“It was always going to end like this, wasn’t it?” The long-browed elder gazed into the tea’s reflection, a thin moon trembling in the cup, and smiled, winter-cold.
Then his body began to fade, like ink thinning in water. “The calamity’s here. The time to seal the gate is almost gone. I have nothing left to do. Li Tongyang, everything from here is yours.”
He slowly closed his eyes. His form unraveled like a woven robe being picked apart, turning wholly into a body of light.
A breeze slipped through like a soft brush. The light drifted apart, thread by thread, until the room held only air.
As if he had never been.
The board still sat with its pieces like scattered stars. The tea still boiled, a small mountain spring singing in the kettle.
“Master?” a young attendant called from outside, voice like a pebble on still water. No one inside could answer him.
“Master!”
This was a place no outsider could find by chance.
This was the Far East.
In a mountain valley, a middle-aged man sat at the heart of a bagua diagram. He sighed, a fallen leaf sound.
“In the end, we still can’t escape. Gongxuan. Qianyu. May you be safe.”
His words fell. He sighed again, and closed his eyes.
All around, a chill tide of power crept toward him, enough to freeze the marrow.
“I declare this: the Far East secret realm will close in three months. From then on, it will never contact the outside world. All stewards, to the main hall at once.”
Elsewhere, Li Gongxuan streaked toward Liqianyu like an arrow loosed wrong, moving with a strange, warped speed.
His father’s voice sounded beside his ear, a ghost wind.
Li Gongxuan froze. He almost faceplanted on the clouds.
He stood there, stunned, disbelief emptying his chest.
The purple-haired girl frowned. “Hey. What’s wrong with you?”
Li Gongxuan turned slowly to look at her. “The Far East is going to close. Which means if I don’t get back in three months, I’m stuck in your world forever.”
“Huh? Isn’t your Far East in the same world as ours?” she asked, puzzled, eyes bright as amethyst.
Li Gongxuan hesitated. “Soon… soon it won’t be.”
“Huh? What does that even mean? Why do you Far East people talk like riddles???”
“It’s nothing. With that brain, I couldn’t explain it to you anyway.” He squinted, a headache blooming like rain.
Right. He could find Eli.
Li Gongxuan slapped his own forehead. When they parted, didn’t Eli give him a message crystal?
Good, good.
He rummaged in his carry-space.
He pulled out a purple crystal that held a dusk glow.
“This is it.” He smiled, and poured his spirit sense inside.
“Hey? Eli? Eli Aestor? Hey?”
On the eighth call with no answer, his brow knotted like tightened rope.
The crystal held only his soul power, circling like a moth on glass.
On Eli’s side, there was no ripple.
Which meant something was wrong.
Boom.
Ahead, the energy from Liqianyu and Birand’s fight swelled into a storm front.
Li Gongxuan frowned slightly.
If his senses weren’t just being jumpy…
Then… there was a thread of Eli’s scent in that maelstrom?
What was going on?
He pocketed the crystal and told the purple-haired girl, “Stay here. I’ll come back for you. You hear me?”
“Oh. Okay.”
She nodded, bewildered but obedient. After half a year on the road with Li Gongxuan, through fierce lands and blessed grounds, she’d grown up a lot. She’d mostly kicked the chuuni out of her. Mostly.
That was that.
His aura flared, a fire catching dry pine. He stamped down. Power gathered under his feet like a rising tide.
The floor webbed with cracks, a spider’s frost.
“Rise!” Li Gongxuan shouted.
Golden light flew from his mouth like a sun-seal, swelling into a great talisman.
He plunged through the sigil and shot toward the battlefield.
“Not done yet!” Liqianyu bit down and hammered her fists into Birand, thunder on an iron cliff.
“Hahaha, too easy! Are those punches for cotton?” Birand’s long hair whipped like a banner. Blood masked his face. He laughed, wild and unashamed.
He flicked both hands. Two long whips snapped for Liqianyu’s waist, red lightning on twin tracks.
Liqianyu steeled her waist with power, clenched, and ignored the rest. Her answer was a fist straight to Birand’s face, a comet.
Whips and punch landed together.
Her protective aura burst like shattered glass. The red-glowing lashes bit left and right into her waist.
The pain hit like a guillotine. Her breath stopped on the blade.
