Liang Chen grit his teeth and corrected his position to block Yi Ze. The wounds suffered by his body were honestly things he considered negligible, his flesh and bones could be easily restored thanks to his body cultivation. But the problem was his organs. Yi Ze hit him with such force that it was inevitable that his organs would suffer from the impact, he could even feel that his intestines had ruptured somewhat.
And in that laid the problem. His organs had yet to be converted into his unique law, repairing them wasn't as easy as it was for the rest of his body. True, he could use his abundant life force to heal the injuries, but it was far from as fast and efficient as it was for the rest of his body. He would need a bit of time, and that was evidently something that Yi Ze would not give him now that he had discovered the trick to her defence.
He swept his spear towards the incoming axe, the laws of time and wind coiling around it to further enhance its power. The axe was indeed pushed aside, but it seemed like that had been Yi Ze's plan all along. She rushed forward before her axe was even fully pushed aside, one of her hands letting go as she curled it into a fist and smashed it into Liang Chen's chest.
There was quite a bit of force behind the attack, but not even close to what any of her previous attacks had amounted to. No, what came instead of the force was her Anima Essence and soul, rushing into his soul and scouring through it as if it was a dagger seeking for the heart it could plunge into.
"Gh!"
But the one who ended up grunting in pain wasn't Liang Chen, it was Yi Ze. Liang Chen had technically left the realms of a Sebettu, but he still had their innate technique, the Bloody Soul Sea technique. Every time he killed something he would devour a portion of their soul and use it to strengthen his own. It couldn't be used to increase his soul cultivation, but it drastically improved the strength and resiliency of his soul and Anima Essence.
And if there was one thing Liang Chen had done plenty of then it was killing, especially after he entered Purgatory's Cradle. His soul was his strongest aspect, and now Yi Ze got to experience the full force of it, her body instinctively recoiling and causing her to fall down to the ground.
When she touched his soul, she saw the sorrow of a child. A crying child seething with wrath, a boy who cursed the heavens, cursed the world as he delved into blood. And beyond that, she saw death, the end of life. From small insects to critters, from critters to beasts, from beasts to kings, and from kings to gods.
Plants rotted away, people rotted away, cities died, countries turned to dust, and finally, even planets died. They went out one by one, the brilliant night sky turning dimmer with each day. And in the end, the sky turned dark, not a single star left to illuminate it. Nothing was born, nothing was saved, all that remained, in the end, was nothing, a great big void that stood all alone in its sorrow. That was the death she saw. Her own, the world's, the death of existence.
A burst of pain brought her mind back to reality, out from that great nothingness dripping with sorrow. She had crashed into the ground before she knew it, a thorny vine taking this chance to dig into her body and run through her veins. She could feel it sucking her blood, threads of darkness stitching themselves into her body as they tied her down.
She turned her gaze towards the sky, but there was no great big emptiness above her, no night sky devoid of stars. There was just Liang Chen, the bright blue sky serving as his backdrop as he corrected his position and used this acquired time to fix his internal wounds.
"This...I almost find this funny. To have your own trump card become your downfall, it is almost enough to make someone laugh. That's a strange soul you got there, vicious even. I admit my loss, Liang Chen. The combined strength of my Ocean's Wrath, you beat it. But I'm not done just yet."
Yi Ze smiled somewhat mirthlessly as she spoke. She could feel it in her soul, that moment of contact between her and his soul had infected her with something. Her soul was decaying before her very eyes, her existence was fading with each passing second. That sad and empty nothingness she had seen had followed her back into her body, and now it was her turn to go there.
Even if she could hold it back by sheer force, it would leave her unable to deal with the poison and memories dug up from the vestiges, it would invade her mind and take away her control over the discordant energy. The dead wanted their vengeance, they wanted their energy back. But when you are ready to accept your own death you tend to prepare a thing or two beforehand, and there was no better time for her to release it than right now.
"Yumao, put them away."
Liang Chen removed his interspatial ring and tossed it away as he spoke, Yi Ze's words filled him with an uneasy sensation. Yumao immediately snatched up the interspatial ring and picked up Sheng Lian, Li Zhao Xu, and Shen Fei, quickly shuffling them into the interspatial ring before he returned to Liang Chen and also entered the ring. The ring landed in Liang Chen's hand just as Yi Ze's final trump card, the last attack she would ever launch, was unleashed.
The island started to tremble violently, cracks extending across the entire patch of land as the buildings collapsed and crumbled. Now that she was dredging it up, he could feel it. Every time she stomped the ground, every time she expended a great amount of energy, it had all been to prepare for this attack. All the energy she had sent into the island, all the power she had gathered in it, all of it was blending with the final bits of power she drew from the water.
All the power erupted at once. Like a volcano exploding or a geyser bursting, all the energy roared as it shot towards the sky. And the island that was forced to house the power was brought along. The entire island was torn from the water and launched into the sky, falling apart as it was unable to withstand the immense force that pushed it up.
The shrapnel filled Liang Chen's entire vision, it seemed to cover the entire earth as it rose skyward and launched itself at him. This was Yi Ze's final trump card. She took her sect, an island bordering on the size of a country, and threw it all at him so that he would join her in death.
But would Liang Chen just accept something like that? The answer to that question was obviously no.
"I told you, Yi Ze, they are angry at you. You are the Ocean's Wrath, so you should respond to the wrath of your disciples."
Liang Chen put away his spear as he spoke, stretching out his arm as if he was extending it towards the vestiges that still filled the world around him. They were the poison that he had dredged up, the wrath of the deceased, they were his poison. But was this really the only form his poison had?
