Deep within the Temple.
The enraged Elder roared silently as the Demon God Tentacles in his mouth writhed and twisted frantically.
In the next second—crack, crack—the surface of the tentacles split open like parched bark, revealing a dense cluster of human eyes.
They all stared at Jon simultaneously, their pupils reflecting a bizarre mixture of indifference and pity.
A series of irritating and painful whispers suddenly echoed in Jon’s mind.
The voice sounded like his mother’s call at times, his father’s encouragement at others, and sometimes like Lily’s intimate, spoiled acting.
But when he tried to listen closely, he couldn’t capture anything, as if it were all a mere hallucination.
“Stop your tricks! Shut up!”
In an instant, Jon activated his superspeed.
His figure flickered as he closed in on the Elder, snapped the tentacle with one hand, and then shattered the creature’s head with a single punch.
However, the Elder and the tentacle did not die.
The shattered head slowly reshaped itself like shifting sand, and the severed tentacle grew back.
Only now, the eyes on the newborn tentacle were wide open, filled with an unbelievable sense of trance and shock.
Jon reacted, reaching out to tear it apart again, but the further he reached, the further the tentacle seemed to pull away.
In just a brief moment, the distance between him and the tentacle had become like a vast chasm.
‘???’
‘What kind of bizarre magic is this?’
Jon was filled with astonishment.
He activated his superspeed once more, but the situation remained the same.
The harder he charged toward the tentacle, the further away it retreated.
He picked up a jagged rock from the ground and hurled it toward the tentacle with all his might.
The rock traced a bizarre arc in the air and slammed hard back into his own face.
“Hiss…”
Jon clutched his aching face, his eyes filled with confusion and bewilderment.
The strange whispering in his heart grew louder and more chaotic, finally merging into a sharp, wanton ridicule that echoed in his ears.
The seawater around him seemed to drain away through a hole.
As the water vanished, he was left in an endless, pitch-black darkness.
It was void, and everywhere was a suffocating emptiness.
Suddenly, a sharp pain shot through Jon’s palm.
He looked down and discovered an eye slowly opening in the center of his hand.
That eye held a smile that seemed to want to embrace him.
Then, he heard a giggling laughter—it was Lily’s voice.
“Friend! Friend! I’ve finally waited for you!”
The cute, milky voice was a tone Jon knew all too well.
“Who are you?”
Jon felt his skin crawl.
He frowned and snapped, “You damned thing! Don’t speak to me with Lily’s voice!”
Lily’s voice stopped abruptly.
After a long while, a sigh sounded in Jon’s ear, this time replaced by a gentle and mature stranger’s voice.
A sudden beam of light cut through the darkness, revealing a woman.
Her features were sixty percent similar to Jon’s.
Jon froze, a strong intuition telling him…
This was his mother’s face.
Pure white butterflies fluttered around the woman, who was filled with maternal radiance.
“Jon…”
The woman called out, her voice as soft as water.
“We have been waiting for you… Join us… Return to where you belong…”
“Is this the only way you know how to disgust people?”
Jon’s figure vanished instantly, and in the next heartbeat, he had broken into the light.
He grabbed the woman’s wrist and squeezed hard.
As expected, what flowed from the wound was not blood, but salty seawater.
“What a disobedient child.”
The woman’s face suddenly darkened, then gradually distorted into a demonic mask. The mask flew through the air, roaring ferociously, “Rebellious son… Kneel for your mother!”
Suddenly.
A terrifying pressure descended from the sky, pinning Jon down until he couldn’t move.
He felt as if every drop of his blood weighed a thousand pounds, and every inch of his skin had turned into mountains and earth.
“Cough—”
Jon coughed up a mouthful of blood.
Even so, he forced himself to stay upright, his knees never bending even a fraction.
“Is that all?”
He lifted his head and asked calmly, “My turn.”
A long-accumulated heavy punch suddenly swung out.
But the ghostly shadow seemed able to predict his movements.
As his fist swung, it pulled away from him again.
Jon furrowed his brows, lost in thought.
A moment later, the woman drifted back leisurely, her face full of a smug smile.
