Chapter 398 - 395: Accelerated Destruction

Chapter 398: Chapter 395: Accelerated Destruction

’I can’t stop it...’

The spinning of the vortex was unstoppable, and Mo Ling could only watch as the outside world changed at a dizzying pace.

Oceans turned to land, glaciers melted, continents drifted...

Tiny sea creatures crawled from the ocean onto land, their limbs growing longer and longer until they formed unique civilizations.

They developed, waged war, developed again... until they perished, becoming nourishment for the land.

The land, scarred by war and devastation, took countless days and nights to sprout new green shoots. In the blink of an eye, they grew into towering trees, only to be felled in an instant by a nascent race and forged into weapons.

And so, the cycle of war and extinction repeated.

Outside the vortex of time, the cycle of life seemed utterly insignificant.

Civilizations that proclaimed themselves advanced and mighty struggled, only to turn to dust.

From birth to extinction, it was all over in the blink of an eye.

The vortex spun faster and faster...

Before he knew it, the sky grew dark.

It wasn’t the arrival of night. Rather, the once-scorching yellow orb in the sky had turned a dim red, swelling to an immense size.

Though the red blotted out the entire sky, Mo Ling could sense that its life was coming to an end.

The moment he had this thought, the red giant rapidly collapsed, shrinking into a small sphere that emitted a dim, white light.

’A white dwarf.’

In the vortex’s rapid spin, even the evolution of a star was like a fleeting firework. The yellow orb, in its prime just a moment ago, was now a faint stellar corpse.

Its light grew ever fainter and its temperature ever lower as the stellar corpse rapidly cooled.

A moment later, the light went out, as if someone had casually flicked a switch. The entire world plunged into darkness and cold, a blackness so complete you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face.

At Mo Ling’s side, only the constantly spinning vortex and the closely-following petrified stones remained.

A dead silence. The destruction of the star meant the end of all life.

The traces of civilization vanished. The last vestiges of life withered away, and the land, devoid of all vitality, died completely.

’Is it over?’

Before Mo Ling could even process it, another change occurred.

The planet... shattered.

It shattered into meaningless chunks of rock, drifting aimlessly through the cold void of space.

The entire vortex was cast into the endless cosmos.

The silence of the universe was terrifying. There was no reassuring sound of flowing water, no enveloping embrace of sand and silt. Having lost all anchor, he could only drift aimlessly.

Drifting through the cosmos, Mo Ling simply gave up on thinking.

After witnessing the cycles of civilization and the destruction of a planet, nothing seemed to matter anymore.

He was turning into a stone.

Until a voice woke him:

"Are you alright? How are you feeling?"

Hearing the familiar voice, Mo Ling quickly looked over and saw that it came from a petrified stone at the edge of the vortex.

The one who was once the Kind-hearted Worm had now become a Kindness Stone.

"I feel... empty. And terrified."

Mo Ling told it his true feelings.

After witnessing the end of everything, Mo Ling only felt endless emptiness.

In their finite lives, they could have been drifting freely in the ocean, hunting delicious shrimp, floating to the surface to bask in the sun, and chasing each other playfully through undersea canyons...

But now, it seemed like none of it had any meaning.

’If destruction is the end for everything, then why bother existing at all?’

"I feel the same way," the Kindness Stone said helplessly, drifting beside Mo Ling. "Many of our companions do. Some have stopped thinking entirely, becoming nothing more than stones."

Mo Ling looked around and saw that many of the petrified stones no longer held any trace of life. They merely circled the vortex, no different from the scattered asteroids.

The Kindness Stone murmured in anguish, "I never knew... that this was the end of petrification..."

"Was choosing to slow ourselves down... really the right choice?"

He wasn’t just asking himself; he was asking Mo Ling.

The vortex drifted through the endless cosmos. In the distance, superclusters of galaxies flared into existence and faded in an instant.

Mo Ling didn’t know how to answer the Kindness Stone’s question. He only knew one thing:

’We missed so much.’

Those fleeting things should have been the meaning of their lives.

The delicious shrimp, the gentle currents, the warm sunlight...

But in speeding up, they had missed it all, and it was forever lost.

"Can we go back?" the Kindness Stone asked in anguish.

"Time... does not go backward..." Mo Ling said dazedly.

The Kindness Stone fell silent, only speaking again after it had circled the edge of the vortex a few times:

"Why can’t it be reversed? You can do it, right? You’re the most talented one among us. We’ve always followed in your footsteps, learning everything from you."

"You created the Vortex of Petrification. Our entire people’s existence depends on you."

"You are our god!"

The Kindness Stone said to Mo Ling expectantly.

This sentence suddenly stirred Mo Ling’s memories.

’God...’

He suddenly recalled the reason he was here.

’The god of the petrified stones... what is it, really?’

’Was it the omnipresent gazes at the Divine Sacrifice Site?’

’Or was it the drifting Petrifying Dust?’

Mo Ling did not know.

He looked at the Kindness Stone and asked seriously, "What do you think a god is?"

"It’s you," the Kindness Stone answered without hesitation.

"But I can’t turn back time, and I can’t grant your wishes," Mo Ling said helplessly. "The vortex will only spin faster and faster. I’ve already lost control of it."

Mo Ling understood the Kindness Stone’s expectations, but he truly couldn’t do it.

The Dust could only change the speed of time; it couldn’t reverse it.

"I am not your god."

He had arrived in the world of the petrified stones for reasons he couldn’t fathom, and had gone through everything they had. Though he felt their pain as his own, he was truly powerless to help.

What was lost was lost, and there was no getting it back.

The Kindness Stone wanted to argue, but the words caught in his throat.

The vast, empty cosmos was cold and stark, a feeling that cooled his thoughts as well.

"I shouldn’t have demanded so much of you..." the Kindness Stone suddenly apologized to Mo Ling. "You’re just like us, only... you’ve gone a bit further and faster."

He spoke with a sense of release, "I actually envy you. I remember when I first rescued you, you didn’t even know what petrification was. I even had to teach you how to hunt."

"But in the blink of an eye, you created the great vortex that allowed our entire people to achieve perfect petrification. I could only remain at the edge, marveling at your astounding achievement."

"But you... you really aren’t a god, are you..."

The Kindness Stone had completely calmed down.

He followed the eddy to the center and floated quietly beside Mo Ling.

The two stones floated there, watching the distant star cluster. It looked like the great net they had once seen on the seabed, its dancing spiral arms resembling the net’s swaying filaments. It all felt so familiar.

"If there were a real god, he definitely wouldn’t be here," the Kindness Stone suddenly said.

"Why?"

"He would have... long since transcended all this."