the Divine Seal to save the world, he will undoubtedly do everything in his power to suppress them so that he can continue his own line of existence."

"I have no intention of criticizing his thinking. He may think that I and the Divination Master are crazy, but I will not give up the path of using the Divine Seal because of his opinion."

"Since he doesn't want to sacrifice himself, I'll sacrifice myself for him."

Yama, the Lord of the Evangelical Fellowship, will suppress those who wish to use the power of the divine seal to save the world...

I'm reminded of the legendary Tai Sui, supposedly killed by Yama, the Lord of the Gospel Court, and possibly now the Lord of the Divine Seal. Could this be the real reason he killed Tai Sui?

And, the answer Xuanming gave was one I had thought of before, and it was also refuted by Number Seven. I said what I had heard at the time: "But... the Divine Seal is an omniscient and omnipotent power. Even if it is to correct the wrong history of humankind, but not to correct all the people who exist because of it... the Divine Seal should also be able to fulfill this contradictory wish."

“Yes, the divine seal has such incredible power. Even if you turn it into a person and ask it to create a stone that it cannot lift, and then lift it up, it can do it,” Xuanming said. “Just like it created the contradictory world we live in now.”

I immediately understood his implied meaning.

To both settle accounts with the flawed history of humanity and fail to settle accounts with ourselves, who were born from it, means creating yet another self-contradictory history. While divine intervention could certainly achieve this, the real world we live in cannot withstand such an irrational outcome, and the end times will still arrive as scheduled.

Perhaps it's possible to spare only a very small number of people from being purged, but in that case, we wouldn't really need to use the Divine Seal. We could simply use the power of the Great Impermanence to take a small group of people away from Earth.

Then, naturally, I thought of this approach: "So, if we just wish the world could tolerate contradictory histories, then the end of the world will never come..."

“Zhuang Cheng, don’t you understand? The power of the Divine Seal is not infinite, nor does it possess absolute omniscience and omnipotence,” Xuan Ming said. “We, the Great Impermanence, may appear omnipotent to mortals, but we both know the truth. The great demon Yin Yue, whom you encountered in the past, was also a demon who could be considered omnipotent, but if she were truly omnipotent, how could she have been defeated by you?”

"The power of the Divine Seal can change the world, but this 'world' does not refer to the entire universe, but rather to the planet we inhabit. No matter how much you overestimate it, it is at most the world within the solar system. There is still a limit to it."

"The true master who originally used the Divine Seal to create the world we know today probably didn't truly want the end of the world to come. Or to put it another way—even if he were a madman who wanted the end of the world to come, he probably didn't intentionally design it in the first place. This event was clearly not in his original script, and all the chaos started from this part."

"The fact that the Lord of the Divine Seal cannot answer questions related to the apocalypse also corroborates this inference to some extent—that the apocalypse is an ultimate destructive event that transcends the power of the Divine Seal."

"He once promised us that he would use the power of the Divine Seal to grant a wish to the Void Apostle who had made the greatest contribution, but he declared beforehand that he would not grant contradictory wishes... Regardless of whether he really intended to keep his promise, he clearly possessed the power to grant any wish, yet he still excluded certain wishes beforehand. This shows that he was well aware of the terrifying consequences that would result from granting contradictory wishes, and he would do everything in his power to avoid it even when he was in charge of the Divine Seal in the future."

“We can avoid the apocalypse by putting human history back on the right track, but it is impossible to directly erase the apocalypse with the power of the divine seal.”

Xuanming's deduction even corroborates the past words and actions of the Lord of the Divine Seal. Could it be that Xuanming was already probing at this level when he inquired about the Soul Loss Syndrome from the Lord of the Divine Seal?
His relentless pursuit continues. Perhaps he's sharing this information with me to distract me. He'll stop at nothing to win. But I'm not so easily swayed by words. On the contrary, I'll try to turn the tables and control him.

"Then... what about the Divination Master?" I found a starting point. "Since even you admit that the Divination Master is someone who would sacrifice himself for civilization... why don't you cooperate with him?"

(End of this chapter)