The Ascension to Godhood Begins with the Blacklight Virus

Chapter 26 First Encounter

Cheng Song leaned against the faded earthen wall, his chest heaving violently.

Cheng Song took a deep breath, suppressing the taste of blood in his throat. The wound on his left shoulder was still bleeding; it was caused by a bone fragment imbued with a faint willpower. The wound wasn't deep, but the remaining contamination, like tiny worms, was trying to burrow deeper into his body. The genetic anchor was suppressing the contamination, but the stinging pain from this process slowed his movements by a beat.

In the passive field of vision of the special extraction lens, sparse dark red specks of light float in the surrounding air—traces of willpower being extracted, contaminated, and dissipated.

Cheng Song's gaze passed over the low earthen wall and landed on the area enclosed by a simple fence. It was quieter there, eerily quiet. There was none of the usual commotion, crying, and cursing of a refugee camp, only a thick, suffocating stillness. The smells in the air were also more complex—the strong scent of herbs couldn't mask the stench of decay as life slowly evaporated.

Meditation Camp.

He had heard of this name before. Those whose willpower was eroded to a certain extent after drinking the talisman water, and whose bodies began to collapse, were sent here. It was euphemistically called "reflecting on one's faults and awaiting the summons of Heaven."

In reality, it was a transit point to the Shrine of the Flame, the final prison before the living were turned into firewood.

"This godforsaken place should be a safe haven for a while," Cheng Song said, wiping his face. His fingertips were stained with a mixture of sweat and dust, along with blood.

He climbed the earthen wall and rolled over into the area shrouded in the aura of death.

The moment Cheng Song stepped into the meditation camp, his breath hitched.

It wasn't because of the stench—on the contrary, it was much cleaner than the refugee camps outside, and had even been painstakingly cleaned. Nor was it because of the noise—there was almost no noise here.

Beneath rows of simple thatched huts lay, sat, or huddled individuals—or rather, people who had once been human. Most were so emaciated that only skin covered their bones, their eye sockets sunken, their gazes blankly fixed on the thatched roofs, or simply closed. Their skin was an unhealthy, ashen gray, covered with dark and bluish-black lines, like cracks in a dried-up riverbed.

Some people were still breathing, their chests rising and falling slightly. Others were already motionless, but their bodies were not yet completely cold.

No one spoke, no one groaned, and even the most painful sobs were rare. There were only suppressed, intermittent breaths and the rustling of the wind through the thatched hut.

Cheng Song shuffled his feet as if walking through a graveyard. His stomach churned, not from fear, but from a rage beyond measure. This was not a natural disaster, but a man-made catastrophe, a slaughter disguised as religion.

He followed the deliberately cleared path to the deepest part of the camp. There stood a relatively intact hut, at least with rammed earth walls and a relatively thick thatch roof.

The door to the hut was open.

Cheng Song walked to the door and stopped.

Inside the house, a gaunt, almost unrecognizable figure sat with his back to the door on a low straw mat. He wore a faded, patched dark Taoist robe, and his hair was casually tied back with a wooden hairpin, revealing his bony neck.

A child lay before him.

The child looked slightly better than the firewood outside, about seven or eight years old, equally thin, but his eyes were still open, clear and bright, though lacking any sparkle. The gaunt Taoist priest held a broken ceramic bowl in his hands, and was feeding the child water little by little with a small wooden spoon. His movements were slow and steady; he would patiently wait for the child to open his mouth before slowly pouring the water, his other hand gently supporting the back of the child's neck.

The scene had an eerie tenderness about it.

The thatched hut was very simple, containing nothing but a straw mat and a crooked wooden table. On the table sat a small oil lamp, its tiny flame burning quietly, casting a huge, swaying shadow on the earthen wall as it illuminated the Taoist priest's hunched back.

The pursuers' footsteps stopped outside the fence. They didn't come in, but silently stood guard outside, like a pack of hunting dogs waiting for a signal.

The person inside the thatched hut seemed completely unaware of the strange occurrence outside, nor did he turn to look at Cheng Song at the doorway. He simply focused on feeding the child the last bit of water, then gently wiped the corner of the child's mouth with the back of his hand.

After doing all this, he slowly put down the pottery bowl and turned around.

Cheng Song saw his face.

