Trials of the Abyss-Chapter 715: Fragmented Land as Body

The Rock Devourer flew ahead. That oppressive feeling of the space around him being packed tight with invisible rocks and mountains vanished the instant he told Pang Jian to follow him.

The bizarre mist remained the same, the fragmented lands were still scattered as before, the Outer Gods were where they had always been, and Pang Jian remained himself. Despite the lack of visible changes, the sudden ease that washed over him was undeniable, as though shackles had been removed and his freedom restored.

He followed the Rock Devourer as they flew forward, curiosity drawing his gaze downward to the fragmented lands they passed. As he observed, a sense of puzzlement rose in his heart.

Bridge-like structures linked the fragmented lands, thick and glistening like veins of pale marrow.

From above, the cluster of fragmented lands resembled the segmented remains of a colossal body.

It was as if parts of a towering body had been cleaved apart into long cylinders, round platforms, and jagged wedges, each a piece of something once whole.

An ancient, mysterious aura surged through the fragmented lands, filling Pang Jian with a feeling of boundless power.

Although Aberrant Spirits have no flesh and blood, they do have souls. Their true bodies are also usually colossal, Pang Jian recalled.

Realization flickered in Pang Jian's eyes as he gazed down at the fragmented lands, then back at the Rock Devourer leading the way.

This cluster of fragmented lands was the Rock Devourer's true body!

The real Rock Devourer was not the humanoid figure ahead, but the creature composed of the fragmented lands below. Its full size eclipsed even the Abyss itself!

Those bridge-like structures connecting each fragmented land were likely its internal marrow, an outward manifestation of its power, much like the spirit veins that ran through the continents of the Abyss.

Like the Star Devourer, the Rock Devourer's true body was as vast as the stars—an entity that was a world unto itself!

"A human!"

Outer Gods on the barren fragmented lands below stared up at Pang Jian with visible surprise. A True God of the human race was a rare sight. Thankfully, none of the Outer Gods made any move to attack or hunt Pang Jian.

Pang Jian quietly extended his divine sense, subtly probing the auras of the Outer Gods to gauge their levels.

Suddenly, a tidal wave of divine sense rippled across the space above the fragmented lands!

A burst of iridescent radiance bloomed beneath Pang Jian like a dazzling underwater dreamscape.

The Outer Gods scattered across the fragmented lands were all drawn to the radiance. A strange light gleamed deep within their captivated eyes.

Their divine consciousness, perception, aura, and will poured uncontrollably into the radiance.

Dozens of radiant streams from different Outer Gods, each unique in hue, stretched out like flowing ribbons, trying to merge into the radiance.

The Outer Gods paled, their eyes filling with alarm and fear.

In the distance, the envoy of the Nether Abyss, lingering outside the bounds of the fragmented lands, trembled as the blue flames in his eye sockets flared violently. "Ripples from the Soulstream of the Nether Abyss!"

According to legend, the Soulstream of the Nether Abyss was both the birthplace of the Nether Race and the final resting place of their souls.

Terrifyingly, whenever its tides surged, it would draw in the divine consciousness of any nearby divine being, forcibly merging them into its depths.

Even the Nether Gods dared not approach the Soulstream during such times, for fear of being absorbed and lost within it.

Pang Jian's divine sense shimmered with an iridescent, dreamlike glow. Though its colors differed from the Soulstream of the Nether Abyss, the effect it produced was strikingly similar.

"Only our leader's divine soul has ever displayed such a phenomenon. He—" The envoy of the Nether Abyss was visibly shaken, horror creeping into his voice.

Far ahead, the Rock Devourer came to a halt. His rocky eyes swiveled and spun as he observed the strange surge that Pang Jian's divine sense had stirred into motion.

As the situation teetered on the edge of chaos, the Rock Devourer raised a hand and pressed it gently downward.

A wave of gray light surged from the fragmented lands and shattered the iridescent radiance. It also severed the streams of light trying to pour into the radiance, jolting Pang Jian awake.

Pang Jian's body and spirit trembled as he quickly retracted his divine sense.

Thousands of delicate strands of prismatic light rushed back to his Immortal Divine Soul like birds returning to a cage.

At that moment, Pang Jian gained clarity into the events that had unfolded.

Nether Abyss Spirit Bees had the ability to devour the divine consciousness of Outer Gods. It was this characteristic in Pang Jian's divine sense that had caused the upheaval.

When Pang Jian was refining his divine sense, golden bees had extracted divine consciousness from the puppet vessels of the Outer Gods to produce golden honey. This allowed Pang Jian to condense a vast number of golden divine sense, which he eventually used to forge his unique golden divine soul.

His unique divine soul had been the foundation for his Immortal Divine Soul when he merged with a cluster of Fortune.

