Cataclysm: Undead Dragons and Zero Empire

Body, soul, and consciousness should be a trinity, in balance with each other, but Terence has gone too far down the path of psychic powers.

His body had long become a prison that confined him, and it was collapsing day by day. Vast spiritual energy surged and crashed within his body, like a giant beast locked in a small cage, spewing out lightning fragments with every breath and tearing at the iron bars of the cage.

All Terence could do was wrap himself in linen, both to barely suppress the disintegration of his body and to wait for the day the Lord would return, and to prevent himself from polluting this pure land on the moon.

"The human body is ultimately a finite vessel."

Lin Ziming's will descended upon Terence, causing this human to look at the idol with empty eye sockets, the edges of which were burning with embers.

"You seek the path to death in your mortal body. The imbalance of the three elements is the beginning of collapse. This is your current predicament, and it is also the end you will be entering."

Terence's body had begun to disintegrate, and countless ashes fell from his body, as if turning into a dandelion in the wind facing the sun.

But Terence's voice remained firm and devout:

"Lord, to be bathed in Your glory and to walk on the path You have guided, even if I return to nothingness, is still the glory of my life. My life, my soul, everything I have belongs to You."

From the moment he chose to embark on this path, he never feared death. In the years when the earth was shrouded in the harsh winter, he had seen too many lives wither away in the cold and too many souls return to nothingness in despair. He knew better than anyone that death was never the end, but the necessary path to return to the embrace of the Lord.

"Human, you must decide your own end, but I think it shouldn't be now."

The instant Lin Zimo's will fell, the black-red sun hanging deep within Terence's empty consciousness suddenly poured out a surge of spiritual energy, like a solar prominence extending from the sun.

This powerful psionic energy enveloped Terence's entire body, as if immersing him in a vat of dye. It first smoothed out the chaotic psionic currents surging within his body, as if a master craftsman was sculpting his work, making every path of the psionic energy flow appear perfectly natural.

Then an even more intense burning began, the flames scorching his flesh, burning it little by little into ashes, which fell off his skin in a soft rustling. He felt as if he were in a furnace, being forged and remade.

Terence knelt naked on the altar, as if looking back on his life amidst the flames, seeing the image of the dragon bones burning with black and red flames in his first dream, and resolving to dedicate the rest of his life to his god.

Now, Terence seemed to leap out of the ashes, his body devoid of any flames or those hideous cracks.

His skin became like marble—smooth, hard, and immortal, with no visible pores or fingerprints.

The blood that once flowed has now turned into liquid flames, as hot as lava, surging through new veins, each heartbeat like a thunderous drumbeat.

The flame resides within him, burns within him, and never dies out, until even immortality comes to an end.

His hair was burned away in the flames, and his eyes no longer held the flickering, eventually extinguished glimmer, but rather two clusters of flames visible deep within his pupils.

He can no longer be called long-lived, because he is no longer affected by the passage of time, no longer grows old with the passing years, and ordinary death cannot touch his body or capture his soul.

Terence was granted immortality, given a perfect vessel to contain his soul and consciousness, and received a new life bestowed by the Lord, representing the Lord's manifest destiny of choosing mankind.

Terence slowly lowered his head, looking at his new, incredibly powerful body, which seemed to be able to mold any object at hand into shape at his will, and feeling the unrestrained, surging spiritual energy within him.

With his body, soul, and consciousness in balance, and allowing his soul and consciousness to grow again, Terence knelt before the statue.

"Lord, I wish to serve before Your throne forever, to guide human civilization on the path You have shown me, and to fulfill the mission You have entrusted to me."

Looking at the transformed believers, Lin Ziming said with delight:

"We hereby make a covenant, and this place will become a sacred place, a promised place, and I will bestow blessings upon mankind as a gift for the covenant."

Lin Zimo unleashed his spiritual energy, and this all-encompassing tide swept over the top of the pyramid, enveloping the entire moon, as if he were holding this celestial body in his palm, slowly tightening his grip.

A stable psychic field gradually took shape, covering the entire moon. It was as if this desolate planet had regained its magnetic field. The psychic energy that was already active here because of faith became more easily perceived, as if it were air, permeating the human soul.

Awakened psychics will find that wielding psychic energy here becomes more fluid and natural, as if the psychic energy in the environment is more inclined to favor humans and is willing to obey their commands. And infants growing up on this land can grow into psychics under the blessing of psychic energy.

From a psionic perspective, the moon in the night sky is no longer a cold, grayish-white color, but is enveloped in a faint blackish-red halo, like an eternally burning black star rising from a sea of ​​stars.

The vast will slowly receded like the ebb tide. The Lord left, and Terence, reborn, stood up. Psionic energy wove virtual clothing for him to cover his body.

Barefoot, he stepped up the stairs to the top of the pyramid, until he stood at the highest point of the temple complex, overlooking everything below, and then he was about to convey a divine message to all of human civilization.

"The Lord has blessed this lunar land. From this day forward, the moon is a blessed holy world, which shall not be desecrated, until mankind perishes among the stars and the covenant made with the Lord ends."

This announcement was quickly relayed throughout the entire civilization. Terence, facing the sunlight streaming from behind his home planet, gazed into the depths of the galaxy. He knew that human civilization was about to begin a new era and a long journey.

In this vision, those who hear the proclamation and have lived through the years of calamity will surely recall the struggles in the snow and ice, the arrival of the Lord's faith during the time of calamity, and how the children who were saved in their infancy have grown up.

In the future, Terence will establish an academy on this sacred land, select qualified children to come to the moon for education, and cultivate them into outstanding psionicists, contributing to the development of human civilization. An era of psionic prosperity and the rise of civilization is just around the corner.

Countless sorcerers dressed in black robes knelt in the temple square and temples, and even on the steps, bowing devoutly to the highest point and to the statue of the Lord, reciting prayers.

Terence stood atop the pyramid, his gaze slowly sweeping over the dense crowd below, over the distinct groups of people—the black robes of the sorcerers and the gray robes of the mages. The excitement that had welled up in his heart because of the Lord's blessing gradually subsided, replaced by a sense of heaviness and worry.

He knew better than anyone that with the return of the Lord, the contradictions buried deep in human civilization and already deeply rooted would no longer be concealed and would eventually be exposed to the light of day in the aftermath of this miracle.

The root of this conflict was sown as early as the time when winter came, from the moment he personally created the two separate systems of divine magic and magical energy.

In that harsh winter of life and death, these two systems were like the two legs of human civilization, supporting it as it stumbled forward through the wind and snow, their paths leading to the same goal: survival.

When exactly did divine arts and magic truly part ways, creating a deep chasm within human civilization?

Perhaps it was only when humanity emerged from the harsh winter, when survival was no longer the sole focus, and when we crossed the threshold of the interstellar age, that these two paths eventually began to diverge in completely different directions.