Chapter 817: Lingering Obsession

After I spoke those words, all the memory fragments in my sea of consciousness boiled. The four Dragon-Locking Pillars trembled violently, as if something were trying to break free from its restraints.

At the same time, a roar echoed above the spirit platform. Xue Zhuo awakened. It sensed my will and voluntarily merged with me.

Unlike the time we merged in the Red Building, it surrendered control on its own this time, allowing me to wield its undefeatable killing intent.

That terrifying killing intent pierced the heavens, making everyone pale in shock. Even Black Robe, who was chanting a spell on the roof, faltered, pausing for a few seconds.

"My talent for practicing ghost arts is extremely high, but ghost arts have never been what I do best." Nine tails swept out, tearing through the obstructing spiderwebs and entangling with Destiny. With my will like a blade, I sprinted frantically upstairs!

"To think a soul on the verge of jumping off the chessboard is hiding inside your body. You've brought me many surprises, but all outcomes have already been set in stone. Nothing you do can change the future. To me, you are just like a child deceiving yourself."

Chen Mo kept his voice very low, so low that only I could hear it. I didn't understand why he was trying so desperately to stop me. Perhaps the world-opening Black Robe spoke of was actually something Destiny had planned from the very beginning.

I didn't know the reason, but one thing was absolutely clear in my mind: whatever Destiny wanted to do, I had to stop it!

Countless spiderwebs carrying the weight of Destiny blocked my path. Ever since I revealed the trump card of Xue Zhuo's killing intent, Chen Mo had intensified his attacks on me.

The patterned abdomens of the spiders split open on both sides. The scene looked exactly like something out of a horror movie. Countless hand-sized shadow spiders crawled out, rapidly closing in along the webs.

I had already charged close to the top floor. Looking back at this sight made my scalp tingle. But what I expected even less was that those hand-sized spiders continued to divide, eventually shrinking to the size of rice grains. They burrowed into the webs, hiding within Destiny, and launched attacks on me from every direction.

"I have already seen your ending. Death is your final destination." Chen Mo chanted ancient syllables. Then, those rice-sized spiders actually pierced through my will and burrowed straight into my body. "No one can entirely escape Destiny. The trajectory of a life might deviate, but it will never spiral out of control."

My consciousness could clearly track those spiders, but I simply couldn't expel them from my body. No matter what method I tried, nothing worked.

The spiders wove a massive web of Destiny within my sea of consciousness, shrouding all my memories. Driven by Chen Mo, more and more spiders entered my body. They started advancing toward the four Dragon-Locking Pillars.

"What is this?" Chen Mo's will was linked to those spiders. He quickly discovered the greatest secret hidden deep within my sea of consciousness—the four massive pillars propping up its sky. "Something like this didn't exist in Destiny's revelations, did it?"

Swarms of spiders crawled up the Dragon-Locking Pillars, trying to squeeze their way inside through the cracks on the surface.

An ominous feeling rose unbidden in my heart. If Destiny managed to pry into the secrets within the Dragon-Locking Pillars, all my previous reincarnations might have been in vain.

"Just one step away, and I still failed?" Only a single door separated me from the top floor. My fingers dug tight into my flesh. I was completely unwilling to accept this!

Failure wasn't scary. Knowing you would fail but doing it anyway wasn't scary either. What was truly terrifying was the doubt and wavering that crept into your own heart after failing time and time again.

The shadow spiders wove their web of Destiny into my will. My own consciousness gradually blurred, and I even started losing control over my body.

"Anyone who lives under these heavens is a piece on the board. Even if you lack the aura of Destiny, the people around you will invisibly drag you into karma! Every single one of them is my pawn. You are stained with too many auras that do not belong to you. The hopes and bonds of others have become your greatest hindrance. Those memories are exactly how I can affect you!" Vine-like patterns surfaced on Chen Mo's face, seemingly carrying some sort of symbolic meaning. "You cannot escape. Your ending was sealed from the very start."

I ignored Chen Mo, pouring all my strength into commanding the Blood Fox Killing Intent to blast the final door. Unfortunately, it was secured by black chains from behind. With Destiny soaking into my body and ensnaring me in spiderwebs, I could only unleash thirty percent of Xue Zhuo's killing intent.

"This is bad." I wanted to ruin Destiny's plan and save the Butcher. However, compared to those goals, the secrets hidden beneath the four Dragon-Locking Pillars were paramount. They contained a portion of the foundation I had accumulated across 2.6 billion reincarnations. This concerned the four Dao Locks; I couldn't afford a single moment of carelessness.

"One failure means nothing." I decisively funneled all my uncorrupted will into the Kidney Aperture, attempting to awaken the slumbering Dream Wing Gu and use one of my few remaining trump cards. But just as my entire will entered the Kidney Aperture, a sudden disturbance erupted from one of the fragments of the Reincarnation Mirror.

A pitch-black hair etched with countless agonizing human faces drilled out! It shot straight for the center of my sea of consciousness, clearly waiting for this exact opening to seize control of my body.

It struck like a black bolt of lightning. I was taken aback the moment I saw it. This was the thing I had brought out of the Longchang Apartments in the Animal Realm. Back then, the grand formation suppressed by the Reincarnation Mirror had contracted inward, sealing away that giant beast and all the lingering obsessions within the Longchang Ancient Buildings.

I originally thought this black hair posed no danger. Who knew it was waiting to bare its fangs until my main will withdrew from the sea of consciousness!

It takes time to describe, but it all happened in a split second. Both Chen Mo and I froze for half a second when this black hair, etched with densely packed faces, suddenly appeared.

"An obsession? How do you still have this thing inside your body? These damned rebels are here to ruin my plans again!"

Chen Mo's tone was off, and I caught onto a few details from his reaction.

He called the obsessions rebels. Thinking carefully about it, that actually made sense. Whether it was the Blood Fox's killing intent obsession or the obsessions of the tragic victims in the Longchang Apartments, neither had entered reincarnation. Instead, they had lingered in the mortal world. Although they were entirely composed of malice and negative emotions, spreading misfortune and disaster, to some extent, they had refused to obey the rules laid out by Destiny and the will of heaven.

Now, as the black hair abruptly manifested in my sea of consciousness, harboring all the resentment of Longchang's tragic victims, it had originally planned to take revenge on me. It wanted to wipe my sanity, control my body, and turn me into a slave. But once it actually broke into my sea of consciousness, it realized that the situation was entirely different from what it had imagined.

Countless shadow spiders and a dense, sprawling web of Destiny filled the space. The evil, roaring faces on the black hair instantly lost their voices. Before they even had time to process the shock, the two sides violently clashed in the most intense conflict possible.

"Chen Mo's tone just now carried a hint of shock, which means he already knew that obsessions existed inside my body. Using the will of the people to baptize me earlier must have been part of his scheme. It's just a pity that he underestimated the insidiousness of the Red Building Obsessions." The black hair's obsession bought me a moment to catch my breath. In the split second that the shadow spiders were distracted, I calmed down, sank my will into the Kidney Aperture, and called out in a low voice, "Dream Wing!"

Pale green dream dust scattered down like stars. Soon, a pair of extremely dazzling wings unfurled from my Kidney Aperture!