Chapter 22: The Man Who Hates the Starry Sky
The vast majority of intelligent life, when gazing up at the starry sky, feel a tranquil joy in their hearts.
Whether noble or commoner, rich or poor, when looking up at the stars, they are all equally insignificant. It is vast, broad, and magnificent beyond the scope of human vision. The starry sky is so eternal; before it, the life of an intelligent being is so brief. The familiar joys, angers, sorrows, and pleasures beside them all fade away in an instant, bringing immense peace.
The vast majority of intelligent life, when gazing up at the starry sky, feel a surging thrill in their hearts.
With the development of civilization and the advancement of technology, the more intelligent life explores the starry sky, the more they discover its grandeur. It is higher than the blue sky, larger than the heavens, farther than the vacuum, lying at the end of the endless deep void. It symbolizes the unknown, symbolizes exploration, symbolizes the thirst of intelligence for the distant. As long as one looks up at it, life will forever be filled with passion.
However, the Paladin Loranda was not one of that 'vast majority.'
He did not like the starry sky at all.
Even now, Loranda clearly remembered the trembling and fear that surged in his heart when his adoptive father, the Pope of the Seven Gods, Israel, first took him through the World Barrier and into the void to survey the endless Star River of the Multiverse.
Too big, too vast, too dark... deeper than the deep sea, broader than the wilderness. It was unimaginable that beyond the beautiful and bright world lay such a terrifying sight.
Why is it like this? Back then, Loranda was constantly pondering this question. He couldn't understand why such a terrifying void existed beyond such a beautiful world. When the Old Pope took him to various worlds to sweep away the conflicts caused by the Death Evil God, this doubt grew deeper and deeper. And when Joshua shared his deductions and speculations about the Multiverse with everyone he deemed worthy of knowing, this doubt swelled in Loranda's heart to the point where he had to speak out.
Why is this Multiverse like this?
Endless chaos lurks in the darkness. Unknown evil gods may arrive silently at any moment. Behind the seemingly beautiful light lies a terrifying shadow drawing ever closer. And an even more desperate picture is hidden within that dreadful, empty future.
Such a starry sky is truly too terrifying, filling one's heart with despair.
As the quasi-heir to the next Pope, Loranda truly thought so in his heart.
The Church of the Seven Gods was not a family-based power. The Pope was generally selected from among the strongest priests of the Seven Gods—though there were occasional exceptions, such as the current Pope of the Seven Gods, Israel. Before becoming Pope, he was not a priest stationed in a temple but a wandering pastor roaming the continent. Before the selection decades ago, no one knew his name. It was only after he defeated all competitors and proved that his understanding of Holy Light far surpassed everyone else, even the previous Pope, that some recalled the name recorded in the books of this too-humble clergy.
In theory, as the Pope's adopted son, Loranda had no competitive advantage. He still had to compete with others within the entire Church of the Seven Gods, without any special treatment because his adoptive father was Saint Israel. But this time was different from any previous Pope's adopted children in history.
Loranda was simply too strong.
At ten, he was sent to the Holy Mountain to be trained as a knight's attendant. At eleven, he awakened the potential for Transcendent power, becoming a Black Iron rank. At thirteen, he formally mastered the seed of Battle Qi, reaching Black Iron High-rank. At fifteen, he stepped into the Silver Shining Spirit. At eighteen, he formally awakened Battle Qi, reaching Shining Spirit High-rank. At twenty, he wielded Life Energy with consummate skill, and the following year, he entered the Gold Realm.
After that, Loranda took only five years to fully master his Gold Glory, honing his power to Gold Peak. At that time, he had just passed his twenty-seventh birthday. While most Paladins were still touching the Gold barrier, he had already seen the threshold beyond the limit of the 'human' species, known as Ultimate Essence.
And after three years of fighting alongside a certain warrior in another world against the Calamity Evil God, through sincere cultivation, Loranda formally broke through to the Force's Ultimate Essence at the age of thirty.
Then, aside from the Pope, no one in the Church of the Seven Gods could defeat him anymore. Whether it was his peers among the Paladins or priests, or the temple priests and Paladin captains of the older generation, when faced with Loranda's Holy Light—as heavy as a mountain and as changeable as water—they all wisely chose to surrender. Before the Paladin calmly raised his cross-shaped warhammer and giant shield, even the Ultimate-rank Paladin Robzek, who was both a teacher and a friend, could only smile bitterly and admit that he had been surpassed by the younger generation.
