Magical Girl's Knight Brother

Chapter 706 Dangerous Guesses

On the front lines of the river basin, the once bustling port city is now nothing but ruins, and the air is filled with the pungent smell of gunpowder, blood, and the salty sea breeze.

The collapsed buildings resembled the skeletons of a giant beast, and the congealed dark red bloodstains painted a cruel picture on the cracked ground. Soldiers of the Black City Legion were clearing the battlefield, collecting the remains of their comrades, and helping the wounded. The atmosphere was solemn and weary, filled with the relief of surviving a catastrophe, as well as the bewilderment of losing their homeland.

A futuristic motorcycle, Langya, was steadily parked by Tang Zijun at the edge of a relatively intact square. Its streamlined body gleamed with a cold metallic luster in the dim light, forming a stark contrast with the dilapidated surroundings.

Tang Zijun got out of the car, still wearing the casual clothes that showed signs of battle. Her expression carried a lingering weariness, but her eyes had regained their usual composure.

Following behind him was Alex, the red dragon who had restrained her dragon might. Her enormous dragon claws slammed into the gravel ground with a dull thud. Her molten gold vertical pupils, filled with curiosity and a hint of barely perceptible unease, surveyed the ruins of this human battlefield.

Their appearance immediately attracted everyone's attention.

"Lord Wolf Rider!"

"Lord Wolf Rider has returned!"

The soldiers of the Black City Legion stopped what they were doing, straightened their backs, and looked at them with awe and gratitude. Desk strode over, his dark crystal armor covered in dirt, but his eyes were bright. He gave Tang Zijun a deep military salute, and everything was understood without words.

"Wow—! It's a dragon!!" A scream full of surprise, almost lifting the roof off if there were one, shattered the solemn atmosphere.

Tangcao rushed over like a gust of wind, her long black hair flying behind her, her large eyes sparkling with pure, undisguised excitement. She circled Alex several times, almost reaching out to touch her shimmering, molten gold scales. "So beautiful, so cool! Those scales, those wings, that aura... oh my god, she's alive..."

She completely forgot about her previous exhaustion.

Alex was a little overwhelmed by the enthusiasm of the arabess. Her huge dragon head tilted slightly, and a small stream of warm air with a sulfurous smell blew out from her nostrils. A hint of helplessness and a little bit of pride flashed in her molten gold pupils.

She glanced at Tang Zijun, who stood calmly beside her, and felt a little awkward.

Scáthach appeared before Tang Zijun like a ghost, her scarlet eyes calmly sweeping over Alex. She clearly recognized this red dragon as the uninvited guest who had brushed past the Black City outpost and caused a brief commotion.

But she didn't ask any more questions, her gaze returning to Tang Zijun, her voice as cold as an icy spring.

"nailed it?"

Tang Zijun met Scáthach's gaze, which seemed to pierce through her soul, nodded, and said succinctly.

"nailed it."

He didn't need to explain much about the divine war that took place in the distant seas; those two words already contained the entire outcome.

"I've suppressed the abnormal rise in sea level," Tang Zijun added, her tone carrying the calm of someone in control. "It won't be long before the ocean returns to its original color."

At this moment, Little Grey, who had been quietly following behind Qin Nan, spoke up, her voice tinged with worry. "What about the creatures in the sea? Those mutated, polluted fish monsters, those deep-sea creatures, they..."

""

This question has piqued the interest of many, who have witnessed the horrific appearance of those twisted creatures and know that they were once part of a catastrophe.

A complex emotion flashed in Tang Zijun's eyes. He raised his hand, and invisible spiritual threads seemed to ripple slightly at his fingertips.

"They..." He paused, seemingly choosing his words carefully, or perhaps dealing with the faint aftershocks of the billions of chaotic thoughts still lingering in his consciousness from the depths of the ocean. "I am doing everything I can to restore their sanity."

"Restore sanity?" Little Gray's beak opened slightly, and its feathers fluffed up in surprise.

"Hmm." Tang Zijun nodded, a tired but determined look on his face. "It's a very troublesome process." He pointed to his head. "The distortion inflicted on them by the Lord of the Deep Sea goes deep into their very being, like forcibly covering them with a layer of insane operating system. What I'm doing now is trying to uninstall" that layer of madness, allowing their original... though perhaps not very intelligent to come back online. This takes time, and it also requires their own survival instinct to cooperate."

He looked at the still dark sea in the distance, his tone carrying an almost parental helplessness and guidance.

"But at least they've calmed down now," Tang Zijun said, a barely perceptible smile playing on her lips. "They've stopped their frenzied attacks and self-destruction. I've given them a new command." "I've sent them to repair the ocean: clean up pollutants, rebuild coral reefs, and regulate turbulent currents and the seabed... In short, give these guys, whose brains are still 'rebooting' and might crash at any moment, something productive to do."