“Give up. You can’t catch up, you can’t win, and you can never leave this place.”
“Either become my ‘child,’ or be trapped in this void for eternity.”
“Agree… Agree to become the Scion of the Sea. I will let you retain the most of your sanity and make you the strongest Chaos Great Demon. We, mother and son, will join forces to sweep through the Source and take back the world that belongs to us!”
Before she could finish, Jon suddenly threw another punch.
This time, she avoided it again, just brushing against the edge of the wind from his fist.
“Hehehehe~~~”
The Demon God’s Shadow let out a mocking and seductive laugh.
Suddenly, Jon’s furrowed brows smoothed out.
He looked up, stared at the woman, and said with a sense of relief, “I’ve learned it.”
The Demon God’s Shadow: “???”
“You didn’t dodge. You distorted my perception. It’s not that I didn’t hit you; it’s that I didn’t aim at you at all.”
The smile on the Demon God’s Shadow’s face froze.
Seeing this, Jon knew his intuition was correct.
“Even if you’ve noticed, what can you do? Your eyes, your ears, every nerve on your skin—they can never touch the reality outside this void.”
The expression of the Demon God’s Shadow gradually turned cold.
Jon tried, and it was indeed true.
This was like a phantom prison created specifically for him.
Even his consciousness was deeply affected, making it impossible to escape.
Facing this bizarre and dangerous situation, he felt a chill down his spine for the second time in his life.
He realized the opponent’s attack was lethal, or at the very least, enough to trap him here forever.
Instead of fear, he felt excitement.
It was a heartfelt joy that welled up from deep within a warrior when facing a powerful enemy and challenging oneself.
His blood boiled, and his fighting spirit blazed.
Jon couldn’t help but marvel in his heart: ‘What an unimaginable enemy. To think there is magic that can penetrate the magic defense covering my entire body and directly affect my consciousness.’
It was just like when he first discovered that the Demon King, Liya, was “faster” than him.
He began to enjoy this battle.
At that moment, Jon suddenly realized—he had come into this world precisely to defeat these powerful enemies.
“I understand! If I want to win against you, I must defeat myself. Defeat my own ignorance, defeat those unreliable senses, and defeat the soul that deceives itself!”
Jon declared with high spirits.
He closed his eyes, and his brain, immersed in the pleasure of battle, spun rapidly, becoming more sensitive and agile than ever before.
The Demon God’s Shadow’s attacks struck him.
Clearly, they couldn’t break through his defenses, yet they worked every time, causing him intense pain and even opening gashes and scars on his body.
Jon understood that this was his distorted consciousness deceiving his flesh, making his body believe it had been harmed, thus manifesting the corresponding injury.
For the first time, his powerful physique was wounded so miserably.
But in the process of evading, Jon suddenly thought—if “I” am untrustworthy, is it feasible to construct an absolutely calm “Other” to spy on the world for me? Furthermore, the senses of the “Other” should not perceive light, but should perceive magic instead…
The darkness faded, and a path opened up.
In a very short amount of time, the [Mind’s Eye] magic—which allowed Jon to spy on the flow of all magic in the world with a calm and unwavering gaze—was completed.
The Mind’s Eye opened, and the world distorted by the Demon God finally returned to its original appearance.
Seawater once again submerged his pitch-black armor and body.
The Naga in the Temple were fleeing in all directions, some numb, some angry, and some terrified.
Jon saw the Elder’s bloated and ugly body, and he saw the Demon God Tentacle covered in eyes.
His shoulder and elbow retracted slightly, and then, he threw a hearty, satisfying punch toward that tentacle.
The world suddenly went silent.
With the Elder as the center, a hollow, conical vortex was punched into the sea.
Inside the vortex, there was not a trace of liquid; only a vacuum remained after being pushed aside by the force of the punch.
The seawater pushed by the explosive power shattered the Temple’s dome and half of its walls.
The Temple began to collapse and break apart.
When the violent seawater finally calmed down, only half of the Elder’s body remained.
The Demon God Tentacle had been ground into dust, leaving no trace behind.
On the surface of the Sea of Lost Souls, a tsunami hundreds of meters high rose up, sweeping toward the distant mist…