The old man you see with your phone is highly suspicious.

However, he was completely unmoved by this matter at the moment, and silently looked at the system panel left for him by the Great Sage.

【Authority - Self-Destroyer (Rank D): A branch of nihilistic authority, capable of selectively eliminating the thinking ability of others and inflicting a stunned state on attacks with cursed blood, causing them to fall into a nihilistic self-destruction state for a short time. Continuing to delve deeper into nihilism will grant even stronger authority.

Warning: Nihilism is one of the most dangerous ideologies; stay away! Stay away! Stay away!

[Demonization (A++ Tier): The ability to transform into any hero concept; however, it can only be used when other units fear the concept of "hero."]

This time, they didn't receive any strange or unusual blessings; this demonic ability was created by the Saviors.

Furthermore, the original owner of this demonic ability should have been the little witch. This ability can only be used by the Demon Eye, which is formed by the fusion of the Divine Purification Demon Eye and the Demon Eye. It was originally prepared for Su Su.

However, he only gained this ability after he accidentally obtained the Raven's Demon Eye and swapped eyes with the little priestess.

Perhaps it was a coincidence, but Xue Lu always suspected that this might also be the future that Su Su's mother saw after swallowing the future demon in the Savior Team.

There's another one: the self-destructors seem to have even stronger authority.

Xue Lude looked at his own power, the only power he could control at the moment: the self-destructor.

The ability to imbue cursed blood with attacks that stop others from thinking should be very useful in both combat and everyday use. After all, a slap stained with cursed blood can stop someone from thinking, leaving them bewildered and mentally exhausted.

As for the side effects...

Xue Dinglu checked his own feelings and it seemed that nothing had changed. He was still the same as before. Perhaps he had some emotions, but not many. However, it didn't matter.

Perhaps this is how demons feel. Besides fear, demons don't seem to have many other emotions, do they?

Does losing emotions really have a big impact on oneself? There was also someone who said that he didn't understand love, but he did love humanity. Just thinking about how a civilization could be wiped out in front of him would make his heart pound.

I still have a reaction, don't I? I still feel love.

"Let's continue exploring hell," Xue thought to himself, no longer dwelling on such trivial matters.

Perhaps it's not bad that I'm gaining complete control over the power of self-destruction, just like the Great Sage, whose power of self-destruction has reached level B, while I'm only at level D right now.

He continued to manipulate the tree roots, and soon, it seemed that he had indeed discovered some information in the deepest part of hell.

This is a cave, which seems to have once been the habitat of a powerful demon. However, when Xue Dinglu walked in, the entire cave was filled with twisted buildings and a large group of human statues with fearful expressions.

Yes, it's a human statue.

Thousands of these lifelike human statues are scattered throughout this vast cave, seemingly fleeing in all directions, perhaps out of fear or hiding from something, but their faces are filled with terror.

Whether it's the remnants of demonic power or the fact that the statue is in a cave where the weathering is less severe, Xue's Law can't even determine how many years old the statue is based on the degree of weathering.

Like a work of art just completed by an artist, this place is filled with such masterpieces.

Soon, as Xue's laws were explored, he saw a pile of twisted stone chips and the records here.

"My name is the Petrifying Demon, one of the primordial demons. Those who could discover this place, perhaps I am already dead, aren't they?"

The stone tablet was engraved with these words, and when Xue Dinglu saw the pile of rubble on the ground, he was also stunned.

“Petrifying… Demon?” he murmured the demon’s name, looking once more at the city that resembled a group of statues, and at the lifelike statues with expressions of fear.

Is this demon's masterpiece the only remaining trace of ancient civilization?

Also, why would anyone be afraid of petrification? Is this a fear unique to ancient civilizations in hell?

Chapter 363 A Civilization from Hell

Xue Lude can confirm that he has never killed a petrifying demon. Although he often forgets some unimportant things now, he still has a relatively deep impression of the demons he has killed.

Even those who were found and killed by him because they were hiding underground, Xue Law still had some memory of them and knew what kind of demon they were, even if they were as weak as little bastards like human skin demons and crocodile demons.

