"What's going on?!"
"Ah!!!"
The darkness kept spreading, moving from a small town, gradually reaching a large city.
The urbanites, naturally included those who spent all night in festivities and work.
They screamed in terror when they saw a thick foggy darkness, like inky water, invade and erase from view the street lamps, stores, and roads.
Some security guards immediately rang the alarm bells and then took to their heels.
But it was futile; except for those who had sensed something wrong early on and had driven away, others who tried to escape by car or on foot couldn't outrun the spread of darkness, erased in an instant without a trace.
Not even a sound made it out.
The endless darkness continued to spread and erode…
At Xiang Mantang's location, as his consciousness sank, the darkness continued to spread.
"Buzz!"
All of a sudden, a struggle appeared for the first time in the cold and merciless eyes of Xiang Mantang.
Soon after, his face began to be covered with Curse Marks resembling the Fire Phoenix.
Those were the bizarre Curse Marks that had devoured the Human Skin Mask when it had tried to erode him.
With the emergence of these Fire Phoenix Curse Marks spreading from his face all over his body, the struggling in Xiang Mantang's eyes grew more intense.
It seemed as though his consciousness was fighting back, on the verge of waking up.
"Hiss, hiss, hiss!!"
An even more fierce black fog emanated from Xiang Mantang, not seeming to erode the world deliberately, but rather as if it was being expelled.
The eyes of "Xiang Mantang" began to transition from struggling to shining a creepy, blood-red.
Afterward, Xiang Mantang's eyes flickered between dark and a demonic red, erratic like a faulty traffic light.
It seemed as if two wills were fighting, using Xiang Mantang's body as the battlefield.
"Get out of me!!"
Suddenly, Xiang Mantang spoke, letting out a dull and furious roar.
Instantly, a vast shadow burst out of Xiang Mantang's body, staggering a few steps before attempting to surge back towards him, but it was like a real person hitting a wall, unable to break back into his body!
"Hmph!"
Xiang Mantang snorted coldly, full of disdain.
He didn't understand why his consciousness, after being suppressed and sinking, had suddenly awakened, and his strength kept growing stronger until he was finally able to expel the shadow from his body.
But that wasn't important anymore, it was a good thing after all.
What he had to think about now was how to completely suppress and confine this shadow back to its original place, Paradise Lost.
"Hm?!"
Xiang Mantang then realized that even though he had expelled the shadow, he maintained a connection with it, as if it had truly become his own shadow.
And he couldn't sever this linkage no matter what!
It was only then that Xiang Mantang noticed the changes in the environment around him.
"This is? Did I do this?!"
Xiang Mantang's face changed in an instant as he looked upon the ruined town and the ashes that drifted within.
"Was it the demons who took control of my body and did this?"
Xiang Mantang's hands trembled as he realized the disaster he had wrought by making a deal with the devils.
And what he found even harder to accept was that the validity of Mu Jinyu's Awakening Method was still uncertain!
"Thud, thud, thud!"
Xiang Mantang lunged forward, running toward the still brightly lit city, ready to warn the people there to stay away from this dark-covered area.
However, after running for a few minutes, he suddenly realized that something was wrong.
The world, thick as ink, seemed to be the domain of the shadow following him. Wherever Xiang Mantang ran, it would follow.
"I... am completely finished..."
Xiang Mantang stood still, surrounded by endless darkness, hands outstretched, looking at the flickering red curse marks with a look of absolute despair.
After regaining his freedom of movement, he had thought of reporting the situation to alert the world that demons were going to cause chaos.
At the same time, he also considered whether to try the Awakening Method he traded from a demon on Mu Jinyu.
But now, in his current state, he simply couldn't do it.
Wherever he went, everything, whether flowers, grass, trees or stones, and dirt, would crumble and disintegrate. One could say that just being alive was a sin...
"Ah!!"
After a moment of stunned gaze,
he remembered what the omniscient old man had once said to him.
Indeed, by being so stubbornly headstrong, he had ultimately brought about a catastrophe, harming others and himself!
The great terror that would make the world fear was none other than himself!
"Hehehe... hahaha..."
Xiang Mantang laughed at himself and then, without any hesitation, clenched his hand into a claw and plunged it towards his chest, ready to dig out his heart and thus achieve the goal of suicide.
Because by now, he really didn't know if an ordinary suicide would allow his corpse to be possessed by the shadow demon again.
Only by destroying his heart, making his body's functions stop, perhaps his corpse wouldn't be taken over by demons, perhaps this would resolve the disaster!
However...
"Dong!"
When Xiang Mantang's claw touched his chest, it made a dull sound as if a flesh palm was striking a steel plate.
"Huh? It's not working?!"
Xiang Mantang was shocked.
With the strength of a Divine Realm Warrior, that claw should have been able to burst a tank, yet it couldn't even pierce through his own body?
Had he become a zombie? A Drought Demon?!
His face changed expressions rapidly, and then he tried again, attempting to smash his own head.
If this were before, a swipe of his powerful hand would have caused his head to explode like a watermelon.
But now, it only resulted in a muffled sound.
No injuries at all.
"I can't even commit suicide now! What am I, a human or a ghost?!"
Xiang Mantang murmured with a blank look in his eyes.
Afterward, Xiang Mantang continued to make various attempts, to mutilate himself or to suppress the shadow behind him.
But none of them worked.
"This shadow doesn't seem to speak, probably isn't the demon from Paradise Lost, that might be the only good news so far."
After all his research, Xiang Mantang finally let out a melancholy sigh.
Then, Xiang Mantang looked at the Dark Realm, estimated to be ten thousand miles in radius and still slowly spreading. He thought that simply letting it spread slowly was out of the question.
So, with a flicker in his eyes, he finally mustered the courage to try to pull the shadow back onto himself.
He found that if he was willing, the shadow could merge into his body.
And he could also use the power of the shadow to shrink the Dark Realm, which had spread a distance of ten thousand miles, back in.
After discovering this change, Xiang Mantang was ecstatic and hurriedly tried to shrink the Dark Realm.
But in the end, he found that he could only compress it to an area of a thousand miles in radius before he could no longer shrink it any further.