"Thank you... thank you, all of you."

Jiling smiled, like dawn breaking over a storm-dark sea, and stepped forward to face it.

"Then... everyone, lend me your strength."

Her hands cupped the unseen like a moon cradle, and light burst between her palms like a newborn sun.

"As you wish."

"As you wish."

...

From Ouyang, from Xi, from Wuhen, countless karmic chains rose like glowing vines, and every strand anchored at Jiling.

Far away in Eternal Slumber, Agas, Dongze, Kanofia, the Moon Goddess—others too—held back like watchfires on a distant shore.

They hadn’t reached the Third Tier, so joining would be dust in a storm; guarding Eternal Slumber mattered more.

Jue felt that familiar breath of wind and wondered, like a stone at cliff’s edge, what words to choose.

He had survived the last cosmic era; back then, Jiling had been his direct superior.

"My lord... have you returned?"

He looked toward the sky’s far rim, heart like a drum in mist, and tried to send his strength.

It didn’t pass. A gentle refusal met him, like a hand turning a blade aside.

"Jue... you don’t need to do this. These powers come from the Other Shore’s karmic debts to me."

"Win or lose, those Tiered Beings will sleep for a long span; you should guard that land with your own flame."

The soft voice washed through him like rain on old stone, and tears fell, bright as dew on grass.

He had thought everything ended back then; he hadn’t imagined she still lived, nor that his million-year vigil mattered.

"I obey your will. As long as I live, this world will endure." He pressed his right hand to his heart like a vow-blade.

Power surged like tide after tide, and karmic chains flew from the Other Shore toward where Jiling stood.

The Ancient Turtle watched like an old mountain and a final boss, calm eyes holding a starry laboratory’s silence.

It let Jiling gather light and strength, like a smith heating iron, and didn’t strike to break the forging.

It had lived too long, worn thin like a riverbed; it sought the peak, not the pallor.

It wanted the Administrator at her full sun, not a winter-weakened dawn, so it waited and waited.

No one knew how long. The chains wrapped her like ivy, and Jiling opened her eyes, clear as ice.

"Sorry to keep you. I’m still not at my peak, but I’m far better than that sickly hush."

The Ancient Turtle nodded, neither joy nor sorrow in its voice, like wind over a bare steppe. "Good."

Boom. A mountain-sized palm fell toward Jiling, and Ouyang’s heart leapt like a sparrow in lightning.

The Ancient Turtle hadn’t wasted its years; outside the Administrator, it stood like an undefeated cliff.

Solitude suits the apex; that saying fit it like frost on a blade.

This strike was at least fiercer than Luona’s vaunted sword that could cut spacetime like silk.

Faced with a palm that could erase rules like fire eating parchment, Jiling no longer sagged.

The River of Time unfurled across the sky like molten silver, and the Corridor of Fate arched like an iron bridge.

The Hall of Truth rose behind her like a temple in stars.

"Time, fate, all truth..." She sang it soft as a breeze. "Rule—Bulwark."

The Ancient Turtle’s palm hit an unseen wall, like a wave smashed flat, and shock rippled like thunder.

Even under a Supreme Will’s shroud, the Primordial Continent shook like a candle in a storm, its end near.

"Let it be. It began here; let it finish here." Ouyang planted the Sword that Threads Causality like a lightning rod.

His strength had been braided away; he stood weak as a shadow at noon, and Bai held him like a brace.

The Ancient Turtle watched its rule-killing strike meet air and stared like a fevered scientist at the blocked zone.

"Is this the Administrator’s power? Every word becomes a rule; the force roots in the stellar source."

It knew the blow didn’t hit the wall but got canceled by Rule, like ink blotted from a page.

Within the lattice of Rule, that area was a bulwark, a fort of law, so the strike stayed chained inside.

"Again."

Legendary power makes every hit a law, every word a truth; knowing it isn’t facing it.

Now face to face, it felt a wild curiosity, like a physicist finding a new constant.

Its palm looked simple as a falling leaf, yet the pressure on Jiling mounted like winter snow.

