Apocalyptic Era: Starting from picking up a Bishoujo
Chapter 503 - 473 Dust Avatar

Chapter 503: 473 Dust Avatar

Right now, it’s unclear whether Taoyuan Village Master has discerned the true situation here, and the pursuit of Xu Gou by Liu Shuying remains shrouded in uncertainty. If Liu Shuying fails, even if I manage to extract intelligence from interrogations here, it will be useless. That said, there’s no excuse not to fulfill my own responsibilities properly.

Moreover, assuming Xu Gou survives this encounter, I’ll need to give Weichi a heads-up about what transpired here afterward. Even though I had no other options, I did use the name of his No. 5 to feign mystery in front of Xu Gou. Who knows what kind of aftermath that act will trigger?

After confirming that the Great Success Rank Impermanence’s seed of the heart in front of me hasn’t restored its connection with Taoyuan Village Master, I prepared to begin the interrogation process.

But the person before me clenched his teeth in fear and murmured in a low voice, "What do you want to know? I... I don’t know anything. Asking me is pointless..."

"Don’t play dumb. You have ties with Taoyuan Village Master, don’t you? Are you the one leaking Ming Zhuo’s intelligence to Taoyuan Village? Or do you have other subordinates within Ming Zhuo’s influence?" I said, "I don’t care about anything else; what I want is information on Taoyuan Village Master personally.

"Whether you’re a traitor that emerged from within Luo Mountain or an infiltrator planted from the outside, possessing a seed of the heart of such high caliber and with Great Success Rank power, your status within Taoyuan Village must be considerable. You should be privy to important information, such as Taoyuan Village Master’s current whereabouts...

"If you don’t want to suffer more, just speak honestly."

As I spoke, I imbued my voice with the power of word spirit.

It was as if invisible threads were binding this Great Success Rank Impermanence, converting him into a puppet against his will. Unconsciously, he opened his mouth and began to say, "Taoyuan Village Master..."

But before he could utter more than a few words, he abruptly snapped his jaw shut, clenching his teeth so tightly that it sounded like steel scraping against steel.

To my astonishment, he resisted my power of word spirit, his bloodshot eyes glaring at me.

I grasped the truth of the matter: "So that’s how it is. Even if you’re a hastily-made product, you’re still a Great Success Rank opponent. The power of word spirit alone isn’t enough to bend such individuals at will..."

The earlier commands—forcing him to awaken and preventing self-destruction—were successful because he hadn’t actively resisted with his willpower; he naturally had a survival instinct. But now the dynamics had shifted. After all, this wasn’t an ordinary demon hunter-level "mortal" but rather a Demigod.

"Then how about this?"

I took out the Fake Water Moon and aimed it at his eyes. His expression changed; he quickly tried to turn his head away. I uttered, "Stop," briefly obstructing his movements so he couldn’t evade in time. The mirror-like surface of the Fake Water Moon established a reflective relationship with his eyes, and psychic mana sought entry through his gaze—the window to his soul.

Yet, his eyes suddenly emitted a cyan radiance, forcibly repelling the mana of the Fake Water Moon.

The mirror of the Fake Water Moon cracked with a sharp "snap," scattering fissures across its surface.

This Great Success Rank Impermanence’s seed of the heart had unexpectedly overridden its host, resisting the power of the Fake Water Moon.

If we were to rank magical treasures by the hierarchy of creation, residence, decay, and void levels, the genuine Water Moon would be of the achieved level, while the counterfeit Fake Water Moon falls under the residence level. Similarly, even in critical condition on the verge of death, a Great Success Rank opponent like Mazao can compel residence-level agents like Agent Kong to retreat and hide. As long as the soul of a Great Success Rank foe is fractured enough, even a residence-level Fake Water Moon can infiltrate their spirit.

The power of word spirit struggles with such tasks because its effect tends to lean toward assessing the soul’s rank. Indomitable willpower is one pathway to higher soul ranks. In theory, even a common person—if endowed with the spirit of a great figure—could immunize themselves from the Death Decree of Great Impermanence-level word spirit power.

But when facing this seed of the heart, the Fake Water Moon was undeniably insufficient. Though seeds of the heart appear repeatedly, and their hosts primarily fall between residence and achieved levels, giving the impression they’re unremarkable, these objects ultimately originate from Great Impermanence, bearing a fragment of its substantial power. Weakening it alone doesn’t mean the Fake Water Moon can manipulate it.

Even if I, as the user, am a Great Impermanence, forcibly injecting excessive mana would cause the Fake Water Moon to collapse under the strain.

Yet I recall that seeds of the heart didn’t seem to possess immunity against spiritual invasion in the past.

The cyan light in his Great Success Rank Impermanence eyes faded as sweat poured off him. His voice, fractured and exhausted, said, "It’s useless... useless. Not long ago, someone attempted to hack into Paradise through the Dreamland Messenger as a jumping-off point. Afterward, Taoyuan Village Master upgraded the version of all dreamland artifacts under his command, adding mechanisms to resist spiritual invasion..."