Thus, Loranda became the next heir—not because he was the Pope's adopted son, but because there was no other choice.
"What are you thinking about, Loranda?"
Suddenly, a man's voice, tinged with anger, rang out.
And following it came a heavy punch, enough to shatter mountains, crack the earth's crust, and sink an island's continental shelf!
Boom! In the environment that had already been beaten into a vacuum, no sound should have been heard. But the extremely concentrated fluctuations of Life Energy caused all Transcendent experts who could perceive energy changes to hear an incredibly shocking explosion in their minds.
The wandering memories were abruptly yanked back into his body. The stray thoughts instantly coalesced in his heart. Loranda suddenly opened his eyes, which he hadn't realized he had closed. He saw an iron fist, gleaming with a metallic cold light, hurtling toward his head, wrapped in overly bright plasma sparks!
In less than a thousandth of a second, the iron fist was already pressing down on Loranda. The plasma fire, brighter than the sun, was enough to burn human eyes to ashes. Even an Ultimate-rank expert had to squint to avoid temporary blindness.
Loranda could feel the immense force of this strike and the danger of his situation. In that instant, countless thoughts flashed through his mind, but his battle-hardened body and combat instincts chose the most correct one. The Paladin immediately raised the Adamantite giant shield on his right hand to meet the heavy punch.
Bang!!!
A gray Holy Light, neither bright nor even dim, radiated from Loranda's body, then turned into streams of light, merging into the giant shield. The shield, emblazoned with the emblem of the Seven Gods, collided head-on with the mountain-crushing iron fist. But the next moment, instead of the ordinary outcome of the giant shield blocking the heavy punch, accompanied by the harsh howl of the atmosphere being torn apart, the iron fist shattered the Adamantite giant shield like a cookie, then, with undiminished force, struck Loranda's face.
One could see flesh instantly vaporized. The Paladin's figure was sent flying far away in an instant. His body traced a long arc of over ten kilometers through the thin air, then crashed heavily onto the gray-white gravel ground.
"Don't get distracted during a fight, Loranda. You were the one who challenged me, asking me to spar with you at the same Ultimate Peak level."
Before the impact crater, which was dozens of meters wide and still emitting blue smoke, a black-haired man's figure appeared behind the smoke. He stood at the edge of the crater and said to Loranda, who was still lying in the center, in a calm tone: "I agreed because you are my friend. And if you consider me a friend as well, you should take this seriously."
"Focus on the battle. Don't let me think less of you."
Hearing this, the Paladin lying in the center of the crater stirred. A gray Holy Light enveloped his body. He slowly sat up, then stood. Holy Light veins, like blood vessels, appeared on his skull, which had almost become a skeleton, rapidly regenerating Loranda's flesh and face.
A crisp sound of bone regeneration came from his shoulder joints. The muscle fibers and blood vessels crushed by the immense force closed and contracted, then regenerated and healed.
"It was my fault."
Walking out of the crater, Loranda sincerely apologized to the black-haired figure: "I saw the starry sky just now, my mind wavered, and I couldn't help but get distracted for a moment."
"Ever since I learned the truth about the World Star River and the Multiverse from you, every time I see the starry sky, I can't help but wonder why this world is like this."
The smoke cleared, revealing that the two were standing on a desolate rocky desert. There was almost no light on the gray earth, only a few stars twinkling in the distant darkness—the only source of light on this land.
If one pulled back the perspective and looked at this dark world from afar, one would see a broken planet. A cold wind swept across this dead planet, whose crust had been partially shattered in an ancient war. In the distance, the remnant of a star, drained of all its energy and turned into a white dwarf, slowly rotated in a nebula of dust.
This was the 681st layer of the Abyss, the Deep Abyss—a desert world once destroyed in the final battle, nearly swallowed by chaos, and brought to its ultimate end.
On the rocky wasteland of the broken planet, Loranda took a deep breath and began to gather the Holy Light within him. Before him stood an avatar of the Legendary Warrior Joshua von Radcliffe, with his power suppressed to the Ultimate-rank level. Facing this friend and formidable foe, Loranda grasped empty hands. Light filled them, forming a cross-shaped warhammer of gray Holy Light and a shield shaped from light in his palms.
"I can never figure it out. The Multiverse, born from the First Flame, why is it so despairing and dark? It's simply inexplicable."
Before he finished speaking, the Paladin moved his feet. With a burst of sand and dust, Loranda's entire body turned into a stream of light, charging toward Joshua.
