“Impossible!”
Magis was the first to break free from this hellish absurdity.
His heavy breathing sounded like a worn-out bellows as he glared with bloodshot eyes at the perfect figure atop the mountain, shouting in disbelief,
“My ancestors participated in the original siege and seal! The legacy records they left behind are clear—the Broodmother was nothing more than a mass of mindless, devouring flesh! What on earth happened over these thousand years?!”
His question was the confusion in everyone’s heart.
A pure monster acting only on instinct, and a Bloodflesh Queen with intelligence, a defined form, even the ability to speak—these were two entirely different horrors.
Elena’s face was as pale as paper.
She gripped her staff tightly, her knuckles turning white from the force.
Trembling, she struggled to piece together ancient secrets with the reality before her.
“Magis is right… In the beginning, it was indeed so. But… but perhaps during this thousand-year imprisonment, through constant analysis and imitation, the Queen’s memories and intelligence were eventually consumed… It… it developed self-awareness!”
This hypothesis was even more chilling than facing a mindless monster.
It meant that what they faced now was an ultimate terror possessing the Golden Elves Queen’s highest wisdom and cunning, yet driven by the Broodmother’s most primal, greedy instincts!
At that moment, the perfect “Queen Galarno” atop the mountain seemed to hear the ants’ whispers below.
The corners of her pale lips curled into a cold smile, as if she saw through everything.
A clear, elegant, yet soul-piercingly cold female voice, tinged with the laziness of awakening and divine arrogance, rang directly in everyone’s mind:
“Ignorant descendants, you are mistaken.”
“I did not develop consciousness—I awoke.”
The voice seemed to carry some kind of magic, causing everyone’s thoughts to freeze.
The Queen slowly spread her arms, the countless blood-flesh conduits connecting her back pulsating faintly, as if channeling power into her words.
“Back then, it was not a Curse, but my voluntary acceptance of the Goddess of Life’s Ultimate Fusion of all things.”
“I led my most devout followers in this great fusion.”
“We cast off the frail bodies of flesh, transcended the forms of birth, old age, sickness, and death, and became an Eternal Life Collective, undying and everlasting.”
“We are the ultimate form of life.”
Her voice carried a trace of pity, but beneath that pity was an arrogance that looked down on insects.
Her gaze swept over the dark elves below.
In her blood-red eyes, the emotion was not of a reunion, but the scrutiny of something alien.
“And you…”
Her voice suddenly turned cold, filled with bitter disappointment and the authority of judgment.
“Believers in isolation—the selfish betrayers.”
The word “betrayers” burned like a red-hot brand into every dark elf’s soul!
“Your stubbornness and ignorance hindered the final step of the elven race’s sacred evolution. Your very existence is original sin.”
These words swept through the entire group like a blizzard of the mind.
“Nonsense!”
A young dark elf warrior could not help but roar, but his voice was filled more with humiliation and doubt.
Magis gripped his sword so tightly his knuckles turned white, his broad frame trembling with rage.
His ancestors, his kin, had borne the name of darkness for generations, guarding this cursed land, watching over the monsters their own people had become, enduring endless pain and torment…
In the end, in the mouth of their former Queen, they had become the original sin obstructing evolution?
This wound cut deeper and more coldly than any blade.
Elena staggered, a trace of blood seeping from the corner of her lips.
Maintaining the Sanctuary Veil, she bore the brunt of the mental impact.
These words shattered her faith.
The self and independence they clung to, their proud creed of “purity born of isolation,” was condemned as an obstacle to progress?
Had their thousand-year vigil truly been a complete mistake?
A cold, bone-deep sorrow spread from the depths of her heart.
If even their original purpose was wrong, then what did their millennium of sacrifice amount to?
The Bloodflesh Queen’s gaze shifted, piercing through everyone and finally settling on Lin En, who had remained absolutely calm from beginning to end.
Her tone carried a hint of something like satisfaction.
“After awakening, I was trapped in this tiny cage set by the betrayers. I wanted to extend the grace of the Goddess of Life, to share my new form with the outside world, but the Power of the Isolated Remains, that filthy force you left behind, blocked me.”
Her voice took on a hint of reminiscence, as if recounting a long and arduous epic.
“For a thousand years, I never ceased my attempts, not even for a single day.”
“I tore pieces from my own body, molding them into fragments filled with my will and vitality, and cast them beyond the cage at any cost, hoping to find new soil to take root and grow.”
“But…”
Her tone grew icy with hate.
“The Power of the Isolated Remains is so vicious—it devours all life separated from my core. Every piece of flesh I scattered was drained of life before it could reach the outside, withering, rotting, turning to useless dust.”
At these words, Elena and Magis shuddered.
For a thousand years, the Sacred Relic and the Broodmother had waged a secret war of escape beneath their notice.
“Yet even decayed dust still carries my will.”
Queen Galarno’s lips curled into a twisted arc, filled with mockery of fate and pride in her own schemes.
She slowly declared the terrible truth, each word striking Elaine and Fiona like a hammer:
“Even if my life fragments cannot break through the cage, the power you used to imprison me can still serve as my call, summoning those strong enough to hear my voice and feel this extraordinary power, to come break this ridiculous seal and greet my glory.”
