Chapter 300: Vol4 Ch25: Earthbound statues

Taking root in the world, Negary continued to spread.

Due to the nonexistent sword stimulating the remains of the previous timelines and kicking up an informational storm, this world’s timeline was currently in a chaotic state.

These remains of previous timelines now existed as anomalous information, which combined themselves with materials in the current world to form abnormalities.

Simply by existing, these abnormalities were constantly stirring changes in the world’s timeline, which made it so that even though Negary’s virus had now spread throughout both past and future, he still couldn’t completely infect the world.

As for Prometheus, he was nothing but a piece that Negary just happened to place down.

It no longer mattered how humanity managed to triumph and became the dominant sentient race in the original timeline; because in this timeline, the birth of humanity was now a direct result of Negary’s influence. Even without knowing it, each human had already been marked with his brand, which they would continue to pass down to future generations.

In other words, as long as the means were proper, humanity’s strength itself would become his support; and knowing this, Prometheus would properly take care of those future visitors.

Negary’s vision soon moved away from any selective group of humans. They might carry certain unique characteristics worthy of being studied, or perhaps even carrying interesting anomalies with them, but by the time he had infected half of this world, it wouldn’t be much harder for him to kill them than to squash an ant.

What Negary was now interested in was these new abnormalities. Unlike the contained anomalies he had seen up to this point, these abnormalities were created from the remains of previous timelines, they represented the concentrated essence of their respective worlds.

Understanding them didn’t necessarily mean understanding an entire world, but it would still benefit Negary greatly.

〖 The third node 〗a golden net manifested in the sky for a brief moment, a figure then appeared in this part this the timeline.

After comprehending this world’s strange temporal structure, Negary was now able to sense the passage of time, which improved his control over all things and the rules of this world by a few percentages.

〖 This should be the place 〗Negary landed on top of a grassy meadow, where the yellow grass was constantly flowing with the strong dry wind.

Also because of this world’s unique temporal structure, some abnormalities were able to exist along the timeline instead of within it. Their past and future were in complete unity, manifesting as an indestructible or unbreakable characteristic; even if one of them could be broken somehow, its past self would simply catch up to the present and regrow the broken portions eventually.

〖 The chaotic timeline 〗walking across the large meadow, Negary saw countless unusual things and creatures in this place.

Due to Negary’s influence on the past, humanity had quickly risen to become one of the most powerful races in this timeline, currently vying for the top spot of the food chain.

However, right at this moment, some bad things were quickly spreading, causing large human casualties.

This was an abnormal phenomenon. It enveloped this entire region of space and time, continuously spreading out from it. One would fall under its influence simply by being here, and since it existed throughout this entire region of the timeline, no dispelling rituals were capable of resolving the ‘effect’ of the abnormal phenomenon.

Walking past a few abnormal monsters created by the timeline alteration, Negary reached a certain human settlement.

The humans of this place were wearing beast hide clothing, all gathered at the same location. Human society as a whole had entered the age of slavery, they had formed family structures that had personal belongings as well as set up an early bartering system.

Due to the lack of food to feed everyone in a single region, humanity had spread out into smaller tribes that cooperated and coordinated against other races.

And currently, one of these early human tribes were experiencing a strange phenomenon—– becoming an Earthbound.

Every once in a while, a person would suddenly become rooted in place and take a strange posture without being able to move. In the earlier stages of this, they would still be able to talk, but after a while had gone by, they would completely fall silent, even their eyes would stay open without blinking.

In the end, they would thoroughly turn to stone, their bodies connected to the earth and become an Earthbound statue.

Any attempts to try and move these people would only cause their bodies to petrify even faster.

No herbs or witchcraft were able to dispel this petrification, even the Divine flame borrowed from the Central tribe could only dispel this petrification for a short while before they returned to the exact same spot and turned into stone again.

It was as if they were cursed by the earth, unable to do anything but stay rooted to the earth.

Negary arrived in front of one such Earthbound. He was a young man, standing bare-footed with both arms reaching forward and one foot halfway raised, almost like he was waiting for something. His pale bare feet had already shown signs of petrification, and he would become a full-fledged statue in just one or two days.

Even while Negary was standing right in front of him, the young man didn’t notice anything. Watching this Earthbound, Negary’s viruses were quickly eating into his body, causing the young man’s body to shiver.

〖 The emotion of guilt, huh? 〗

By extracting these Earthbounds’ pasts, Negary easily found a common point between all of them: they all felt guilt in one way or another.

For example, the guilt of this Earthbound right here originated during a hunt several years ago. Since the Divine flame was taken back by Prometheus, most humans lost their terrifying digestive ability; having no choice but to use regular flames to cook food, thus leading to the average human constitution being lowered to a certain degree.

During that hunt, his group ran into an abnormal monster that manifested from the timeline alteration. To save his own life, this Earthbound used his bow to shoot his comrade’s leg, using them to attract the abnormal monster’s attention.

If this Earthbound was a ruthless megalomaniac, nothing would have happened at all, but he still couldn’t help but hold a small bit of guilt in his heart.

And it was this little bit of guilt that turned him into an Earthbound, he was restrained by his own sense of guilt, slowly but surely turning into a stone statue.

Negary’s gaze peered into both the past and future, carefully observing how this Earthbound slowly turned into a statue from his lively flesh state, as well as what changes would occur to him during the long years after he fully became a statue.

〖 In reality, this Earthbound phenomenon only renders them without control for the first 10 years after its manifestation. If the petrification can be dispelled after 10 years, they will have been essentially resurrected 〗Negary commented after witnessing one of this statue’s futures.

After humanity reached the top of the food chain, this Earthbound statue was found by an empire of the future, who then studied and utilized the statue’s properties to create the Immortal Statue technique.

To continue living, the emperor who was near the end of his lifespan petrified himself together with his army, all of them waiting for the day in the future when they become unsealed once more. Several thousand years after that, when that eventually came true, great turmoil was brought onto the world.

But if Negary destroyed this statue right now, that timeline would cease to exist, and the petrified empire would never come to be.

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