Soul of Burning Steel

Just when the Seven Sacred Mountains cheered for detecting the signal from afar, Joshua did not go to the void.

At this time, he was still in the Mycroft Continent.

If you want to go to the void, you can go anywhere, as long as you can fly upwards and rise to an altitude of more than 700,000 meters, you can come to the edge of the world. Here, the boundaries of time and space are blurred. You can easily go to the outside world without using the time-space gate at all. And with Joshua's strength, he doesn't even need to climb too high, as long as he reaches a height where his strength will not affect the surface buildings, he can distort the space at any time and go to the void.

Now, the warrior set the coordinates that he had already prepared, and he strode through the gate of time and space, and then, in bursts of intense blue light, he came to the hilly area in the southeast of the eastern plain, a building with a simple appearance and no Inside the conspicuous mage tower.

The 'Nameless' stone tower is a round tower building located at the highest point of the Magna Great Hills. Huge granite and ashlar stones make up its outer layer, and depressions that seem to be traces of wind erosion are all over its surface, but its interior But it shone with magical fluorescence. Many adventurers who lived around Magna thought it was an ancient ruin at first, but when they approached and prepared to explore, they realized that there were powerful defenses around this seemingly ordinary mage tower. According to some adventurers who have infiltrated around the magic circle, there are huge stone puppets standing around the nameless stone tower, as if rejecting all outsiders.

Many people speculate that the owner of this mage tower may be a powerful mage who often travels far away, so he left huge puppet stone statues to guard his mage tower that seems to be in disrepair. In fact, they guessed That's right, it's just that they are still too conservative about the strength and number of tower masters.

Joshua walked out of the teleportation circle on the fourth floor of the stone tower. He was greeted by Barnir and William. Two legendary mages stood in front of the gate of time and space. One was reading a large magic book, and the other One was instructing an obsidian puppet to prepare coffee, and when the time and space were turbulent and the soldiers completely walked out of the fluctuating time and space channel, they all dropped their work and instructions and went forward to welcome the soldiers.

"You're here, the analysis of the mental fragments and the magic cocoon has already had a rough result, and many interesting things have been discovered."

Without exchanging pleasantries, the three communicated directly as if they had communicated a long time ago. After nodding each other and confirming the situation, they walked to the laboratory on the top floor of the stone tower together.

Barnier took the lead. The old mage shook his head and said, "Of course, because the experimental materials are relatively small, destructive analysis methods cannot be used, so the efficiency is relatively low."

The 'Nameless' stone tower is one of the footholds of the two legendary mages, Barnir and William, all over the Mycroft world continent. This is their largest research base in the Eastern Plains. Except for some students, they will be brought here Apart from assisting in the research, no one knew that the stone tower belonged to them, and after Barnir shut up, William took up the conversation again: "The mental fragments are too fragmented, it seems that they were completely shattered after being severely injured. It’s really hard to peel back the pieces of memory.”

"Thank you, sorry for the trouble."

Regarding this, Joshua, who entrusted the two to help, didn't say much, he just thanked him sincerely. Soon, the three of them came to the laboratory on the top floor of the stone tower.

This is an extremely white room - the four arms, the floor and the ceiling are all the purest white without any stains, and the silver-white metal workbench is engraved with lines of rune arrays shining with light blue light patterns , the cabinet is filled with all kinds of bottles and jars, with labels on them: 'Forest of Creeping', 'Abyss Soil', 'Styx Water'... But the most eye-catching one is the one placed in the center of the laboratory. A huge circular array disk, and three crystal balls placed on the array disk.

"Speaking of which, it's really a coincidence. Barnier and I caught a demon in your territory last time. By analyzing its spirit and soul, we have accumulated first-hand analysis data on powerful demons. Let this The job is a lot easier.”

After arriving at the laboratory, William pointed to a crystal ball placed on the formation board, and said with emotion: "If we didn't have this kind of experience, we might not have dared to accept your commission."

"What demon?"

Joshua turned his head curiously.

In the Blood Moon Abyss, after the battle with the black dragon and the two demon lords, Joshua gave the spirit fragments of the beholder lord Helm and the remaining half body of the worm lord Saluka to the imperial royal family respectively. The Mage Association and Barnier and William, but because the Imperial Royal Mage Association has to focus on the development of another world recently, it is impossible to help the soldiers analyze the wreckage left by these two legendary powerhouses as soon as possible, so in the end Joshua will Its carte blanche was entrusted to two legendary mages.

Now it seems that both Barnir and William have worked hard to complete Joshua's commission. It has not been a few months, and they have already harvested a lot, and have sorted out most of the soldiers before they are ready to go to another world. material.

