Chapter 1905: Chapter 1901: The Creator’s Puppet
Ye Fan left from a land of gentleness, and this was the first warmth he’d finally been able to taste after being busy for so many days. He was still immersed in it.
He even felt a bit reluctant when he left, because he desperately needed the warmth Qin Mengyao and Yang Xiaoting gave him. He liked this warmth a lot, and hoped to have more time with the two little girls to nurture their feelings.
When Ye Fan returned to the Arctic, Master Mingye had been waiting for a long time. When she saw Ye Fan she was still a little angry, and said, "You’ve been gone so long, I want to know what you went to do. Have you not thought, if someone came here during this time, how were you planning to deal with it? Those ancient mighty ones might not be your match, but destroying Earth is an easy thing for them."
"I don’t want to talk to you about that." Ye Fan said sharply. "I’m asking you now, where are Zhao Jun and Min Shang. Don’t tell me you don’t know. If you keep playing dumb with me, don’t blame me for killing you on the spot."
"You..." Master Mingye looked very angry. She wanted to argue with Ye Fan, but at this moment Ye Fan simply wouldn’t reason with her at all.
Power gathered in Ye Fan’s hand as he barked, "So it seems you just refuse to talk, you really want to cling to me to the death, is that it?"
"If you want to kill me, you don’t need all this nonsense. Whether I live or die doesn’t seem to matter anymore. If you want to kill me, I can’t resist anyway, right?" Master Mingye shouted back. "If you don’t kill me, I’ll look down on you instead. Right now I’m set on dying; let’s see what you can do to me."
Ye Fan was in no mood to be polite with Master Mingye. At this moment his heart was filled with anger, anger caused by the disappearance of four women around him. All four were women he cared about.
Li Zhaojun, Min Shang, Tantai Wanrong, and Mo Xiaoyan—if he added Shen Yan, who had vanished earlier, that made five beloved women missing. And counting the Su Nü who had disappeared before that, he felt that many of the women by his side had been inexplicably swept away by some unknown force. This feeling of having those close to him manipulated from the shadows was something Ye Fan refused to accept.
"Go on, kill me!" Master Mingye kept provoking Ye Fan.
At this moment Ye Fan suddenly unleashed a surge of power that rushed toward Master Mingye, devouring her. Master Mingye had thought she could gain Ye Fan’s pity and avoid being killed, but she had clearly misjudged Ye Fan’s resolve. Killing her was almost effortless for him. As soon as his power shrouded her, Master Mingye didn’t even have the strength to struggle and could only watch helplessly as that power enveloped her.
"Ye Fan, you..." A trace of grief flashed in Master Mingye’s eyes. Only now did she realize the gap between herself and the other women at Ye Fan’s side. Even if she wanted to help Ye Fan from the bottom of her heart, she had always appeared before him as an enemy, and on top of that she had kidnapped the woman he loved most. There was no way she could receive Ye Fan’s pity or concern.
Ye Fan continued to attack her. Master Mingye seemed to have only one road left—death. But just then, a surge of power suddenly erupted from behind her. That power seemed intent on protecting Master Mingye. In an instant her strength seemed to rise, and she actually gained the ability to defend against Ye Fan’s attack.
"What’s going on?" Even Master Mingye herself had no idea what was happening.
Right after that, the mysterious power completely closed over her. Master Mingye felt her own strength was no longer under her control at all. That power was still shielding her, while Ye Fan was clashing directly with it. As for Ye Fan himself, he had no idea where the power came from; he couldn’t even determine its nature.
"Whooo, whooo, whooo..." The sounds around them were all muffled booms. In the end Master Mingye seemed to be sucked into a crack of dust, vanishing between time and space, and that power disappeared along with her, as if it had never existed.
The sheer strength of that power made Ye Fan feel like he was surrounded by enemies on all sides. After he withdrew his energy, he stared off into the distance, unable to sense any further clues about it.
"Who is it? Why do you keep opposing me again and again? There was already a mysterious power stirring up waves around me, and now someone else is targeting me. Even someone like Master Mingye would be rescued by this mysterious power. It absolutely can’t be the power of Pan Gu, Fu Xi, or Nuwa, because those three have no need to cross hands with a junior like me this way. Aside from them, who else could wield such terrifying power? Is this tied to those ancient forces slumbering in the universe, or is it the power of the heavenly tribulation itself?" Confusion churned in Ye Fan’s heart. He no longer understood his own situation, nor did he know how great the difficulties he faced truly were.
Pan Gu, Fu Xi, and Nuwa were already enough to give him a headache, and now there was another mysterious power on top of that, making everything even more unfathomable.
He suddenly thought of that mysterious woman of power he’d captured before. That power had been imprisoned all along in an elemental cage. Now that his elemental power had mostly recovered, he naturally needed to interrogate that mysterious power and see what he could get.
He left Earth and quickly arrived in the Left Domain star system. There he went straight to the elemental prison. When he opened it, that power was still there, still howling. Because it was a woman’s voice, the shouting sounded arrogant and rude, as if she wanted to devour Ye Fan.
"If you’ve got the guts, kill me. What’s the point of imprisoning me? You lowly human, you’ll be wiped out by us sooner or later!" That mysterious power-form was not a human at all, but a clump of something between existence and nonexistence, a fusion of Spiritual Body and elemental force.
For now Ye Fan still couldn’t communicate with the six small crystals, and the Tongling Mirror within his body was sealed. He couldn’t sense more information. At this moment, completely destroying this power wasn’t easy either; the only thing he could do was keep it locked up.
"When are you planning to wipe out this world?" Ye Fan said. "The time of the heavenly tribulation foretold in ancient days—how long until it comes?"
"You’re just a lowly human, nothing more than one of the creator’s puppets. You’re not even a puppet, you’re a puppet’s puppet. What right do you have to ask anything?" the voice snapped back.
Ye Fan frowned. "So by your logic, Pan Gu and Fu Xi and the others are just your puppets as well, and I am the continuation of the lives created by those people, so I’m a puppet among puppets. That’s what you mean, right? Is the master behind you the one who created the world?"
"You’re not qualified to ask that," the voice said. "You can’t destroy me, because safeguards were already in place before these puppets were ever created. Once the time comes, all of you will be annihilated, not one left behind."
