Silent Crown

The situation was deteriorating.

Ye Qingxuan had barely been toying with Paganini’s Changing Music Theory, but now he had become like a little black snake in an electric cage.

There was no way out. Within the rapidly changing Ultimate, he had fallen into the trap that Paganini had arranged for him.

But Ye Qingxuan welcomed the black tide that swept out before him. The tiny electric light did not hesitate at all but sped up its retreat. It broke out of Paganini’s cage like cavalry breaking through an infantry formation.

That was the stupidest choice.

If you gambled with your own speed by hastily entering the enemy’s positions, the only outcome would be getting mired down.

No amount of caution would be too much, especially since the snare he was in trapped his whole body, and moreover, his enemy was Paganini. Even the Iron Thorn Knights of Burgundy would not dare to face the Blood Wall Phalanx of the Asgardian Ironfrost Clan. The safest method was to occupy a spot within the core of the Ultimate, resolutely defend your own positions like you were building a fort, tempt your opponents into a war of attrition, and use music theory to shore up your own weaknesses.

Reckless sorties would only exhaust your energy and worsen the situation.

Ye Qingxuan’s response made Paganini, who had prepared for this game, quite disappointed. It was true that being able to gather his power was a breakthrough, but did he really think that he’d be able to break out of a trap set by a dark minister?

The quality of his aether was formidable, it was true. But how could he compare to a fallen saint who had spent hundreds of years immersed in the domain of a Scepter?

The illusory face in the wispy fog revealed a trace of disappointment and ridicule. His empty hands called forth music theory and began to build layers upon layers of movements, covering the cage that was lit by electric light.

Let me teach you how musicians fight…

But suddenly, the indistinct face stiffened. At the moment of collision, Ye Qingxuan, who was in the electric light, raised his hands. The light began to shake as violently as a dragon, letting the music theory sealed in the Symphony of Predestination trickle out.

It came out as a handful of dust.

It was like branches that had been burnt to charcoal and then crumbled into an extremely fine ash. But once the fine ashes were shaken out of the electric light, they cast themselves towards the endless sea of blackness. In an instant, they had expanded to millions of times their original size. Each microscopic grain of ash transformed into a star, and together they filled the surging sky in the core of the Ultimate.

Those ashen stars seemed to be alive. They were like starving worms after a long hibernation that as soon as the rain touches them, begin to devour everything, extract nutrients, and transform. Even the Changing Music Theory was transformed by them. In a flash, it had been torn into a million pieces, and then was quickly superseded.

The Changing Music Theory had actually been distorted by the ashes, and then devoured by them, turning into nutrients for them. Even though it was only a short time, that single moment was enough to bring about a frightful transformation.

Countless rootlike lines burst forth from the ashen stars and intertwined with one another until they formed something like the roots of a daffodil. An incalculable amount of malevolent vitality emerged from them, and they turned into pink flower buds.

They bloomed incredibly fast. It was an ocean of flowers without end, with music theory intertwining, beautiful enough to be frightening. And what flowed out of it was the pure essence of the Abyss!

Rotten black branches!

His broken lamentations at being locked up were only just beginning.

The situation had reversed in but an instant, but there was nothing unusual about this for Ye Qingxuan.

In a flash, the rotten black branches smashed through Paganini’s music theory. He was left unguarded, revealing his weakness. But the electric light that Ye Qingxuan had turned into did not take the opportunity to attack. He was not in the mood for fighting at all. Instead, he took advantage of the gap and plunged into the turbulent flow in the core of the Ultimate without hesitation in order to escape.

As the electric light rushed out of the stone plate and Ye Qingxuan’s consciousness returned to his body, he felt an earth-shattering roar ring out from within the Ultimate.

The earth shook like it was no more than a feather. The roaring sounds of countless buildings collapsing mingled together. Cracks appeared one by one in the buildings that had become fortifications for the Sacred City.

The stars twinkled out as if most of them had been wiped away in an instant, and a massive torrent of aether burst out from the depths towards the sky. Heaven and earth changed color.

Everyone was stunned. They looked at him, not sure whether or not he was responsible for this trick.

At first, no one had believed that Ye Qingxuan had the ability to do such a thing. They thought that although the Grand Inquisitor liked to stir things up, he was nowhere near as terrible as the legends said. He wasn’t a catastrophe in human form. How could it be possible that he would bring destruction wherever he went?

Now that they had seen this with their own eyes, everyone was chilled and had no more doubts about the rumors.

It seemed that they were true!

This guy went to the Anglo Kingdom, and the Anglo Kingdom was thrown into turmoil. He went to Auschwitz, and Auschwitz was now a large crater. Then he had gone to the Sacred City, and the Sacred City still hadn’t recovered. Now he had come to the Ultimate. How could they still be confident in its stability?

“What did you do?” Mabel looked at him in shock.

“Nothing, I just put the rotten black branches in the Ultimate…”

The sound of blowing cold air rang out again.

Everyone’s face went white as a ghost.

Was it freaking happening again?

Wasn’t he going to go investigate the situation? How would they get out of this one?

Ye Qingxuan jumped up. There was no time for an explanation, he waved his hand hurriedly and said, “Go, go! You can’t stay here. It’s a trap! A giant trap!”

Of course, it was a trap!

Almost half the Masters in the world had fallen into Paganini’s snare. If they let him get away with this, he would be fulfilling Hyakume’s goal of making the Abyss appear within the Physical World. This was something that Ye Qingxuan could not allow, and so he would not leave.

It was too evil.

Just thinking about Paganini’s plan and what would happen next was enough to make Ye Qingxuan decide to get out of that mess as quickly as possible. Anyone who didn’t had a deathwish.

The rotten branches that he had just set forth were enough to disrupt and delay Paganini within the ultimate. He figured that cleaning up the mess he had just made would delay him a little bit.

But time was passing, and he couldn’t leave even if he wanted to. Before Paganini had been corrupted, he had once pulled nearly half the musicians in the Sacred City into the Abyss right under the Pope’s nose. Now he was up to his old tricks again but on a scale hundreds of times larger than before.

If he guessed correctly, the Ultimate was different this time, and Paganini was definitely behind it. No, he would not have been able to set such a huge trap by himself. It seemed like after Hyakume’s death all of the remnants of the Abyss’s forces had fallen into his hands.

Hordes of demons, the next catastrophe, dark ministers, abyss sages…even several avatars that Hyakume had left behind before it fell. At this moment Hyakume was gone, and the spirit tablet was suspended in the air. If Paganini could take the next step and completely restructure the Abyss, then he would be able to replace that b*stard Ludovic and become the Former Dark Pope.