Thinking of this, he looked at the crystal ball William was pointing at.

Then, Joshua saw a familiar face—his expression suddenly became subtle: "Laldan As? You caught it in my territory?"

It was a perfect red and white sphere, in which a dying demon was being imprisoned, and it could be clearly seen that this was the Great Intent-level demon who had fought with warriors in the past with an avatar, the Devourer The heart demon Laldan As, but compared to the aggressiveness at the beginning, the current Heart Eater has already curled up in the crystal ball in despair, not to mention the halo of despair, and does not care about the outside world. Even if the three legends came to watch it, it was the same, like a piece of dead meat that had been spoiled.

"Yeah, it should have been caught around the time you returned from the Grandia world. It happened to be discovered by us just after crossing the Ural Mountains."

Barnier didn't continue to explain how the two caught the big demon, he just stroked the surface of the crystal ball lightly, and said with emotion: "If it weren't for analyzing the soul and body of this heart eater, we would Mastering the ability to peel off soul fragments and memory fragments from a living body, we may not be able to successfully complete your commission. By the way, we found that demons are no different from normal creatures in terms of life essence, just because they live in too harsh an environment And with mutations, their meat actually tastes good after purification."

"The only pity is that although this Mind Eater has not completely collapsed, it has completely closed itself and will not respond to our stimuli. Even if you kill it now, it will not move halfway. .”

"This...is really a coincidence."

Taking a deep look at the motionless great demon in the crystal ball, the "future" legendary demon lord in his previous life, Joshua smiled lightly, and then stopped paying attention. He looked at the other two demons placed on the formation board. The crystal ball in the direction said, "So, have you really analyzed Helm's mental fragments and Saruka's body?"

"Saruka's is more complicated. We haven't figured out how its energy is fused with its cells, and then converted into other life forms, but the analysis of Helm's mental fragments has indeed been completed."

At this time, William came to the silver crystal ball on the other side, and there were fragments like colorful prisms floating in it. They were the spiritual fragments left behind by the beholder king after his death. The master of mind turned his head and looked at Joshua. , and added a sentence: "It's just that it was broken too badly, and the memory is very confused... I don't know who broke it."

Joshua didn't reply either. He looked at the silver-white crystal ball and asked seriously, "Excuse me. Then, is there any information worth mentioning?"

"Yes... But to be honest, Barnier and I don't quite understand it. Although we often go in and out of the void and go to the abyss, we have never seen that kind of world."

Barnier stretched out his hand and made a gesture of 'please': "You should come and see for yourself."

Joshua didn't refuse, he stepped forward and came to the silver crystal ball. He reached out and touched it.

Then, light and shadow intersected, and a torrent of thoughts composed of a large number of fragmented memories surged towards Joshua.

He saw the many memories that belonged to the demon lord Helm buried deep in his heart - born in the broken soul of a certain outsider mage, devoured his compatriots to grow and evolve, fought endlessly in the sixth abyss, and expanded his power, Qiao Xiu Ya saw a demon struggling to survive the apocalypse, and then became more and more cruel and ruthless.

The lifespan of demons is long, much longer than that of humans. Even the fragmented and shallow memory fragments are extremely thick compared to humans, but Joshua suppressed these memories and thoughts that belonged to demons one by one, and only extracted the most important ones. own useful information.

Goliath, the gluttonous demon king, would rather suffer a serious injury than cross the shield of the sacrificial field of ten thousand worlds to snatch Saruka's remnant body and Helm's spiritual fragments. The remains, there is definitely something worth paying for the other two people, so he worked tirelessly to gather the fragments of Helm's spirit that he crushed, and finally entrusted the master of the mind and the rune that has reached the pinnacle of self-transformation to control Now, Joshua has obtained a lot of geographical information related to the sixth abyss, but it is of no use. He feels that he needs to go deeper.

So Joshua went deeper.

In the torrent of hundreds of years of memories of the demon lord, Joshua was immersed in the deeper fragments of the other party's thoughts. He searched for all the "secret" memories of the other party, and mercilessly exposed them. open.

Finally, he found the fragment hidden deep in his memory by Helm.

This is a memory from more than 370 years ago. It was a failed teleportation. The great demon who had not yet achieved legend was caught in the space-time rift between worlds, and right there, it witnessed A most ultimate destruction.

It was light, a mighty stream of light. The silver-blue brilliance of the stars is shining, and the gamma ray burst that destroys everything surges from the center of the stars. It destroys everything, and turns the planet into ashes with a snap of fingers, just like a castle made of sand blown by a giant. like that.

