Chapter 151

151

The shock of it left Lu Yan speechless for a long time.

The vision continued.

After the fetus was extracted from the fleshy tumor, the entire city of Laleye began to convulse violently.

Giant fissures tore across the ground. Stone pillars crumbled and plummeted from the heights.

Deprived of the fetus, the white umbilical cords fell into a frenzy.

They transformed from pale tendrils into blood-red appendages, their surfaces sprouting cold, hard scales. The crimson cords speared through one believer after another, draining them dry until nothing but dregs remained.

Amid the chaos, Jiang Yue roared, "Give it to me!"

Lu Cheng clutched the fetus tightly to his chest. "No! I'm the one who brought it out. Don't think you can cut me out of this!"

He knew it. Aside from his single gift of foresight, he was useless.

Staying in Laleye meant certain death. Only this dead thing in his arms offered a sliver of a chance at survival.

Panic twisted the faces of the remaining believers. The water level kept rising, threatening to flood their nostrils.

Jiang Yue's arms had already morphed into feathered wings, her legs into sharp, taloned hooks. With a frown, she grabbed Lu Cheng by the shoulder and launched them both into the air.

A believer spotted the winged figure above and raised a desperate hand. "President! Save me!"

Jiang Yue's gaze swept over him, cold and dismissive.

In the end, only a handful made it back to the ship. Captain Luo Yi, his inky-black tentacles whipping through the water, fished the Merchant from the depths.

A retired navy man, Luo Yi hauled up a few other familiar faces from the sea. He turned to go back for more, but Jiang Yue's hand clamped down on his shoulder.

"Enough," she said, her voice cutting through the din. "This place is going under."

And not just the city. Those blood-red umbilical cords were surging upward now, reaching for what had been taken from them.

Seawater gushed into the ship's hold in great, gulping waves. Short on crew, the whaler's engines struggled to life, its escape from Laleye agonizingly slow under Luo Yi's sole command.

At the final, desperate moment, the ship finally surged forward with a deep, groaning roar, fleeing the sinking nightmare.

The cords had no faces, yet everyone aboard felt the sheer, ravenous fury in their frenzied, monstrous dance—a palpable wave of thwarted hunger.

Luo Yi watched the city sink beneath the waves, his expression one of stunned horror, rendered utterly mute.

The whaler broke the surface into a pitch-black night.

After a heavy silence, the Merchant spoke. "We paid a high price. It's time to divide the spoils. That was the agreement from the start." Greed glinted in his eyes.

Lu Cheng looked lost. "Divide… how?"

He'd just graduated from university. Without his peculiar talent, he'd never have been allowed on this Deep Sea Society expedition in the first place.

A man who had lost an eye answered. "By dividing our god, of course."

Lu Cheng instinctively tightened his arms around the small form. "You can't…" he murmured. "There will be a price."

"A price?" The Merchant let out a low chuckle. "If there was one to pay, you paid it when you cut it free and brought it into this world prematurely. Yet here you stand, perfectly fine."

Lu Cheng's pleading gaze found Jiang Yue—the only person he felt he could still trust.

From overusing her talent, her avian feathers hadn't fully receded. She stood shrouded in her black robe, her tone unnervingly calm. "We need the 'god,' but not a whole one. We seek a power we can control, not a ruler from the abyss." She extended a hand toward Lu Cheng. "Hand it over."

Underwater, he'd had some bargaining power with her.

In this cramped surgical room, he was defenseless.

Reluctance flickered across Lu Cheng's face, but he surrendered the child.

As Jiang Yue moved to take it, she froze. A new umbilical cord, sprouting from the fetus's navel, had attached itself to Lu Cheng's body.

Like a parasite, it greedily siphoned his flesh and blood, feeding the tiny form.

Shock registered on Lu Cheng's face. In the panic underwater, he hadn't even noticed the thing piercing his skin.

And now, nourished by human vitality, the long-dead fetus emitted a faint, thready heartbeat from within its tiny chest.

The blurred mush of its face defined itself into the contours of features. It opened its mouth and let out a thin, wailing cry.

A wave of debilitating weakness washed over Lu Cheng. Pure terror seized him. "Take it off! Get it off me!"

Jiang Yue frowned, attempting to sever the deep red cord.

But this cord was infinitely tougher than the white ones. Her blade struck it as if hitting solid steel.

"Damn it," she cursed under her breath.

With separation impossible, Lu Cheng was strapped to the surgical table alongside the fetus.

Lu Yan watched from beside the table, his face an impassive mask, as if observing someone else's story.

His younger brother's voice whispered by his ear. "What comes next… might be a bit cruel."

Lu Yan had performed countless surgeries. Blood and gore didn't faze him. He didn't even blink.

An old man emerged from the shadows. A long beard nearly brushed the floor. In his hands, he carried a blood-red ancient text.

He was a renowned Seer from years past, codenamed the Shaman.

"The ancient texts state," the Shaman intoned, "the most crucial parts of this entity are the seven fish eggs within its stomach. Each egg can grow into a powerful lifeform. A future ruler of the world." He slowly produced a stone knife carved with strange patterns. "As for this… it is merely the vessel that bore them."

As he spoke, he sliced open the fetus's stomach.

Black blood gushed forth, soaking the surgical table beneath.

The fetus's mouth opened wide, releasing a piercing, agonized shriek.

The cry echoed through the silent operating room, chilling to the bone.

Hearing it, the Shaman coughed up a mouthful of bright red blood, his corruption level spiking uncontrollably.

"Are you alright?"

"It's nothing. Merely a minor backlash," the Shaman replied.