"Rule—Lockdown."

Space shattered like brittle glass, but the cracks didn’t spread; they froze inside that sealed field.

Time seemed paused there like a stopped clock, and Ouyang saw spacetime bubbles split like thin skins.

"This is the Ancient Turtle’s power?" His throat tightened like a knot, and he swallowed air.

It didn’t target the past, only the present, yet the River of Time shivered like reeds in rain.

Those bursting bubbles might be past segments erased, pieces of history washed from the river like sand.

History heavy with causal chains holds like bedrock; Ouyang’s thread is too vast to cut inside the tale.

Small worlds with few links are like remote villages; erase them, and the sea of stars barely ripples.

Some never even know those villages stood; they fade like mist off hills at sunrise.

The old Yuan World had chains woven dense as city streets; compared to small worlds, it was a megacity.

A city that big doesn’t vanish by whim; it resists like steel against flame.

Those cracking bubbles marked histories smashed; those worlds would never exist in time again, gone like ash on wind.

Jiling stopped pure defense; she saw Ouyang’s sword auto-ward like a guardian, and she loosed both hands.

A vast red cloud bloomed in the starsea like a sunset wound, and red lightning danced like serpents.

It was the former Supreme Law, and though Ouyang knew it had dispersed like smoke, Jiling coaxed a brief revival.

A colossal red thunder pillar fell like a divine spear, aiming for the Ancient Turtle.

Heaven’s punishment that could fell a First-Tiered Being struck, and the red bolts turned to chains like burning vines.

They wrapped the Ancient Turtle like a mountain in bindweed, tight and bright.

"You still aren’t at your peak..." The Ancient Turtle sighed at last, like wind through pines.

Jiling had borrowed strength, but the gap to her sunlit height remained like distance between stars.

She could resist for a while, but not for long; sand ran thin in the hourglass.

Time was almost up, the horizon paling like dawn.

Jiling stayed calm, face clear as lake water, and looked at Ouyang and the others.

"Everyone, I’m sorry. I let your hopes down." Her laugh had salt, like sea over stone.

She hadn’t regained her peak—that was one shore—but the greater cliff was the Ancient Turtle itself.

If Jiling weren’t alive, it could’ve become Administrator by sheer force, like a king claiming a throne by storm.

No rule’s blessing, no prior consent; its naked might could have made it master of this starsea.

"For beings like me, death isn’t a true ending. A fall is only a longer sleep."

"Ouyang, Aurora, Wuhen—we’ll meet again far ahead, beneath that radiant golden age."

"Azathoth... that’s what they call you, right? Then see a true Administrator’s power, even if it’s only one strike."

Jiling smiled, and her glance back was peerless, like a swan on snow. "Rule—Negation."

For an instant, the starsea seemed to burst like a seed pod; the River of Time flooded all like monsoon.

In the Corridor of Fate, one word echoed like a bell—Negation.

The Ancient Turtle stood in the river and howled like a wolf; its self was denied like ink erased.

The River denied its existence; the Corridor severed its fate like scissors through thread.

That roar traveled every corner like thunder along cliffs; all living things heard it, wild and clear.

There was no resentment in it, only calm acceptance, like dusk taking the day.

"What a pity..." The mountain-body folded like snow, and became an old man, white-haired and bent.

He leaned on a cane like a withered branch and walked the River from history’s dawn like a pilgrim.

Each step crossed an era like stepping stones; each step was an aeon like a ring in wood.

How long has he existed? The sky kept its silence like a sealed jar.

No one knew, not even Jiling, who held laws like stars in her hands.

Her Rule—Negation was strong, a blade of winter, and it hurt him deep, but only as a wound.

His existence was too ancient, spanning the river like a bridge, from the old into the now.

Her negation was built on her knowledge of him, like mapping only the coast of an ocean.

To erase him wholly, she’d need to trace the river to its spring and deny the root like pulling a taproot.

But across the long river, negation thinned like rain in distance, and faded like embers at dawn.

From first to last, Rule—Negation couldn’t reach his source, a well beyond the map.