Chapter 952: The Kings Emerge

Just then, the world changed once again. Half the world was covered in frosted ice; the other, burning with blazing heat. However, neither fire nor ice could combat the black fog.

The spirit of ice, holding a scepter of frost, floated toward the top of the castle as she exuded an aura of majesty.

"The ice queen of the white world..." This time, it was Zhang Lie, rather than the envoy, who had spoken. In his past life, Zhang Lie had witnessed one of the ice queen's attacks. With a careless wave of her hand, she had sealed a world in everlasting ice.

She floated by the entrance to the castle, locking gazes with the solar king, who had just walked up to its front. Their gazes met, one cool, one heated. A blizzard roared, and sunlight flared. Dark clouds made to cover up the suns, but the sunlight pierced the clouds and splashed golden light onto the land.

The two kings stood facing each other. Where their auras met, snow melted and refroze as they clashed for dominance.

Just then, a fourth portal opened. Dark clouds seeped out from within, covering up the sky. A shower of rain began to fall.

𝘧𝓇ℯ𝑒𝓌𝑒𝑏𝓃𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘭.𝒸ℴ𝓂

.

The frost and sun didn't seem to bother the rain one bit. The dark clouds dominated over the sky, pushing out sun and frost. The bones inlaid in the ground began to shake as an unidentifiable black mass slowly floated over. An aura of death permeated the air.

"The king of the world of death, the decaying king."

As the unidentifiable black mass squirmed out of the portal, a torrent of bleached white bones appeared behind it. They covered up the ground—just how many lifeforms had to be killed to produce so many bones?

Black worms squirmed out from crevices in the sea of bones, revolting the warlords.

The fifth portal opened up. The first thing that struck the onlookers was the fetid stench. A vile, grayish fluid, frightening and formless, spilled out from the portal. It quivered and swelled, as though it were the source of all filth and waste.

Small blobs of gray matter were expelled from the organism's main body, which scattered throughout the land. More and more mutated growths and abominations were visible within the main body's flesh, squelching as they tried to escape—before they were swallowed back into its interior and digested away.

It digested everything it touched: black fog, rain, frost, and sunlight.

The grayish vapor it produced spread through the air as the stench grew far, far stronger. Even those at the very top of the castle could smell it. The warlords began to vomit, their faces contorted with disgust. Li Zongming clutched at his nose with an ashen face.

The envoy introduced, "The king of evil, representative of the unclean world, the source of all filth and waste."

The sixth portal opened. The first thing that could be heard was the beating of drums.

Everything before the spectators was cloaked in darkness. After the drums, what seemed like a kaleidoscope unfolded before them. It then melted away, revealing a deep abyss filled with black worlds and suns.

A giant clam, pried half-open, slowly emerged from the portal. Cylindrical growths grew out of its interior, like appendages that helped it crawl forward. A face with no mouth and empty sockets for eyes looked out from within.

The clam's interior was filled with darkness and chaos. Even given Zhang Lie's strength, he couldn't peer into its interior.

He snuck a glance at the interior of the clam, only to suddenly feel a particularly arresting bout of discomfort. It seemed as though there were countless figures blowing flutes by his ear and whispering words of madness.

Zhang Lie blinked. He suddenly discovered that it was no illusion—surrounding the clam were many such servants, blowing on single-frequency flutes in a chilling, nauseating symphony that disoriented and discomfited the warlords.

The envoy clutched his ears as he warned, "The primordial chaos of myth and legend—within that source of chaos grew the king of chaos! Cover your ears—don't try to look at the king itself. You'll go crazy! Don't you see the monster howling interminably over there?"

By the side of the king of chaos were a large number of ugly, misshapen giants, whose faces had been replaced by tentacles. Their mouths grew out of their chests, and their five sensory organs were randomly distributed over their bodies.

Some of their eyes grew out of the tentacles, others within mouths, ears by waists, arms, or palms—and it was difficult to figure out where their noses were located. They either had an extra arm or an extra leg.

"Those lifeforms weak of will and possessing limited strength will be incapable of preserving their sanity and transform into these monstrosities upon hearing the sounds of those flutes. Those who dare to look directly at the king of chaos will suffer the same fate."

"Once they lose their mind, they'll become monsters controlled solely by the king of chaos. Even the kings of other superior worlds have a chance of suffering the same fate. Given your limited strength, you'd turn into such monsters the moment you try to sneak even the smallest glimpse. The king of chaos has been deemed strongest among the superior kings."

The king of chaos was surrounded by a large group of mindless, formless dancers, each playing a madness-inducing flute.

"In order to interact normally with the other kings, the king of chaos has sealed itself within the clam. Otherwise, even if the various kings themselves can tolerate the madness, their subordinates wouldn't be able to do so. Never, never try to glimpse within the clam."

The black worms that were slithering through the white bones that had spilled onto the ground began to screech madly. Tentacles grew out of their heads, limbs from the bodies, and a huge mouth from their abdomen. They had no eyes, no nose, and no ears.

As they screeched, they swarmed around the king of chaos, clearly so weak that they had been immediately corrupted by its aura.

"As expected of the strongest superior king..."

A bone-chilling darkness twisted heaven and earth, warping even natural law. Sun, darkness, fog, and rain swirled around an abyssal wind.

The four superior kings who had arrived before the king of chaos all bowed down. The king of chaos was so strong that even Zhang Lie glanced at it appraisingly.

The seventh portal opened. Countless orbs of light walked out from within, surrounded by a seemingly endless supply of the world's energy. The chaos seemed to quell, the disturbance caused by the king of chaos wiped clean.

This strange, unusual collection of orbs seemed to be formed of countless worlds, which grew and perished as the orbs expanded and shrank.

It was part of everything, and everything was part of it. It belonged to the liminal, the limitless—it might have been the source of life itself, so deeply connected as it was to the arcane.