Chapter 1415: Love and a Shattered Heart

Chapter 1416: Love and Hearts Shattered

"Enough," Teacher Ye said slowly. "Whether it has power or not doesn't matter, as long as it represents judgment, that's enough..."

Han Meng was silent for a moment before finally handing his pistol to Teacher Ye.

"Thank you."

Teacher Ye walked past Han Meng, slowly making his way out of the laboratory.

Just then, he seemed to remember something: "And thank you for your judgment."

"I only did what was right," Han Meng replied calmly.

Teacher Ye looked at him for a long time, then gave a desolate smile. "If only you had been born three hundred years earlier... how wonderful that would have been."

Teacher Ye said no more. He slowly pushed open the laboratory door and ascended the steps. The surface ground was now covered by the frost of the Forbidden Sea. His blood-stained shirt fluttered in the biting wind, his silhouette desolate yet resolute.

A storm of thoughts swirled in his eyes; his life had entered its final countdown.

"Children...""Teacher, I'm here."

Boom—!!

A deafening roar echoed from the ruins. A giant praying mantis shot out of the dust, moving so fast it left afterimages. With a flash of cold light, a member of the Pu family was instantly cut in half at the waist!

Gushing blood sprayed into the air like brilliant fireworks. Pu Xiachan, watching nearby, had bloodshot eyes. "Damn it!!!" "Why... why can't we catch it, no matter what we do?!"

After instantly killing one person, the giant mantis once again turned into lightning, blending into the dust and vanishing from everyone's sight.

The scattered and desperate Pu family members nervously converged towards the center, their eyes fixed in different directions, trying to catch a glimpse of the mantis calamity before they, too, were cut in half.

Pu Xiachan softly murmured, hurricanes swirling around them, flames erupting from nothingness. Elements obeyed her command, agile and powerful... Yet, even so, she could not directly confront a berserk Seventh-Tier Fuser.

And within a kilometer of their location, three more calamities from the Forbidden Sea were rampaging, slaughtering everything around them.

The current situation was far more dire than simply being attacked from both sides. The South Sea Domain had completely become a home for calamities. Their concern was no longer how to defend the area, but how to break out and survive...

"It's coming!!!"

Someone yelled, and everyone immediately turned to look, but before they could even discern the mantis's movements, the person who had cried out was instantly sliced in two. Their bloody upper body flew through the air, splattering everyone with crimson.

Just as Pu Xiachan was about to react, the mantis's cold blade arced, slashing towards her!

An invisible storm swept across the entire area. The next second, the mantis's body froze in place, as if it had lost consciousness.

Pu Xiachan's pupils were fixed on the mantis's blade, so close to her. Her back soaked with cold sweat, she slowly turned to look... She saw a figure, covered in blood, holding a gun, staggering towards them.

"Ye Mu!!" Seeing the person, Pu Xiachan's heart sank.

One high-ranking Fuser was already so difficult to deal with; now that Ye Mu himself had arrived, they were most likely doomed.

Teacher Ye didn't spare Pu Xiachan and the others a second glance. His gaze, from beginning to end, was fixed on the immobilized mantis... His eyes expressed anguish, self-reproach, and bitterness.

Almost every member of the Faction of Fusion had undergone the fusion surgery performed by his own hands. Or rather... it was Calamity of Thought that had created the Faction of Fusion through his hands.

From the moment they completed the fusion surgery, they became intimately linked with their respective world-ending calamities. This was a suppressive force originating from the very core of their bloodlines; the world-ending calamities could even, with a mere thought, cause their fused calamities to lose control, making their lives worse than death.

And "Cutting the Calamity" was the act of severing the calamity's consciousness, yet while gaining power, it also deepened the connection between the calamity itself and the physical body, making the person more akin to a calamity. This also meant that the higher the degree of "Cutting the Calamity," the deeper they were controlled by the corresponding world-ending calamity.

This was the power Teacher Ye had personally given them, and also the curse Teacher Ye had personally bestowed upon them.

"Mibo...""I'm sorry."

A storm of thoughts swirled in Teacher Ye's hand, temporarily blocking the world-ending calamity's control over Mibo. The gigantic mantis began to visibly shrink, gradually returning to human form...

Mibo had "Cut the Calamity" too deeply and was too profoundly influenced by the world-ending calamity. Even after Teacher Ye restored him to human form, he remained in an uncontrollable berserk state, his eyes crimson as he charged at Teacher Ye.

Looking at that familiar face, Teacher Ye's memories surged... He clearly remembered how he had brought Mibo back from the Ash Realm, how he had enabled him to complete the fusion, how he had praised his extraordinary talent, and how he had personally taught him to control his power... Those memories, once cherished by Teacher Ye, now felt like sharp swords piercing him, leaving his heart bleeding.

Tears streamed down Teacher Ye's cheeks as he slowly raised the gun in his hand.

"Teacher... Ye..." A final glimmer of clarity appeared on Mibo's contorted face. He painfully called out to Teacher Ye, and in Teacher Ye's eyes, he seemed to have transformed back into the child who had eagerly raised his hand in class.

"Class dismissed... Mibo."

Bang—!!

A bullet pierced Mibo's skull. He fell heavily forward at Teacher Ye's feet, his breath completely gone.

A wisp of smoke drifted from the gun's muzzle. Teacher Ye's hand, holding the gun, trembled slightly...

Everything, absolutely everything, had started because of him. Now, he had to personally judge the sins he had created. Even if the process felt like being torn into a thousand pieces, a pain that cut to the very core... this was the punishment he deserved.

Tears spread across the frozen ground. Teacher Ye, in his blood-stained shirt, raised a hand and gently closed Mibo's unseeing eyes, then spoke softly, "Mibo... soon, we will come to join you."

He stood up, staggering, and continued walking towards the next direction.

Pu Xiachan and the others stared blankly at the scene. It wasn't until Teacher Ye had walked far away that they snapped out of their daze... They didn't understand what had happened, nor why the Faction of Fusion, after backstabbing the South Sea, had then plunged into internal strife... But that blood-stained and desolate shirt had been deeply etched into their hearts.

Mibo was just the beginning.

The skeletal direwolf now rampaging through the ruins, the algae dragon freely traversing the waters of the Forbidden Sea, the purple fox rapidly moving among piles of corpses...

And as the high-tier Fusers were personally killed by Teacher Ye, the real torment now awaited the children who had only just begun "Cutting the Calamity" or had not yet started.

"Teacher Ye... I didn't mean to kill anyone, I really... I don't know what happened..."

"Teacher Ye... are we inherently evil?"

Linglong, briefly regaining consciousness, knelt before Teacher Ye. Beside her lay mountains of civilian corpses. Her face was filled with guilt and self-reproach... She covered her eyes with her hands, sobbing uncontrollably.

Teacher Ye's body trembled slightly. He closed his eyes in pain...

"Calamity of Thought...""You will pay the price..."

On this day, tears and gunshots echoed in a continuous symphony. Love and hearts were shattered.