These words struck with even greater force than her earlier declarations!
In everyone’s minds, a terrifying image arose—a giant monster of flesh endlessly tearing itself apart, its fragments turning to ash in the air day after day, year after year, and those deadly Plagues nothing more than drifting dust from this thousand-year futility!
Elaine’s whole body trembled violently, barely able to stand.
At last, he understood.
The kingdom’s Disaster, the Crown Prince’s illness, the grand expedition—everything had been no more than crumbs tossed from a monster in its prison, and they were mice lured by those crumbs!
This was not just a trap—it was a higher-dimensional, millennia-spanning mockery.
“Enough.”
Lin En spoke.
His voice was not loud, but it was like a sharp ice pick, piercing the divine atmosphere the Bloodflesh Queen had created.
Through Elena’s Sanctuary Veil, it echoed clearly in everyone’s consciousness.
He raised his head, and for the first time, his bottomless black eyes burned with unrestrained fury, enough to scorch the world.
So the pain his mother suffered day and night, the suffering of Fallen Leaf Village, all stemmed from the so-called call of the monster before him.
He stared straight at the perfect Queen atop the mountain, his voice filled with absolute reason and supreme contempt.
“A Queen who turns her own people into wailing sculptures?”
“A God who needs Plague and Disaster to summon followers?”
“You can’t even reveal your true form, hiding behind a beautiful shell to mask your rotting, stinking flesh.”
Lin En stepped forward, pronouncing his judgment.
“You’re not a God, nor a Queen. You’re just a prisoner—a pathetic captive trapped by your own desire and decaying flesh!”
He raised his right hand.
A searing energy, so hot the air itself distorted, rapidly condensed in his palm.
No more words.
He declared his answer with action.
“You want powerful lives to break your chains? Fine. I’m here.”
Before his words even faded, Lin En slowly raised his hand.
In the next instant, a sight that made everyone’s scalp tingle unfolded.
Around him, space twisted violently.
Twenty-four fist-sized miniature suns, radiating destructive light and heat, appeared from nothing!
Magis’s pupils shrank to needle points.
He recognized this magic!!
He had faced its bombardment in battle with Lin En before, but compared to this, the previous one was child’s play.
So… Lin En had never used his full strength before.
No wonder he was so confident.
Fiona unconsciously tightened her grip on her sword, her fingertips cold.
She had seen with her own eyes how this very spell had ended the hopeless Beast Tide, believing that was Lin En’s full power.
But the starry array of destruction before her told her how wrong she was—it was just the tip of the iceberg.
Only now did they realize in terror that all they had seen before—clearing Beast Tides, fighting him—was just Lin En casually casting spells.
Facing such a colossal foe, Lin En did not hold back the power of Thermobaric Art, but unleashed it in full, mind and magic at their limits.
This was its true form!
The complete Thermobaric Art!
“Go.”
Lin En spoke a single word, waving his arm lightly as if commanding a battalion.
The first of the twenty-four “suns” vanished instantly, striking the heart of Bloodflesh Mountain.
There was no deafening roar—only an implosion so brief it sucked all the air away, followed by a blinding white heat and a destructive shockwave.
“Boom——”
A massive charred hole appeared in the mountain.
But this was only the prelude!
Before the shockwave finished expanding, the second, third, fourth “sun” followed in succession.
Boom!
Boom!
Boom!
Boom!
Boom——!
A continuous, unending barrage of saturation bombing began!
Explosions erupted one after another, storms of light and heat ravaging Bloodflesh Mountain.
Each “sun” landed exactly as intended, their blast zones seamlessly joining.
On the flesh mountain that blotted out the sky, hundreds of meters of tissue and countless wailing elven faces were instantly vaporized and scorched, turned to ashes in the flames.
Sticky flesh burst open, exposing deep muscle seared into twitching charcoal.
What once seemed like an indestructible living mountain now resembled a mass of mud pounded by burning iron hammers, its charred wounds torn wider and deeper until a canyon of flame and embers nearly split the slope in two.
This was not battle.
It was slaughter.
Not magic, but calamity!
This pure, unreasonable destruction that vaporized life utterly was an agony the Broodmother had never known in her thousand-year sleep!
“Ah—no—AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!”
Atop the mountain, Queen Galarno’s flawless face finally shattered under the inhuman bombardment.
No longer a Queen’s elegant voice, but a howl filled with the screams of millions of vengeful souls—a scream of pain and disbelief that pierced the ears!
She could not understand!
How could such magic rain down like drops of water?!
All of Bloodflesh Mountain quaked as if it were an ancient beast being torn apart.
Countless flesh tentacles thicker than battering rams erupted from undamaged regions, flinging scorched earth and molten rock in every direction, lashing out blindly in pure agony.
But Lin En only stood quietly, surrounded by a Honeycomb Bulwark of interlocking hexagons, deflecting and pulverizing all debris.
He did not even look at the apocalyptic destruction.
His cold gaze was locked on the false queen above, twisted by rage and pain.
The twenty-four “suns” behind him burned and replenished endlessly, as if his magic were infinite.
“Magis,”
He spoke without turning, his voice as calm as discussing the weather.
“This is the ending you wanted.”