He is the leader of the Tantric sect in Chagdu.

Chapter 94 EGO·Eternal Burning

The parasitism of worms is one answer, but also their way of survival. They always eagerly burrow into people's bodies, completely consuming the entire shell as a place for reproduction. As for the souls they don't like inside the container, worms usually choose to replace them.

They abhor radiance and reject wisdom and reason; this is also the answer.

"Mia————"

The extreme silence created a sense of unreality. Ronan had just uttered two words, trembling, when the antlered girl interrupted him, "I know."

Mia took a deep breath and unconsciously took a step back. Although her body trembled slightly, she finally steadied herself and stood firm. "That thing can no longer be our colleague—I can feel it, that pure malice—ignorant and chaotic, disgustingly so, and it's getting stronger and stronger—"

"What exactly is that?"

"————" Ronan couldn't give a response. He was staring intently at the dim alleyway ahead. The dark vision system configured before the battle was covered by the silence spell, and the two of them had lost their night vision ability. They could only rely on the muzzle flashes of the guns of the clearing people to illuminate the scene not far away.

"he----"

Mia swallowed carefully.

"Is he/she dead?"

At the epicenter of the attack by the secret techniques and bullets, the erupting flames were slowly dissipating. Within the area, the secret energy that rippled outwards gradually subsided, and a pile of spent shell casings had already accumulated on the ground. The smell of rust and blood permeated the air, surging and suffocating.

Deep within the surging dust.

,

A burst of noise whose specific meaning could not be discerned by hearing.

Something wet, sticky, and smooth seemed to crawl on the flat ground with a legless body, followed by a series of light and even silent footsteps—in the deathly silence, darkness became a hidden question, and the twisted and intertwined things seemed to use proliferation instead of movement as patterns, avoiding all obstacles, and even in the pool of blood, they were not stained with a trace of flesh or filth. The darkness was the passage for them to sneak through.

"Gulp—" The sound of swallowing was so clear that everyone could hear it. Ronan felt his body trembling slightly. He didn't know how he could understand this bizarre scene in front of him—or rather, he didn't need to understand it. When its traces appeared in the world, then without the need for a medium of thought, "they" took it upon themselves to penetrate these flawed souls.

An overwhelming sense of imbalance washed over me.

Mia silently covered her ears and collapsed to the ground. In her cloudy eyes, something was tearing at the backlit iris. Reason was being dissolved by the incomprehensible substance—the void of cognition was being eaten away, leaving a large hole, into which fear fell.

"What exactly is it?"

It resembles the curves of a body crawling across the sand.

-snake?

-No.

"Worms" are often mistaken for "snakes," but they are by no means snakes.

"A snake that is not a snake"

"Mia!"

The antlers on his head were bent like a folded candle, and his swaying vision made it almost impossible to see anything clearly. All the "lines" that make up the world had become questions in Ronan's eyes, but he still maintained his rationality.

Drifting in near-lost fear, only a flickering flame remained in those scarlet eyes, precariously holding onto the last vestiges of color in the darkness.

—Correction————

The only remaining thought.

After a difficult connection to the think tank, Ronan was briefly stunned. His eyes were met with a bright red notification: "Extremely Dangerous Warning! Forbidden activity detected near you. Unit locked to Forbidden List Ω006: 'The Serpent That Is Not a Serpent,' Containment Class 'ALEPH'—the highest correction authority has been automatically activated. The Red Pool is currently experiencing severe disturbances; the 'Descent' protocol is temporarily unable to specify a landing point, and the 'Blockade' protocol is still under repair."

Estimated arrival time of secondary support: 251 seconds.

"Live on."

"what?"

His body, barely able to support itself, tilted and fell to the ground.

"What the hell?!" Ronan gave a wry smile.

"You expect us to survive for four minutes in front of something like this?"

Despair descends upon the deathly silence.

A few steps away in the alley, a tall, slender figure slowly emerged from the center, enveloped by the creeping darkness.

Ailian.

Stiff steps, blank expression —

Ronan's face was ashen.

Not long ago, that colleague who seemed eccentric but was surprisingly endearing has now become a forbidden vessel.

"Damn it—" He shook his head, trying to raise the gun beside him, and then issued the "attack" command in the think tank. After a moment, the surroundings remained silent. The signals in the cleanup channel had all gone offline, and those still standing iron cans had probably become forbidden nests.

In the silence, only Ronan's powerless arm trembled as he raised a harmless pistol.

"I'm so unwilling to accept this."

He aimed at Ai.

"Bang-

'

Gunshots rang out simultaneously with desperate whispers, bullets piercing through what seemed like a curtain of darkness before them, going straight through this empty shadow.

Missed.

Even though the inside was teeming with disgusting insects, the camouflage faithfully protected the body.

