Born in Blood

Chapter 437 Horrors

Liam coughed a mouthful of blood. Warm blood dripped down his scalp all the way to his tippy toes.

He stood above mounds formed through versions of his own corpses, and the victory felt all the more greater.

He had beaten thousands of himself. Proved that he was the strongest iteration.

Proved that the previous Liam was still too hung on remnants of humanity. Outdated.

What remained of that, Liam burned it. Tore it to shreds and shed his skin.

Liam looked around.

There was silence.

He waited for the dramatic moment when something burst from the ground. Or when something shot at him from the sky.

Or a 'ding!' followed by a massive reward for the feat he just accomplished.

Nothing of the kind happened.

"I didn't just kill a thousand versions of myself for no reason, did I?" Liam asked seemingly no one, a bit of annoyance in his voice.

"Where's my reward?"

Silence met his words, but Liam wasn't worried.

After exactly a minute of absolutely nothing happening, the corpses below Liam's feet started to jitter and move.

"Well…" Liam laughed, but remained calm.

The copies of himself that Liam had killed were slowly rising on their own, as though they were puppets being raised by a string.

Liam carefully maneuvered his way over to a patch of ground where there was a relatively safe distance between him and his bodies.

Then, he waited to see how it all unfolded, the femur sword in his hand.

Though, the more they rose above, the more Liam realized that they weren't actually alive.

They were definitely dead, but even as their feet left the ground and they levitated mid-air, their heads were hung downwards.

The sky darkened.

From white, it went to a dreamy, midnight color, reflected with beautiful little stars that made Liam's cold heart skip a beat.

But the scene was straight out of a horror movie.

Thousands of corpses, wearing his face and body, no less, rising above air with no support whatsoever.

Suddenly, their heads jolted upright, and their eyes fluttered open in unison.

Stars.

Their eyelids opened, but there was no human eye, or any eye behind it.

Instead, there was a black background with thousands of little galaxies dancing within their eye sockets.

Liam felt entranced. Sucked in by the mesmerizing patterns of those cosmos.

This was otherworldly.

To him, it wasn't scary or morbid. This was the very definition of beauty. The purest form in his dead eyes.

In unison, the corpses opened their mouths, their tone matter-of-factly as they said four words:

"You have chosen war."

The voices were surreal, as though young, old, male and female had spoken at the very same time, forming a sole, contradicting cacophony.

Liam was stunned.

Even for his new 'entity' form, Liam didn't have the comprehension to understand what was happening.

"Your kind was a mistake. An uncured infection I have yet to eradicate fully. Soon, you too, will understand."

Liam's gaze snapped from one corpse to another, but they all had the same starry eyes.

They weren't separate beings. It was just one.

And Liam had a funny feeling he knew exactly what he was talking to.

"Is this…"

A dramatic pause.

"The Opposition?"

Silence.

No response, but Liam had his answer.

A slow smile crept across Liam's lips.

The Opposition was a balancing force.

Everyone knew it was the thing that allowed for 'Ora' to live on, and for a semblance of order to exist within the realm of cultivation.

Other than that, it had zero control or dominion over the affairs of heaven and earth.

It was not divine, nor was it worshiped by even the most regular of people.

Liam found it strange how the Opposition referred to itself as 'I'.

'It's not just a force. It's a living thing. What kind, though?'

"No one told me you could talk," Liam said, suppressing his surprise the best he could. "Or were you just shy until I came along? Am I that special?"

Silence.

The Opposition ignored his comment, choosing silence.

Liam lingered on its words for a second.

This wasn't something that just happened to everyone.

Perhaps it was an encounter unique to him.

Him wasting time with pointless jokes were not for anyone's benefit.

Instead, he could use that time to understand why the Opposition said what it said to him.

"My 'kind'. There's more than one, you see," Liam said with another smile, a little forced this time.

"Do you mean the octopus, the Ashura or the human?"

Silence.

The skies got just a little darker.

"You."

Liam blinked, then suppressed the urge to laugh.

Despite the vague answer, the Opposition was definitely talking about the Ashuras.

What else?

Only the Ashuras fit the bill of 'your kind was a mistake', and 'an uncured infection.'

But Liam was missing the context!

Why did the Opposition choose to say that at this exact moment?

Liam felt like the meeting was coming to an end.

He felt a pressure slowly rise within his sea of consciousness.

He had to dig deeper.

"You referred to yourself as 'I'. Why? What 'war' have I chosen?"

A terse silence.

"They have forgotten. The horrors. The uninhabitable world. You have been fighting the war all along."

Liam furrowed his brows.

He didn't understand this. He didn't understand anything. What horrors? What uninhabitable world? What war?!

"Our time here is over. I have taken your sanity. I will take much more."

Liam felt like something had burst within his very mind.

It was very painful.

Liam loved it. That was part of the problem, but there were bigger issues at hand.

The walls of Liam's mental sphere slowly tore apart from itself, as though it was shedding a layer of translucent skin.

The expelled golden barrier walls weightlessly floated into Liam's mental energy, dissolving within it.

Seconds felt like years.

Years spent in pain.

But soon, it was over.

Before Liam could assess the proper changes, he felt tired.

Drowsiness.

Eyes closed.

Darkness.