Chapter 2097: Despair

A ghastly pale sun slowly set in the west. Night had fallen again.

Things that looked like corpses, but were actually ghosts, or even the rotten flesh of many lives, crawled out of every nook and cranny like cockroaches. They skittered toward the devastated city. It should’ve been a magnificent and grandiose structure, but it wavered like a boat caught in a ferocious gale.

Its sole remaining formation lit up, silently defending the city against hordes of creatures. A thousand holes and a hundred boils marked its surface. Countless living beings filled its openings with their own bodies.

It was another night of despair.

……

Morning saw the rise of the ghastly sun, one without any vitality. The tide of monsters that’d ravaged the land for a night receded.

Large wagons laden with broken bodies creaked out of the city and shed their burdens into the pit in front of the city walls. Black oil followed the bodies. Moments later, black smoke billowed into the air. What was an already gray world turned even darker.

Those who died to the monsters had to be burned or they’d mutate and turn into monsters themselves.

Lu Yun sat on a large rock outside the city—he’d crawled up from the pit of the dead. It’d been a very close call; he’d nearly died a few times. Slack jawed, there wasn’t a hint of life to be found in the young man. He was like a human-shaped sculpture. People paid him no heed and walked woodenly past him.

There were too many walking dead like him in this world. He knew nothing about this unknown and mysterious world that he’d arrived in.

He didn’t even know why he was here.

There was nothing in his body apart from a hunk of flesh riddled with injuries. The Tome of Life and Death had disappeared, the power of reincarnation dispersed. There was no sign of the power of civilization to be found.

Lu Yun was now a mortal. No, he was trash that was less than a mortal. If the monsters attacked the city again, he would be mashed into pieces by their pungent mouths.

“Is God dead?” he murmured with a cough.

“God? God died a long time ago,” a melodious voice rang by his ear.

Lu Yun looked up stiltedly and saw a charming figure standing in front of him. She was a young woman dressed in green and a rare expression of life force.

He’d sat dumbly on the rock after making it out of the pit last night. If it wasn’t for the young woman protecting him throughout the night, he would’ve been torn to pieces when the monsters attacked.

However, he didn’t lose heart or faith. Even though he possessed nothing at the moment, he was still a powerhouse forged in the fires of hell, one who’d weathered endless trials and reached the apex of another realm. He would not be demoralized by his circumstances.

As much as he despaired, he was still Lu Yun.

He was just… dazed from the explosion.

God’s self detonation had destroyed the entire Divine Temple of Nothing. It no longer existed in the nothing. Lu Yun’s survival was a miracle and his brain yet rang from it. There was nothing he could do apart from sit on the rock.

His previous murmuring was simply a sign that he’d recovered his abilities to think and speak.

“Oh.” Lu Yun nodded mutely as his mind was still foggy.

“God is the hope of all life. Everyone is waiting for him to resurrect and end this world of despair,” the young woman explained seriously as she looked at Lu Yun. “But God is probably really dead. He has been long lost to time and everyone has forgotten him. Why do you remember him?”

“Don’t you remember him too?” Lu Yun said haltingly.

The young woman shook her head and took a deep look at him before leaving. Yuan Yi was the guardian of Jingzhou City and the sole reason why it still stood. She was one of the few cultivators that remained.

Jingzhou City would stand if she was present. It would fall if she left.

“Where is this place?” Lu Yun suddenly asked.

“Jingzhou City.” Yuan Yi paused.

Lu Yun shook his head. “I mean this world.” He already had an answer in mind, he just wanted to confirm it.

“This world is this world, what else can it be?” Yuan Yi responded with puzzlement.

“The only world?” Lu Yun nodded. “I understand.”

“What do you understand?” Yuan Yi frowned and walked back.

She’d personally watched Lu Yun crawl out of the pit yesterday, which was why she paid extra attention to the young man fortunate enough to survive. As she hadn’t seen him fall from the sky, she thought he was just a luckier survivor.

Although Jingzhou City was the only city to be found in the thousands of kilometers around them, millions called it home and it wasn’t possible for her to remember them all. Not to mention that most people walked around like the living dead, eking out life one day at a time. She wasn’t interested in conversing with dull people like that.

Thus, she was the city’s guardian, but no one took a second glance at her.

“You are a cultivator?” Lu Yun asked slowly. “There is no great dao in this world, what do you cultivate?”

“Great dao?” Yuan Yi breathed out. “What a distant name. There is no great dao, we cultivate ourselves.”

“I see,’ Lu Yun nodded. He tried to get up, but failed and sat back down.

“You are heavily injured, but not by the ghost zombies.” Yuan Yi frowned. This was the first time she talked to someone like this in the one hundred years she kept watch over the city.

“Ghost zombies? Is that what you call the zombies that attacked last night?” Lu Yun nodded. “That’s correct, they didn’t cause these injuries. Would you believe me if I say God left them on me?” He broke out in a brilliant smile.

Yuan Yi stared at Lu Yun. How long had it been since she’d seen someone smile?

I… don’t think I’ve ever seen this expression on anyone’s face, not in the one hundred some years of my life. Why is this young man… smiling? He can’t even stand and looks like he’ll die at any second.

Why is he smiling?

Because God inflicted his injuries?

Yuan Yi shook her head and beckoned, jerking Lu Yun’s collar upwards with a gust of clear wind and walking back to the city. Lu Yun bobbed along in her wake.

“The formation needs to be repaired, it’s about to break.” Lu Yun glanced at the defensive formation when they passed through it.

“The last formation master died in battle ten years ago and we haven’t had one since. Even if we did, we don’t have the origin stones to spare for it.”