"Bang"

Ronan pulled the trigger expressionlessly.

"Bang"

Gunshots rang out incessantly, faint flames licked the darkness and swayed in the crawling waves. Finally, when the guns made the "click-clack" of empty chambers, this meaningless resistance came to an end.

The night was incredibly long.

And darkness is precisely where worms reproduce.

Without flinching, the "container" strode straight ahead, arriving before the two remaining survivors on the battlefield: Ronan and Mia. Ronan could barely maintain his rationality thanks to the unexpected suppression of the "worm" by "fire." Mia, however, was already being consumed by the worm's influence; the turbid color in her violently trembling pupils was a harbinger of impending loss of control.

—I'm going to die.

Ronan stared blankly into thought, his sluggish mind beginning to wander, without the "revolving lantern" that others often mentioned.

.

He started thinking about some strange things.

For example, if we follow the development of movies and TV dramas, in this situation—as someone who has suffered a tragic failure—shouldn't they choose to save their last bullet for themselves, instead of foolishly firing all their bullets and not even being able to decide the manner of their death?

After that, he stopped thinking about it. Since there was no one else around, Ronan just spoke his mind.

"Perhaps we should have kept two."

He muttered, "We have to leave one for this stupid deer too—she certainly doesn't want her body to be hollowed out by termites, and then a bunch of disgusting things to move in and replace her soul—"

Ronan bent down and gently embraced Mia, who was shivering on the ground. He pulled her head into his arms and, just like when she was a child, gently stroked her cute-looking antlers.

Although they are both deer, they are different breeds—Mia's sexual characteristics seem to indicate she is a Nara deer; her antlers don't have any unusual growth, their structure is simple, and they grow horizontally. Compared to my own large antlers as a moose, they look rather shabby.

Ronan felt like his thoughts were starting to flash through his mind.

So, this guy often envied himself, after all, a pair of divine elk antlers was really cool, the complex and beautiful division of power was like the branches of a tree, as if it were the work of a god: it is said that the supreme divinity who holds the standard of "enlightenment" is symbolized by the elk.

She envied me, and I admired her optimism and carefree attitude. Although she seemed unreliable, she was always my last resort. Her reaction speed was quick; she never hesitated, and her judgment put me to shame.

—Mia has saved me so many times.

"So, I'm so unwilling to accept this!"

Before the tears could even flow from his eyes, they were evaporated by the burning sulfur in his pupils. Ronan felt suffocated, even his fear was squeezed into the depths of his soul—something scorching hot ignited him from within. He felt pain and oppression, an unreleased blockage and despair.

"Fire—fire—I haven't made those damned scum pay the price yet. I still haven't followed the principles of fire, or fulfilled its teachings. Change is nonsense. Powerlessness and struggle—that's my true nature."

Tears finally broke through the barrier of her eyes, falling to the ground with scalding heat, evaporating into a cloud of white mist.

"I'm so unwilling to accept this."

He said.

His fist clenched in the darkness.

"There are too many things that cannot be done, and too many things that have not been done."

Mia's head trembled twice, like a small animal desperately seeking security, and she pressed herself against Ronan's chest even closer, her burning body temperature seeming to set him on fire—

The antlered girl's small instinct, her final action, caused Ronan's heart to stop abruptly at that moment. He couldn't help but swallow his saliva, and every drop of moisture in his cells began to evaporate.

He was almost going crazy.

"I'm not reconciled—"

A surge of heat, solidified in my chest, expanded as if to burn my heart to a crisp.

"It shouldn't be like this—"

Ronan held Mia tightly in his arms until the figure came right in front of him, just a step away.

The flames in the pupils ignited silently, briefly dispelling the darkness.

—I don't want to die.

He whispered.

—Nothing has been accomplished yet.

Nothing has changed.

Injustice and darkness will never be eradicated.

—Could I be the one to do that?

In the utter silence, Ronan suddenly raised his head and looked up at the high dome.

—The Principle of Lighting—Our Hearth Fire.

—From the earliest thunder and fire, to the boilers and steam that came with the birth of civilization, then to electricity and lighting, and finally to the present day—

His gaze gradually turned blood-red, rising upwards as if pointing towards the direction of fire, the direction indicated by the flames.

Above, in the very center of the chest cavity of each nest, flows the inextinguishable principle of fire—this is the foundation of Hallownest, the heart of industry.

After the sun set, it took over the pinnacle of the "principle of illumination," nourishing civilization in darkness with an inextinguishable flame. The great power emanating from it is the principle of "fire."

—His name is "The Forge".

By studying his majesty, humanity lit up the singularity of their nest, calling it the "heart of the furnace."

