Chapter 63: The Nascent Abyss Will and Malice

Amplified by the void, the ripple's power radiated outward, rendered visible by the peculiar nature of this subterranean space. Faint undulations spread and washed through the air, plunging into the infinite dark, the bottomless abyss of the chasm ahead.

Perception was woven into the ripples, traveling alongside them as Wang Yu thrust his five senses deep into the chasm.

At first, there was no distinct sensation—nothing but darkness, nothingness, and an empty, desolate silence.

Gradually, Wang Yu sensed a growing sluggishness, as if diving into seawater; an omnipresent resistance began to obstruct and sever his advancing ripples layer by layer.

Yet, it was entirely evident that Wang Yu had encountered no physical matter; the source of this resistance could only be the entity formed by the massive accumulation of psychic energy, or perhaps the hidden existence Zieg had mentioned within it—the Absolute Divinity Remnant.

For the longest time, the ripple was something only biological organisms could obstruct; while it could traverse freely within Wang Yu’s own body, it could not roam unchecked inside the form of any other conscious being.

Though the ripples diffused under the blessing of the void might be blocked by more things due to the void's intermingling, in essence, the pure ripples Wang Yu released without void enhancement were only ever obstructed by conscious creatures; therefore, what blocked his ripples now had to be psychic energy.

The sluggishness and obstruction Wang Yu felt at this moment could only be caused by the perimeter of that colossal, aggregated psychic entity, or rather, by the psychic energy it emanated.

But… this did not seem to be a bad thing. Even with the void's enhancement, Wang Yu’s ripples had a limit; the maximum range he could currently extend them was merely a sphere with a fifteen-meter radius.

Right now, the scope of his extended perception had long since surpassed that limit; the depth of the abyss beneath the cliff was terrifyingly immense. A thousand meters? No, more than that—at least several thousand, perhaps even ten thousand meters.

Wang Yu’s ripples kept extending, never pausing, traversing a hundred meters, a thousand meters, pressing steadily forward through this sluggish mire.

Though these psychic forces obstructed Wang Yu’s ripples, they also provided a point of leverage, allowing him to use the very energy blocking him as an aid to cling to and advance.

The feeling of obstruction did not diminish; it grew increasingly pronounced the deeper Wang Yu went, but correspondingly, the assistance it provided became greater as well.

It was marvelous; this psychic energy was unlike the kind that could nearly sever his ripples entirely. It appeared loose, directionless, devoid of a unified will, and lacking the autonomous exclusivity inherent in conscious biological beings.

This psychic energy was chaotic and disordered, vast in quantity, yet similarly devoid of that exclusivity; compared to psychic energy governed by a conscious mind, this mass had no direction at all, closer instead to the pure concept of raw psychic energy.

Like a dense, crowding throng of people, packed and blocking the way, jostling aimlessly back and forth, they would not unite as one to target Wang Yu, the stranger who had thrust himself among them.

Wang Yu might be squeezed outward by the crowd, but he could also use his hands to pull himself along these people, utilizing them as leverage to propel himself forward; even if the density of the crowd increased, the difficulty of his advance would not actually intensify by much—unless a critical threshold was reached, forward progress would not be too arduous for him.

Soon, the distance Wang Yu had advanced exceeded two thousand meters; the surrounding darkness and nothingness were no different from the beginning, except that the concentration of psychic energy had risen another tier.

"Hmm?" A brief moment of doubt flickered in Wang Yu’s mind. His ripple probe had encountered a barrier, one no longer resembling that strange sensation of sluggishness; this obstruction was solid, a barrier as definitive as a wall.

Then, in the next instant, that wall ceased to be a wall; the moment the ripples touched this layer of psychic barrier, the energy erupted into a writhing mass, twisting, coiling, and clawing toward Wang Yu’s ripples.

"As expected, then. My ripples are undetectable only when they are sent out purely on their own; these parts enhanced by the void are entirely visible to an existence whose perceptive faculties have reached a certain level."

Wang Yu attempted to spiral his ripples to evade, but it was futile; the entirety of the surrounding psychic energy had been mobilized by some consciousness, integrating and unifying these scattered forces that were otherwise aimless and directionless.

In an instant, it felt as though everything in the vicinity had turned against him; a lone man in a surging tide, Wang Yu began to be squeezed and buffeted by the uniformly mobilized crowd, and the places where he could once find leverage transformed into shackles binding him.

Instantly, the segment of perception he had mapped out using the ripples was utterly crushed and controlled from all directions, stripping away any lingering possibility of movement.

Some existence had become aware of him, and this presence was now utilizing its absolute dominance over this unimaginably vast ocean of psychic energy to begin controlling and strangling Wang Yu.

The intensity of the surrounding psychic energy was soaring; in Wang Yu’s perception, it had practically materialized into solid matter. When his ripples brushed against it, it felt no different from touching a wall; now that this psychic energy possessed a core, Wang Yu’s ripples could no longer penetrate it at will.