Death blew the horn, Destruction chanted hymns, and the planet with a huge energy shield was directly destroyed, and its ashes danced and burned in the stream of light, like sparks floating on a bonfire. It can be seen that the iron core of the star turns red and is washed into the stars - this scene may be difficult for the legendary mages who have been living in the plane world, but Joshua is very clear, he saw the supernova The light of the birth burst across the galaxy, destroying all the stars along the way, and finally hit the sun of this galaxy.

As if the shell of an egg was broken, the egg white mixed with the yolk spilled out in the vacuum, and the liquid hot gas spewed out from the interior of the star and was blown away by the light.

A star is thus extinguished.

Witnessing all this with Helm at the time, Joshua couldn't help but hold his breath - he understood the horror of this scene better than anyone else, even Helm who saw this scene with his own eyes.

The gamma ray burst coming from afar does not have the ability to destroy the planet or blow away the stars. It can at most kill all life on the surface of the planet and blow away the atmosphere. If what Helm sees is true, then there is only one possibility... …that is, not far from this destroyed galaxy, not even more than a few light-years away, a huge super star exploded and collapsed, forming a neutron star...or even a black hole.

"It's really amazing. I didn't expect the prototype of Helm's Star Blaze to be a real gamma-ray burst... But Goliath shouldn't take it so seriously."

The shock was only for a moment, and Joshua was not affected by this scene. He frowned and thought: "A terrible astronomical disaster, for the abyssal demon, maybe it is just to get some magic inspiration, there is no need to be so nervous recapture."

There should be some important information that he didn't discover. Joshua thought so, and then continued to search for Helm's remaining mental fragments, hoping to obtain deeper information.

Next, countless scattered memory fragments flashed... Helm's advanced legend, which had acquired stronger power, confirmed its own legendary form. It manipulated the destructive light flow to suppress half of the Sixth Abyss, And ready to act towards the supreme goal of conquering the entire abyss plane—but in the middle, a stronger force ended Helm's ambition, which was the future Demon King, Goliath.

It was so unbelievably powerful that he didn't even use any hole cards. With pure energy and physical strength alone, he defeated Helm who was going all out. It seemed that the abyss lord who could dominate everything had just shown his edge and unified the entire sixth abyss. The Demon King did not choose to kill other Demon Lords, but ordered them to conquer other worlds for his own ambitions with his own power.

For various reasons, Helm did not choose to resist, it decided to submit to this powerful abyss lord temporarily, but Joshua saw that in the first hundred years after being defeated, Helm was not as loyal as it is now, and it always He was thinking about how to become stronger, replace Goliath, and become the next demon king to rule the whole world.

It tried many methods, whether it was meditation, conceiving new spells, accumulating energy, or optimizing the energy condensation acceleration structure in its body... It did become stronger, but it couldn't defeat Goliath. Helm was extremely distressed by this until the end , it came to mind that might be the only way.

That is to return to the world that produced the gamma ray burst, and analyze the source of this terrifying power.

Helm firmly believed that if he grasped the truth of the terrifying power, let alone the abyss lord, I am afraid that even the gods would be difficult to contend with him. Therefore, with more than ten years of preparation, it finally restored the original mistake of teleportation. Coordinates, ready to enter that world again, to find the source behind that power.

"...I can't find its source...it's too far away. I've been flying for several months and haven't left this high heat cloud area."

"The energy radiation here is more terrifying than the void. Even I can't support it for too long... The Blaze of the Stars is not over yet, and scattered energy flows are still erupting from time to time."

"Strange... Such a terrifying sense of space distortion, what is in the distance? The light has turned into a whirlpool... Is something coming?!"

"It rushed in! No, it rushed in a long time ago... This is the light from decades ago... It is the source! It caused this disaster!"

This was Helm's last fragment of memory—it saw an extremely bright star, and an inconspicuous dot that came from nowhere and crashed into the star.

Letting go of the hand that was touching the silver crystal ball, Joshua took a step back, his brows furrowed, and he fell into deep thought.

Barnir and William on the side didn't bother Joshua. In fact, they felt the same way when they observed Helm's memory, and it was even more difficult to understand than Joshua. After all, whether it was Barnir or William, They have always lived in the world of planes where the sky is round and where the sky is round. They have never heard of the vast and boundless star sea world like stars and planets.

At this moment, the soldier was thinking about the significance of Helm's last fragment of memory.

"The Lord Beholder doesn't have a psychic leap engine like mine, and it can't cross the cosmic space counted in astronomical units... Even after flying for a few months, it still escaped in the sun that was blown out. Inside the nebula."