Even though they were separated by countless layers of curtains, Ronan found that he could still see that bright and blazing fire, as if it were blooming right in front of him, like a fiery and beautiful crimson rose.

He reached out his hand, facing the air that was curled up due to the high temperature, and gently touched the infinitely brilliant flame.

excruciating pain.

Ronan's body began to tremble with unimaginable force, a tremor that would have shattered an ordinary person—the flame, without anyone noticing, had spread along his arm like a blot of crimson ink touching white paper.

The pain was excruciating, and the despair was overwhelming.

He started to burn.

The burning, from the inside out, begins in the heart. The flesh remains pure white, and the flames do not engulf anything as they pass by. It is unknown what medium it is covered by; it burns in nothingness, yet it grows ever hotter.

The soul near the fire is like a glass membrane, wrinkled and distorted.

It began to crumble.

It was as if a giant, black cast iron hammer had crashed down from the dome, striking his outer shell—almost instantly, both his body and his vessel shattered with a mournful cry, countless cracks like shattered glass, bursting forth with a tearing shriek.

Everything went dark.

-die.

"die?"

-Oh.

A tiny spark ignited from the absolute darkness.

Ronan gradually felt lighter.

When flames engulf everything, when pain reaches its limit, when the spirit remains as pristine as freshly fired porcelain, countless cracks, after being burned by the high temperature, transform into scalding scars. And on the outline of the porcelain, the cracks, like ice shattering, become a beautiful work of art.

Then burning becomes one answer.

Death is no longer a source of fear.

—We must keep Mia alive.

he thought.

-

— "This idiot can't take care of himself," although this phrase is usually said by the other person.

—It's my turn to take good care of her.

Ronan opened his eyes to see a rising flame, as intense as the midday sun, now replacing the radiance as the light—the tree seed silently took root in the vessel's blood, absorbing the brutal flow of flames like forging and growing wildly, its essence flowing like liquid within its roots, whether for revenge or protection.

This is the completed budding ceremony —

—But that's not enough.

He looked at his arm.

A thin film of flames barely held back the spread of the forbidden creature. Beneath the churning flesh, the huddled worms continued to resist the "fire" barrier, pushing their parasitic territory inward.

—Even this isn't enough to deal with those things—

"What should we do?"

A sense of awareness suddenly arose from the high temperature, and the flame in the eyes seemed to become a mentor, driving the newborn to understand their newfound power.

Ronan closed his eyes and sank the ball of fire into the vessel.

He imagined himself as a bundle of firewood.

The next moment—

A slender arm, pointing straight inward, pierced into her own chest cavity.

"Click"

The sound of flesh tearing did not resound in the mortal world. The transparent arm pierced through the skin, through the muscles, through the bones, reaching all the way to the edge of matter and spirit.

One belongs to the realm of the mind.

—Experiencing a reshaping of the heart.

Ronan took a deep breath.

"My spirit will become my strength."

—

The sound of fire colliding with iron.

The forging process has begun.

"I need to stand firm here, blocking her way, just as my belief will burn eternally—it must support me, and it must be the strongest and most steadfast version of myself."

Its posture must be as firm as a horn; it must burn eternally and support everything I pursue—so that everything rooted in darkness and filth may be cleansed by the principles of fire.

The spine, as hard as cast iron, supports the body until it stands.

The next moment————

Ronan ripped the projection of his now-spiritualized spine out of the tear in his chest—

The secret essence clung to the mangled arm. A similarly blazing flame ignited, transforming in Ronan's hand into a wildly flamboyant, bizarre longsword.

The sword flashed to the side, parting the curtain of flames that formed a barrier before the chaos. The burning flames seemed to incinerate all ignorance and drive away all darkness.

That's all.

The grotesque skeleton and hanging flesh fibers made the sword infinitely terrifying and bizarre, but the attachment of the secret substance made the entire sword body appear as crystal clear chalcedony—the side ribs that had not yet fallen off were like transparent and divided deer antlers.

—Spiritual manifestation.

"Self-cultivation transforms into 'tool'."

Blasphemy and holiness intertwine here, as the forging technique representing "fire" is perfectly fused with a material called "the essence of the soul."

Supporting himself with the longsword, Ronan placed Mia on the flat ground on the other side. A layer of crimson film blocked the erosion from malice—and so, in the warm environment, the antlered girl's expression gradually returned to calm, followed by her breathing becoming more even.

"In that case—"

He stood firmly upright, holding a mental weapon forged from "Ronan's self".

He met Ai's gaze; Ai's expression was strange, and she seemed to have suddenly paused for a moment before bursting into a grotesque laugh.

"Then I can face you directly."

Ronan raised his longsword high, his eyes burning with crimson flames—by virtue of this creation that had reshaped everything.

"In the name of burning and incineration"

"EGO·Eternal Flame"

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