He shrugged. "This will distract them and prevent them from getting carried away or falling into chaos again. After all, it's always good to have something to do, right? Even if it's... moving bricks on the seabed."

Listening to Tang Zijun use words like uninstall, restart, blue screen, and brick-moving to describe "psychological counseling and job placement" for a group of sea monsters twisted by evil gods, Qin Nan and Xiao Hui couldn't help but chuckle. The heavy atmosphere was lightened considerably, and even Scáthach's perpetually frozen lips seemed to twitch slightly.

Although Desk and the soldiers around him didn't quite understand the strange metaphors, they could still sense the peculiar concern for life (even if it was a distorted life) and the composure of controlling the overall situation in Tang Zijun's words.

Alex's molten gold vertical pupils gazed intently at Tang Zijun, looking at his tired yet still humane face. She could see that this man not only possessed the divine power to expel evil gods and control the ocean, but also had an almost instinctive sense of compassion and responsibility that had not been distorted by power.

He may have stepped into the realm of the inhuman, but he is still clumsily but firmly repairing this scarred world, including those corrupted souls, in a way that is "human."

"What about the Pleasurable Creature? How is He?" Tangcao asked curiously as she wiped the last trace of dirt off the ice crystal slender sword.

She had just finished a fierce battle with the white-haired Herrscher and only caught a vague glimpse of the devastating changes happening on the other side.

Upon hearing this, Qin Nan replied, "? It was incredibly tragic. That guy didn't even manage to descend. The seal was almost broken, but he didn't even get close to the dream."

She pointed towards the completely withered cocoon, now just a huge, dark red stain. "Tang Zijun forcibly took away most of the energy she was saving for birth. With her power severely diminished, she probably doesn't even have the strength to crawl out of the egg. She probably doesn't dare to move, after all..."

She drawled out her words and looked at Tang Zijun with a smile.

"If He dares to come, He will suffer the same fate as the Lord who sleeps in the deep sea."

Upon hearing this, the surrounding warriors couldn't help but show relieved and respectful smiles on their tired faces. Desk patted the shoulder of his adjutant beside him forcefully, and the heavy dark crystal armor made a dull thud. Even Alex exhaled a small stream of hot air with a sulfurous smell from her nose.

However, not everyone was enjoying the relaxed atmosphere.

Some perceptive warriors, like Xiao Hui and a few high-ranking officers, looked at Tang Zijun with admiration mixed with a hint of undisguised worry. They had witnessed Tang Zijun's aura as if he were devouring an abyss, the chilling aura emanating from beneath his shattered black-blue armor, which was of the same origin as that of an evil god, "swallowing" the power source of an ancient ruler. This sounded like chewing on a cosmic poison as candy; a backlash was almost an inevitable fate.

Scáthach silently took a few steps forward, her purple eyes locking onto Tang Zijun.

"You used this power to severely injure and kill the Lord of the Deep Sea, proving your current control over it." Her tone abruptly changed. "But Tang Zijun..."

"What about the other Great Old Ones?"

"The Lord of the Deep Sea is just one of them. They have different forms and different sources of power. The nature of the power of the Pleasurable Creature is completely different from it."

"Does your ability to transform and control its power today mean that all the Great Old Ones can be killed and devoured by you in the same way, transforming into the 'new form' within your belt?"

She paused, her gaze sharp as a knife, pointing directly to the heart of the problem and revealing the deepest fear in everyone's heart.

"If you encounter a large enough number of Great Old Ones, with higher levels of power, and whose corruption is more bizarre and difficult to deal with..."

"The vessel that holds all of this." Her gaze finally settled on the seemingly inconspicuous wolf rider belt around Tang Zijun's waist, which now gleamed coldly in the darkness. "Your belt, where is its limit?"

"Will it one day be overwhelmed by this endless cosmic poison, or polluted to the point where even its own rules cannot be maintained?"

"By then..."

Scáthach didn't finish her sentence, but the meaning of her unfinished words was already very clear: "Tang Zijun, out of control and fused with the power of multiple Great Old Ones," would be a walking end that is billions of times more terrifying than a single evil god.

Tang Zijun remained silent.

The relaxed yet weary expression on his face vanished instantly, replaced by an unprecedented solemnity. He slowly lowered his head, his gaze falling on his waist.

The wolf rider belt that had accompanied him through countless battlefields and witnessed his transformations lay dormant, its azure chaotic core embedded in the central groove spinning silently, emanating a cold, abyssal aura that echoed in his mind. He could clearly feel the immense chaotic primal force contained within it, belonging to the sleeping lord of the deep sea, as well as the lingering echo of a trace of filth that had been forcibly stripped away, belonging to something that crawled with pleasure.

Scáthach's problem also served as a wake-up call for him.

Can other Great Old Ones also be "eaten" like this?

he does not know.

Today's victory was largely due to chance and uncertainty.

