Chapter 43: The Great Explosion
The nine moons in the sky were nine enormous and grotesque monsters, bearing not a single trace of normal life from beginning to end.
Tentacles? Pseudopods? Jointed limbs? Tumors? Blister cannons? Irregularly expanding masses of flesh, or churning humus liquid?
None of these were the main body of Chaos, nor the true form of the monsters. They were merely the distorted projections of Chaos within the human mind, the illusory manifestations born from the fusion of all things that people fear, deny, and refuse to see. It defied common sense, shattered reason, and was the concrete embodiment of malicious nightmares in the real world.
Those who fear the ocean can see tentacles and whirlpools. Those who fear the forest can see vines and roots. Those who fear the void of space can see malformed wings and bottomless abysses... And those who fear nothing, who even anticipate the completely unknown with excitement, see only a mass of filth, a mist emitting a faint gray light.
The Nature Mentor watched as, in her eyes, nine enormous spheres of ice, rock, and fire sequentially crashed into the Chaotic planet, which in her vision was already covered in a deep black, viscous biomass.
And so, one could see nine points of light, like suns, ignite in the sky, then strike the ground one after another.
In that instant, apocalyptic catastrophe occurred nine times simultaneously.
Priest, who had been caught by the Nature Mentor and was floating in the intra-realm vacuum within the Aklafa Hub, seemed to want to say something. But faced with this battle so vast it surpassed the scope of his understanding, the young man could only open his mouth to speak, yet no sound came out.
These nine moons, seemingly completely enveloped by Chaotic power, very likely had at their cores the flagships of those nine Legendary experts from long ago.
This was the information he wanted to convey to his teacher and the Nature Mentor.
Through the records stored in the Aklafa Hub and some faint clues deduced, Priest could easily discover that the nine hubs on the ground were, in essence, parts of the flagships of the nine Legendary experts who had pursued the Decay Evil God. They served as suppression points of Order, evenly distributing an anti-Chaos field over the entire world to seal the Evil God.
Of course, the power of the Evil God was not something that could be suppressed by the strength of nine warships alone. It would occasionally riot. At such times, the nine moons in the sky would release Chaotic power, forcing the Decay Evil God to use its own power to fight against another form of Chaos, thereby decaying and generating the primordial Steel Force, which would in turn suppress itself... As for why the nine moons were so far away, the answer was simple: if not necessary, it was indeed unwise to place two types of Chaos together, or the consequences would be completely unpredictable.
This was a sealing method that seemed strange on the surface but was actually exceptionally reasonable. Perhaps the original seal was just a massive framework, but over time, the Steel Force gradually accumulated, and under the deliberate guidance of the nine Legends, it even took the form of the current planet, forming an even larger sealing system to weaken the Evil God. It had to be said, this was an ingenious idea of turning waste into treasure.
But now... none of it mattered anymore.
Priest looked from afar at the Chaotic planet.
The world... was turning red.
All things were burning fiercely.
Burning celestial bodies struck the earth. The Chaotic ocean instantly transformed into a boundless sea of fire. Countless tentacles, jointed limbs, and everything that seemed born from nightmares turned to ash under the absolute energy level. The Chaotic branches that danced like seaweed could no longer retract into the ground in time but were instantly scorched into nothingness.
Accompanied by a collision that was completely inaudible in the vacuum but immensely grand in the energy perspective, nine enormous, blazing golden-red fireballs appeared on the planet's surface. Their shattered debris also struck the ground, raising continuous golden spots on the black Chaotic sea. Super-hurricanes, vast enough to stretch thousands of kilometers, appeared across the globe, even overlapping each other. Countless corrupted materials were sucked into the sky, then hurled into the empty cosmic vacuum.
In that instant, even the Evil God, struck simultaneously by the nine moons, temporarily lost its power to resist.
And at the same time, Joshua, who had penetrated three million meters deep into the earth, encountered an unprecedented problem.
"Trouble. The depths of this planet are entirely filled with insubstantial Chaotic mist. There's no way to tear it apart!"
For Joshua, tentacles, vines, roots, jointed limbs—none of these existed. In his eyes, whether it was the nine moons or the entire Chaotic planet, they were just oversized black spheres. Chaos, to him, looked like a layer of garbled code, and touching it felt unreal, only causing mutual corrosion.
This wasn't usually a problem. No matter what form the enemy took, it couldn't escape being destroyed by him.
But this time, Joshua, who had intended to tear through the crust and mantle to directly expose the Evil God's sealed main body—acting as the 'core'—to the vacuum, then destroy it or reinforce the seal, discovered after penetrating millions of meters into the planet's interior that the Chaotic planet had no solid substance inside. It was insubstantial, completely unlike a real planet that could be torn apart from within. The power that allowed him to tear continents apart and hurl celestial bodies couldn't be exerted in the slightest.
