Start from the God of Death and break through the world.

Chapter 1131 The Closed Loop of Cause and Effect, The Truth of the Holy Soul

A bolt of lightning suddenly streaked across the sky, illuminating the faces of the boy and girl.

The girl's face was pale, the color draining away as she died, and her empty pupils held terror, despair, and worry for the boy.

Heavy rain lashed the boy's and girl's faces, mud mixed with blood flowing freely. In the lightning, a tall figure holding a weapon walked over, bending down to pull out the blade that had pierced the girl.

It was a middle-aged man wearing an exoskeleton device. He was strong and powerful, and with the added strength of the exoskeleton, he felt he could easily pull out the silver blade that he had thrown.

But the next moment, the little boy kneeling in front of the girl moved. He raised his small hand and grabbed the buckle in front of the man's mechanical arm.

"What……"

The man wearing the exoskeleton was very surprised. He suddenly found that he could not move his hands; he could neither move them down nor up.

He saw a small hand grab his robotic arm from a point where it was difficult to exert force, but the actual sensation was as if he were being clamped by a large hydraulic press.

He didn't lose his composure, still hoping it might be a mechanical malfunction. After all, his exoskeleton wasn't high-end, and with the rain pouring down and him trudging through muddy mountain roads, the possibility of a malfunction wasn't zero.

But when he shifted his gaze to the boy, lightning flashed across the sky, allowing him to see the boy's face clearly.

Ah... what an expression that was, and what kind of eyes those were.

The boy seemed to have gone mad at that moment; his expression was a mix of laughter and tears, which appeared extremely bizarre to the man.

His eyes, as they opened and closed, were no longer the normal pupil color of a boy, but a terrifying purplish-black. When he looked into the boy's eyes, it was as if he were staring into an abyss.

"So that's how it is..."

Lu Li's voice was trembling with sobs, and her body was shaking.

He finally understood that the Demon God's seal was indeed solid, and that the Demon God had never interfered with him before he went to the depths of his soul to borrow its power.

It turns out that the person who saved me back then was still myself.

Lu Li felt distressed because he understood the law of cause and effect very well. If this was the truth, then he had completed the great causal loop. In a sense, the matter was already settled, and it would be difficult for him to save the people he loved.

Click——click——

In his heightened emotions, Lu Li unconsciously increased the force in his hand, crushing the metal buckle on the robotic arm.

Upon seeing this, the man jumped back as if he had seen a ghost, trying to create distance between himself and Lu Li.

But after Lu Li stood up, he did not attack the man immediately. He just looked up at the sky and at the familiar rain curtain in his memory, looking as if he were crying and laughing at the same time.

"The Holy Soul... was originally within you!"

The man shouted, his voice filled with both fear and excitement.

However, the small figure standing in the mud only glanced at him briefly before grabbing a fallen leaf swept by the wind and casually tossing it away.

puff-

The falling leaves, sharp as knives, pierced through the man's brow, causing his body to collapse with a crash.

Xiao Luli bent down and picked up his senior sister. Looking at that familiar face, he felt a pang of sorrow and closed her eyes.

If his original essence were intact, he would have countless ways to reverse everything at this moment. Even if his senior sister really perished, he would have a way to call back her soul, reshape her body, and give her life again.

But now he is just a cripple, his essence is still just a mess, he can't use any mysterious power at all, he can only be a little stronger when he has a physical body.

Even because only the original source, that is, the 'information carrier' part, came over, the powerful physical body that he painstakingly refined with faith power in his later life was also gone.

The sadness only lasted a few seconds before Lu Li rallied. He didn't believe in fate, and even if it were, he would defy destiny!

So he picked up his senior sister and started running. He remembered that a mudslide was about to happen here, and if he didn't run, he and his senior sister would be buried in the mudslide.

He was able to easily kill the exoskeleton warrior just now because after his essence was poured into his own body, he could forcibly stimulate some of the potential within the body, but in reality, it was only slightly stronger than when he was an adult.

What truly made that man unable to resist was his mature martial arts skills, while his current physical attributes were too low to withstand the natural disaster.

