It was only at this moment that I realized I had made a very serious mistake.

Zhuang Cheng said that his flames are his spirit. My understanding of this statement was that his spirit is just an ordinary one in standby mode. Only when he activates his superpower does his spirit serve as the fuel for the flames, or even transform directly into the flames themselves.

But what if the truth is different?

Zhuang Cheng is an ability user who can freely transform between himself and the flames. If his spirit in standby mode isn’t just an ordinary spirit, but instead possesses the attributes of blazing flames, or is even more akin to "flames disguised as spirit"…

Then what I had done would have been as foolish as reaching my hand into an active furnace!

And reality surpassed even that metaphor. In that moment, I experienced a hallucination of seeing the sun.

The instant I activated my ability against Zhuang Cheng, I felt as if I had collided head-on with a blazing sun. Destruction, death, ash, vaporization, sublimation... I vividly saw endings like these.

At the same time, many of the questions I had been unable to understand in the past were suddenly resolved in my mind. For example, why Zhuang Cheng had said he had never encountered anything unusual before.

He wasn’t lying; he probably really had never encountered anything unusual before.

The idea that supernatural attract each other is a common rule of the human world, but this old and worn-out logic cannot bind true power. In fact, it might even have the opposite effect, causing other supernatural to steer clear of it.

Supernatural acting on instinct will avoid it out of fear, while intelligent supernatural will subconsciously avoid drawing attention to it. Even purely phenomenological supernatural will pass by it due to some unknown law.

Now, I can understand why I couldn’t sense any magical fluctuations from him. It wasn’t because he had some special attribute, but because we were in different dimensions. It’s like how a two-dimensional being can’t perceive or interact with the three-dimensional world. Unless I was sensing the flames, which are fragments of his spirit, or unless he intentionally lowered his own level, I couldn’t possibly detect any magical fluctuations from him.

He is far too great an existence for me to grasp, and to him, I am far too insignificant. He probably can’t sense my magical fluctuations either, just like how he was oblivious when I attacked his soul earlier.

Wait… why haven’t I been burned to death?

I snapped back to reality. The illusion had long since ended. Zhuang Cheng was still standing in front of me, seemingly waiting for me to make a move.

“What’s wrong? Aren’t you going to attack?” he asked. “If you don’t come at me, I’ll have to come to you.”

As he said this, he took a step toward me. Instinctively, I retreated, frantically checking my own mind and abilities.

I immediately understood why I wasn’t dead yet. Before I could be incinerated by the illusionary sun, my ability had stopped itself.

The illusionary sun could have burned me to ashes in an instant, but my ability deactivated in less than an instant. It was akin to how a mantis shrimp could generate temperatures exceeding the surface of the sun in a flash, yet it causes no catastrophic damage—the contact time is simply too brief to be lethal. But that wasn’t the main issue. The real problem was why my ability had stopped on its own.

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It wasn’t because Zhuang Cheng had used some magical force to block my ability, nor because my ability had some kind of built-in safety mechanism. The only explanation was that the duration of the ability had ended.

The time my ability traps a target in a dead-end illusion depends on the target’s mental response—the intensity of the emotions they experience within the illusion. And if my ability deactivates immediately after making contact…

That could only mean one thing. It wasn’t that his magic overpowered my ability; it was that his mind had overcome it first.

“No… that’s impossible! I don’t accept this… I refuse to accept this!”

A surge of inexplicable rage overwhelmed me, and I shouted uncontrollably.

“What is it that you won’t accept?” he asked, looking genuinely puzzled.

The contact with my ability had been too brief; it seemed he wasn’t even aware that I had activated it.

I no longer paid attention to his reaction. Instead, I threw everything I had—all my strength and beyond—into manipulating every shadow I could reach in the surrounding area.

Countless shadows surged out of crevices and corners, transforming into sharp blades that shot toward Zhuang Cheng like a barrage of arrows from all directions. He controlled the surrounding sea of flames to create a massive wave, sweeping away all the incoming shadow arrows. But this was merely a feint, part of my plan. By now, I had seized control of the shadows from the lower floors as well.

The moment he focused his attention on the visible attacks, the floor beneath his feet shattered as shadows surged upward, swallowing him whole.

The shadows dispersed, and Zhuang Cheng, who had been at the center, vanished without a trace. He had simply disappeared.

It wasn’t that he dodged my attack—I had directly transported him into the shadow world.

Banishment to the shadow world had no inherent benefit for me, which was why I had never considered using this move against anyone before. Even earlier, I hadn’t immediately thought of this method.

But now, I wanted Zhuang Cheng dead.

By all logic, even he shouldn’t be able to think or survive in a world devoid of time and space, let alone return from it!

Yet what happened next shattered all my hopes.

Zhuang Cheng reappeared. With a flash of fire in the air, a humanoid figure composed entirely of flames materialized above the countless crisscrossing layers of steel and concrete.

I couldn’t comprehend how he had managed to return. Hastily, I gathered all the surrounding shadows again, forming them into a massive serpent that lunged at him. But I knew all too well that this seemingly powerful attack was little more than an empty display—utterly useless against him.

He merely raised his right hand and made a downward slicing motion in the direction of the shadow serpent.

I couldn’t comprehend what had just happened. All I saw was an unimaginably brilliant flash of fire, and the next instant, I was engulfed by an explosion. My body was swept away by the shockwave, like a fallen leaf in a raging storm, flung far into the distance.

The blast hurled me out of the abandoned building, even higher than its crumbling structure.

In my inverted field of vision, I saw an awe-inspiring cascade of flames surging upward, cleaving the entire building vertically in two!

The shadow serpent was gone, utterly annihilated. The deafening roar of the explosion reverberated endlessly.

How could anyone hope to fight against such an absurdly overwhelming opponent? If I landed and immediately fled into the shadows… I would surely be pursued…

No, even if I could escape…

I…

Scenes from my past life began to flash vividly in my mind, one after another.

My childhood fascination with the magical and the strange, my youth spent despairing on my knees in a dead-end alley, and my middle age, where I abandoned my conscience and took lives in pursuit of power…

The words of the Creator of Oddities echoed through my mind amidst these memories:

— When you truly despair and resign yourself, convinced that you are powerless to change anything…

— The seed of the heart will leave you.

The final image that lingered in my consciousness was Zhuang Cheng’s expression—completely unaware that I had ever activated my ability.

I closed my eyes, utterly hollow.

The heart seed I had nurtured all this time vanished from my body like a fleeting illusion.

The power that once coursed through me lost its anchor, spiraling out of control and running amok, tearing my body apart from the inside…