Rivers of the Night - Chapter 652

Chapter 652: Nothing

Theron’s battle was unlike anything anyone present had ever seen before. He forgot about everything, and somehow, from the very first stroke of his spear, they were already convinced…

It was impossible for him to fall here.

It wasn’t because the Tribulation wasn’t strong—it was the strongest Gold Mancy Tribulation any of them had ever laid eyes on. They were used to measuring strength by the number and thickness of the lightning bolts, only to find that Theron’s own had gained real sentience.

It wasn’t because Theron was so overwhelmingly powerful either. Every time he faced one of the lightning generals, it was like he was fighting with his life on the line; a single wrong move would gut and grate against his flesh, every slip causing a burn that singed to his bones and clipped at his life’s strings.

It wasn’t even because the Tribulation was waning. Every moment, it only seemed to grow stronger, more furious.

It was because Theron was completely and utterly mad.

From the first stroke, he challenged the Mandate itself. As though he felt the power of the Tribulation wasn’t nearly enough, his first action was to split the clouds.

The Tribulation, unsurprisingly, came back even stronger than it had initially, and yet with every enemy that formed, and every one Theron felled, his momentum only seemed to increase in kind.

There was a boiling of his blood and a thumping of his heart that was painted onto their very souls. They could practically feel Theron’s breath, the pulsing of his muscles, the raging of his strikes.

Every blow he levied carried the Laws of a world that seemed to be entirely of his own making—one encapsulated by pain, heartache, a life that none of them had lived, and yet every one of them could understand.

No, it wasn’t a matter of understanding. It was a matter of fear—the very same fear that rested in the hearts of every living being.

That fear of being inadequate. That fear of losing everything you had once known. That fear of being left with nothing to show for the life you had lived aside from vapid strength and pain.

Theron’s roars sounded like cries to their ears, but so guttural and real that they made many of them bleed—whether that be from their ears or their eyes. The crimson streaks fell like tears, and in essence, they were tears.

Not a single one of them could escape the fact of being moved by the sight before them.

Every attack Theron suffered, every strike he parried, and every assault he levied, they found themselves being placed more and more in his shoes.

The Resonance of the Heart Pavilion had spread so far beyond the normal parameters of where it should be that even after being restrained, they found themselves being pulled forward.

And then the first of them began to turn to ice, then a second wave, followed by a third.

Every time, the process was the same.

Flashing lights of demons in the night and fears in the shadows prowled within their souls. Their eyes glazed over and, for a short moment… it felt like even the skies themselves were trembling.

The Heavens seemed to be facing something they could bend and break, and yet were entirely unable to make yield.

A man broken and shattered. A man representing the dregs of everything wrong with the world—the sheer pain and horrid nature of it all.

And yet one who would rather fight to his last breath to break it all rather than fall to the same traps and menace that others before him had.

He would rather suffer pain to make others suffer. He would rather shatter his bones to feel those of his enemies crumble in his fists. He would rather rend his flesh until he was nothing more than a skeleton if it meant peeling the layers of his enemies’ skin stripped piece by piece.

That carnal fury—it was so deep and unfathomable that it didn’t seem to have limits of its own, so all-encompassing and suffocating that they didn’t understand how he was breathing at all, how he could still stand so tall and so proud, how he could possibly display such strength when there was nothing left of his heart at all.

Tendrils of darkness danced out from Theron with him as the center of it all. His Water Mana responded in kind, and it was like the world had become his own hellish scape—not one forged by fire and oozing pillars of molten earth, but instead one that was far more harrowing…

The vastness of the unknown, the chill of the ocean’s depths, a place the sun’s light couldn’t reach and fears lurked around every corner.

To burn in an endless pyre and suffer to the end of time was one matter—but to slowly sink, reaching out for breath and receiving nothing in return, searching for warmth and yet having it leeched instead, looking for a single point of light and receiving nothing but darkness…

That was its own hell.

Theron had been in such a quagmire for over a year now. He lost, and he lost, and he lost.

He gained small victories, eking out an existence day by day, stroking his ego against opponents who had never been worth much to him to begin with, only to continue to sink in this endless well of depravity.

There was nowhere to go, nothing in this world for him, and yet these Heavens seemed to insist on trying to take more—trying to suppress him even further.

Where was there to go when you had already hit rock bottom?

There was nowhere for it to push him any longer, no more suffering it could wreak, no more torture it could bring forth.

“I have nothing. I am nothing.”

Theron’s spear passed through space and time itself, stroking downward a single time and yet severing the life of every lightning general before him.

The Tribulation Clouds split into two once again.

But this time…

They didn’t return.