Chapter 560 - 556: Second Calamity, Staying True

Chapter 560 - 556: Second Calamity, Staying True

Two percent?

Two percent?!

TWO PERCENT?!

He was mistaken!

Tittering on the precipice of death, Wei Wuyin’s response was delayed yet extremely forceful. He refused the urge to move, to take that next step into the darkness as he anxiously delved into his memories in hopes to retain the little bit of himself that remained.

’W-w-wha-what h-happe-ened?’ The feeling of his consciousness hanging on the edge was quite strange. There was no pain. There was no feeling of anxiety. There were no alarms to speak of. Yet he knew death was just a single breath away.

Besides King, the three other Astral Souls simultaneously spoke out in hurried panic. Their mixed words were extremely confusing to him who was concentrating on maintaining his sense of self and resisting the urge to traverse the darkness.. The jumbled mess offered no help, but he determined one definitive thing from their words: they didn’t know.

Somehow, his outer shell that had restored itself and reaffirmed his sense of self had started to rapidly deteriorate once again. They hadn’t even noticed until they felt the threat of dissipating themselves! If it wasn’t for their alert, he wouldn’t have noticed it at all.

For now, he had to try to recover once more before anything else. The four Astral Souls helped, sending bits of vivid memories that they recalled that shaped and birthed his individuality.

The day he met Du Ling.

As a young child, he ventured out often as the little lord of the Wei Clan who owned Red Dove City. The entire city respected him and he was quite playful at the time. His clan’s city had a strict rule of executing criminals in a very public fashion, and a group of criminals from the Bucklion Gang had been recently detained by his older brother and were being executed one by one.

Du Ling was a causality of timing, yet he hadn’t known that at the time. When Du Ling was given the chance to say his last words, the fear and despair on his face was as obvious as the full moon in a cloudless sky. Facing death, that fear of the end, terrifying exhaustion, and grievance in his heart, his last words were:

They weren’t complete souls, and they lacked this vital aspect. They thrived off what Wei Wuyin already knew or what their Daos were composed of. If Wei Wuyin was ignorant of something, they were similarly ignorant. If they knew of something, then Wei Wuyin already knew of it, but his mind would take a little longer to bring it out.

’Think Wuyin, think. What changed?’ He hurried his mind to recall all his thoughts prior to the degradation. There wasn’t much, so he pinpointed a peculiar detail. ’Before their shouts, I was thinking to myself that I would never neglect my cultivation.’

That was it!

Wei Wuyin’s silver eyes brightened in the darkness. This trial was based on causing the soul to experience a cleansing induced by regret, but regret didn’t just manifest in the wallowing of the past, but the willingness to change oneself for the future! While he was aware of the falseness of the memory, it infused him with sufficient regret to induce a change in character, in thinking.

’I’ll never indiscriminately kill simply because someone wants to harm me or my interests. Killing is an extreme, and solving one’s every problem with it wasn’t always the best course of action. I certainly can’t make it my only solution. I learned this long ago. If I was like this, I would’ve killed everyone in the Scarlet Solaris Sect that day. I would’ve upturned everyone’s lives, slaughtered them and their children, family members, and spouses. To ensure there were no roots left behind.

’I would’ve destroyed the entire sect! That’s not me. I no longer cultivate to strive for power, but to strive for freedom and life.’ A calming sensation enveloped him, as if an invisible pair of hands grasping his throat had loosened its grip.

A cold, vicious mentality was forming within him and it was fueled by regret from his negligence.

’So that’s how it is. How terrifying! Just being affected by regret through any way is enough to cleanse the outer shell. What type of Calamity of Hell is this? Feels more like a trap. How could one not change their thinking even if they’ve obtained their awareness?!’

This Calamity of Hell wasn’t simple by any means. He had to ensure that he was completely unaffected by the memory, that he stayed true to himself. It was this self of his that was resisting the calamity, so he must not lose it.

"What’s next?" Kratos asked. Despite his dignity as a Void Dragon, a being that could enter anywhere and escape everywhere, there was a lingering sensation of unease within its voice. This calamity had given it too many frights and it was the closest that its ever experienced death.

They all knew that if Wei Wuyin lost his soul’s outer shell, his soul would be whisked away to the River of Souls. They would be forced to go along with it.

’We stay true to ourselves. We continue forward.’ The urge to move was becoming too much for him to resist. If he continued resisting, he felt that his soul might instantly disperse.

Step. Step. Ste-

He stopped.