Moreover, an even more troublesome problem had latched onto him.
From deep within the planet's core, an indistinct murmur came from an unknown source. An intangible, formless decaying wave, capable of eroding all things, began to attack this human who dared to approach it.
And the moment the erosion began, an incredibly violent explosion occurred on Joshua's surface.
Boom!!! Sparks surpassing nuclear fusion ignited on the armor of the silver giant god. The strongest substance in the observable universe began to release light and heat as bright as a star, rapidly self-destructing. At the same time, Joshua's form began to expand at an alarming rate. In a mere instant, his volume swelled by a full four hundred times, and this expansion showed no signs of slowing down!
"Even degenerate matter can be forcibly restored to normal stellar matter? No, this should just be the dissolution of the Steel Force that I used to forcibly constrain the density of matter!"
The power supporting his body directly collapsed. His expanded legs were crushed by his own weight. Joshua was initially startled, thinking that the Decay Evil God's decay was utterly unreasonable, even capable of restoring stellar remnants to intact stars. This was less like a God of Decay and more like a one-click restore button. But quickly, he realized that the degenerate matter composing his body was not the remnant of a naturally destroyed star, but artificial matter forcibly constrained by his Steel Force.
When the Steel Force of the warrior was restored, a large amount of matter and energy dissipated, turning into normal material particles, naturally causing the body to expand rapidly, causing the warrior's main body to dissipate into formlessness. And when the miniature world within the warrior was also restored to Steel Force crystals, Joshua, who used them as thought nodes to link his consciousness and maintain his mind, would become a monster incapable of thought, acting only on the instinct to devour and strengthen.
However, Joshua was not panicked by this strange attack from the Decay Evil God. Battle was a process of give and take. While his body was being rapidly restored to normal matter, the warrior calmly assessed the situation and quickly found a path to victory within this seemingly unfavorable scenario.
The Steel Giant God, whose form was continuously dissipating and expanding, laughed loudly as he spread his four arms, extending them in four directions. One could see an increasingly bright light surging violently on the warrior's surface!
In the void.
The Nature Mentor looked down at the Chaotic planet, nearly completely deformed by the bombardment of the nine moons. Her gaze was solemn, her mind pondering something unknown... At this point, she had no good means left to stop a 'planetary-level' Chaotic mutation. This was the flaw of most Legends of the Mycroft World: their firepower was severely lacking when entering world-level combat.
But soon, an anomaly appearing at the location where Joshua had previously torn open the earth and delved deep into the core caught all of Galannod's attention.
It was a rapidly swelling, continuously expanding 'bump'.
Initially, Galannod thought the bump was just another aberrant tissue born from the Evil God's mutation. But quickly, she sensed something was wrong. The bump's expansion speed was terrifying, and the humus material from all other areas of the Chaotic planet was rushing towards it urgently, as if trying to suppress this abnormal bulge.
But this powerless suppression was meaningless. For some reason, the Nature Mentor recalled the scene of a seed sprouting in the Mycroft World.
A seed, pressed under a rock in the soil or lodged in a crevice, absorbs enough nutrients through day after day of wind and rain. It begins to swell and sprout, pushing aside everything around it. Even if a heavy rock blocks its path above, even if hard stone walls surround it, the seed will still sprout, then push aside the rock, crack the stone wall, and stretch its leaves under the sunlight.
Galannod vaguely sensed this power of life, the power of expansion, from this rapidly swelling bulge.
And the power of expansion was, in essence, the power of explosion.
Compressed air expanding rapidly would stir up shockwaves in the atmosphere, causing an air explosion that destroys everything. But what would happen if matter compressed to its extreme expanded rapidly?
Naturally, a cosmic explosion.
Of course, the degenerate matter composing Joshua's body was not a theoretical primordial singularity, and his mass and expansion speed were not that terrifying. But regardless, an explosion caused by eighty percent of the mass of Joshua, comparable to a small world—what extent could it reach? No one knew, nor had anyone ever imagined such a scenario.
But now, the stunned Nature Mentor witnessed it all firsthand.
The continuously swelling bump, already hundreds of thousands of meters high and nearly as vast as a continent, had its outer layer of Chaotic material become very thin. One could clearly see the constantly expanding, roaring silver radiance inside the bump! One could see the light of Steel Force, like sharp swords, piercing through the bump from top to bottom. Countless cracks spread across its surface, within which flowed a brilliant silver radiance. The Chaotic material of the entire planet seemed unwilling to give up, still trying to suppress and envelop this radiance. But the Decay Evil God, already crippled by the impact of the nine moons, with most of its Chaotic material paralyzed, was powerless to stop it.
As the bump burst, the violent radiance of Steel Force illuminated the world.