Although Loranda was slightly injured from his earlier distraction, thanks to the powerful defense and recovery of Holy Light, he was still at his peak. The speed of an Ultimate Peak Paladin on this near-vacuum, dead planet reached an astonishing 17,000 meters per second—fifty times the speed of sound!
At such speed, crossing a hundred meters took less than an instant. One could only see a faint gray light. But the black-haired man's avatar smiled slightly at this. Facing the gray light that ordinary detection arrays couldn't capture, his figure vanished directly. At the same time, explosions began to appear abruptly on the rocky wasteland, and dazzling energy flashes rose like small hills all over the wilderness.
At this moment, the two, both at Ultimate Peak, were engaging in rapid collisions and exchanges at dozens of times the speed of sound.
Streams of heavy, violent force continuously blasted from the metal iron fist, shaking the Paladin's body. Meanwhile, the gray Holy Light infiltrated everywhere, seeping into the warrior's arms in the form of hidden force. Both defended and attacked each other. One could see high-heat oscillating hand blades cutting through Loranda's Holy Light shield, while the cross-shaped warhammer struck Joshua's shoulder, covered in metal outer armor, producing a dull echo.
"Loranda, Brandon also challenged me before. He wanted to spar with me, and I agreed."
While the Paladin was fully focused, pouring all his energy into this rapid offense and defense, the warrior's clear voice echoed in his ears: "He wanted to test with me how sharp and heavy his sword was. He wanted to know how strong he had become after advancing to Ultimate Peak and how far he could go. So I kicked him into the sun."
As soon as the words fell, a frantic warning sounded in Loranda's heart. He opened his eyes wide, wanting to retreat quickly, but it was too late. Joshua rapidly closed in, raising his right elbow high and striking heavily toward the Paladin's skull. This blow was powerful and heavy, like a mountain falling from the sky. If Loranda couldn't block it, he would undoubtedly have his head smashed.
"Ahhhh!"
To avoid that outcome, Loranda could only quickly raise both hands, dragging two obvious white lines of Holy Light from the sides of his arms. He roared silently, raising the Holy Light hammer and giant shield above his head. One could see a gray-white glow suddenly appear on the Paladin's face, and a halo like an angel's appeared above his head. But Joshua's elbow strike had already arrived.
Boom!
With the collision of both attack and defense, all sound disappeared.
Unfathomable force instantly shattered the rock layer on the planet's surface, tearing apart the already broken crust. The energy tide triggered by the immense force even distorted the flames. The Paladin's figure, wrapped in Holy Light, dragged a long gray line, smashed directly into the deepest part of the mantle, and plunged into the core.
"At that time, a solar flare happened to erupt on the sun's surface. The star's heat and light raised a million-kilometer-scale sea of light. And Brandon cut through the corona and walked out from the sun's surface."
"His sword light was like an abyss that could destroy everything at that moment. The Heaven-Abyss Sword, capable of cutting worlds and determining life and death, could bring everything, including chaos, to its end. He achieved his goal and found what he wanted."
In the innermost part of the broken planet, the deepest part of the mantle, even though the sun had gone out, the heat of the planet's molten core had not completely dissipated. Around the core, viscous, golden-red liquid metal was still slowly churning. In fact, under the extreme heat and pressure of the core, there was no longer any magma, rock, or liquid. Here, the solid and liquid states of matter were hard to distinguish. Even the hardest alloy was as soft as grease here, yet harder than diamond.
But in this extremely soft yet incredibly solid layer of high-heat metal, a humanoid figure slowly walked out of the golden-red viscous molten iron. The head, nearly shattered by the warrior's elbow strike, was rapidly healing in the gray Holy Light. The first part to regenerate was the Paladin's bright and determined eyes.
"That's nothing."
He used Holy Light to vibrate the high-density metal layer at the core, producing a deafening sound: "I can walk out of a star too."
"It's just that, Joshua, Brandon could find what he wanted because he was single-minded: he has a wife, he has a daughter. As long as that guy can protect his family, he won't think about anything else. He pours all his faith into love and family bonds. Even without needing to know the answer, he can move forward with unwavering determination."
But I am different.
I want to know the answer.
With endless doubts in his heart, the repeatedly struck Paladin stood up again and again. With his talent, he should have long ago found his own path. But for some reason, Loranda stubbornly suppressed the instinctive urge for self-sublimation that had begun to stir since returning from suppressing chaos in numerous Star River worlds. This man, as stubborn as iron in his convictions, would never allow any confusion in his heart.
Until he found the answer in his heart, Loranda would never compromise with this world and casually take a step forward.