Shimmering light flowed through the thorn thickets, and the thoughts of the Ancient God spread in the darkness. A shattered body passed through the narrow gaps between the thorns, and a faltering will crossed the abyss between madness and idiocy.

How long had she been wandering in this chaotic space? How much contamination from the Ancient God had she come into contact with? Was she still a complete individual, or merely a fragment drifting in the chaos, about to be assimilated and absorbed by it?

Agatha could no longer tell; she could not tell anything apart. She could not even discern the boundary between her body and the surrounding chaos—in her vision, her body was like a splash of ink gradually dissolving in water, the edges blurred and fluid. She seemed not to be striding forward in this darkness, but flowing forward in a viscous fluid similar in nature to her own body.

She knew that everything was reaching its limit—the primal elements. She did not know if they had created all things in the world, but it was clear that they had created her current body.

Ice melts into water, mist dissipates into the wind. A counterfeit formed from the primal elements would return to this "sea" of primal elements, and the so-called "individual will" inside this body would soon become an inconspicuous spark in this chaotic "sea," becoming "nourishment" for the faint lights that wandered through the thorn thickets.

She was just a counterfeit, just a shadow. She had the memories of twenty-four years of life, memories of her homeland, her comrades, everything she loved and hated—but perhaps only three days, or even less, of those twenty-four years truly belonged to her.

For some reason, the voice of Councilor Winston suddenly echoed in her mind, filled with sighing and regret—

"It's all meaningless…"

A living person with a real life had thus annotated his life in this endless darkness, while a counterfeit with only three days of life was crossing the darkness, attempting to confront the Ancient God.

"How foolish…"

Agatha sighed softly, her voice dissolving into the darkness, turning into faint ripples. In her mind, endless information was rising and falling, and the mysterious will composed of "0"s and "1"s was washing over her brain.

She knew that she was about to dissolve into this vast will—even if this place only stored a fleeting thought of the Ancient God at a certain moment, its vast scale was beyond the comparison of her weak mind.

But it didn't matter; she had arrived.

She had crossed the vast thicket of thorns and reached the deepest part of this darkness.

The heaven-supporting pillar-like "tentacle" stood silently before her eyes, its surface covered with mysterious dark blue lines, like a monument recording ancient truths against the dim, chaotic background.

Agatha slowly raised her head and reached out, trying to touch it.

Black fragments and dust rose and floated in her vision.

Her skin had long been cut by the thorns, and a black, mud-like substance was now pouring out of her body like mist, dissipating and dissolving into the surrounding space. The rising black fragments and dust were the things floating out of her body.

Agatha thought that she must look like a terrifying puppet covered in cracks, and that even if she were covered in bandages, she would not be able to hide this terrifying appearance.

At the same time, the Ancient God's "tentacle" did not respond to her touch.

It did not display powerful might, nor did it reveal any terrifying aspect. It did not even react to external stimuli—all she felt from her fingertips was a slightly cool and soft touch, with a hint of roughness.

Was it because this was just an illusion projected from the deep sea? Or was it because her existence was too insignificant to attract the attention of the Ancient God?

Agatha frowned, thinking about what she could do in these final moments, but after a long period of thought, she realized that there seemed to be nothing more she could do.

She had reached the end, understood the truth of this darkness, and crossed the thorn thicket that symbolized the Ancient God's thoughts. She had also witnessed a part of the YouSui Shengzhu (Abyssal Saint Master)'s true form at the end of this darkness—she had even touched the Ancient God's tentacle with her own hands.

There were no more truths to be discovered, and no more missions waiting for her to complete—this last part of the journey was less about fulfilling her duty as a gatekeeper and more about satisfying a bit of her own obsession.

Now, it was time to rest.

So Agatha took a light breath, relaxed her body, and slowly turned around, leaning against the huge tentacle as if it were a pillar.