The hacking attempt he mentioned was undoubtedly my own action from last time.

It seems identical methods are futile against Taoyuan Village Master.

"Then would you kindly disclose the information yourself? Then I won’t have to kill you," I said.

The Great Success Rank opponent’s tone carried a trace of mockery: "But... if I later beg you to kill me, wouldn’t that change the terms... right?"

"You seem quite familiar with this..." I glanced at the division base victims sprawled far away. "So this is your usual ’game,’ is it?"

"Kill me... I won’t say anything." He closed his eyes.

"You don’t seem like someone who fears death. Why are you surrendering so easily now?" I asked. "If you die here, you won’t enter Paradise."

"Even if I die, the dreamland artifact can still record my existence. When Taoyuan Village Master retrieves the artifact, I’ll resurrect in Paradise," he said with unwavering conviction.

"That kind of resurrection..."

I hesitated but refrained from engaging him in a philosophical debate on resurrection. "Then what if I destroy your seed of the heart instead?"

As I spoke, I manipulated my power to invade his body, attempting to disrupt his seed of the heart. The seed trembled as if frightened and sought to flee from his body, but I confined its movement within a strict range.

However, I seemed truly unable to destroy this seed of the heart.

Though I couldn’t grasp how Taoyuan Village Master accomplished this, if this seed of the heart—Meng Zhang’s Original Seed—was indeed tied to the Cyan Dragon Seed’s creation, or even was itself the Cyan Dragon Seed, its nature might align with the creations found beyond the third door. My inability to annihilate it was, therefore, entirely logical.

But how could there be so many Cyan Dragon Seeds? Did Taoyuan Village Master split them into numerous fragments? And how could a truly indestructible Power Seed be divided so extensively by him?

Was it because Taoyuan Village Master is indeed Shan Liangyi himself, granting him the ability to do so? Or was it the Green Dragon Inheritor’s "Wood and Cultivation Power" at work?

The Great Success Rank Impermanence seemed unable to perceive my covert attempts and likely didn’t realize I couldn’t destroy the seed of the heart. Instead, he spoke with a mix of fervor and despair: "If I don’t speak, there may still be a sliver of hope; if I do, my soul will never enter Paradise..."

Clearly, he was a fanatical believer in Taoyuan Village Master, harboring an almost superstitious reverence for this God.

Could it be that his capability to endure such a high-caliber seed of the heart stemmed partly from his faith’s power, making him an ideal vessel for Taoyuan Village Master’s strength?

I continued suppressing the seed of the heart’s resistance within his body while making another attempt to invade his spirit using the Fake Water Moon. This attempt also failed, as I have always struggled with employing the illusion techniques of this magic treasure, let alone multitasking while doing so.

It seems the Vermilion Bird Seed’s influence on my natural talents persists. While I may now appear versatile—using the power of word spirit to realize numerous miracles and leveraging a profound conceptual understanding to achieve what ordinary demon hunters would spend lifetimes mastering—these feats are just natural abilities inherent to Great Impermanence, akin to breathing or walking.

However, for skills not inherently natural, my mastery remains excruciatingly slow.

As I wrestled with challenges, I persistently tried to sense Xu Gou’s location in my consciousness.

Although the Power of Cutting severed my connection with the thermal energy marker, the marker itself should still exist, and the link might be re-established. This was something I couldn’t accomplish before; fortunately, this ability fell within the Vermilion Bird Seed’s gifted skillset, making it attainable.

The concept of "unvanished thermal energy markers" is a hard-earned lesson from my past failure. Previously, when I entered the fifteenth-floor basement, all external Firefly connections were severed, and they disappeared instantly, making it impossible to continue monitoring Mazao.

After recent studies, I discovered how to preserve Firefly existence even after complete disconnection. Fireflies vanished because they lost spirit as their fuel, so the solution lay in pre-programming them to sustain themselves by consuming external materials as fuel.

Now, I ensure Fireflies automatically use space itself as their fuel source, distributing them to my allies like Mazao, Zhu Shi, and Lu Chan, among others. This ensures continued Firefly function even in highly closed different spaces, eliminating fears of sudden extinguishment of Firefly connections and thermal energy markers in the outside world.

Weichi also received a special edition Firefly, which automatically emits a distinct signal upon display, signaling those around him: this individual is under my protection.

During the recent battle, I imbued all the heat I produced with identical programming, transforming it into energy that wouldn’t extinguish even when outside my line of sight.

That said, if other Great Impermanence-tier forces extinguish them, no amount of pre-programming would be effective. Just as I felt I was about to re-establish the connection with Xu Gou’s thermal energy marker, the marker abruptly disappeared. Almost certainly, Xu Gou erased it using the Power of Cutting, obliterating it along with time and space.

Suddenly, an irregular wind swept through the area not far from me, stirring up clouds of dust.

Massive swirls of dust converged and took on a humanoid form, materializing in my field of vision.