She sprawled on the ground, gulping air like a fish on shore.
Nerves screamed up her spine, a chorus of knives: her waist would not move.
Pale, she pooled the last of her strength in her head, and sprinted at Birand, a final spark.
Birand only smiled. Red power poured over him like lacquer. He took it head-on again, a cliff in surf.
Liqianyu collapsed, dragging breath in ragged ropes.
The sawn-in-half pain kept sawing. Her mind flashed white. She had no strength left to fight.
“I… I’m so unwilling.” She ground her teeth and let out a torn sigh.
Birand chuckled and limped toward her, one leg dragging. “You’re really something. Hahaha. Not bad at all.”
“I’ve never been hurt this badly in a one-on-one. You actually impressed me. Is the Far East full of monsters like you? Hm? Borrow someone else’s power and jump to this level?”
He reached her side as the words ended.
“I’ll tell you why I didn’t dodge. Because this is Eli’s body. When I find my own, this will just be a corpse, you know? To me, it doesn’t matter. You break it, you break it.”
Liqianyu blinked, stunned, staring at Birand as if seeing him through fog.
“Last thing, foolish woman. I’m really not in the mood to lie. The ones who sealed me were indeed the Abyss.” Birand smiled, lifted his left hand, and flattened his palm into a blade.
“You made me this miserable. Go die content, really.”
Liqianyu sank into confusion, thoughts scattering like startled birds.
The Abyss? How could that be…
Clang!
Birand stared, wrong-footed, at the strange long sword that slid between his palm-blade and its prey.
“What’s this?”
His answer was a kick.
Birand’s instincts snapped shut. He crossed both arms to block.
The force still blasted him back, a cannonball in his chest.
His face darkened.
Since his revival, nothing had gone smoothly.
What was this?
How many coincidences could the world stack?
Li Gongxuan held Jade North Star and looked at Birand with curled lip. “Alright. I get it now. From what you said, you’re some monster squatting in Eli’s body, right? Good, good. You used my friend’s body to maim my sister, then tried to kill her. You’ve got guts.”
Birand studied him, then let out a thin, contemptuous laugh. “Sacred Rank? You’re only Sacred Rank? What makes you think you can fight me?”
His mouth said one thing, but his heart tightened its guard.
The girl was a fresh Sacred Rank too, yet drove him into this state.
This man looked so much like her and called her his sister.
He might have the same bizarre tricks.
Who knew?
“No. Impossible.” Chiliad stared, shaking, at his severed right hand lying not far away, pale as driftwood.
Ahead, a figure bathed in blood stood in midair with a sword, panting like a bellows.
Eli blinked, taken aback, as the scene bloomed across his vision, a ghost window on his face.
“How could I be beaten this easily!” Chiliad gritted his teeth. His octopus beard drooped like dried squid under his chin.
The blood-red figure panted hard, dragging a still spotless white blade, one step at a time toward the sprawled Chiliad.
“Last strike. Rest now, dead one.” The words came through a mouth full of blood, the body at hard limit.
But Chiliad, on the ground, couldn’t muster a flicker of resistance.
“Damn it.” His pupils widened, drowning in black.
The holy white sword slid into his body. With that blade, his life bled out by degrees.
Eli watched, a crooked smile on his lips.
“What is this? A final flare? Showing me this before I die?”
The weather was perfect; the sky outside was a single blue tile. It wouldn’t rain for days, Birand thought, looking past the window.
He sat at the head of the Alliance high council, bored as drifting ash, unmoved by the clamor below.
“Hero! Tell us—how is what the goblins did any different from courting death?” A blonde girl slammed the table. The wood shuddered. So did her chest.
Birand nearly fell from his chair. He coughed, awkward. “Ahem, Corinna. Calm down.”
“Exactly, Corinna. Mind your manners before the Hero.” The female guard at his side shot her a glare. Corinna rolled her eyes back at her and said, “Hero, you’ve watched long enough. Why not give us your advice?”
“Corinna, don’t be rude,” said the middle-aged man beside her, brow furrowed.
“Father!” Corinna stamped her foot, temper sparking.
Eli frowned.
These… felt like the memories he gained later.
Feeling Birand’s memories wash through him, Eli suddenly wanted to cry.
What is this? At the edge of death, and all I get are these scenes?
Did I, from the very start, have nothing at all?