Sure enough, Lu Li had only run a short distance when the sound of mountains collapsing and the earth splitting began to come from his side and above.

Lu Li did consider going to save his master, but he knew in his heart that there were no lights left at their dojo down the mountain, the battle was long over, and if he ran in that direction, he would eventually be swallowed up by it.

After regaining his composure, Lu Li realized that his current behavior was different from what he remembered. He hadn't fought with that man, nor had he been buried in the mudslide, which meant that there was still room for change.

His first priority is to survive, and then try to reverse everything in this era!
Rumbling--

The mudslide rushed down the hillside, destroying roads and many buildings at the foot of the mountain, and finally reached Lu Li and his group's dojo, flooding most of the houses before stopping.

Lu Li observed for a while, settled his senior sister in, and then went down the mountain to check on her.

Sure enough, those people hadn't left yet; they were all digging around their temple, presumably believing that their master hadn't told them the truth and that the sacred spirit was hidden in their home.

Lu Li saw his master lying under a tree, his chest pierced by a mechanical arm, and his anger surged even higher.

Without a second thought, he rushed out, and after a burst of gunfire, shouts, and wails, only one of the warriors who came to surround and kill them remained alive.

Lu Li recognized this person's face. He had seen him not only today, but also on the last day before Lu Li went to the space when Lu Li was seeking revenge after he came of age.

He was the man who stood on the high place at the execution ground, hoping to watch himself die. He should also be the mastermind behind today's events, the only man with a certain influence in both the 'underworld' and the company.

"Hahaha……"

Seeing Lu Li dismantle his companions as if they were toys, the man knew he was about to die, but instead of being afraid, he burst into laughter.

"What are you laughing at?" Lu Li said coldly. In fact, when he killed those martial arts masters back then, he never ambushed them. He had always asked them a few questions before the battle, but none of them told him the detailed reasons for their attack on his master.

Back then, Lu Li wasn't so complicated. If the other party wouldn't talk, he would just kill them. It was that simple.

In the end, he couldn't find the 'ringleader' of the tragedy, so he had to use himself as bait to lure the other party out. All he knew back then was that the other party had retired and worked for the company, and had even obtained a good position.

Lu Li believed that the other party was hiding out of fear, so if he were executed, the other party would definitely show up to put his mind at ease.

He did indeed make the right bet back then and successfully killed his opponent, but due to the circumstances, he didn't ask him a single question.

"I laughed at Lu Feng. It turns out he didn't even know what a Holy Soul was, and he actually gave it to a child."

The man laughed loudly, “I laugh at myself, and at my ancestors, who waited for millions of years, through endless time, only to find it all for naught.”

"What is the true use of the Holy Soul?"

Lu Li didn't kill the other person directly; he was genuinely curious about the answer.

This answer has been lost for a long time, and even the stellar-level computer Talma of later generations could not deduce it. In this era, since these martial artists are all flocking to the sinkhole and pursuing the Holy Soul, they may really know the correct way to use the Holy Soul.

"usage?"

The man gave Lu Li a strange look. He was also dressed in black today. In Lu Li's memory, the man was also wearing a black robe when he was on the execution ground more than ten years later.

He scrutinized Lu Li from head to toe, meeting Lu Li's dark purple eyes in the eye. "The Holy Soul has never had any real use. I came here only to reclaim the Holy Soul and seal it back into the sinkhole."

Lu Li was somewhat taken aback upon hearing this. He never expected to receive such an answer. He looked into the man's eyes. The man was about to die, and his tone was very honest. He was not lying.

That is to say...

"You lied to them!?"

Lu Li's voice was filled with surprise as he pointed to the corpses on the ground.

This time it was the man's turn to be surprised. He seemed not to have expected that the Holy Soul would have so many human emotions, or rather, be influenced by human emotions.

He smiled and said, "So what if they are? They are all greedy people. Lu Feng is indeed a grandmaster. My family has declined and only I am left. Now I have no choice but to live off the company. I can't afford to hire mercenaries, so I can only use them."

"What did you mean by 'family' and 'guarding'?"