Scáthach's words were like a boulder thrown into a still pond, stirring up ripples of unease in everyone's hearts. The fatal question about the limits of the belt completely shattered the relaxed atmosphere of surviving the ordeal.

The soldiers' hands, which were carrying rubble, froze in mid-air. Qin Nan's magic terminal screen went dark. Even the flowing light on Alex's molten gold scales seemed to freeze for a moment. Everyone saw the most terrifying future in those unspoken words: Tang Zijun, out of control, becoming a walking end.

Tang Zijun's gaze swept across the solemn faces of the crowd, finally settling on the depths of Scáthach's eyes. He slowly exhaled a breath of stale air, which condensed into a brief white mist in the cool air.

"You're right, Scáthach." His voice held a weary clarity, as if he had pierced through the fog. "But the real problem... is perhaps more serious than whether the belt can bear it."

He took a step forward, his boot crushing a piece of gravel engraved with blasphemous runes.

"The gods, creating dream worlds and building sanctuaries for billions of living beings is indeed an unimaginable feat, but they made a mistake that is almost childish."

He suddenly raised his hand and pointed to the murky sky.

"The conservation of energy, the balance of positive and negative forces—this is the most fundamental ironclad law of the world." Tang Zijun's voice echoed through the ruins, shaking off the dust from the walls. "Have you ever wondered why the real world is relatively stable? Why there are no Great Old Ones there? The answer is simple: because its negative energy... has an outlet."

Tang Zijun's fingertips traced rapidly in the air, and the dark blue chaotic energy flowed with his thoughts, conjuring up a clear picture in front of everyone.

A three-dimensional model of the real world appears on the left, with countless golden points of light flowing around the main world.

On the right, two intertwined dimensional projections split off—one is a reversed world composed of inverted mirror images, and the other is an inner world interwoven with threads of light and darkness.

The gray-black negative energy flow of the real world is like being drawn in by an invisible funnel and continuously injected into these two secondary dimensions.

"See that?" Tang Zijun said. "The Reverse World, the Inner World, and the Outer World—these worlds are used to harmonize positive and negative energy. Positive energy remains in the real world, while negative energy transforms into monsters like heretics and those driven by greed..."

He clenched his fingers, and the negative energy flow in the illusion suddenly condensed into a menacing, monstrous phantom. "These manifestations of negative energy are essentially singular and traceable."

He abruptly waved his hand, dispelling the illusion on the left and instead conjuring a model of the dream world—an isolated bubble suspended in the void, enveloped in golden divine runes. Golden light, representing positive energy, flowed within it, while the gray-black negative energy... was like poisonous fog trapped in a glass jar, with nowhere to go, only able to accumulate, settle, and mutate continuously.

"This kind of negative energy is singular and can be transformed. An individual's negative energy can only be transformed into a greedy person, but the negative energy of a city..."

"It will transform into a gap in the inner world, allowing heretical demons to descend into the real world," Qin Nan answered quickly, while also frowning.

"That's right, but what about here?" Tang Zijun's voice suddenly turned icy as he pointed to the thick, churning black cloud of negative energy. "The gods used their immense power to carve out the dream world, but forgot to provide it with a proper sewer system," the fear of countless beings echoed.

Despair, madness, evil... all negative emotions had nowhere to go.

His fingers plunged deep into the core of the black cloud. "These stagnant pus cells, accumulated over countless eons, were constantly compressed and corrupted under the suppression of divine power, ultimately..."

"The illusion suddenly changed! The accumulated negative energy began to throb like a heart, and stretched out countless sticky, eyeball-covered tentacles, twisting and entwining into a disgusting, indescribable, enormous shadow—the prototype of the Great Old Ones!"

"They are not the malice of any one person, nor the malice of any one city," Tang Zijun roared like thunder. "They are the aggregate of billions of negative thoughts, the crystallization of the poison of civilization accumulated over millions of years."

"An Old One may carry the overwhelming resentment of a race's extinction, the mad echoes of a god's fall, or even the ultimate despair before a civilization's annihilation."

"The negative energy monsters in the real world are transformed one-to-one, while the ones here are antimatter bombs compressed from billions of tons of filth and sludge."

A cold wind swept through the ruins, and everyone felt a chill run to their very bones.

Qin Nan instinctively hugged his arms tightly. Tang Cao's icy crystal slender sword hummed softly in its sheath. Alex's molten gold vertical pupils reflected Tang Zijun's heavy figure. The dragon finally understood what he had been carrying when he devoured the evil god.

Tang Zijun sighed softly. "So, I don't know how long the belt can last, but I do know that as long as the fatal energy loop of the dream world doesn't break..."

He paused, and the words he uttered sent a chill down everyone's spine.

"...Then every Great Old One I killed was just like squeezing a tumor out of a boil."

"And new tumors are always growing."

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