Eli sat cross‑legged in the void, eyes closed, feeling shifts roll through the cosmos like wind combing tall grass.

After a long breath, he lifted his head a fraction, lids still sealed like stone under moonlight, unreadable.

“They’re here,” he murmured, voice light as dust on still water.

A man in purple homespun with a beret sliced the universe’s isolating wall like a knife through a paper lantern.

“So you’ve come?” Eli smiled, rose, and stood as steady as a pine in snow.

“Oh? Then you’re this world’s guardian?” The purple‑clad man’s grin curled like smoke from a brazier. “You don’t look like much. Still, you sensed us the moment we cut in and rushed to stop us—credit where it’s due. In the last few universes, half the sky was already broken before their guardian crawled out.”

“How many did you bring?” Eli asked as if asking about the weather, the words falling like leaves.

The man in purple frowned, then snorted, a spark on dry straw. “What, you’re blind? A blind man as a guardian?”

“Hahaha—how shameless,” his companions jeered, voices like pebbles rattling in a gourd.

“Blind has its uses,” Eli shrugged, casual as a young fisherman on a riverbank.

That, like a cold breeze, raised the hackles of the purple man’s party. Veterans smelled knives under silk.

He tilted his chin, as if checking a sundial. “Mm. The main force should be close, like thunder behind the hills.”

“So, guardian, you seem to know a fair bit about us. That surprises me like frost in late spring. Care to share your source?”

“Do you think that’s possible?” Eli shook his head, calm as a pond at dawn.

“Will you submit to us, then?” the man asked, voice soft as velvet over steel.

“No.”

“Unseal your universe and let us in?” His smile was a thin crescent, a sickle moon.

“The gate is me,” Eli said, smiling like a blade under snow. “Step over my body, and see where that road ends.”

“Then there’s nothing to discuss.” The purple man sighed like a reed flute. “I thought you knew enough to be afraid. Turns out you’re just a frog in a well.”

“Then let’s fight,” Eli said with a helpless shrug, as if brushing rain from his sleeve.

The purple man drew his hands from his sleeves; beneath each forearm ran a long blade, cold as winter water.

“Come, guardian.” He blurred forward, a hawk stooping through cloud.

Eli’s ears twitched like a cat’s. He raised a hand and unmade each strike, one by one, like ripples smoothing after a tossed pebble.

The purple man slipped sideways and hacked in a cross‑cut. Eli’s foot thudded into his soft ribs first, breaking the motion like a stick in a wheel. Eli took the opening and drove a knee like a battering ram, sending him tumbling like a leaf in gale.

Hands clasped behind him, eyes still closed, Eli smiled at the five facing him, as placid as a temple bell.

“Hu—got some bite,” the purple man said, kneading his aching arm like bread dough, oddly pleased.

“Everyone, together.” His shout cracked like lightning.

His companions nodded and bared their weapons, edges flaring like cold stars aimed at Eli in the center.

Eli breathed in, head tilted, drawing the void into his lungs like mountain air.

“We’re about to take your universe in hand,” the purple man said, voice warm as honey and just as cloying. “We’ll develop it further. No need to spread ugly rumors. Since we’re many and you’re… disabled, we’ll wait for you to finish your breathing.”

“No need. I’m done,” Eli turned his head with a smile, sunrise‑easy.

“Then draw your weapon, guardian. That sword on your back—time to wake it.” Unease crawled over him like ants under bark.

He felt like a mouse on a drum, toyed with by a cat’s lazy paw.

“I said there’s no need. Not to boast, but if I still needed a sword for you lot, I’d look down on myself,” Eli said, the words soft as falling ash.

One companion spat, voice sharp as broken glass. “Blind fool. Refuse the cup and you’ll drink the penalty.”

“Enough,” the purple man cut him off and lunged first, two blades slashing like twin comets.

Eli skimmed through the void, body sliding like a fish through reeds, shedding strike after strike.

He spun twice in the air, hands still clasped behind him, and set his feet in the emptiness like reeds finding the wind.

The purple man quickened, power climbing in layered waves, one crest chasing another.

Eli stood where he was and drew breath again, as slow as tide.

“Ever seen a fly when it lands on a spider’s web?” he asked, words drifting like a feather.

The purple man’s instincts flared like a brushfire. He glimpsed a teammate thrusting a longsword toward Eli’s back. Eli slipped aside as if he had eyes there, then set a foot on the man’s back, pinning him like a moth.

Behind that teammate, the purple man caught a glint—an ultra‑fine blue filament, there and gone like lightning behind clouds, swallowed by cosmic glow.

He blinked hard, blamed his eyes, and dove back in, twin blades falling from above like a guillotine.

Eli bent with an eerie twist, the strikes cutting only night. He turned and met him with another brutal knee, an iron bell ringing in bone.