The soldier muttered to himself: "The energy eruption has not yet ended, which means that the stellar wreckage erupted at the source has not been completely stabilized... But since the light can be twisted into a vortex, it must be a black hole more terrifying than a neutron star."

As for the last scene, Joshua can easily understand it: the gravitational chaos caused by the black hole may have distorted the light, and it took decades for Helm to see what should have appeared at the same time when the gamma ray burst arrived. In the past, it should have seen something suddenly appearing around the supernova that was about to explode, and then induced the supernova to collapse and explode.

It's just... what is that thing? Three hundred and seventy years ago, what exactly triggered that terrifying gamma ray burst?

There is no follow-up to everything. This is the last spiritual fragment left by Helm, the demon lord, in this world. Most of it is in the hands of Joshua, and a small half is in the hands of Goliath. Until now, Joshua still hasn't done it. He understood why the abyss lord insisted on taking Helm's spirit shards, so as not to let himself succeed, but the soldier had a vague guess in his mind, but this guess was quite absurd, and he felt a little unlikely.

"Have you solved your problem? Joshua."

After Joshua finished his contemplation, Barnier on the side spoke. He looked at the serious warrior, shook his head and said, "To be honest, William and I didn't see anything. The memories of these demons are messed up. There are still a lot of weird places."

"No... On the contrary, there are more and more problems."

Although he said so, Joshua's complexion improved a lot. Although he didn't understand Goliath's purpose, he did know the source of Helm's power and the coordinates of the star sea world... Helm didn't The jump engine can't cross the distance in units of light years, but he can. When he has time in the future, he will naturally go to that world to see the situation and find out what's going on.

"Don't worry too much, Joshua, the memory of demons is almost like this."

On the other side, William, who is well-informed and has played with his mind a lot, smiled lightly. He turned his head, looked at the cocoon placed in another black and white crystal ball, and shrugged: "Saruka's life Although we haven't finished analyzing the shape yet, we have to say that it really deserves to be a legendary powerhouse. Just a little bit of life essence structure we have analyzed now is enough for us in the "Rebirth of Broken Limbs", "Life Extension" and " Great progress has been made in life research such as strengthening internal organs'—this cocoon is even alive, which is much more valuable than the spirit fragments of a dead demon."

"Haha, it's good that it's valuable. In short, the research in this area is up to you."

Joshua smiled slightly at this. This was the purpose of sending Saruka's body fragments here. Although he also has the technical ability to analyze the body fragments of the lord of insect demons, he has no time—maybe In the eyes of others, he seems to be very leisurely, as if he does not need to manage his own territory at all, and even runs around, but in fact, Joshua is far more busy than others imagined, just like now, he is going to another world On the way, take a moment to get information about the demon lords.

After exchanging a few words with the two legends and confirming that Winterhold College will take over the next joint research, Joshua left the stone tower. Standing on the Magna hill, he slowly raised his head and looked towards the sky. Afterwards, the warrior turned into a dim silver light and rose straight into the sky.

During the straight flight, Joshua had a lot of thoughts in his mind... Devils, abysses, evil gods, gamma ray bursts in different worlds, gods' inquiries about order, and sages from afar... It sounds complicated, but A warrior is a simple person. For him, no amount of doubts can stop him, but only give him more motivation to move forward.

"There are so many interesting questions."

In this way, this time will not be boring.

Thinking of this, Joshua came to the void beyond Mycroft. Under the silver light of the Ten Thousand Worlds Sacrificial Field, he stood in the turbulent flow of time and space. The warrior looked around, and he seemed to have noticed something, so Joshua Seriously said to the void beside him: "I kept you waiting, Karlis."

"For me, it's just a moment."

Accompanied by Joshua's words, the turbulent flow of time and space vibrates slowly, and a great will spans time and space, directly talking to Joshua's spirit. Its voice was gentle and low, with a reassuring tone: "So, are you ready, Joshua?"

"certainly."

A resolute answer came from the turbulent flow of time and space. Joshua calmly looked at the chaotic void, and said softly, "Let's start now."

"Let me see which world is asking for my help."

I used to blame the amber sword for breaking the update. When I wrote almost three million words, I also felt that the update became more and more difficult... There are more and more plots and foreshadowings involved, and major events have to be unfolded one by one... It's really difficult ah.

This is 6,000 words from yesterday. Today’s update should be sent out at night in China. Let me have a rest first. Recently, my lumbar spine is hurting. I guess it’s because I’ve been sitting for a long time... I’ll lie down for a while.