Chapter 1119: Cost and Responsibility

The spread wings of the Shadow Dragon blocked out the light in the entire subspace. It was a darkness beyond the laws of physics, even the blood-red light in the realm of the Chaos Gods was swallowed up.

Every beat of its wings created ripples in time and space, and the memories of billions of civilizations devoured by the swarm flowed between its scales, emitting an eerie whisper.

Yang Cheng could feel the pressure coming towards him - it was not just a simple impact of force, but the embodiment of the will of the entire biological community.

As the dragon charged, the very fabric of the Warp warped and distorted, and countless secondary dimensions shattered like fragile glass.

He clenched the lightning spear in his hand, and the flickering light on the tip of the spear illuminated the chaotic void within a radius of several light years.

"Here it comes!" Neos' voice exploded on the spiritual level.

The Emperor's spirit suddenly materialized, and the sword made of pure psychic energy burst into a light comparable to that of a supernova.

All the epic scenes of human beings fighting against darkness in history emerge on the sword, from the first time primitive people used fire to drive away beasts, to the Space Marines holding the last line of defense in the ruins of the hive city.

The shadow dragon opened its mouth huge enough to swallow a star system, but inside it were not teeth, but countless rotating micro black holes, each of which contained the desperate wail of the swallowed planet.

When it pounced in front of him, Neos's action of raising his sword to block it seemed simple, but in fact it contained the exquisiteness of transcending dimensions.

“Zheng!”

The moment the blade touched the shadow, the entire subspace's time stream was torn apart.

Yang Cheng saw countless parallel time and space flashing before his eyes: in one timeline, Neos's sword slashed out half a second earlier, splitting the dragon in two; in another timeline, the sword was half a beat slower, and the two were swallowed by the shadow; there were countless possibilities that were annihilated in the collision.

Reality is constantly being rewritten and reorganized, like a historical book that is being torn and glued together crazily.

"Crack!"

Hundreds of life threads connecting the psychics broke at the same time, and Neos' spirit body flickered violently.

Yang Cheng saw the emperor's illusory face rapidly switching between young and old, which meant the backlash of the Golden Throne was intensifying.

"It's now!"

Yang Cheng did not hesitate. The gold in his hand pierced out with the collective memory of the entire human race against darkness.

On the tip of the spear is condensed: the temperature of the fingertips of the first primitive man to depict light in cave paintings.

The guardian of the Library of Alexandria held up the scriptures in the sea of ​​fire.

The Martian Mechanicum's dedication to preserving knowledge during the Dark Age of Technology.

Even the courage of the most ordinary imperial soldiers when pulling the trigger in front of a sea of ​​insects.

This blow transcends the laws of physics.

Wherever the spear passed, the shadows retreated like wax encountering flames, revealing the ugly body of the hive mind, an abominable aggregate woven from trillions of devoured consciousnesses, every neuron screaming the dying words of different civilizations.

Sticky black pus spurted out from the punctured wound, and each drop contained the memory of the last moments of a planet.

“Ahhhh!!!”

The scream of the Shadow Dragon triggered a chain reaction in the material universe: psykers on thousands of planets bled from all seven orifices at the same time; the Geller force field of the battleship overloaded and exploded; even the Ethers of the Tau Empire suddenly fainted collectively.

In the subspace, the soul tsunami caused by this scream directly broke through the formation of the demon army.

The four gods who were watching the battle from afar had to deploy their own domain barriers.

Waterfalls of blood rise from Khorne's Brass Fortress, Nurgle's Plague Gardens are enveloped in a fungal shroud, Tzeentch's Labyrinth of Fate begins to fold in on itself, and Slaanesh's Palaces of Pleasure are shrouded in a pink mist.

But these barriers are not so much a protection as they are an opportunity for the Four Gods to expand their territory. Just a moment ago, Yang Cheng saw that Khorne's Bloodthirster Legion had launched a tentative attack on Slaanesh's territory under the cover of the barriers.

Neos did not waste the opportunity created by Yang Cheng.

The Emperor's figure suddenly split into countless golden points of light, each of which represented a decisive moment in human history.

When these light spots condensed into sword light again, the sword blade had become an existence that penetrated all time dimensions.

In the past, it slashed at the newly born hive consciousness.

In the present, it tears out the heart of the shadow dragon.

In the future, it wiped out all possible resurrected Zerg variants.