Blood sprayed from the purple man’s mouth, a crimson ribbon in star‑light. In that instant he saw them clearly—blue strands coiling around Eli like silkworm threads lit by moon.

Eli’s not‑quite smile curved like a crescent. “Oh? Someone finally noticed.”

The purple man’s eyes went wide. “Back! Leave now! This place is wrong!” he roared, voice cracking like ice.

They weren’t novices. At his shout, they scattered outward in the same breath, like quail taking wing.

Eli stood in the air as if on packed earth, steady as a mountain.

“Too late,” he said, head lifting, voice soft as snow.

Their bodies froze, snagged mid‑flight as if caught by unseen hands, stiff as flies in amber.

Eli stepped lightly on empty space, no longer hiding, walking the sky like a spider treading silk.

Horror crawled over the purple man’s skin like cold rain. Threads were everywhere, dense as winter willow down; beneath Eli spread a giant web, its strands tied to planets arranged with ruthless care, weaving a spiderweb in the dark.

From the moment they slipped into this universe, they had been fighting inside that net like insects buzzing under glass.

“I wondered,” the purple man said with a helpless laugh, dry as tinder. “A blind man outside, with no mental sense, yet dodging us. Now I see.”

They thrashed, but the threads thickened into chains, links hard as frost‑forged iron, locking them cruelly as their strength bled away like water from a cracked jar.

Feeling power drain and the chains only bite deeper, panic bloomed like mold.

Eli still didn’t open his eyes. He sensed the purple man push the intel he’d gathered about him beyond this universe, a spark shooting into dark seas.

Eli didn’t stop it. He simply watched that message fly toward the unknown like a lantern set on a river.

“Any last words?” Eli raised his palm and smiled, warm as sunlight on snow.

The purple man glanced at his teammates, a look like a knife’s flash—buy me time. He focused on sending, on carving truth into the void.

A teammate drew breath to speak. Eli’s fingers closed like a fist of iron.

All but the purple man were crushed at once, turned into puddles of violet blood that slithered through space like spilled wine.

“You’re the vanguard, aren’t you?” Eli appeared at his side with a soft step, smile gentle as rain.

“We’re scouts,” the purple man answered with a thin smile. The light in his eyes faded like a candle in wind.

Eli frowned. The man was dead.

The instant the message left, his soul vanished, snuffed like a moth in a flame.

Eli straightened and frowned, a small crease like a blade cut. Loyal, he thought—a man who killed himself without a blink.

He sighed, then snapped his fingers. Threads became pure fire, clean and white as kiln heat, burning away every foreign trace.

Then he squatted at the web’s heart, at the mouth of the new rift, and waited, still as a hunter by a frozen stream.

He knew another hard fight was coming, heavy as storm.

The purple man never had the skill to pierce a universe’s wall. So what is readying to descend?

Eli lifted his face. The vast rift stared back like a single giant eye, sweeping its cold gaze across this cosmos.

…

In the lower realm, the Demon Race shattered the allied gate like a flood smashing a dam and poured into the birthplace of the Hero.

A demon strongman swung his butcher’s blade at a wailing infant, steel falling like winter hail.

A woman, clutching a child limp with unconsciousness, begged for mercy, her voice a torn kite in hard wind.

The demon saw the Hero’s light settle onto the infant’s head, a halo like dawn on frost. He frowned, sighed, then raised his long saber high and chopped down like a headsman.

High above, Edlyn watched, silent as a cloud.

She wanted to see why her sharpest assassin failed to kill the Hero when they breached the Holy Court Church’s headquarters, a puzzle like a knot in bamboo.

So she didn’t move, hands still as ice.

She knew this was fixed history, carved like characters in stone. If she forced a change, some anomaly might bloom like rot.

She still wanted to save her mother‑in‑law. At the first glimpse of the demon assassin, she’d already lifted her hand, ready to pluck fate like a string.

But a surge of power swelled beside her, strong as a tidal bore, and froze her reaching hands in midair.

A man appeared by the woman like a shadow cast by noon sun. He lifted a palm and blasted the demon assassin back, shock rolling like thunder.

He took the child from the woman’s arms and frowned, brow furrowed like plowed earth.

Tears bright as dew, the woman looked at him. “Hero, thank you. Thank you. This child is humanity’s hope. Please… please save him.”

The man nodded without words, a mountain’s quiet assent.

She kept that grateful face, like a lantern painted on silk, and her heartbeat stilled.

Edlyn frowned, the line sharp as a hair. She felt the woman’s soul pulled into the Celestial Realm, and by its weight it was an Angel of no low rank, a star in high heaven.

The man sighed, long as wind in pines.

He understood.

So the true self was a tool from start to finish, a chess piece on jade board. Even his mother was arranged by a Celestial God?

He was the third departing avatar, Luxiao.