It was a face thoroughly dried by time and something far deeper. The skin clung to the bones, wrinkles deep and etched, yet strangely, it didn't appear fierce; instead, it possessed a calm born of excessive weariness. Most striking were his eyes. Deep-set, their gaze cloudy, as if covered by an indelible layer of dust, yet deep within that dust, a faint, flickering ember seemed to burn. Weariness, endless weariness, almost overflowed from those eyes, but beneath that weariness lay something Cheng Song couldn't comprehend—not madness, but something more silent and utterly utterly mad.

The Taoist priest Zhang Jiao raised his eyelids and looked at Cheng Song.

His gaze was indifferent, without scrutiny, hostility, or even curiosity, as if he were looking at a stone or a blade of grass at the doorway.

Then he spoke, his voice hoarse and dry, as if he hadn't spoken in a long time, or as if he had been exposed to smoke for a long time.

"What are you carrying on your back," he said slowly.

Cheng Song's heart suddenly clenched violently without warning.

It wasn't the panic of having his secret exposed, but a more fundamental shudder of being "seen." Since he came into this world, no one had ever been able to reveal his deepest secret so directly and so calmly.

He steadied himself, suppressing the tremor in his eyes, his gaze sweeping over the silent firewood outside before settling back on Zhang Jiao's face. The tragedy he had witnessed, the rage of being hunted, and now the tender scene of him feeding Zhang Jiao water had given his voice a sharpness he himself was unaware of:

"Those people outside," Cheng Song raised his hand, pointing to the desolate camp outside the thatched hut, "were all your doing? Controlled them with talismanic water, then sent them to that godforsaken place to be burned like firewood?"

Zhang Jiao's face remained expressionless. He even glanced outside in the direction Cheng Song pointed, then looked away and returned his gaze to Cheng Song's face. His gaze remained calm, a calmness that sent chills down one's spine.

"The world is cannibalistic," he said slowly, each word like grains of sand squeezed from the depths of his lungs. "As far back as I can remember, it has been cannibalistic. Starving to death, freezing to death, dying under the swords of soldiers, dying under the whips of cruel officials, dying in ditches, rotting by the roadside."

He paused, and in his cloudy eyes, the ember seemed to flicker faintly.

"My talisman," he continued, his voice devoid of emotion, simply stating a fact, "at least brings this eating habit to an end. A quicker death, less suffering."

Cheng Song's breathing became heavy. He took a step forward, his foot landing on the rough ground of the thatched hut: "And what about their willpower? Was it drained by you to refine into more talismanic water?"

"It's medicine," Zhang Jiao corrected, his tone as calm as if he were talking about the weather. "Their willpower, their lives, can be refined into medicine. To save more people who aren't quite dead yet, to give those who can still breathe a little longer."

He tilted his head slightly, and for the first time, a faint, almost bewildered expression appeared on his gaunt face, as if Cheng Song had asked an extremely foolish question.

"That's fair."

"Fairness?!" Cheng Song's voice suddenly rose, sounding particularly jarring in the deathly silent thatched hut. The repression, anger, confusion, and suffocating feeling brought on by the heavy burden of the past few days erupted at this moment.

"Treating people like firewood or medicine, you call that fair?" He pointed outside, his fingers trembling slightly with emotion. "Look at them! They're not medicine! They're human beings! They have names, families, and the right to want to live, to eat their fill, and to see the sun rise tomorrow!"

He took a step closer, almost bumping into the crooked wooden table, causing the oil lamp flame to flicker violently.

"You keep talking about saving people, but what kind of medicine are you concocting? Your medicine is just to squeeze the last bit of value out of people before killing them! Using their lives to exchange for the lives of those you call 'still breathing'? What about them? Aren't their lives lives too?!"

Cheng Song's chest heaved violently, his eyes behind his black-rimmed glasses red with rage. He stared at the gaunt Taoist priest before him, this monster whom countless people hailed as a great and virtuous teacher, whom the refugees saw as their last hope, yet who turned people into fuel on the ground.

"You can't save anyone," Cheng Song said, his voice hoarse with intense emotion, "You're just using a form of self-hypnosis to slaughter them!"

Zhang Jiao listened in silence.

The dim light of the oil lamp cast flickering shadows on his deeply lined face. His cloudy eyes were fixed on Cheng Song, on the undisguised anger and pain on the young man's face, and on that almost naive insistence on humanity.

His gaze was deep, as if he were looking through Cheng Song at something else, or at his past self.

