The Ultimate Evolution
chapter-1460-30041322

(TL: The Fang Lin that Sheyan is fighting is actually the MC of Ace Evolution/Death Battlefield, the prequel to The Ultimate Evolution. )

Under the protection of the giant lightning tentacle, Sheyan witnessed the Realm crumble in front of him. It was truly a grim and shocking sight, as if the apocalypse had arrived, and as if various towering, decaying buildings were collapsing at the same time.

The dark silhouette sitting under the rotten gate was reduced to ashes before his very eyes under the attack of the terrible lighting tentacles!

Reduced! To! Ashes!

Sheyan could not find any joy in his heart, witnessing the spectacle. Before he encountered Fang Lin, he was mentally prepared to face any kind of enemy. However, he did not expect that the enemy, who could be regarded as the biggest enemy he had faced in his entire life, would die so easily, without so much as a struggle! The simplicity of Fang Lin's end, the simplicity of his annihilation, simply felt too apprehensively surreal to Sheyan.

Sheyan felt as bizarre as a protagonist in a martial arts story who thought that he was about to face a tough fight with a bitter enemy that would last for three days and three nights, but after he made the first move, the enemy was already dead.

"Something feels off..." thought Sheyan. He took a deep breath and started thinking hard. He had already calculated every possible situation repeatedly when he came up with the plan; no matter how the enemy responded, it was impossible for Sheyan to lose, unless the enemy had the power to defeat Noah Realm C. Like a Blackjack player who held a 21-point hand, there was simply no way he would lose.

At that moment, Sheyan saw a light belt drifting over from the Realm, easily navigating through the gaps between several giant lightning tentacles that contained enough power to destroy the world. The light belt did not seem to possess any attack power. It looked like a huge umbilical cord more than 100 metres long and 10 metres wide!

Within that "umbilical cord", a fetus was bizarrely born out of nothing. Numerous veins were connected to the fetus' body. The fetus rapidly grew and took shape. At first, he was holding his knees with both hands in a fetal position, and then his body slowly developed and extended. When the fetus reached the size of about eight or nine months of pregnancy, Sheyan could finally recognize him. He was Mogensha!

Next, the "umbilical cord" gradually hardened and turned transparent, becoming like a huge transparent glass pipe that connected between different time and space. All kinds of strange scenes then appeared in the pipe, bent and distorted like the images in a kaleidoscope. The images rushed through Mogensha's body like a tide, and Mogensha slowly grew up.

From what Sheyan could see, all those scenes were likely Mogensha's life experiences, and the Realm was reshaping his memory in this way. Noah Realm C sure knew how to maximise her resources. The process of sculpting life required the extremely mysterious source energy, which even the Noah Realms treasured highly. And when the rotten first generation Nightmare Realm was destroyed, a lot of incomparably precious energy would inevitably leak out of it, so Eve had decided to put the energy that escaped from the Realm to immediate use.

But the moment Sheyan's vigilance relaxed slightly due to the emergence of Mogensha, his heart suddenly tightened. He instantly turned his head around and saw, from within the terrible scene of destruction, a tiny spot of light which hurt his eyes.

The spot of light rapidly enlarged and became more and more intense. The light then gradually converged into a large, mysterious vertical eye!

The vertical eye was cold and beautiful. It was getting bigger and bigger in Sheyan's vision, obviously because it was rapidly getting closer. It was letting out a force of attraction so strong that it seemed to be able to suck the soul out of someone!

When Sheyan was right in front of the eye, he saw the scene of a baby being born. The next moment, it became the scene of a kid playing and fishing by the sea... These memory fragments appeared one after another, flying towards him like sharp, rotating blades, seemingly trying to tear his soul apart!

The pupil of the vertical eye suddenly disappeared and turned into a deep black hole.

It was all really mysterious.

So mysterious that it made him want to dive in, even if it meant that he would drown! He felt as if he had lost the ability to think, like his intelligence had frozen and stagnated! The intense, trance-like state he was experiencing could hardly be described with words.

What angered Sheyan the most was that he even witnessed his father's death in those memories! His father had his back to Sheyan as his body was pierced through by several weapons. And yet, he kept fighting fearlessly until his last breath. Even after his death, his body remained standing!

"Wait..." In the midst of extreme anger, Sheyan suddenly realised what was wrong. That's right, why couldn't he see his father's face? This was because the opponent was ingeniously using the memory fragments in his subconscious mind to launch a counter attack! Sheyan had never seen his father's face before, so the opponent could not use that to attack him!

But even after Sheyan realised that he had fallen for the trap, he could not find a way to break out of the illusions. There was a powerful and terrible force circulating repeatedly in that eye, like countless tentacles covered in suction cups that gripped Sheyan soul tightly, trying to drag him inside.

Despite knowing that Noah Realm C would only need a second to save him, Sheyan did not know whether he could hold out for that long. Under the terrifying power of Fang Lin and the Nightmare Realm combined, as well as the fact that they caught him completely by surprise, that single second felt like it was magnified into days, months, or even years!

