The spirit snapped and split, emitting countless dazzling rays of light that immediately filled Zonggu's field of vision.
And at this moment, he saw more than just light.
...
The underworld of another world, the distant past.
In the deep and dark Huangquan Hall, a ball of flesh and blood wrapped in divine power separated from the body of the Mother Goddess.
While condensing into a god, it also formed its own consciousness. Later, he got his own name: Zhilei.
There were seven other brothers born in the same form.
And at the beginning of their birth, they already understood the meaning of their existence: to become the "material" to repair the boundary between the other world and the human world when necessary.
What a disgusting and hopeless future this is!
While hating this future, the eight brothers who were born at the same time also hated each other.
The sadness and despair originating from the Mother Goddess affected them, making the eight brothers just want to cling to the body of the Mother Goddess, and thus they sank.
Until a call came from the darkness.
"Izanami, my wife!"
It is the Father God Izanagi.
The Mother Goddess was ecstatic, but she was afraid to face him with her body rotting and maggots crawling around her body, so she left the Father God waiting outside.
She wanted to cover up her ugly appearance as much as possible and return to the world with her father, but she just ignored time.
The Father God couldn't bear to wait, so he walked into the Underworld Hall with a lit comb tooth as a torch and saw the Mother Goddess's true appearance at this moment.
The frightened Father God dropped his comb teeth and ran away immediately.
The Mother Goddess showed her ugly face and was filled with shame and hatred. She immediately ordered the eight brothers to lead the Underworld Army and together with the Underworld Daughters, leave the Father God in the Underworld in the other world.
Just before leaving the Huangquan Hall, Zhilei turned around and saw the Mother Goddess picking up the still burning comb teeth and pressing it on her chest to extinguish it.
The Eight Thunder Gods each led the Underworld Army to hunt down the Father God. They did not cooperate with each other and even restrained each other. Without exception, they all ended in failure.
However, the eight brothers who hated each other were surprisingly unanimous in their choices for the future: none of them wanted to stay in hell.
When the Mother Goddess chased them in person and made a decisive oath to the Father God across the Thousand Leading Stones, most of the eight brothers had fled the other world and came to the human world.
Zhilei moved the fastest and escaped further, heading straight for the final destination of all gods - the Kingdom of God, Gao Tianyuan.
It was a place completely different from the underworld of the other world.
Floating in the clouds, it is boundless, full of vitality, bright and beautiful. Eight million gods live here, and prosperity is everywhere.
Some people disliked the childish thunder from Huangquan and covered their faces and noses when they saw him. There were also more people who welcomed him and took him to appreciate the dazzling beauty of Takamagahara.
After only staying for a while, Zhilei had the idea of staying here forever.
And all of this was forced to come to an end when Father God Izanagi led all the gods who roamed the world to ascend to the Kingdom of God.
The world has taken shape, and Gao Tianyuan is about to be closed, forever separated from the human world and the other world. As one of the gods, Xiao Lei was ruthlessly expelled by the Father God.
In fact, he was thrown directly back into the lonely and empty underworld.
The huge gap from heaven to earth made Zhilei almost collapse, and the mother goddess who had been staying in the underworld changed back to her original appearance for some reason.
The anger she felt when she said goodbye to her father had disappeared, and she welcomed her child with a smile.
And such a smile also appeared when Tsuki no Takako came to Huangquan. But it was accompanied by the Sky Congyun Sword that pierced his chest without hesitation.
The perfect divine body, which was beyond the reach of "inferior gods" like the Eight Thunder Gods, was destroyed by a single sword. The Takako of the Moon died on sight, and the remaining gods were thrown into the underworld by the Mother Goddess.
Deep in darkness.
Then, the Mother Goddess' smile did not change and she turned her attention to Zhilei again.
Zhilei had already suffered the blow of falling from Gao Tianyuan, and he was so frightened that he went straight to collapse.
And even when he fell into madness, he was still trying to escape from hell.
The Mother Goddess moved faster and raised the sword in her hand. But her target was not him, but the boundary between the other world and the human world.
Infused with divine power, the Mother Goddess slashed her with a sword and escaped from the underworld in the most decisive way. It was more like venting her anger at her father God Izanagi and Takamagahara for abandoning her.
Zhilei, who also came to the world through that rift, had his last remaining sanity cut off, and has been wandering in a state of confusion and madness ever since.
During his wandering that lasted for thousands of years, he had sensed traces of one or two of the remaining seven brothers several times. However, the short-term sensing only caused the two parties to quickly move away from each other, and no one wanted to see the other.
And the person I least want to see is the mother goddess Izanami.