But he had absolutely no recollection of the petrifying demon.

They either disappeared long ago because no one feared them, or they were conceptually devoured by similar demons such as the "Stone Demon".

The rubble we see here now is probably mostly from the former.

Xue Dinglu looked at the building from afar and discovered a stone tablet buried in dust and mud among the rubble.

The stone tablet recorded many stories. After the translation module left by the great sage began to extract the text one by one, the original translated text was soon presented to Xue Lude.

"The world-destroying giant tree... man-made gods... dealing with the crisis of the world-destroying giant tree..." Xue Dinglu read the words above and suddenly fell silent.

Although much of the text has been damaged over time and even translation modules cannot restore it, Xue's Law can still piece together a story based on the remaining text.

In Hell, there once existed an incredibly advanced civilization, excelling in both technology and magic. Technologically, they were capable of flying to the nearest planet, and in terms of magic, they possessed a combat power of Tier 4, even to the point of being able to mass-produce Tier 4 items through technology.

They became extremely arrogant as a result, and for a long time they even had the illusion that they were the overlords of the universe. Therefore, after developing the portal, they tried to open the portal to unknown coordinates to find other alien civilizations, and even conquer and colonize them.

Until, their random opening of doors actually led them to an apostle's colony in the vast universe.

Xue's Law: "6..."

When Xue Lude saw the description of another planet, inhabited by a barbaric civilization whose branches were covered with the corpses of billions of humans, and how they destroyed the sacred tree with a single shot to stop this barbaric ritual, his lips twitched slightly.

Good grief, if you guys had been a little cowards and run away when you saw this, maybe the problem wouldn't have been so big.

That must have been a colony of the apostles, where they were planting trees when suddenly a cosmic bumpkin shot it in the face, and the divine tree used that shot to sneak into their lair.

Next, just as Xue's Law predicted, things unfolded.

They fired their cannons in the morning, were caught by the Divine Tree at noon, and by the afternoon, their home planet's coordinates had been located and they were found by the Apostles' retinue.

Upon receiving the message, the native civilization above Hell immediately made thorough preparations, essentially gathering the vast majority of its forces to prepare for a desperate war.

Then, in just 7 minutes, the entire army of the Hellish Civilization was wiped out.

This was not a war at all; it was a one-sided massacre.

However, the pre-hell civilization did not come away empty-handed; in their most critical moment, they gained an unexpected power called "Authority."

They embarked on the bloodiest experiment, searching for "fit individuals" to suit all sorts of authority. After a long period of modification and adaptation, they created a group of beings who were nearly invincible on their home planet.

Its name is, the artificial god!

The Petrifying Demon was one of the first generation of adaptors. It claimed that it had a human name, but had forgotten it, and from then on, it would only be called the Petrifying Demon.

The story continues within the stone tablet.

The artificial gods engaged in a fierce battle with the attacking apostles' retinue. Because the artificial gods' power was authority, each one of them was a humanoid catastrophe on their home planet. Gradually, the artificial gods suppressed the apostles' retinue and even launched a counterattack to reclaim lost territory.

Even during the war, the artificial gods discovered that they were almost immortal. For example, the petrifying demon controlled an authority called "petrification," which allowed it to transfer souls in any area it petrified.

That is, as long as there are individuals in the world that he has petrified, he will be immortal.

Similarly, the one who controls the hurricane, as long as wind exists in the world, even if it is killed countless times, will be resurrected by the wind and return to continue fighting to the death with the apostle's retinue.

After a long period of fighting, the Apostle's retinue seemed to have come to think that the world was no longer interesting.

Like a rock in a toilet, smelly and hard, so they gave up on this world. There was no way to deal with a group of immortal monsters that were attacking them relentlessly. Basically, as long as they were on their home planet, there was no way to deal with them. The only way was to destroy the world directly from outside the world.

But the apostles came to harvest people, not to destroy the world for fun.

So after harvesting a group of people, they left and stopped fighting the artificial gods.

