From the end of the world

Chapter 504 Overwhelming Power
In nature, being strong does not necessarily mean survival, nor does being weak necessarily mean that survival is impossible. It depends more on whether one can adapt to the current environment.

In the era when dinosaurs were still rampant, mammals, which were the ancestors of humans, were mostly small nocturnal animals the size of mice. They avoided being hunted by dinosaurs by relying on the shelter of caves, rock crevices and other terrain. Some populations even mastered the ability to dig in the soil and burrow underground. Even the dinosaurs could not dig them out to hunt them.

I felt like I had encountered an enemy who was very good at digging holes and diving. As a doomsday monster, the other party was able to avoid my attack, relying not only on its own strength, but also on its evolutionary adaptation to the chaotic space-time of the doomsday era to get shelter. Sometimes being strong is not the only solution to survival. As the overlords of the era, the dinosaurs withdrew from the stage of history after the mass extinction catastrophe, but mammals were able to survive and continue to evolve.

But, I think, could it be that this is simply because the strong are not strong enough?
Both dinosaurs and mammals are weak in the face of the power of nature. If humans with advanced technology had collectively traveled to the Jurassic period, perhaps they would not have been wiped out by the crisis of an asteroid impact on the earth; and as long as the dinosaurs were powerful enough to flatten the mountains, the mammal ancestors hiding underground would not be able to rely on the protection of the environment to avoid being preyed upon.

This is what I am going to do now.

The swirling pile of building debris seemed to have turned into a small mountain, and it fell towards where Tan Xiang and I were standing with overwhelming mass. This was probably the most powerful attack that the cartographer in the form of a probability cloud could unleash at this stage. Because the mountain of building debris was too large, it seemed to be falling at a slow speed, but in fact it would only take two or three seconds to land.

Seeing this scene, Tan Xiang showed despair.

However, as I slowly lowered my raised palms, endless flames emerged from the higher sky.

That was the fire emitted by the super-giant flaming palm formed by my flames. The length of the flaming palm from the fingertips to the base of the palm was a full three kilometers. The palm was facing downwards, as if it was going to slap a bug to death, and it was moving towards the ground at a speed far exceeding the mountain of construction waste.

Compared to it, the mountain of construction waste that was falling towards me and Tan Xiang was nothing more than a tiny pebble. The length of the pedestrian street we were on was only a few hundred meters, and this giant flaming hand was enough to hold it all.

The cartographer is now like a math problem. Normally, if you want to kill him, you must first solve the problem cleverly, but I chose a violent solution - since he is distributed in any part of this pedestrian street in the form of mathematical possibilities, then I only need to strike him with a blow that will definitely kill him no matter where he hides, and the possibility of his survival here will disappear.

If that doesn't work, then I'll just destroy the space-time itself in this area, so it doesn't matter whether he's lurking in the second or third dimension.

Entering the realm of metaphysical abstraction and becoming mathematical possibilities are all tricks of the weak. Under overwhelming force, they are nothing more than childish tricks of setting up a temple in a snail shell.

A sufficiently powerful force is enough to distort all principles.

This is true even in the unreasonable doomsday era.

Because now I am even more unreasonable.

The giant flaming hand first smashed and burned the mountain of construction waste in the air, and then pressed down on the ground of the pedestrian street. In the boundless flames, I felt that I had finally come into contact with the cartographer's soul hidden in the depths of chaotic time and space. His figure seemed to appear in my perception again.

When he was dying, his chaotic eyes seemed to finally regain some clarity. That might be the last trace of his human soul that he had not yet eliminated during the process of becoming a demon.

He glanced at the skyfire above, then looked at me, seeming relieved.

"God..." he murmured, "You finally showed up... to save us?"

The light of destruction engulfed him.

After the torrent of orange-red light completely receded, the possibility of the life of "cartographer" was completely eliminated from the doomsday era.

The battle is over.

I slowly lowered my right hand and looked around.

The cartographer’s last words still seem to echo vaguely in my mind.

Tan Xiang lay on the ground with his head in his hands and trembled for a long time. It seemed that he realized slowly that he was not burned to death. Then he raised his head hesitantly to observe the environment.