This misalignment in his perception of time was truly bizarre, but in fact, Einstein had already cleverly interpreted the related concept a long time ago:

"When you sit with a nice girl for two hours you think it's only a minute, but when you sit on a hot stove for a minute you think it's two hours. That's relativity."

Under the powerful suction force of the giant eye, Sheyan's eyes saw stars, his ears could only hear the loud roar of the air, his heart was in his throat, and his body was rapidly losing stamina. His every cell seemed to have been sent into overdrive, and he was filled with an intense pain, almost like he was getting cooked!

"Is this the man's death throe? His one last struggle using the destructive power of the Realm?" While struggling to hang on, Sheyan tried reaching out for help, but even his mind seemed to have been frozen under the opponent's pressure. Every single thought seemed to take thousands of years to execute.

But when Sheyan's resistance was on the verge of breaking down, the internal environment of his body also started to collapse, which immediately affected the place where he stored the fruit of Aladdin's Magic Lamp. It was certainly impossible for Noah Realm C to monitor Sheyan's condition at all times, but she kept a close eye on the object of her desire.

As soon as Noah Realm C realised that something was endangering her coveted prize, she instantly became furious!

The fury of a Son of Heaven often resulted in grave consequences.

And what happened when Noah Realm C, who held the lives of thousands of Sons of Heaven in her hands, got angry?

The answer was a large-scale destruction of time and space!!!

Noah Realm C was furious with the fact that the enemy had nearly succeeded in ambushing Sheyan, whom she was protecting, right under her very nose! This was no different from trying to pull a tiger's whiskers!

Sheyan's vision was suddenly filled with a dazzling light! He instantly lost all his five senses. All he could sense was emptiness.

A total emptiness!

After an instant, or perhaps an eternity, Sheyan finally regained his senses. In his sight, besides Noah Realm C's flailing lightning tentacles, was dust as far as his eyes could see! The dust was light and fine, and it was simply everywhere. Its light grey colour seemed to hold a deadly silence, just like the dust on the surface of the moon stirred by the footsteps of the astronauts! It reeked of death!

It was the so-called "fine ash" in Buddhist Scriptures, the end product of something that had gone through the four great trials of Formation, Stagnation, Destruction, and Emptiness!

Under the furious attack of Noah Realm C, everything was reduced to this kind of completely dead dust, no matter what it was!

Sheyan pinched a little bit of the "fine ash" and slowly rubbed it between his fingers while appearing to be deep in thought. In the end, he could only sigh.

"It's a little regretful, but after an attack like this...he should be dead, right?"

Then, he turned around, and his eyes brightened. Mogensha, who was protected inside the transparent "umbilical cord", was opening his eyes.

Not only that, but various protective barriers shaped like giant bubbles were drifting over from afar, travelling freely between Noah Realm C's horrifying lightning tentacles. These protective bubbles contained people inside, and, of course, they had come here with Eve's permission.

The bubbles gradually dissolved when they got close, and out came Zi, Reef, Sanzi...everyone in Party Ace! They had come here after receiving the message to witness the miracle!

"Welcome back to the team!"

"Welcome back!"

"...."

Amid the excited shouts of the party members, Mogensha slowly opened his eyes. The look in those eyes turned from confusion, to clarity, and finally to surprise! He spread his arms wide to welcome into his embrace his familiar teammates who were swarming him.

Sheyan, instead, stood at the side, clapping his hands lightly with a smile on his face. Zi kept looking at him as if there was something that puzzled her.

Sheyan naturally noticed. He turned to her and asked, "Why are you staring at me?"

"It's just a hunch, but I feel like there's something a bit different about you compared to before," replied Zi with a frown.

Sheyan burst out laughing. He suddenly pulled her into his arms, which made her fidget in panic. However, she did not have the strength to resist Sheyan, and she did not really have the intention to either. After realising that her half-hearted struggles got her nowhere, she simply gave up resisting. She closed her eyes with a blush.

She heard Sheyan whisper in her ears, "The biggest change in me is that I suddenly find myself wanting children of my own."

"What??" asked Zi, perplexed.

The smile on Sheyan's face turned to one of evil.

"So let's make a baby."

"Wait!! What..."

Looking at the red-faced Zi who was gnashing her teeth and pinching him hard, Sheyan casually smiled and pulled her closer. A certain thought emerged in his mind.

"Mogensha had been reduced to ashes, but even he could be revived. What about my parents, then? It should be possible for them, too, right? Based on the strength of our party within the Realm, as long as we keep it up, we should be able to get more and more revival opportunities! Wait for me, mom and dad. As long as I keep surviving, we'll definitely meet again one day!"

　　***

At the same time.

On Earth, in the real world.

It was a fine day. The bright sun was shining on a small garden, its light so intense that the leaves were even a little scorched. The bees flew lazily among the flowers amid the heat.

This place was not a park or a school, but a mental institution in C City. However, all the patients staying here were not the kind that was aggressive or dangerous. That said, their behaviours were sometimes really chaotic and illogical, often leaving the staff speechless.

