A man among dragons, building a mysterious ancient church.

Chapter 392 What does it mean to "show off one's skill before an expert"?
"We...we succeeded? We killed Odin?!" Nuwa looked at the corpse that could no longer be called a living being, her tone slowly changing from shock to joy.

"Yes, there is no sign of life, so we can confirm that it is dead." Asou Makoto nodded with certainty. She had already activated her spiritual vision, and the lunar pathway spiritual vision was uniquely advantageous in ensuring life, so it was impossible for her to be wrong.

"Everyone, you can rest in peace now." Fingel slowly closed his eyes, hoping that the rest of his teammates from the Greenland ice sea diving team could sleep peacefully forever, because he had finally avenged his teammates and killed Odin, who had killed them.

Chu Zihang stared blankly at Pompeii's corpse. A few years ago, on the overpass in the rain, he could only flee in a sorry state when facing Odin, while his father, Chu Tianjiao, was forced to cover their retreat. Now, a few years later, Odin was killed by him and his church partners. It was truly a sad story.

Susie walked to Chu Zihang's side without saying anything, just silently keeping him company. She always took care of Chu Zihang's feelings in this way.

As for the curse and misfortune inflicted on Pompeii, resulting in him digesting a lot of good things right after drinking the potion, he can share that with his best friend Chen Motong when he gets back.

At this moment, Chen Motong felt a little regretful. She had originally thought that she might be able to use her own abilities to peruse all of Pompeii's mental memories and try to find the Holy Palace Medical Association's headquarters and her mother.

Unfortunately, Pompeii's mental strength far exceeded Chen Motong's imagination. If it weren't for Mr. Error's various methods that prevented Pompeii from fully displaying his combat power, no matter how Chen Motong and Su Qian joined forces, they would not have been able to break down Pompeii's mental world.

Given the tense situation, Chen Motong and Su Qian were giving their all, hoping to kill Odin as soon as possible, and they couldn't hold back to look through his memories.

Chen Motong knew in her heart that she could ask Mr. Wrong to delay the time until Su Xi was promoted, but she could not ask Mr. Wrong to subdue Pompeii for her own selfish reasons and let her slowly spy on Pompeii's mind.

Ultimately, helping the newly promoted Susie digest the potion is a core interest of the Old Church.

As Mr. Fool mentioned at the previous gathering, the ancient city and the underground river are treasures left behind by the ancients, and they require many high-sequence powerhouses to harmonize them.

Based on this, the Old Church was bound to actively cultivate more high-sequence powerhouses, which is why Chen Motong dared to ask Mr. Wrong to deliberately delay the time when hunting Odin.

She knew that Mr. Mistake would definitely grant this small request.

This is what Mr. Fool and the entire Old Church hope for. As for Chen Motong, her private affairs are clearly not within the scope of Mr. Fool and the Old Church's interests.

Furthermore, Pompeii is, after all, the king of the sky and the wind, and is incredibly powerful. He can buy time, but if he wants to control Pompeii and let Chen Motong browse through his memories, the difficulty will increase significantly, and Pompeii might even escape.

Due to a combination of factors, Chen Motong did not ask Xu Lie to control Pompeii. However, it didn't matter. Chen Motong's beautiful eyes sparkled, and she had already set her sights on the Gattuso family.

Even if Pompeii is gone, there's still the Gattuso family, right? With her abilities, if she can't access Pompeii's memories, surely she can access the memories of the other bigwigs in the Gattuso family?

At that time, we can still use the Gattuso family as a lead to uncover the Holy Palace Medical Association.

Xu Lie and the other members were also watching Pompeii's charred corpse, torn apart and pierced in various ways.

However, unlike the other members, who were simply marveling at the joint effort to kill Odin and bring down a dragon king, Xu Lie was savoring Pompeii's actions.

Yes, even when faced with death, Pompeii did not give up and continued to operate, attempting to interfere with time and causality using some kind of magical alchemy that Xu Lie was not familiar with.

Unlike Xu Lie, Pompeii could not directly reverse time in certain areas; he did not possess the bizarre abilities of the Sequence 1 Time Worm.

Therefore, Pompeii cleverly attempted to reverse only the 'enemy-friendship' situation, without completely reversing time. He merely used two techniques from the Seven Kingdoms of Alchemy: time reversal and separation of cause and effect.