This attack that transcended time and space forced the Hive Mind to disperse its forces for defense.

The shadow dragon's figure suddenly dimmed, and the memories of civilization flowing between its scales began to become disordered, and some even devoured each other.

One of the dragon's front claws suddenly collapsed into countless flying insect-shaped shadows, which was a sign that it was completely destroyed in a certain timeline.

However, the Hive Mind's counterattack came faster.

The collapsed front claws suddenly reorganized into billions of microscopic flying insects, each carrying a concept of the ultimate weapon for the devoured civilization.

Yang Cheng saw that there were gravitational weapons that could compress stars into bullets, heat death missiles that reversed the law of entropy increase, and even singularity generators that imitated the Big Bang.

These conceptual weapons fired simultaneously, creating a devastating vacuum singularity in the warp.

"It looks like this guy has swallowed up a lot of civilization." Yang Cheng's golden pupils stared directly at the hive mind in front of him and laughed.

"Whatever he ate, it's time for it to end here now."

"Be careful!" Neos' warning came through the psychic link.

Yang Cheng held the spear horizontally, and all the ancient runes on the spear shaft lit up.

Each rune is the soul of a hero who would rather die than surrender. At this moment, they build the last line of defense at the cost of their own annihilation.

The shock wave of the explosion caused Yang Cheng's body to shake for the first time. He felt that his physical form was disintegrating, but was forcibly reorganized by some deeper force.

"It's okay! I can handle it!"

Thanks to the enormous power of faith and loyalty, Yang Cheng has the trump card to fight against the will of the hive.

Neos's situation was even worse. The Emperor's spirit was torn apart and reassembled tens of thousands of times in the center of the explosion, and each rebirth caused more psychic threads to break.

Yang Cheng saw that Neos's face was aging rapidly. It was the Golden Throne that was imposing its constraints again.

“It’s time to end it.”

Neos' voice suddenly became extremely clear. His eyes turned completely golden, and a huge force flowed through his body.

All those broken psychic threads suddenly lit up, each one connected to a psychic whose life was burning in the material universe.

Yang Cheng understood Neos' plan instantly.

He took a deep breath, raised the spear above his head, and the tip of the spear began to absorb all the light and heat around it.

The two men, one in front and one behind, like dragon slayers in ancient legends, launched the final charge towards the shadow dragon.

"Roar!"

Just when the golden light of the two was about to engulf the shadow dragon, the entire subspace suddenly shook violently.

Yang Cheng felt a piercing chill running down his spine - it was not fear, but some kind of special warning.

"Something's wrong!" he tried to warn, but his words were torn apart by the sudden psychic storm.

The broken body of the Shadow Dragon suddenly collapsed into a singularity, and what erupted afterwards was not destruction, but some more terrifying "rebirth".

Countless tentacles glowing with a faint green light stretched out from the void, each of which was entangled with the tombstone of the civilization that was devoured by the swarm of insects.

The dragon's body began to reorganize, and the memory of civilization on its scales suddenly came alive, turning into millions of screaming faces.

"roar----!!!"

The reshaped shadow dragon was several times larger than before. Its spine was made of the remains of the swallowed planet, and its wing membrane was covered with the wriggling patterns of the Hive Fleet.

The most horrifying thing is its evolved eyes. It is not just a pair, but a collection of billions of compound eyes. Each eyeball reflects the last moment of different planets being swallowed.

Neos' pupils suddenly contracted.

The emperor instinctively blocked with his sword, but Yang Cheng saw that his old friend was half a beat slower - that was not due to negligence, but some deep weakness.

When the shadow dragon's front claws slapped down, the light of the Emperor's Sword dimmed noticeably.

"boom!"

The shock wave generated by the collision swept across the entire subspace. Neos' spirit flew backwards like a meteor, smashing more than a dozen secondary dimensions along the way.

Yang Cheng saw the psychic threads connecting the Emperor breaking into pieces, and each break was accompanied by the explosion of the head of a psychic in the material universe.

"Neos!" Yang Cheng used psychic lightning to force back the shadow dragon and moved to the side of the Emperor in an instant.

The Emperor's spirit was flickering violently between reality and illusion.

The energy chains that represented the Golden Throne's constraints reappeared and cut deeply into Neos' spirit.

What was even more terrifying was that Yang Cheng saw four different colors of pollution entangled in Neos's psychic essence.