The hatred, the anger, the desire for vengeance, the darkness lurking within the vestiges were all pulled out, a sinister poison to taint the soul. But under Liang Chen's control, the poison was forced to change. That unseen yet sinister thing slowly started to condense, a hazy white mist filling the world.
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But that wasn't enough, not yet, so he kept going. More and more energy was poured out from him and into the poison, the mist concentrating further. And then, the first droplet appeared, a bleak white drop just hanging in the air. One became two and two became four, droplet after droplet appearing in the air as the mist vanished. Enough drops to fill a cup, then a waterskin, then a bucket, then a wagon, a house, a lake, a river.
The number of droplets increased exponentially, beneath was a clear blue ocean while above was a dim white one, two oceans standing in stark contrast. The vestiges vanished one by one, their everything had been pulled out and turned into poison, their wrath now left in Liang Chen's hands.
"Go."
Liang Chen muttered a single word, his face almost as pale as the poison floating above him. The white ocean, the soul-formed poison turned corporeal, dropped down as it followed his orders, descending upon the rising island and its shrapnel. His white poison was his strongest, it worked by liquefying the bonds that kept cells and the like together, humans would be turned into nothing but a puddle should they suffer its effect.
But this ocean wasn't formed from just that poison, he had fused in his law of time, his law of death, and his law of rot, all to ensure that it would have full effect on the rising landmass. And indeed, the poison splashed the island and its shrapnel, the vegetation rotting and dissolving, the stone and earth withering and fading to sand and finally to dust.
In the end, the massive landmass faded from existence and the white poison landed in the clear blue ocean. The water hissed and sputtered, but the poison and the laws fused into it proved stronger. The clear water was swallowed by the poison, at first just turning dim and sour, but eventually, it too faded away. Yi Ze's ocean had collided with his, and in the end, only his remained, a poisonous liquid that rendered the place inhabitable.
There were only two small lives left in this place, Liang Chen who was hovering in the sky and Yi Ze, who had been flung away by the eruption of the island, luckily pushing her away from the path of the poisonous ocean. Liang Chen descended from the sky, landing next to the now white water as he gazed upon Yi Ze.
"It's a shame. Had you come here earlier, or had you just been born here, then you could have become our 10th Wrath. Perhaps we'd even be able to extend beyond this cradle at that point, Purgatory's revival would have been that much closer."
Yi Ze didn't even try to sit up as she laid there, she just spoke calmly and quietly. She was weary. She had done her part, both in life and now in death, now it was her turn to rest. But luckily for her, there was someone here that could take over her duty. Although whether or not he knew it himself was unknown.
"Join you? No, I don't think that would ever happen, even if we had met earlier. We are both wrath, but our ends are different, our ideologies."
Liang Chen spoke as he slowly walked forward, he didn't think that there was ever a time in his life where he would have been in the mental place needed to join the Wrath sects. The goal he sought was simply too different from what they sought.
"Do you remember what I said earlier? In the end, you still don't fully understand us. Neither our goals nor our emotions. It's too late for anything else, but have a talk with Lao Ye, acquire that understanding."
Yi Ze smiled humourlessly again, weakly shaking her head. He didn't understand them and they didn't understand him, they just fought and killed each other without understanding the other. But now, now Yi Ze understood him slightly, she had dug into his soul and gotten to catch a glimpse of him. But it was already too late, that possible 10th Wrath, the Heaven's Wrath sect would never be born in this land.
Liang Chen could not read her thoughts, he hadn't been able to unravel her soul from the very start since it was too strong. So he didn't know her thoughts, what went through her mind, he simply stopped at her side and brought out his spear again.
"Why did you never use your law of water?"
Ye Zi was the lord of Ocean's Wrath, the Nine Wraths Lamentation that she used could draw power directly from the water and fuel it into her. And looking at the desiccated corpses it seemed like she could also draw out power from the water within your body and take it for herself, leading to the discordant power that had coursed throughout her body. But even so, she had never used the law of water against him, never controlled the water around the island.
"Because I don't have it. The sect masters aren't chosen based on their laws, we're chosen solely based on strength and how compatible we are with the lamentation. No, I'm not like you, Li...Storm Lord, I don't have the luxury of multiple laws. All I have is my law of Power. It was enough to reach this point, but it seems like it wasn't enough to stop you."
The truth was much simpler than Liang Chen had expected, Yi Ze simply didn't have any other laws. She had put her everything into power, controlling both her own and her enemy's. That was how she was able to defend against so many attacks, she surrounded herself in a miniature domain that increased her own power while lowering the power of everything else that entered it.
And it had worked excellently, even Liang Chen's attacks lost a lot of power under the effect of her domain. But once he figured it out, that was it. With time flowing in opposite directions around his weapon, the concentration Yi Ze needed to maintain her domain rose drastically, people simply weren't used to time moving differently like that. And in the heat of battle, doing something like that was exceedingly hard so she wasn't able to cope.
"Goodbye, Storm Lord. The path of the world won't change much whether it's yours or Lao Ye's Wrath wins out in the end, but I'll watch on from the other side. Show me what ending is in store for Purgatory, for our Wraths and lamentations."
Yi Ze showed a final smile, the same calm and accepting smile she had shown when Liang Chen first arrived here. And then she used the last bit of her strength, her own lifeforce converted into Qi, to shatter what little remained of her soul. It was her death, her offering to Purgatory, and she would give it with her own hands.