Chapter 2071: Chapter 2071: Mother

Up to a moment ago, everything had been quiet, shrouded in a silence as thick as the mist itself. The voice that had, so suddenly, come from the fog rang loud and clear, cutting through the stillness.

Zen, Duke and Edmond

all turned towards the source of the voice.

“The long-haired woman!”

Edmond's face darkened immediately.

He had encountered this mysterious woman after he had suddenly appeared here, seemingly at random.

He was wise enough to know the type of people he couldn't afford to provoke, and this woman was undoubtedly one of them.

The last time they had met, she had broken his arm, and then left without a word. They had never met again since then.

Edmond even suspected that she possessed the knowledge of how one could exit in this strange world.

But not for a moment had he thought that she would appear here once again.

Duke, too, was stunned when he heard the woman's voice.

“What the hell does she mean by 'son'?”

As his eyes examined the woman's face, realization dawned on him.

“They look exactly the same!”

The woman's hair, which was over a thousand feet long, trailed on the ground as she walked slowly in their direction. She had a mesmerizing aura, and was stunningly beautiful.

And yet, one detail about her appearance was deeply disturbing.

She looked exactly like Yan!

Her son. The brother and sister...

A possibility suddenly occurred to Duke. “Is this woman Yan and Zen's mother?”

How could she be here, of all places? How could such a coincidence be possible?

Duke felt that he was crazy enough to have agreed to the plan arranged by his clan. Now, however, he understood that plan was ridiculous, because this world was even more bizarre than he had ever expected.

Harold had nearly given up on the hope that someone would come and help Zen.

Although Zen's performance had, so far, exceeded his expectations again and again, he believed that Zen had finally met his match in Edmond, and was doomed to die.

This was a desperate situation, and the results were not difficult to predict, especially for an intelligent, experienced man like Harold.

His master had entrusted the protection of Yan and Zen to him, but he had failed to save them from this tragic situation. His heart sunk in his chest with great shame and defeat.

Although he had tried his best to restrain himself, his face could not help but show his inner turmoil.

He had been standing there for a while, wallowing in guilt and self-pity, when suddenly, he caught a glimpse of the long-haired woman through the Eye of Perception. Immediately, he emerged from his trance, trembling from shock.

“It's Master's wife! It's impossible! How could she be there?” With disbelief etched on his face, Harold became visibly excited.

Gibson and Marsh stared blankly at the woman with long hair, also in shock.

“It's her!”

“She's Mike's wife! Why is she in the debate venue?”

Gibson and Marsh were both aware of what had happened in the past, but they knew very little about this woman from the Nine Li race: that she was Mike's wife, and 𝐑ÀɴŎВΕṤ

that she could never come to the debate venue to save her son and daughter. It was inconceivable for her to appear here!

Harold was the first to figure it out.

He clapped his hands and said, “I know! It's an incarnation of fear! She must be the incarnation of someone's fear! That's the only possible explanation!”

“An incarnation of fear? That makes sense!” Gibson's eyes flashed with realization.

“But she had been absent from the divine land for countless divine eras. It's impossible for these young warriors to have ever seen her in their lifetimes. How could she have become the incarnation of their fear?” said Marsh. Although he knew that Harold's idea made sense, something still didn't add up in his mind.

Harold shook his head. “I don't know. Perhaps it was the result of some bizarre coincidence. Perhaps, she became someone's fear by chance... or in some other indirect way... Fate, this is really an arrangement of fate!” he finally exclaimed.

Indeed, incarnations of fear were not simple products of the imagination. They had wills of their own, and their embodiments could move freely.

Although her strength had been greatly weakened in this place, Harold believed that she was still strong enough to be able to easily defeat a fiend.

A profound sense of relief washed over him.

Zen, however, continued to ogle at this long-haired woman, dumbfounded.

He had seen a vague outline of a figure when he had just entered the debate venue.

And it turned out that this was the woman he had seen!

Back then, after he had killed the monster in the underground of the Tie Clan, he had obtained a piece of mud and a small eyeball.

Through that eyeball, he had seen this woman's head!

The head bore a striking resemblance to Yan.

Her face had remained imprinted in his mind since then.

'Has she become the incarnation of my fear...?

Is this the way she has appeared here in the debate venue?

And she is my mother? Unbelievable!'

The thoughts in Zen's mind were in a turmoil.

Yan strained to lift up her head, as she lay in Zen's arms, and looked at the woman.

Although she was very weak, a glimmer of pale light flashed in her eyes when she saw this woman, whose face so resembled her. “Mother... Are you really my mother?”

As the long-haired woman stared at Zen and Yan, a touch of warmth, so fleeting Zen thought he might have imagined it, seemed to flicker in her demonic red eyes.

Unbelievable as it was, the woman nodded, looking directly at Yan.

“Whoosh!”

Fast as lightning, she swooped down over Zen and Yan, and reached out her hand to touch Yan's forehead.

Zen, however, still on high alert, held Yan tightly and recoiled, all the while staring at the long-haired woman warily.

He was not as quick to trust the woman as Yan seemed to be in her weakened state.

Just because this woman looked a lot like Yan, that didn't mean she was necessarily her mother. Anything was possible in this place.

Zen had never met his mother. In his imagination, however, she was a gentle and kind woman. That was the image his mind conjured up when he thought of her from time to time.

This woman before him, to the contrary, had a strong evil aura around her, so strong it was almost palpable. She didn't look like a good person at all, and was totally different from what he imagined his mother to be.

This underground world was full of mysteries and he had seen many an incomprehensible thing already. This could be just another one of them, and that thought filled Zen's heart with fear to the brim.

How could he let this woman approach Yan without knowing who she was and what her true intentions were?

When the woman saw Zen flinch away from her like that, a hint of sadness and desperation flooded her eyes. Yet, she continued to stare at Yan. And then, she spoke at last. “Yan is not mature yet. If she activates the shadow of Snake Goddess, she will hurt herself and may even lose her mind. This is fatal! I can save her!”

Zen's heart skipped a beat. He wanted to believe the woman. He wanted to believe that there was a chance for Yan, whose life force was weakening with every passing moment.

“The shadow of Snake Goddess? You mean the purple shadow?” Zen asked, desperation in his voice. He didn't have long to make a decision.

The woman nodded. “Yes,” she whispered.

Zen knew what he had to do. If he wanted to save Yan, he had to act fast. This was his last chance, risky as it was.

The powerful fiend was still there, hiding in the mist. Did this woman plan to save Yan right here?

“But that guy is still here...” Zen said.

The woman, however, did not seem to think much of Edmond. She treated him with complete indifference, as if he were a piece of dirt on her shoe, not a mountain-sized fiend.

Upon hearing her alleged son's words, she frowned, but then smiled soon after. “You are right. Wasn't it because of this guy that Yan had to use the shadow of Snake Goddess? Then...”

“Buzz!”

Her extremely long hair suddenly lit up with a hellish red light. Then, each hair on her head suddenly turned sharp and malleable as a fencing sword. With the mass of knife-like hair circling her head like a cobra's hood, she charged towards Edmond.

“Woman, you...”

Edmond's eyes widened in fear. He desperately tried to use the spatial transference, but it was to no avail. It was already too late.

Her hair, already a thousand feet long, now started elongating infinitely, and wrapped itself around Edmond, who stood tens of thousands of feet tall.

A loud ripping noise tore through the foggy air.

Her hair, now a thousand knives, tightened around Edmond, and began cutting into his flesh.

It was not long before he was completely shredded into pieces.