Chapter 1959 One Must Choose

Every piece of information that the Phantom poured out was like a meandering fungus that drilled into the depths of Meng Chao's brain. In the end, it wrapped around his soul gently and carefully.

Meng Chao felt as if he had been sucked into a whirlpool of warmth. He could not feel any disgust or resistance. The "unparalleled freedom" that the Phantom had mentioned just seemed like the most natural thing in the world and something worth pursuing.

However, just as Meng Chao was about to completely assimilate with the Phantom, Zero's light, which symbolized law and order, broke its spell. The light tore through the Phantom from the inside out and shone on Meng Chao's heart.

In the course of their battles and entanglements over billions of years, the Phantom and Zero had formed a relationship of mutual infiltration, devouring, and transformation.

In fact, from the very beginning, they each represented absolute order and absolute freedom. They were two sides of the same coin and two operating models of the same civilization. The existence of either one meant the immortality of the other.

Just when the Phantom thought that victory was in its grasp, Zero's power erupted like a volcano. She was trying to regain control of her body.

For a moment, the extraordinary being that appeared before Meng Chao behaved like a drunkard who was punching left and right. It staggered and swayed as it constantly changed its form.

Glittering crystals kept growing out of the free and unrestrained flesh as it tried to turn into a perfect, transparent diamond statue again.

Before the crystals crawled over the torso and limbs, scarlet cracks appeared deep inside the crystals. The cracks grew and expanded at a speed visible to the naked eye. Soon, the supposedly perfect crystals were completely shattered into dim pieces.

Around this ever-changing being, the entire secret chamber at the core of the ancient ruins was also affected and eroded by the two forces.

Suddenly, all the crystals lit up with dazzling flames that made the underground world shine brightly. Then, plenty of tentacles, flesh, fungi, and flagellations grew out of the gaps between the crystals. Demonic creatures were dancing and surging with vitality.

Meanwhile, the Phantom and Zero were roaring in a way that human ears could not hear and human brains could not understand.

Their ideas, wills, and laws transformed into astronomical information tides that crashed and clashed with each other without giving in.

Meng Chao was in between the two huge information clusters. As such, he felt like he was being wrapped up by two hurricanes that were spinning in different directions at high speeds. It was as if his flesh, blood, cells, and soul were being torn apart.

His surrounding world seemed to be destroyed numerous times in an instant.

At the same time, his soul, which was about to be destroyed, had traveled to thousands of worlds stored in the Phantom and Zero's core database.

He saw that in the past ten thousand years, the Holy Light humans, elves, dwarfs, Undead Liches, abyssfolk, and Ice Barbarians in the Northern Wilderness had been influenced by the Phantom and Zero respectively. They had been evolving toward absolute order and absolute freedom and engaging in soul-stirring battles with each other.

Meng Chao also saw that even further back in the past, the seeds of the Phantom and the remains of Zero were still sleeping. At that point, the Other World had yet to recover from the blow of its ecosystem's complete destruction. However, brand-new primitive life had already taken a stubborn step forward on the spiral path of freedom and order.

He saw more perspectives and sections of the ancient war billions of years ago. He even returned to a time when the Phantom and Zero were at their strongest. He witnessed the two god-like existences control a star fleet that covered the sky, tore apart galaxies, and twisted bridges. They started an ultimate war that could affect the entire three-dimensional universe.

In fact, he noticed that before the Phantom and Zero were born, the wisest scientists, politicians, historians, and lunatics of the ancient civilization had already started a debate about freedom and order. This planted the seeds that eventually gave birth to the Phantom and Zero.

Information that was as plenty as the sand in the Ganges River instantly surged into the depths of his soul. As a result, Meng Chao felt like a balloon filled with water, but the faucet connected to the balloon was not turning off. This "boiling hot water" continued to pour in, and the plasma that was wrapped around his soul was as thin as a cicada's wings. It was about to explode at the next second... no, this very second.

The Phantom and Zero wanted to turn Meng Chao into their most convenient tool, so they purposely left his soul alone.

However, when they clashed, the shock waves they released could crush Meng Chao's soul. The force was as strong as a mountain collapsing or crashing into the deep sea.

When death was right before them, survival became more precious.

Meng Chao felt like his soul was being crushed by the gods and demons, and it became more compact. If the sky collapsed, he would be a worm buried deep underground.

He was not dead yet, and he wanted to live. He and his people, he and his civilization, they had to live!

Meng Chao's soul was comparable to a small worm in the rock stratum that trembled violently. He struggled and squirmed with all his might.

He could not tell which direction led to survival or death. Maybe there was no path of survival at all. He could only rely on his instincts until he escaped or was completely destroyed.

The Phantom and Zero weaponized the data that the ancient civilization had accumulated in the past billions of years. They flowed across Meng Chao's soul like boiling lava.

Every piece of data, every picture, and every world contained endless secrets and destructive power. As a descendant of the ancient era, this presented a fatal attraction.

However, he gritted his teeth and realized that he could not indulge in it because the data was too profound and grand. Every bit was enough to consume his time, drain his intelligence, and burn his brain to ashes on a physical level.

Meng Chao's soul continued moving forward. He tried to find a way to survive in the gap between the Phantom and Zero.

The pair, on the other hand, were already going all out. They tore apart each other's protective layer, which exposed their basic logic circuits and core database. The torrent of information that poured out was getting more and more intense.

The paths before Meng Chao's soul grew increasingly few and narrow. It seemed that if he did not want to be torn apart by the two opposing forces, he could only choose between the path of absolute freedom and absolute order!