Take the young mental patient who had dull eyes, for example. When he came to the garden, he suddenly broke out in laughter for no apparent reason. With saliva dripping down his mouth, he grabbed a beautiful oleander flower and plucked it off, completely ignoring the bee that he had accidentally crushed in his grip. With his hand swollen from the sting, he stuffed the crumpled flower together with the bee into his mouth without any hesitation, then chewed them with relish.

The medical staff rushed over to stop him, but the young mental patient suddenly started crying and spat at them. Snot, saliva, vomit and tears mixed together, smearing his face. In the end, in order to prevent him from suffocating himself or biting his own tongue, the staff had no choice but to stuff a tongue guard in his mouth. He was still struggling wildly, and he would not stop even when his wrists were already badly bruised.

All of a sudden, without any warning, the young mental patient completely calmed down and allowed himself to be handled like a lifeless puppet. This completely surprised the staff, some of whom were bringing tasers and sedatives over, because something like this had never happened before. However, mental patients were often regarded as lunatics precisely because of their peculiar behaviours, so no one thought much of it.

The staff naturally would not wait on him in front of his bed after administering the sedative. They tied him up for now, and they would come back later to untie him. Theirs was a tough job. It was not uncommon for them to be bitten and scratched by the patients. They certainly could not care for the patients as carefully as family members would.

After the staff left him, the young mental patient slowly opened his eyes.

Those eyes were still full of dullness and craziness at first, but as time went on, they gradually became clear, like dust that had settled. The clarity of his gaze was not the shallow kind. Like standing on the bow of a ship and looking down into the ocean, the first thing you would notice was the clarity of the water, but what you would feel immediately afterwards was the endless depth of the sea!

"Ughh, this feels...great! I finally got rid of that rotting body and returned to the healthy body of an 18 year old! A lunatic? A madman? Ha-ha-ha! Only a fine line separates a madman from a genius!"

Although he was bound tight, the young mental patient kept taking in deep breaths with his fists clenched, as if he was exploring his new-found energy.

"Sure enough, my theory is right. Source energy is the most mysterious energy in the universe, so even the powerful Realms don't fully understand it! Fortunately, although that Sheyan guy stole a lot of the source energy that leaked from all those assassinations we performed, I'm the one who gained the most from them as the important human node! I did it! I had to use up most of my plundered source energy, but I've acquired the chance to start over again!"

During the previous confrontation, Sheyan had laid down an ingenious plan, drawing his mother Realm, Noah Realm C, into the fight. From his point of view, no matter how the situation was going to develop, it was impossible for him to lose.

However, unbeknownst to him, his opponent Fang Lin was also planning something big!

The first generation Realm he belonged to was aging and decaying, so if he wished to survive, he must find a way to extend the Realm's life. The only choice he had was to assimilate into the aging and decaying Realm. That way, he would obtain the power to travel through time and space, so he could kill other variations of himself in other universes to grow stronger. With the powerful and mysterious source energy he plundered, he managed to delay the Realm's decay. However, this could only cure the symptoms but not the root cause!

The first generation Realm was like a dying old man. No matter how much supplement he took, he would only delay the inevitable death. If that went on, the only fate awaiting Fang Lin was to die together with the Realm, or even be consumed by it before then!

Therefore, when Fang Lin made the plan to deal with Sheyan, he had also left a backdoor for himself. If the plan was successful, Sheyan would be killed and absorbed. The rich amount of source energy obtained would be invaluable to the Realm. Fang Lin would have achieved his goal.

However, if the plan failed, it must be because an even stronger force had intervened and destroyed the first generation Realm. This would give Fang Lin a wonderful opportunity to free himself of the shackles of his mother Realm and regain his freedom!

He had been preparing for this for a long time, and even had a target ready! All he needed was for his decaying first generation mother Realm to be destroyed. As soon as that happened, he would instantly move into the body of the young mental patient he had selected, someone who had huge potential, whose life wavelength was highly compatible with his own source energy wavelength, and whose consciousness was completely jumbled up. This behaviour was no different from a forced invasion. Fang Lin could use the abundance of source energy he possessed in his soul to transform his new body and improve its potential even further.

If he were to do this before, the first generation Realm which was closely bound to Fang Lin could easily find him and kill him, but not now! By making use of Eve's formidable power to destroy the first generation Realm, Sheyan had helped Fang Lin eliminate the only threat that could locate him and exterminate him!

In retrospect, it appeared that when it came to scheming, Sheyan had been slightly bested by Fang Lin! Sheyan had not obtained any substantial benefit from his plan, while his actions had instead rescued Fang Lin from the inhuman state that could barely be regarded as living. Although Fang Lin had lost the great power that came from assimilating with the Realm, he had gained the chance to start over with a body that contained infinite potential!

Thanks to Fang Lin's understanding of the Realms, it would simply be way too easy for him to find a new Noah Realm to join and become a contestant again. Moreover, he now had the advantage of moving in the dark.

But Sheyan's advantage was obvious too. He already had such a huge lead in terms of power. Compared to Fang Lin, who had to start over from scratch, he held the absolute advantage.

This is definitely not the end to the battle between them. That will be another magnificent battle, another moving story!!

(The end.)