The artificial gods and native humans triumphed, albeit at an extremely heavy cost. The war against the apostles reduced their population to only one-tenth of its original size, halted their technology and magic, and left the world devastated, with most areas becoming barren wastelands.

But they still won.

Up to this point, things were still normal; it was a story of a civilized, man-made god working together to repel the invaders and achieve victory.

Then, things started to go crazy.

The artificial gods immediately broke out into a civil war. In the long period of death and war, these beings, who had become one with power, seemed to have long forgotten their memories of their human days, as if they had been infected with some kind of nihilism.

These humanoid concept cataclysms began a civil war, and after the first artificial god, who ruled over several human cities, discovered that he could gain power from humans, all the artificial gods began to fight amongst themselves.

They plundered people, seized cities, and then became entangled in a power struggle, killing each other and creating other gods.

The entire world descended into complete chaos. The war between artificial gods became even more bloody and brutal than when they had once repelled the apostles. They even discovered that killing anything related to the other's "concept" could weaken other artificial gods, which made them even more unscrupulous and cruel.

For example, there is an artificial god whose authority is "explosion," but all man-made explosives in the world are destroyed by other artificial gods, and all people who can make gunpowder, even scientists, are killed directly by other artificial gods following their thinking.

In just a few years, the power of the artificial god will be weakened to the point of being nothing more than a roadside stall.

Once this was discovered, an even more brutal war ensued. They no longer tried to kill each other, but rather to eradicate the concept of the enemy from its very roots.

As a result, more and more beings related to the concept of artificial gods were erased. Once the first one to erase the concept of others existed among the artificial gods, it was like opening Pandora's box, until an artificial god died completely or the whole world was destroyed.

……

Xue Dinglu took a deep breath; he understood everything by now.

Artificial gods are the precursors to demons.

The so-called demons were originally artificial gods who protected civilization. When facing the apostles, they were always the first to charge forward, using their souls and bodies, which had been arbitrarily modified to adapt to authority, to fight against the apostles' followers.

They were immortal and indestructible, dying and restarting countless times, fighting until even the apostles abandoned this planet...

Until they killed until they forgot their human memories, forgot their humanity, forgot their original intentions, and finally became madmen who fought only for the sake of fighting...

They utterly degenerated and became demons...

This is the power of authority. Will this be the outcome if humans wield this authority?

Xue's Law didn't know, but the original form of these demons was a group of children who fought desperately against the invaders for the future of humanity.

Until they became a complete catastrophe for the world, killing the humans who ruled by the other in order to eliminate other created gods, killing everything connected to the other concept, weakening the authority of others, and even devouring the authority of others...

At this point, they were no longer man-made gods, but utter demons.

A demon who has completely lost his humanity!

This is the precursor to the demon.

Therefore, the demon's craving for human fear is merely a means to perpetuate its "concepts" and carry them out. Many demons, however, can maintain their concepts without human fear, such as the powers of volcanoes, lava, hurricanes, and the deep sea…

However, many forms of authority require the existence of a "concept" to be powerful, such as "machinery".

Therefore, the artificial gods who tried to kill each other's authority eventually experienced the disastrous consequences of the avalanche. After numerous wars, humanity was on the verge of extinction. Only then did these artificial gods, who had long since fallen into demonic ways, realize that something was wrong.

So they established a basic order to sustain the remaining population, but at this time there were still various factional struggles and power struggles.

After a period of peace, the war between demons broke out again. However, this time it was no longer a war between individual demons, but a war between demons from different factions and forces.

Even after all of humanity was wiped out, the demons continued their relentless battle. They were born to be weapons of war. In the end, humanity was not wiped out by the invasion of the apostles, but destroyed by the Pandora's Box that they themselves created and opened.

These twisted demons were once a group of warriors fighting for their own world...

Is this the price of using human nature to control the world?

Xue's Law, who has had extensive contact with the world's authorities, has a deep understanding of how powerful authority can be. But can authority really erode human nature in such an exaggerated way?