If the outer, less powerful psychic forces were the fringes of this ocean, then the current, continuously intensifying strength presaged that the core of this ocean was drawing near.

The core of this ocean? What could it be? Wang Yu felt a trace of curiosity. The Absolute Divinity Remnant? No, that didn't seem right; an materialized object like that shouldn't be stored in a place like this, and something hailed as the ultimate weapon of the Royal City couldn't possibly be left here so casually.

Then what could it be? A consciousness spontaneously generated by this ocean of awareness? That would make sense; to be able to block his ripples, it had to possess a will.

In that case, let Wang Yu witness this will that, in Zieg's words, was enough to drive most people to madness; he did not fear this existence, for he possessed absolute confidence in his own mental resistance.

Furthermore, to take a step back, Wang Yu was incapable of astral projection; meaning, the ripples he extended at this moment did not even contain his psychic energy, but only the raw concept of his perception. No matter how powerful the core of this psychic ocean was, it could not affect something that wasn't there.

Soon, Wang Yu’s ripples beheld that core; since it was inherently unsuited for visual observation, what Wang Yu perceived was difficult to express in words.

As a whole, it resembled a sphere composed of a mass of smoke and cloud, an indescribable existence twisted together, swirling with mist like an entangled, knotted nebula, pulsating at times and falling dormant at others; this unspeakable cloud of smoke manifested directly before Wang Yu’s ripples.

An emotion called curiosity flickered from time to time; this peculiar existence went so far as to display its emotions straightforwardly before Wang Yu’s ripples.

Anger, mania, a surging urge to slaughter, doubt, confusion, fear, joy—these bizarre elements, along with fragments of entirely meaningless information, were transmitted along Wang Yu’s ripples.

Countless images—slaughter in a narrow alley, brutality upon a bed in a dark corner, the agony of life-and-death separations, the ecstasy of promotion and wealth, the delight of a great vengeance exacted—image after image poured into Wang Yu’s mind without intermission, accompanied by the emotions bound within them.

The emotions contained within those consciousnesses also bored deep into the recesses of Wang Yu’s mind; the imagery grew increasingly vast and chaotic, shifting from real memories into scenes of fantasy.

A grotesque, humanoid creature with six heads; a stitched monstrosity of forcibly pieced-together corpses; birds with human faces emitting strange laughter; and on a bright, moonlit night, glimpsing through the eaves and gaps of a house the bloodshot twin eyes of the moon in the sky, peering down.

The imagery became increasingly chaotic and disordered; flesh and blood replaced soil, corroding the earth, while the sky was blanketed by crimson, vacant eyes. Strange human limbs sprouted from the ground like trees, and from the edges of those limbs hung fruits bearing human countenances.

The emotions contained within these rapidly accelerating, frantically distorting images also turned bizarre—hysteria, mania, depression, panic… every manner of emotion bored into Wang Yu’s mind without disguise, without restraint, and without pause.

The violent torrent of information was simply not something an ordinary person could process; the data within was enough to turn any sane mind toward madness. No human could receive such information without falling into insanity, and Wang Yu, too, found the information incomprehensible.

Therefore, he stopped looking.

"No wonder this thing drives people mad; it really is quite nauseating." Wang Yu chose to stop accepting those inputs; at the start, he had looked closely, finding that it was all a jumbled mess of memory fragments from anonymous individuals and their emotions at the time, with some scenes perhaps holding a bit of intelligence value.

But afterward, these images began to warp; all sorts of bizarre things appeared, saturated with frantic emotions, and Wang Yu knew this stuff no longer held any value.

Thus, he chose to tune it out. These emotions still transmitted frantically to Wang Yu through his perception; to observe meant inevitably being affected by these things, but Wang Yu was like someone watching a movie on a phone—with one press of the power button, the screen went black, and whatever played inside had no effect on him whatsoever.

Waiting a moment, that frantic torrent continued to accelerate, speeding up the process of pouring those mad, terrifying things toward Wang Yu; countless bizarre images flooded into Wang Yu’s mental space, only to vanish like mud into the sea, leaving no sound behind.

These things were utterly incapable of affecting Wang Yu; he was merely checking to see if there was an end to these maddening objects.

He wanted to see if the core of this space had already given birth to a will; as long as it was a true will, it couldn't consist solely of madness…

The frantic pouring accelerated, and more and more things were transmitted along Wang Yu’s ripples, until at a certain moment, they reached an end, as if it had poured out all its chaos and disorder to some degree.

That violent, disordered will actually fell quiet for a brief moment; that unnameable aggregate halted before Wang Yu’s perception, floating and drifting, and those chaotic components seemed stripped of their maddening, infectious power, appearing slightly softer.

