The moment I picked up this scroll of beast hide, I sensed something unusual. Its leather was completely different from the previous scrolls; it felt delicate and smooth, like a peerless beauty appearing amidst a crowd of ugly monsters!
This ignited a flicker of hope in my heart. This scroll was clearly precious, and the content it recorded must not be the nonsensical ramblings of the followers of the Mother of All Creation, like the previous ones.
I slowly unrolled the scroll. What met my eyes wasn't text, but a painting!
In the painting, a pair of scarlet eyes, shrouded in shadow high above, gazed greedily at the small figure desperately running below.
This painting invigorated my spirit. I thought to myself, isn't this exactly what I saw in my hallucination!
Someone had recorded this hallucination a long time ago!
For some inexplicable reason, I suddenly felt like complaining. This hallucination felt like an automated program, and the Mother of All Creation was truly lazy. After hundreds of years, she still hadn't updated it!
What era is this, still relying on traditional hallucinations!
Complaints aside, my life was not yet in my own hands. I couldn't openly curse the Mother of All Creation.
What if this wretched thing suddenly manifested and gave me a huge surprise? I wouldn't be able to handle it.
I continued to scroll down the parchment. Finally, text appeared.
"Gifted by the Mother of All Creation, born divine, eternally immortal..."
This passage was extremely mystical, seemingly mixed with many religious prayers. Moreover, the content was absurd, filled with nonsensical claims of eternal life and immortality.
Even with today's advanced technology, humanity couldn't unravel the secrets of the human body to live for five or six hundred years like figures from myths.
A primitive deity worshipped by the natives of a wild, mysterious island could not possibly possess such power.
I sighed softly, realizing that the greater the hope, the greater the disappointment. I had expected this painting to be followed by the solution to the black spider on my body, but instead, it took a 180-degree turn into religious indoctrination.
These ancient, wild characters were obscure and difficult to decipher. I skimmed through them, my eyes moving rapidly, until I finally saw something different!
Hmm?
After this section of neat and clear prayers, there was a completely different handwriting.
Messy, scrawled, as if someone had hastily recorded it on the scroll in an emergency.
"A scam, all of this is a scam... She cannot grant eternal life... We are all vessels... Now it's my turn..."
This scrawled text ended abruptly, followed only by a few streaks of shocking, brownish-red bloodstains.
Although this passage contained few words, the amount of information it conveyed was astonishingly vast!
I exhaled heavily, leaning back against the wall, my brow furrowed as I calmly contemplated.
Scam, eternal life, vessels...
These words, connected together, gave me a bad premonition.
In the depths of my consciousness, those scarlet eyes seemed to be staring intently at me from some corner.
The preceding prayers had mentioned divine gifts. If I connected this to what followed, a terrifying thought emerged in my mind.
The blessings of the Mother of All Creation were nothing more than a miniature reincarnation ritual!
I surmised that perhaps the Mother of All Creation had deceived her followers from the very beginning.
Under the pretense of bestowing blessings and eternal life upon them.
In reality, she used them as vessels, laying eggs within them, which would naturally hatch when the time was ripe.
I even had a more sinister idea: perhaps the things laid within the followers didn't have their own forms. Once they matured, they would possess the followers' bodies, thus achieving a form of immortality in an unwitting manner!
This thought sent shivers down my spine. I subconsciously touched my chest. If my guess was correct, the black spider on my chest was the mark of a blessing from the Mother of All Creation!
This would explain where the power came from that allowed me to suddenly explode with strength and kill Gu Duo Si in the death arena.
When I was in school, I had heard a saying that deeply impressed me: To take it, you must first give it!
"Young man, how's the reading going?"
Just as I was lost in my own whirlwind of thoughts, an aged voice sounded from behind me. I snapped back to attention, turned, and saw the old hermit had quietly appeared behind me at some point.
"Ah... It's okay. There are some really interesting stories here, hahahahaha, I got completely engrossed!"
Having regained my composure, I quickly used laughter to mask my recent nervousness.
Finding a solution for the black spider was a matter of life and death, my most critical vulnerability. I couldn't let anyone know!
"Oh, young man, are you interested in hearing a story from me?"