A casual release of his divine sense on this cluster of fragmented lands had stirred unease among the Outer Gods, indicating that something about this place made his divine sense far more potent than normal.

Pang Jian turned to see the Rock Devourer looking directly at him.

"I slightly amplified your power just now," the Rock Devourer said, descending toward a heart-shaped fragmented land and gesturing for Pang Jian to follow.

This "heart" of the fragmented lands was where the Rock Devourer's heart would have been if he had flesh and blood.

Not a single Outer God took residence on it.

This was also the fragmented land from which the humanoid figure of the Rock Devourer first emerged.

Pang Jian landed on the fragmented land, the smooth surface beneath his feet feeling like polished jade.

This heart-shaped fragmented land was slightly smaller than the Resolute Expanse. The only living beings on it were Pang Jian and the Rock Devourer. There were not even insects, grass, flowers, or trees.

The Rock Devourer plopped down onto the flat expanse of the jade-like fragmented land and asked without preamble, "Who is Pang Qi to you?"

A buzz rang in Pang Jian's mind. He had long understood that his father, Pang Qi, the previous World God of the Abyss, had likely held many identities and names across both the Abyss and the wider starry skies beyond.

However, the only name Pang Jian knew was Pang Qi.

That the Rock Devourer knew this name left Pang Jian stunned. This was clearly not a normal Aberrant Spirit.

"You look like him, and even stirred an impressive tide of divine sense, so I figured you had to be his child," the Rock Devourer said, face shifting with startling complexity.

The slabs of stone that formed his features softened into a jade-like texture, subtly shifting in response to the ebb and flow of his emotions.

An abrupt anger darkened his features.

"But the divine sense you unleashed resembles the Soulstream of the Nether Abyss. That's not something Pang Qi could have given you!" he snarled, voice seething with suppressed fury.

A terrifying rumble echoed from deep within the heart-shaped fragmented land.

"Pang Qi killed your mother! The only reason I left the Nether Abyss—the only reason I survived the hunts of the Outer Gods and rose to become a Rank Twelve Aberrant Spirit—was because of her!

"Everything I am now, everything I've achieved, I owe to your mother!

"Pang Qi deserves to die a thousand deaths! The human race of the Abyss deserves to die!"

The fragmented lands making up the Rock Devourer's colossal body groaned as the marrow-like bridges connecting them writhed.

The glow radiating from the fragmented lands flared to a hundred times their former brilliance, so intense that it cleansed the bizarre mist in the surrounding area.

This unexpected upheaval startled the Outer Gods residing on the fragmented lands. They rose into the air, peering at the heart-shaped fragmented land, desperate to see what had transpired.

Unfortunately, their sight was blocked. A muddled brilliance cloaked the heart-shaped fragmented land, obscuring everything within. Even the envoy of the Nether Abyss, still hovering in the distance, was shaken.

"He promised me he would let Pang Jian live!" the envoy despaired.

Despite his panic, the Nether God dared not rush in and question the Rock Devourer while it was enraged.

He was a newly ascended Nether God, and he still did not fully understand the relationship between the Rock Devourer and the Nether Abyss. All he knew was that the Rock Devourer was a being even their leader treated with the utmost caution.

The Rock Devourer had killed the Nether God that the Bronze-Masked God sent. Even then, their leader held back his displeasure.

Had any other divine being killed a Nether God so close to the Nether Abyss, their leader would never have allowed them to live.

The envoy dared not approach this powerful Rock Devourer when he was in the throes of rage.

One Nether God was already dead. Another would not make a difference. Their leader had not raised a storm over the first; there was no reason for him to react differently over a second.

The envoy considered his survival to be far more important than his mission.

***

The Rock Devourer's fury atop the heart-shaped fragmented land sent shockwaves rippling across the other fragmented lands.

A storm of emotions surged violently within Pang Jian's heart, as if to match the trembling earth beneath him.

Even in his earliest memories, his father only ever said that his mother had passed away due to illness. He never spoke much about her past, and Pang Jian always assumed his mother was an ordinary woman from a small town in Northern Qi—someone his father had met and fallen in love with during his secluded years.

It was not until Pang Jian started cultivating that he started questioning his father's background, especially due to the strange phenomena surrounding the bronze pendant.

Even then, he never once thought to question his mother's origins.

Now, this Rank Twelve Aberrant Spirit claimed his mother had helped it escape the Nether Abyss.

This Aberrant Spirit had only survived to this day and rose to Rank Twelve because of Pang Jian's mother.

The revelation struck Pang Jian like a blow to the head, leaving him dazed and struggling to process the information.

"A long, long time ago, your father and mother met within the bizarre mist," the Rock Devourer said, gradually regaining his composure. "Your father had a World Tree with him, while your mother had me. This was during a gathering of the World Gods, and I was one of those present."

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