This is not surprising. Among the dragons, apart from Nidhogg, the Black King who created alchemy, Pompeii can be considered the second-best alchemist among the dragons.

The conceptual weapon Gungnir, which was crafted, is a combination of two major technologies: 'conceptual weapon' and 'causal separation'.

In every moment of the battle, Pompeii's alchemy continued to operate subconsciously, like a high-frame-rate video recorder, constantly recording 'enemy and friend'.

This record is extremely complex, including the arrangement of each cell of 'enemy' and 'friend', the flow of energy, coordinates in space, and so on.

These records are etched deep within Pompeii's soul; in short, they are 'archives' of the 'enemy' and 'ally' from a single second ago.

When Pompeii suffered a fatal wound, an alchemical passive technique etched deep within his soul was triggered, or perhaps Pompeii's subjective will was automatically activated.

Paying a huge price—perhaps burning away one's lifespan? Or perhaps acquiring some precious authority? The fundamental law of alchemy is always equivalent exchange, and Pompeii could not have avoided paying a price for it.

Xu Lie was so focused on deciphering the mysteries of alchemy that he didn't have the extra thought to figure out what the price was.

In short, Pompeii combined the two highest alchemical techniques of the dragon race, 'time reversal' and 'cause-effect separation,' using the 'severely injured state' recorded one second ago as the 'cause' to forcibly overwrite the 'now dead' as the 'effect.'

This process is neither a cure nor a complete time reversal; it is merely a forced replacement of cause and effect within a brief and incomplete timeline.

The evidence is that Chu Zihang's weapon, Murasame, will still be stuck in Pompeii's stomach, and Fingel's spikes will still pierce Pompeii's limbs.

If time were reversed in the complete version, Murasame should be returned to Chu Zihang's hands, the Earth Spikes should return to the earth, and even the surrounding mountains and forests that were completely destroyed would be restored.

The village rain, damaged by 'weaponization', the towering spikes, and the forests annihilated into particles, became material evidence of this paradox of cause and effect.

If Pompeii were to actually use the 'time causality' to overwrite the past, the current situation would be that everyone would be forced back to the spatial coordinates of the previous second, and Pompeii would be resurrected with a knife in his stomach and limbs pierced through.

In any other situation, Pompeii could easily be resurrected, and might even use the opportunity to turn the tables on his enemies. Unfortunately, Xu Lie was here. As a parasite on time and a Trojan horse of fate, Xu Lie almost burst out laughing when faced with Pompeii's ultimate alchemy, which involved time incompletely and also causality and destiny.

In this respect, Xu Lie is truly a nemesis to Pompeii. Whether it's stealing time or stealing fate, he can effectively interfere with Pompeii's move, causing Pompeii to pay a huge price but be unable to revive.

This can basically be described as showing off one's limited skills before an expert.

However, Xu Lie was in no hurry to make a move. He simply used the power of the Sequence 1 Time Worm, and a huge phantom of a wall clock appeared behind him, gently emitting a 'ding' sound, freezing time in the surrounding area.

This is the true stopping of time, where everything around us and all things are brought to a standstill in their most fundamental way.

Far surpassing Lu Mingze's dream of time stop, the shockwave from the wind and thunder compression sphere created by Pompeii was suspended in mid-air, bringing everyone's attack and Pompeii's state to a complete halt.

During this time, Xu Lie carefully studied Pompeii's trick and learned many alchemical techniques. After he had almost 'deciphered' it, Xu Lie stole one second from Pompeii and stopped when it ended.

The instant time resumed its flow, Pompeii's Time Alchemy was activated. It could have rewritten its state back to one second earlier, but after that one second was stolen, the alchemy, having taken Pompeii's price, encountered a bug and failed to function.

So Pompeii died, and died very decisively, because alchemy essentially took Pompeii for free, only taking money without doing anything, and did not forcibly overwrite Pompeii's state from a second ago.

Xu Lie could even clearly sense that Pompeii was particularly bewildered after his death, unable to rest in peace, and not understanding why the resurrection alchemy he had arranged in advance had failed to work at all!

Yes, Xu Lie could sense Pompeii's spirit. Although Pompeii's body had died and his mind had collapsed, his essential Dragon King soul still drifted out, preparing to return to a cocoon that had been laid in advance.