A strong sense of unease welled up in Lu Li's heart, because with his experience he could tell that the other party was not lying. It's just that he hadn't thought back then that there would be so many things hidden behind this seemingly simple ambush.

"Of course, it's to prevent the Holy Soul from being reborn and to prevent anyone from bringing the Holy Soul out of the sinkhole."

The man said, "That will be the beginning of a new catastrophe..."

At this point, the man looked at Lu Li with a strange gaze. "Strange... The Holy Soul should be on you, otherwise you wouldn't be so strangely mature. But if you are the Holy Soul, why would you need to ask me these questions?"

Lu Li knew he was being viewed strangely from the other person's perspective, but he still asked, "My master passed on the Holy Soul to me not long ago, and I don't yet know its function. I'm just often disturbed by other voices in my mind."

The man seemed to be deep in thought. After a moment's thought, he said, "If you still have a shred of humanity left, go into the sinkhole and end your own life. Perhaps it's not too late."

"Why? And what is this great catastrophe you're talking about?"

Lu Li asked.

"That is the end of everything. Civilization will perish, life will become extinct, and only a very few lucky ones will survive."

The man explained, “And you are the culprit. Do you know that this world has endured countless calamities? Only a very few eras have survived, but the civilizations of those eras have all become relics of the past.”

Lu Li never expected that the man he had casually tossed to death at the execution ground would know so much. However, even if he had known back then, he would still have killed him without hesitation.

"You mean... the Holy Souls weren't the creators of those civilizations, but their terminators?"

Lu Li understood what the other party meant.

"Of course, do you really think that something that erodes your soul and whispers in your ear could be a benevolent being?"

The man laughed sarcastically, “Cultivation civilization, magic civilization, fantasy civilization—these are just the civilizations that have been recorded in legends throughout history. In reality, there have been many other civilizations that have not been recorded because they were completely defeated and disappeared without a trace. But those few civilizations ultimately prevailed and sealed the Holy Soul into the sinkhole once again, which is why the legends remain.”

Lu Li was shocked to hear this. It turned out that Talma's calculations were wrong. Now he didn't know whether Talma's calculations were not accurate enough, or whether this terminal AI had already turned against humanity and was misleading them.

If it's the latter, then we can only say that humanity's extinction was not unjust. After all, from the moment the Talma Organization led the company's people down into the sinkhole to find the Holy Soul, it was guiding humanity toward its demise.

The Holy Soul has never been the creator of any civilization, nor the guide of any era; it has always been the terminator of any era.

Only in good times, in flourishing civilizations like the cultivation civilization, might there be experts who could fight against the vessel possessed by the Holy Soul, and after paying a heavy price, reseal the Holy Soul back into the sinkhole.

In an era where civilization is not strong enough, they would only be destroyed by the holy souls that escaped from the sinkhole.

As for why the victorious side doesn't permanently eliminate the possibility of the Holy Soul escaping, Lu Li had also been inside the sinkhole. He knew that the sinkhole was a very evil place. It was an ancient ruin built with Great Dao-level materials. Who dared to say that it could be easily destroyed?

If an attack were to be launched against the entire area, there might be some mysterious and unpredictable mechanisms and formations involved. Without the strength of a peak ninth-tier cultivator, there's no way to destroy that place.

Lu Li believed that the Holy Soul was the demon god within his body. That guy was indeed not something that could be killed. Perhaps the best way was to use the sealing power on its body to put it back into the sinkhole where there was no spiritual energy under certain conditions.

As for why sacred spirits always appear in different eras, it is not difficult to understand. After all, when a civilization declines and perishes, a lot of information is lost. And after several eras, people in later generations will simply listen to the past as myths and legends.

For example, from the perspective of an ordinary modern human on Earth, there is a myth about a powerful demon who is sealed under a certain mountain. The myth says that once the demon is unsealed, a great disaster will occur.

But if archaeologists get accurate information, wouldn't they still rush over and start digging?

After all, people tend to believe in science rather than myths and legends, thinking that legends are exaggerated and products of the ignorance of the ancients.

(End of this chapter)