It wasn't just him that wasn't destroyed, the pedestrian street itself wasn't destroyed by my flames either. Because I was just thinking about destroying the mountain of construction waste above and the cartographer on the ground, the giant flame palm automatically disintegrated and dissipated after completing its mission. Extra destruction was not my intention.

It's a good thing that things didn't develop to the point where the surrounding space and time had to be destroyed. If that happened, even I couldn't say whether others could survive.

By the way, breaking the void cannot help me reach the nothingness outside the world.

Nothingness is a realm of "non-existence" in the true sense. Because it is not a space, there is no concept of "entry". I don't know what kind of power Huang Quan used to banish me there. At least I can't do it, and I don't think Luoshan Dawuchang can do it easily. "Zhuang Cheng... who are you?"

Tan Xiang was certainly not so stupid as not to be able to connect the giant flaming hand with me. He sat up on the ground, looked at me with disbelief, and said, "Could it be... that you are a god? Just like the gods that the cartographers worshipped before..."

"more or less."

It would be a bit troublesome to explain in detail what the Great Impermanence and human gods are, so I acknowledged it directly and added: "However, it doesn't matter in the era before the end of the world. Now I can't call myself a god. I can't bless you or protect your future safety. Just think of me as a superpower who is just very powerful."

"It's just that the power is very strong..." Tan Xiang seemed to want to complain about something.

"Instead of that, can you answer a question for me?" I said.

"What's the problem? I will tell you everything I know." Tan Xiang asked cautiously.

"You don't have to be so scared of me," I said. "I just want to know why you weren't poisoned by the cartographer. If the cartographer's ability wasn't so tricky, maybe you would have had a chance to attack the two children and kidnap them as hostages, right?"

"Ah... you mean that." Tan Xiang suddenly realized, "It's very simple, I vomited out the food beforehand."

"Spit it out?" I asked.

"After finishing my meal, didn't I ask the cartographer where the bathroom was? After I went to the bathroom, I secretly vomited out all the food I had eaten. It might be because it was a little late, so I still digested a small part of it. The toxins still have a little effect on me."

Tan Xiang sat on the ground, touching her body, and seemed unable to stand up for the time being. Then she continued, "Actually, I didn't know there was poison in the food from the beginning. I just felt that in this horror story, I shouldn't accept food and water from strangers casually... Maybe I'll eat his food first, and he'll eat my meat the next. And I wasn't particularly hungry.

"It's just... I didn't expect the subsequent developments to be so terrifying. He really wanted to eat my flesh..."

As a young man who grew up in a peaceful era, this was definitely the first time he encountered such a ridiculous thing, and a look of fear appeared on his face.

Although he lacks survival experience, he can still make such a decision. It is possible that he has always lacked a sufficient sense of reality about his situation. Because he is experiencing an event like a horror story, he also follows the logic of horror stories when making decisions, rather than his own logic in normal reality.

But no matter what, his judgment and decision were correct. To put it bluntly, he has been pretty useless since his first appearance, but here he finally made me look at him with new eyes.

"So...what should we do next?" Tan Xiang asked anxiously.

He was probably worried that I would abandon him because he was not good enough. The cartographer had explained to him the concepts of madness and demonization before, so he should be very clear about how dangerous it is to be alone in the apocalypse.

"Don't worry, I won't abandon you for the time being," I said.

“For now…” Tan Xiang muttered.

It might not be a good decision to go with me, because the power of the unlucky star may still haunt my fate, so there will be a lot of monsters attacking me on the road. I have experienced the elusiveness and unpredictability of the doomsday monsters. Although they cannot pose a deep enough threat to me, the people around me are another matter.

I turned and walked away.

Including the safe house, almost all the buildings on the pedestrian street have become ruins. This is not my doing, but the work of the cartographer before. I kept searching in the ruins of the safe house and found what I was looking for.

I dug the wandering soul out from under the rubble. He looked dazed.

The cartographer had said before that the wandering soul was not his companion, but a severely injured blessed monk he captured from outside. The reason why he fell into madness was not because of madness, but because he had driven a few nails into his brain.

In other words, if I want to communicate with this person who knows the clue about the small bowl, I don't need to recover my power of words first. I just need to dig out the nails in his brain.

(End of this chapter)