The fear that penetrates into the bone marrow makes the already crazy child unconsciously stay away from the Kinki land while wandering, but the most obvious thing about the chaos is that it is out of control.
A few months ago, the confused Korai broke into a long forest. A few months later, when he walked out of Mount Hiei east of Kyoto, Izanami was standing outside.
"Ah, isn't this my child? What a chance encounter... We probably haven't seen each other for thousands of years."
It was still early spring, but Izanami had already put on summer plastic slippers, and her clothes were very cool, as if she had just returned from the humid and hot southern country.
"Is it just Zhilei? Where are your elder brother and younger brother? My mother also wants to see them now."
Seeing that familiar smile, the crazy Zilei's instinctive reaction was to run away, and he did so.
Izanami followed leisurely, never moving too far away.
He went down the mountain into the water, and she followed him all the way, and finally caught him on the shore of Lake Biwa.
"I'm a little tired of the cat-and-mouse game..."
She casually threw him into the lake dozens of meters away, then stepped on the water and walked up to him as if walking on flat ground.
"Let's leave it at that."
Boom——
Thunder and lightning flashed, and lightning surged among the dark clouds.
Izanami raised her head to look at the gloomier sky in the night, and after a moment lowered her head to look at Korai.
"Oops, I left my umbrella on Mount Hiei. I don't want to get caught in the rain, so I don't have time to take you to meet that child."
She thought for a moment, took off her left slipper, tied it with a piece of hair randomly twisted from her shoulder, wrapped the other end around his neck a few times, and then tied it into a knot.
She threw it away casually, and the plastic slippers were fixed on the water. No matter how much he struggled, they did not move. Instead, the hair became tighter around his neck and sunk deeper.
"This is a little punishment from your mother."
The barefooted Izanami approached again, "Maybe it's a bit heavy... but the final result depends on your luck and the child's understanding."
After saying that, she stretched out her finger and touched the center of Zhilei's forehead.
"..."
When his fingertips fell, Zong Gu, who was immersed in Zilei's memory, also woke up.
A large amount of information poured into his mind, and he seemed to have spent a thousand years in Zhilei's memory.
But the light emitted by the broken god in his hand has not yet dissipated, and the expressions and postures of the three people outside the boundary have not changed. It seems that it only happened for a moment.
Soya looked at Tsukuyomi, and his mind was full of the scene when he died.
The latter obviously didn't know what he had changed in just a few seconds. Seeing that he had successfully found the god, he broke it into two pieces and showed a slightly relieved expression on his face.
"Next..."
Zong Gu was about to ask him how to absorb Zilei's divine power when the spirit in his hand suddenly stopped emitting light.
Then, a speck of light emerged from it, and before he could react, it quickly penetrated into his body.
The moment he came into contact with the light spot, Zong Gu found that he suddenly had a brand new feeling, and it rapidly expanded to the entire world almost without limit.
In seven remote and different places, he felt some familiar and strange atmospheres. At the same time, their respective appearances also emerged in his mind one by one.
"Fire thunder, black thunder, thunder, thunder..."
He had just "seen" them all, except for Zhilei, the other seven of the Eight Thunder Gods.
And this feeling is fleeting, lasting less than half a second. By the time Souya, who was confused, realized the meaning, everything had dissipated to nothing.
"The traces of the Eight Thunder Gods..."
He was very upset.
It's just that there was no warning in advance. Anyone suddenly faced with this situation would be stunned. Now it's too late to regret.
Click.
Something is broken.
Zong Gu lowered his head and found that there were a lot of cracks on the half-shaped ice sculpture-like gods held in his two hands.
The next moment, the ice sculpture shattered into powder and slipped from his fingers. Before it even hit the ground, it completely dissipated in the air.
Immediately afterwards, Zonggu found that the scenes he had just glimpsed from Zhilei's memory were also quickly disappearing.
In the blink of an eye, there was only one sentence left in his mind.
A sentence I had never heard before.
The three people from Jingzi and Zi who were standing outside the boundary saw the dazed Soya suddenly kneel down, then immediately picked up the arrow next to him and started scratching on the ground in front of him.
"...Sotani-san?"
Zhilei was already gone. Kyoko tore up the talisman on the ground and took the initiative to cancel the boundary.
When she, Tsukuyomi, and Asagiri Suzu walked up to Soya, he was half-kneeling on the ground, his hand holding the arrow trembling, but his face was full of confusion.
On the ground in front of him, there was a line of words that seemed to be unfinished.
[Destiny is established, the sword cannot be moved. You will not die if you are struck by the sword...]
Looking down at this line of words, Zonggu's mind went blank.