"I probably don't have a soul to move on with…" Agatha had some strange thoughts in her mind, muttering to herself in the darkness, but soon she shook her head with a self-deprecating smile. "Definitely not. If I had a soul, crossing that door would definitely cause a lot of trouble for the 'gatekeeper' on the other side… and if I went, what about 'her'? One person can't cross that door twice…

"I wonder how things are at the cathedral… I wonder if those guys who went down the well have returned… but they don't seem to need to worry…"

She muttered to herself in the darkness, as if unable to control the dissipation of her thoughts, and unconsciously spoke out what she was thinking in her heart.

But at that moment, a strange burning sensation suddenly interrupted her monologue.

Agatha woke up abruptly from her daze.

In that instant, she felt the flames scorching her body, the terrifying heat seeming to instantly burn through her soul. She felt her mind boiling in the flames, and her thoughts, which had almost been assimilated here, also cleared up. She struggled to get up in this hallucination of being burned alive, not knowing what had happened, but the next moment, a voice drilled into her mind—

"The fire has been lit."

It was her own voice.

In the darkness, Agatha's eyes widened. She seemed to see a hallucination—she saw herself standing in front of a deep pool of churning black mud, the edges of the pool lined with disgusting cultists and demons. The mud in the pool was churning, and malice spread. She raised her hands high in front of the swamp, burning like a torch.

A touch of ghostly green suddenly appeared in her vision, as if the hallucination had pierced through the boundary between reality and illusion.

Agatha lowered her head and saw that flames were burning on the surface of her arm, which had already begun to disintegrate and dissipate. The ghostly green flames were exactly the same as what she had seen in the hallucination.

In this channel built by flames, she suddenly felt—she felt another mind, another self.

The other party also felt her.

She understood what she had to do—she still had something to do.

Agatha suddenly turned around and stared at the heaven-reaching pillar-like tentacle. The most brilliant smile since she had stepped into this darkness bloomed on her face, and bright light emerged from the depths of her eyes once again.

She took a step forward and stretched out her hands towards the tentacle. Her whole body was quickly engulfed in flames, but the pain of being burned by the flames now seemed to have turned into a great reward—Agatha opened her arms, the posture she had seen herself making in front of the deep pool in that hallucination.

Like an embrace, the gatekeeper rushed towards the tentacle.

Great power would confront another great power—those crazy cultists妄想 (wangxiang, attempt in vain) to use the gatekeeper as a sacrifice to build a bridge, but this raging fire would completely cut off everything.

Boom!

A terrifying roar came from the darkness. The flames swept across this chaotic and distorted space almost in the blink of an eye. In the overwhelming and rising spirit fire, the huge tentacle instantly turned into a burning torch, and trembled violently in the flames.

Agatha felt her flesh rapidly dissolving in the flames. Her body, which was originally composed of contaminated substances, had now also become a link to be completely purified by the flames—but she felt no fear at all. Instead, she struggled to raise her head and look back in the direction she had come from.

The "thicket of thorns" had also been ignited. In the wildly spreading spirit fire, it looked like a strange and magnificent canopy.

"Goodbye… Councilor Winston…"

Agatha murmured to herself, hugging the tentacle even more tightly in the flames, quietly waiting for the end of her fate.

However, just before her consciousness was about to dissipate, she suddenly felt something.

The flames burned through her, and also burned through the tentacle. In the bridge built by the spirit fire, she felt the response of this "Ancient God's limb" for the first time.

She looked up in astonishment, looking at the patterned surface of the tentacle, watching the flames flow inside and outside it, and feeling the information injected into her mind from the spirit fire. She saw countless eyes suddenly opening on the surface of the tentacle, and those eyes were frantically transmitting knowledge and information to her.

Finally, all the knowledge and information turned into a storm in her mind—

11101001…11100101 10001000…10010011…

A large string of "0"s and "1"s filled Agatha's last remaining thoughts.

But this time, she understood what they meant.

"Error… Copy…"

She read the information conveyed to her by this Ancient God's limb in shock, understood its intention, and finally pieced together the answer.

She stared at the tentacle that she had set on fire.

"This is also… a counterfeit?!"

The next second, the raging green fire devoured her last bit of consciousness.

(End of this chapter)