From the end of the world

Chapter 506: Wandering Soul Awakens
The person who appeared in the cartographer's diary and claimed that my flame was very similar to the Great Demon of Disaster was obviously the silent and dull girl who was protected by the cartographer.

It turns out that the "fire-controlling monster" that attacked her team in the past was really the Great Demon of Disaster, and the reason why she was afraid of me was because she associated me with the Great Demon of Disaster.

But why did she think my flame was very similar to that of the Great Demon of Disaster? At least in terms of appearance, my orange-red flame should be completely different from the black flame of the Great Demon of Disaster in the rumors.

Let’s just believe that the Great Demon of Disaster is really my future self. Then in this case, will the Great Demon of Disaster also possess the Seed of Suzaku like me?
According to the information I had obtained before, it was impossible for two descendants of the Vermillion Bird to appear in the same era, just like it was impossible for two sets of divine seal fragments to appear in the same era. This was true even if I had traveled through time later.

Or is it that in the chaotic apocalypse, even this most basic rule has been broken? Or can my future self (the Great Demon of Disaster) continue to maintain my power even if I lose the Suzaku Seed?
Since my fire power can still function normally, it means that the Vermillion Bird Seed is on my side, not on the side of the Great Demon of Disaster... Following this logic, the most reasonable development may be that the "current Great Demon of Disaster" has lost his power.

If we combine the "Time Island Theory" that I analyzed and speculated before, when the Great Demon of Disaster and I are in different areas, we should also be regarded as being in different time periods. In this case, we can indeed preserve the Suzaku Seed at the same time in the doomsday era.

This means that when the Great Demon of Disaster and I appear in the same area, one of us will inevitably lose all of our power...

I put my guess aside for now and read the rest of the cartographer's diary.

"She is like another child I adopted, a severely infected person of Madness. Not only did she forget her real name, but she also forgot many things in the past. She didn't even have the most basic ability to take care of herself. I relied on the ability of 'guiding direction' to barely maintain her most basic mental structure.

"Survivors who are severely infected by madness often have strong visual and auditory hallucinations. They can see the non-existent moon in the night sky like the Blessed Monks, and can also vaguely hear the Gospel. Although most people generally believe that survivors in this state are extremely fragile and dangerous, sometimes it is precisely because of this fragility and danger that they have certain sensitivities that ordinary survivors do not have - they can even sense the fluctuations of mana like us Blessed Monks.

"It is said that the flame of the Great Demon of Disaster is black, while Zhuang Cheng's flame is clearly orange-red. However, since she has judged that the two have very similar frequencies based on her perception of mana fluctuations, I cannot ignore this.

"According to legend, the Great Demons are all fallen gods. They are strange kings who cannot speak and only know how to destroy everything. However, the Zhuang Cheng I met is rational and can speak human language. It is hard to believe that he is a Great Demon.

"However, he does seem to possess some of the characteristics of the Great Demon of Disaster. For example, when he releases his power, his own mana will not fluctuate, only the flames that he differentiates will appear.

"Could it be that he is actually the 'Great Demon of Disaster in the Past'? How could this bizarre doomsday world, where even the long river of time has become shattered and chaotic, be able to show such incredible miracles?
"A god before he became a demon... I have never heard of such a thing, at least it is not recorded in this diary...

"It's still too absurd anyway. The amnesiac monk I picked up while walking around outside turned out to be a god before he fell. It's really too far-fetched. I can't believe this speculation immediately.

"But if Zhuang Cheng is really a god..."

The diary ends here. It seems that the cartographer doesn’t know how to continue expressing his feelings for a moment, so he puts the pen aside for the time being and leaves it for later recording.

However, he no longer had an "after". After he turned into a karma demon, he was burned to ashes by me.

Another question arose in my mind.

Judging from the text in the diary, the cartographer did not regard me as "an ordinary blessed monk who can only manipulate fire." At least, although he did not completely believe that I was the Great Demon of Disaster, he never gave up this suspicion. In the subsequent contact and attack on me, he seemed to be certain that I was just a piece of fish on the chopping board for him to slaughter.