The images that drove men to delirium ceased their assault; the core of this psychic ocean did indeed seem to possess its own will—an immature, newborn will. Did it belong to this ocean of psychic energy…

That drifting, splendid sphere still cast its emotions outward, and Wang Yu could still capture them using the perception of his ripples: "Confusion, curiosity, excitement, longing, longing, longing…"

Wang Yu silently recited the desire of this will in his heart; this fellow truly was like an infant newly born into this world, beginning a vague exploration after the madness briefly receded, turning curious about its surroundings, beginning to long for certain things…

"Longing to leave, longing to be greater, longing to be unconfined, longing for 'freedom'?" The thoughts of the psychic ocean's core were transmitted to Wang Yu fitfully, with blurred clarity; this newborn will had begun its yearning for freedom.

Why would a newborn will long for freedom? How could it comprehend the difference between this place and the outside? No… those images, those memories.

This vast repository of memory might be a catalyst for madness to anyone else, but to an existence born within this frantic ocean of consciousness, it might just be ordinary memories.

Thus, the information within these memories was sufficient for it to understand this place and the outer world; indeed, if one could go to that world outside, who would willing remain in this bottomless chaos.

Sorrow, sadness, powerlessness, longing for freedom, longing for freedom, sorrow, sadness, sorrow, sorrow, anger, sadness, anger, sadness, malice, longing for freedom, longing, freedom, longing for a vessel, escape, escape, longing for a vessel, malice, longing for a shell, longing for freedom, here… there is a vessel!

At a certain instant, the psychic energy that had been casting its emotional information almost unconsciously began to change; this newborn consciousness noticed the other presence in this void space—Wang Yu’s ripples and his perception.

A sudden surge of malice manifested within this consciousness, and the newborn will abruptly gave birth to a powerful desire.

Within its fractured and chaotic will, there was also some information regarding this territory: a wondrous object, difficult to escape, a portion could be severed, occupy, leave, sever, requires a vessel, here, a strange will, a vessel, can be seized!

The newborn will pondered chaotically, its malice intensifying; the knowledge within those chaotic memories told it that the suppression of the wondrous object could not be stripped away, but it could cast its own will out, occupy someone else's body, and thereby escape.

"Human will, fragile, crush, occupy! Shell, freedom, escape!"

Malice festered, boiling within this newborn will; it directed this malice squarely at Wang Yu. In its memories, its psychic energy could easily crush and pulverize a human's fragile soul without effort, and the shell and freedom it yearned for were within arm's reach.

"Is man born evil… the so-called kindness and purity of a newborn will is just wishful thinking after all, haha. An infant only does whatever benefits itself unconsciously, and this thing is no different."

Wang Yu curled his lip, finding it quite normal; he had merely been curious. Could he really guide a newborn will in this abyss onto the right path or strike up a good relationship with it? How could that be possible…

But since it wanted to crush his will, then let it come; who was afraid of whom.

The newborn will of the abyss began to writhe, its psychic energy twisting and condensing.

A core that concentrated the majority of the newborn will's existence, possessing a psychic force unimaginably terrifying to humans, was created by it.

Then, propelled by countless psychic tentacles, it began to accelerate, building up momentum; following the direction of that unfamiliar consciousness, it prepared to thrust this core toward the entity of that consciousness.

In its memory, that surge of consciousness must have been what is known as an out-of-body experience, and at the end of that consciousness, there must surely lie the vessel it so desperately craved...

The core was propelled outward at a terrifying velocity, while the sea of psychic energy, stripped of most of its consciousness, sank into a profound silence.

The psychic core, leveraging its intangible nature, raced along the ripples of Wang Yu’s trajectory, hurtling toward the location of his physical form, its inner will brimming with malice and the thrill of impending liberation.

That will had already caught sight of Wang Yu’s shell; he stood atop the lighthouse, gazing into the abyss with a look of utter indifference.

The psychic core flew straight toward Wang Yu’s forehead, its immense speed allowing it to pierce through in an instant and enter his mental realm.

"The next step is to crush the soul of this vessel..." Freed from that chaotic sea of psychic energy, the nascent will had become remarkably clear-headed.

Having surged into Wang Yu’s mental space, it began to hunt for its target, noticing a figure standing upon the surface of an endless lake. "Is this it? Crush it!"

The nascent will possessed a boundless malice; it intended to shatter that entity and seize control of the body.

"Freedom! A vessel, to see the world outside that..." The nascent will reveled in the beautiful prospects awaiting it after destroying the soul, yet it came to an abrupt halt in a single heartbeat.

That heartbeat was the moment it flew past an old wooden door standing ajar.

In that instant, every trace of its will was purged; all that constituted the nascent will was erased. Its malice, its joy, and even the very essence of that nascent will vanished into thin air as its consciousness dissolved.

Only the highly condensed psychic energy remained, drifting past Wang Yu’s door.

An object resembling a glass marble, radiating brilliant colors, fell onto the endless lake of Wang Yu’s mental space, sending ripples spreading outward.

The figure the nascent will had seen approached, stooping down to pick the object up.

"This is...?" A flicker of wonder and bewilderment stirred in the eyes of the Lady of the Night.