That's how the Dragon King is; he can be killed once, but he can always return.

Xu Lie read a lot of strong emotions such as confusion, unwillingness, and doubt from Pompeii's soul. Even though he was unwilling, it was no use. The dragon race's innate instinct made Pompeii's soul quickly return to the cocoon across space.

Pompeii, now only a soul, was not fully conscious, retaining only the strongest emotions he had before death. Therefore, he did not notice that his dragon-shaped soul was suddenly crawling with insects for some unknown reason.

The translucent dragon soul was clearly visible in every detail, and a translucent worm with twelve rings hung between each dragon scale.

Yes, Xu Lie did not forcibly retain Pompeii's soul. Now that the uniqueness of the erroneous path has been accommodated and the godhood ritual has been completed in advance, he only needs to digest the Time Worm potion to advance to the erroneous path.

Digesting the worms is incredibly easy; you just need to steal a moment.

Therefore, Xu Lie once again split his forces into two groups. One group, consisting of Time Worms, followed Pompeii to search for Odin's egg. They would then directly climb onto Pompeii's cocoon and steal it, draining Pompeii of all its time.
The other group allowed the clones to move freely, stealing other people's time 24 hours a day. They would steal a few minutes from anyone they met, accumulating little by little until they reached a tower, which was a different kind of collective digestion.

Erii looked at the dead Pompeii and smiled happily. It was all that big bad guy's fault for supporting Herzog and doing so many bad things, causing her brother, Genjiro, to suffer for half his life.

Fortunately, it's been resolved now. But if Pompeii is the Dragon King, Erii recalled the common sense that Xu Lie had taught her earlier: "This Dragon King, does he have other cocoons?"

"No dragon bone crosses were left behind."

The group, who had been marveling at the killing of Pompeii, snapped out of their daze and frowned. Xu Lie, however, stopped recalling Pompeii's time-space causality alchemy and said, "There's no need to worry."

"Xia Mi told me that the Dragon King's soul returns to the cocoon and takes several years to emerge from it. Moreover, he is very weak after emerging from the cocoon and it will take even longer to recover his fighting strength."

"There is no need to worry. When Pompeii is resurrected and returns, I believe that you will have already advanced to a higher level, and you will be able to kill Pompeii more easily at that time."

That being said, Xu Lie did not believe that Pompeii could break free of its cocoon and return. The many Time Worms attached to Pompeii's soul would not give it a second chance.

As for Xia Mi's secret of having the shortest time to break out of her cocoon and the fastest recovery afterward? Considering Xia Mi's dignity, Xu Lie decided to keep it a secret and didn't reveal it.

The members were relieved. Mr. Error was right! In a few years, they might be able to defeat Pompeii in a one-on-one fight. There was no need to worry.

Chen Motong's eyes gleamed with gossip: "Tsk tsk, the King of Earth and Mountains has told Mr. Error everything~ He didn't even keep the secret of the Dragon King's cocoon transformation from him."

Chu Zihang didn't look at Chen Motong, but he silently pricked up his ears, while Fingel and Susie openly looked at Xu Lie.

Asou Makoto and Erii also took notice, both showing great interest in Natsumi.

Back in the capital, the members were already very keen on gossip about this kind of thing, and now that Chen Motong has set the stage, everyone can't help but start paying attention.

"Never mind." Xu Lie stared at Chen Motong, smiled playfully, his cheeks slowly blurring as if his skin was melting and then rapidly reforming: "I won't lie to you anymore."

As his appearance changed, Xu Lie transformed into the likeness of Pompeii. He released a small amount of the wind-elemental incantations he had previously stolen, causing hurricanes to howl and lightning to surge, much like Pompeii's resurrection!
The members were both disheartened and panicked, and quickly prepared for battle. Flames, dawn, and misfortune all appeared simultaneously, but Asou Makoto, who had confirmed Pompeii's death, stopped everyone: "Wait, wait!"

“Mr. Xu, you can’t make jokes like that at a time like this.”

At Aso Makoto's request, Xu Lie transformed back into his original appearance. Fingel clenched his right fist and tapped his left palm: "That's right! The Faceless Man Talisman we used back in the capital! It allows you to freely change your face!"

Chen Motong realized he had been tricked and couldn't help but grit his teeth: "Aaaaah, Mr. Mistake!"

(End of this chapter)