After a long while, he moved his chapped lips very slightly.

"people……"

He repeated the word, his voice so low it was almost inaudible, carrying a distant, dreamlike quality.

"yes."

He raised his withered, claw-like hand, pointed outside, then slowly withdrew it and pressed it against his emaciated chest.

"But in this world, those who are alive, who can still breathe, who can still walk, are human." His voice regained that chilling calm. "Those who are about to die, lying there... are just the catalyst."

"Like crops in the fields, firewood in the mountains, and fish in the river. Use them when you can. Once they're used up, they're gone. That's how the world works, and that's how nature works too."

When he said this, there was no cruelty on his face, only a resigned and utterly empty look. It was as if he wasn't talking about hundreds or thousands of living lives, but rather stating the most ordinary natural principle: "Grass will wither, water will flow."

But the instant those words fell, just as Cheng Song was chilled to the bone by this extreme indifference and twisted logic, and almost rushed forward to grab his collar—

Cheng Song's left eye, the one with the special extraction lens embedded in it, suddenly felt a sharp, intense pain without warning.

It wasn't something that was actively activated, but rather something that was passively and forcibly pried open by an extremely strong presence that couldn't be perceived by normal vision.

hum-

The world suddenly changed color in the vision of his left eye.

The dim thatched hut, the flickering oil lamp, the withered Zhang Jiao... all the material scenes instantly faded and faded away, replaced by a surging, indescribable energy landscape.

The first thing you "see" is Zhang Jiao.

To be precise, it was inside Zhang Jiao's body, that thing that was about to completely devour him from the inside out.

Inside his chest cavity, where withered flesh and bones intertwined, floated the phantom of a book.

Half of the book was a brilliant, warm gold, seemingly containing endless compassion and hope. Its light flowed like the sun formed from the purest willpower, radiating a vast and awe-inspiring thought that inspired worship and redemption of all beings.

The other half, however, was a viscous, twisted, constantly writhing and churning pitch black, exuding endless malice and hunger. That blackness was so profound, so evil, that merely "seeing" it chilled one's soul, as if countless eyes were open in that darkness, or as if billions of souls were wailing, cursing, and sinking into that viscous substance.

Gold and black are not clearly distinct, but rather intertwined, devouring each other, and clashing wildly. The golden part is burning, bursting forth with light and heat that purifies and soothes all living beings; the black part is also burning, spewing out poisonous flames and shadows that pollute and distort everything.

Two flames waged an endless and brutal war within Zhang Jiao's withered body, on that illusory book.

Zhang Jiao himself—that withered, seemingly fragile body—was both the battlefield and the only fuel for this war.

Cheng Song "saw" that every bit of life force, every wisp of energy, and even something more essential deep within Zhang Jiao's soul was being frantically drawn out and thrown into that eternal burning by those two opposing flames. His emaciation, his exhaustion, and the dying embers in his eyes all stemmed from this.

He carried on his back a burning, self-confrontational hell that was slowly burning him to ashes.

At the same time, deep within Cheng Song's body, the Black Light Virus, which had fallen into a state of dormancy due to digestion, suddenly emitted an extremely faint throbbing.

It was as if a slumbering beast, in the boundless darkness, sensed another similar yet different imprisoned beast, struggling and roaring in the same way.

The resonance was so fleeting that Cheng Song almost thought it was an illusion.

But Zhang Jiao's reaction proved that it was not an illusion.

The moment Cheng Song's lens passively caught a glimpse of the burning book, Zhang Jiao's withered body shuddered violently.

His cloudy eyes, which seemed indifferent to everything, suddenly narrowed. He abruptly raised his withered hand and clutched it tightly to his chest, his knuckles turning white from the force, and the bluish-black veins bulging menacingly on the back of his hand.

For the first time, the unchanging calm and emptiness on his face was broken.

It was replaced by an extreme sense of astonishment, a sudden and almost horrifying scrutiny.

His gaze, like two rusty yet still sharp awls, was fixed on Cheng Song, as if trying to pierce through his flesh and bones and see directly into the depths of his soul, to see the source that triggered the resonance.

"you……"

Zhang Jiao's hoarse voice was slightly distorted by some intensely churning emotions, carrying a barely perceptible tremor.

"What...what is that?"

This time, his eyes held shock, confusion, a hint of instinctive vigilance, and even a... extremely complex desire for exploration that he himself was unaware of.