The Four Gods are too powerful. The original Four Gods were enough for Neos to handle, let alone the Four Gods this time are even more powerful.

Neos raised his upper body with difficulty, golden psychic blood flowing from the corners of his mouth.

His face quickly switched between youth and old age, and each switch made the traces of pollution more obvious.

"Go away, Neos."

"I can handle everything here."

"No, I want this to end here."

Neos' voice was terribly hoarse. "Every day... every second... is preventing them from breaking through the webway..."

The shadow dragon did not give the two a chance to breathe. It opened its newly born giant mouth and spewed out a torrent of painful memories of the swallowed civilization.

The defense line that Yang Cheng hastily built was broken through in an instant, and the runes that embodied human courage were also shattered in an instant.

"System, come and find a solution."

"Ding, host, you need to grow. This is a good opportunity for growth. The system will not help you. I hope you can solve it yourself."

"Restoring the glory of humanity requires price and responsibility. I hope the host can bear it."

"Damn it..." Yang Cheng cursed inwardly, but the insect nest's attack came again.

"Be careful!" Neos pushed Yang Cheng away, but was hit head-on by the torrent.

The emperor's spirit shook violently like a candle in a storm, and Yang Cheng saw that Neos' left hand instantly aged into a mummy state.

“Hold on!”

Yang Cheng thrust the lightning spear into the void, summoning a thunder barrier that spanned dimensions.

But the Shadow Dragon's attack method became more bizarre. Each of its scales began to act independently, transforming into a miniature hive fleet and launching attacks from different time dimensions.

Neos knelt on one knee, with the Emperor's Sword inserted in the void to maintain balance.

His voice came out intermittently: "My soul... has been torn apart by the Four Gods for too long... like... an overstretched net..."

Only then did Yang Cheng truly understand Neos' recent condition.

Neos is not only fighting against the Hive Mind, a large part of his power is still wrestling with the Four Gods.

The pollution entangled in the spirit body was not a new wound, but the traces left by the tug-of-war that lasted for ten thousand years. Each pollution was deliberately activated by the hive mind at this moment, becoming a shackle that dragged down the Emperor.

"Why didn't you say it earlier?" Yang Cheng roared and slashed through a group of attacking scaly insects.

Neos suddenly showed a tired smile: "If I tell you... you will... let me stay on the throne..."

The shadow dragon seized this opportunity to launch a general attack. Its entire body suddenly disintegrated into billions of insect swarms, each of which aimed at a wound on Neos's spirit body.

The deadliest of all was a spike of pure despair, aimed squarely at the Emperor's heart.

At the critical moment, Yang Cheng made a crazy decision.

He abandoned all defenses and threw his lightning spear directly at Neos.

The spear disintegrated during flight, transforming into countless tiny golden lightning bolts, which accurately hit the Four Gods' Pollution that entangled the Emperor.

However, at this moment, Yang Cheng's body was swallowed by the power released by the giant dragon transformed by the will of the hive.

The moment Yang Cheng's figure was completely engulfed by the darkness of the Hive's will, Neos felt a kind of rupture that transcended time and space.

The threads of fate connecting the two people, the invisible bonds that had been quietly woven since ancient times, were all broken at this moment.

The Emperor's pupils suddenly contracted, and golden psychic blood oozed out from the corners of his eyes, condensing into crystal teardrop-shaped crystals in the void.

The emperor shed tears. In that instant, the emperor seemed to see the future of mankind.

“Yang Cheng…”

Neos' voice was very light, but it caused the entire subspace to stagnate.

His soul suddenly solidified between the superposition state of youth and old age, presenting a kind of unprecedented pure form.

The Blade of Truth wailed in his hand, and all the epic scenes of humanity that appeared on the sword suddenly turned into the same picture.

That was the scene of Yang Cheng leading his fleet to fight in another world.

The shadow dragon roared in triumph, and cruel pleasure lit up in its billions of compound eyes at the same time.

Its body began to disintegrate and reassemble, preparing to deliver the final blow to the lone "Lord of Mankind". Countless tentacles of devoured civilization emerged from the void, and billions of tentacles attempted to form a huge psychic cage to surround Neos.

"boom!"

The moment the tentacles approached the Emperor, golden psionic energy ignited them.

"It seems like it's time for one last fight..."

Just as the Emperor was about to unleash his full power, an imperceptible change flashed in the dark depths of the Hive Mind.

At first, the so-called anomaly was just a black spot.