After a brief procedure, the fish eggs within the fetal stomach were finally retrieved.

Seven semi-translucent orbs, each with a dark speck like a tiny fry swimming inside its fluid bubble.

But the moment they touched the air, their vitality drained away at a visible rate.

The shriveling eggs emitted a foul, rotten-fish stench.

The Merchant panicked. "What's happening?! Do something!"

The old man glanced at the eggs and acted decisively. He raised his knife and severed one of the fetus's limbs.

One egg was shoved into the raw, unformed flesh. Its deterioration halted.

"It seems these eggs are not yet mature," the Shaman declared. "They require the embryo as a culture medium. We were too hasty! They could have incubated on their own. Now, having lost most of their vitality, we must find a way to artificially accelerate their maturation later." A look of profound regret crossed his face.

He proceeded to dismember the dead fetus with methodical precision.

He must have been a doctor once. Or a butcher. Nothing else explained such practiced, clinical cruelty.

He dug out the fetus's underdeveloped eyeballs.

He split the tiny chest open and removed the small, golden-hued heart.

He cut out the tongue. Finally, that grating cry ceased.

He removed the ears. He severed the throat. Finally, he scooped out the brain.

It was a brutal, sacrificial disassembly.

When the old man finished, his entire body contorted into an impossible shape. He bent at an angle no spine should allow, his own hands flying up to clutch his throat, his form twisting in on itself like a knotted ball.

The Shaman let out a guttural shriek of agony. "Save me! Save me!"

Jiang Yue rushed forward, trying to pry his limbs apart, but it was useless.

With a sickening crunch of bone, the old Shaman died, frozen in that grotesque pose, a serene smile still etched on his face.

A cold dread seeped into everyone present, especially the recently graduated Lu Cheng.

Fortunately, aside from the Shaman's death, no other anomalies occurred.

The Deep Sea Society claimed three fish eggs. The other survivors, except for Captain Luo Yi, took one each.

The fetus on the table had long stopped breathing, a discarded piece of used-up refuse.

Its still-warm blood had trickled down to wet the side of Lu Cheng's face.

He looked at Jiang Yue, his voice trembling. "Can you take it off me now? Please, I'm scared."

Jiang Yue offered a faint smile. "Of course."

Beneath the black robe, her face elongated, forming a long, sharp bird's beak.

She opened her mouth and swallowed the dead fetus whole.

Even refuse shouldn't be wasted.

Her eating habits were avian; she didn't chew, merely tilting her head back and stretching her neck, her wings giving a few feeble flaps.

Time advanced. Lu Cheng had been back from the sea for a while, yet nightmares still plagued his sleep.

He was just a mysticism enthusiast, unlucky—or lucky—enough to awaken Talent 66. He'd wanted to prove the existence of gods. He never imagined being dragged into such a brutal truth.

But fate wasn't done with him.

Two weeks later, someone knocked on his door.

Lu Cheng assumed it was a food delivery. But seeing the visitor, an icy chill shot down his spine.

Jiang Yue stood there, one hand resting on her abdomen, her expression blank.

"I'm pregnant," she stated flatly.

Less than a month since their return from the sea, Jiang Yue's formerly flat stomach was now swollen, as if she carried a full-term child.

Several days later, it was born. Lu Cheng named him "Lu Yan."

The child looked no different from any human infant. The two of them, like an ordinary couple, cared for it with cautious devotion.

That lasted until the child began to learn to speak.

One-year-old Lu Yan looked at Jiang Yue and said, "Bird."

Then he looked at Lu Cheng. "Eyes."

A sudden, blazing light of triumph ignited in Jiang Yue's gaze.

Lu Yan was born with knowledge. He possessed Talent 6: Omniscience.

……

……

The scene before him shattered like a soap bubble.

In that instant, Lu Yan snapped back to the present.

Even underwater, he felt a suffocating lack of air, forcing him to gasp. "I remember… I was five when I learned to speak."

Lu Yan had lived in fear since childhood, his reactions to the world perpetually dulled and delayed.

His earliest memories began at three. By five, he’d finally managed speech. The Omniscience talent? That only came later, after contact with a pollutant.

The colossal dragon corpse still loomed before him.

His brother drifted upward gently, moving through the water like a fish circling him.

A faint smile played on his brother's lips. "So, I told you. I would protect my brother."

What Lu Yan had witnessed were events from before the world reset.

After being born from Jiang Yue, with no "little brother" to suppress him, his talents surfaced early. He was raised as the Deep Sea Society's holy child.

As Lu Yan grew, the world's pollution index climbed daily. Chaos deepened, forcing the Prevention and Control Center to initiate the latter stages of the "Spark Project" ahead of schedule—establishing survivor bases.

And the Deep Sea Society, leaning on Lu Yan's power, built a base rivaling the Center's, seizing supreme authority.

According to Lu Cheng's foresight, Lu Yan was destined to become a god. But the first Wang Yu parasitizing his body… betrayed him.

"Little brother," using the Devour talent, consumed Lu Yan. Inherited everything this body possessed.

He replaced Lu Yan, becoming the new god, and returned to the deep sea—their shared birthplace.

Decades later, humanity perished. Pollutants claimed the world.

Barren. Broken. Devoid of life. Devoid, naturally, of hope.

That would have been the world's final state, had Tang Xian'an not risked everything to reverse the flow of time.

But because of that unexpected miracle, the world was thrown back many years—to when that blood-stained whaling ship first arrived at Laleye.

Time could be rewound, but it could not erase a god's existence.

Here, in this sunken city, He watched Lu Yan in His own way.

This was the beginning of everything.