In the weird world, caution is the basic quality of a demon hunter. No matter how much vigilance you take out for unknown things, it is never too much, and this is even more important in the apocalypse. If a certain goal makes you hesitant and you can't fully judge its details, then the best thing to do is to give up as soon as possible, rather than bite the bullet and continue to move forward.

But in the end, he still chose to bare his fangs at me and presented me with the poisoned meal. Such an aggressive move was somewhat reckless. This was definitely not a decision that an experienced survivor like him would come to after rational thinking.

Unless he is not making decisions based on reason, but is driven by an emotion that people like me and Tan Xiang, who have lived in the modern world, cannot understand.

I remembered the last words he uttered before he died, facing the giant flaming hand in the sky.

Then, I continued to flip through the diary, wanting to see what the cartographer had experienced in the past and try to get more knowledge about the apocalypse. Unfortunately, the written records of the apocalypse are as difficult to preserve as the memories of the survivors. The latter will become fragmented, and the former will be inexplicably destroyed. There are many inexplicable black marks in the cartographer's diary.

Some of the texts that were not blacked out also analyzed these destroyed records. The cartographer once suspected that he was controlled by madness and woke up from sleep to blacken his diary. But even when he had no pen, ink or paint, the blackening phenomenon would still occur, and he was not the only survivor who encountered this. In the end, he could only explain it as a unique weird phenomenon after the end of the world.

"Some survivors believe that there are rules hidden in the chaotic space, and that we are not teleporting to different areas completely randomly when we move. In order to survive better, they will try to analyze the laws of time and space changes in the area they are in, and record them on drawings, which they call "maps."

"Of course, few survivors would really volunteer to do this kind of hard and difficult work, but I heard that the Gospel Institute is actively promoting this project. The people involved are called 'Doomsday Cartographers'.

"I seemed to be one of them in the past, and I was quite enthusiastic about this job. I don't know what happened, but later I seemed to have chosen to escape from the Gospel Institute, but I still didn't give up the work of making maps. A long time passed like this... I grew so old that my personality was iterated again and again under the immersion of madness. I can't even remember who I was in the past. Only this map is still intact in my hand for the time being.

"Perhaps this map is not so intact, and is actually damaged a lot? For example, a graffiti map with only messy and scribbled lines like this would be difficult to find even if someone randomly altered it several or even dozens of times.

"Not only have I lost the desire to make a map, I no longer have the knowledge to interpret it. If a monk from the Gospel Monastery accidentally picks it up, maybe he can interpret its contents, but I think this kind of map is already outdated.

“Although I can still decipher some things with my ability to ‘guide the direction’, I am not interested in the results of my past work.

"I don't want to recall my past."

I flipped through another diary. The further I flipped through the diary, the more blacked out it became. This was the only part of the diary that was relatively intact.

As I read through the book, my understanding of the apocalypse was increasing, and I could say that I benefited a lot from it. There were also records about Ma Zao, which were almost the same as what the cartographer had said before his death. After I had basically finished reading it, I heard strange noises coming from my side.

I put the diary down and looked around. I saw the wandering soul groaning, then slowly opening its eyes and staring upwards like a patient with hypoglycemia.

After a moment, the spirit finally appeared in his eyes. He sat up straight, looked around, and then his eyes stopped on me and Tan Xiang.

"You are..." he read.

"You finally woke up? Then please introduce yourselves. I'm Zhuang Cheng, and he's Tan Xiang."

I pointed at myself and Tan Xiang first, then asked him, "Who are you? Do you remember your name?"

Hearing this, Youhun looked at me, then at Tan Xiang, and then covered his forehead, as if the nail was still stuck in his brain tissue, and muttered: "My...name..."

Tan Xiang made a few comments: "You look just like a mobile game player who has just entered the prologue and is at the stage of giving yourself a nickname. Don't give yourself a weird name, or you will regret it later."

Youhun looked like he was struggling to find something he had lost in a swamp. I tried to remind him, "Is your name 'Youhun'?"

"Wandering soul...wandering soul?"

He repeated the name over and over again, and his expression slowly calmed down.

(End of this chapter)