“You think [It] really never noticed you?”

Ye Weibai’s lips held a faint smile, a moon-thin curve over still water, as he looked down at the stunned man at his feet. “After all these years, did you really hide even your shadow?”

Augustine—the Hero King who tried to challenge [It] and met a butcher’s end—slipped on in secret like a ghost that dodged dawn, and he lived for centuries. In those long winters and longer summers, he kept masking himself in a hundred ways, afraid [It] would find him and finish the kill.

And now Ye Weibai asked if he truly thought his hiding place was fog thick enough to blind the sun.

“Why not?!” Fear flashed like startled lightning in Augustine’s eyes, and his body shook like a reed in a storm. He raised his voice to drown the tremor. “The World is vast as an ocean; [It] can’t watch every drop! Besides, my [Time Seal] and my [Erasure Field] are enough to—why are you smiling?!”

Ye Weibai’s smile held mockery and pity, a leaf’s shadow on cold stone.

“Why dodge my only question—the question that matters: do you think [It] didn’t notice you?” His smile faded like dusk, and the black-haired youth fixed him with a gaze steady as a winter star. “I’m saying—you only thought so. You lied—to yourself.”

“What do you know about me?! No—you know nothing!”

Teeth bared, he growled from the bottom of a pit, and his knees bent like loaded bows; purple fire lit in both his eyes, a twin blaze in a midnight well.

In the next heartbeat, a purple hurricane howled out from him, throwing stones, dirt, and petals into the sky like a storm of knives. In the very next, like time running upstream, all that wild wind folded, and every shard flowed back into Augustine’s body.

Purple light bound him tight, a blazing violet meteor wrapped in chains of flame. He floated up, like a star defying the river’s current, and he shot back toward Ye Weibai—relentless, bamboo splitting under a blade, a hammer falling from heaven.

The Void shuddered and everything roared, as Augustine’s vast power tightened to a single point, like a planet squeezed to a seed. Its gravity dragged the world by the roots with a crackling chorus.

Earth, Purple Blossoms, the walls of the castle behind—everything wrenched free like teeth torn from a jaw.

For a breath, it felt like the entire World rose in one tidal wave with Augustine, all of it crashing down on Ye Weibai.

This strike—pure energy and naked force—carried no special craft, yet it was born with [Spellbreak] and [Dread], a hammer that ignored any [Misfortune].

“Your nonsense—”

Before Augustine arrived, the wind hit like a black tide; purple as thick ink washed over Ye’s figure. Hair and robes streamed like banners in a gale, yet his eyes didn’t blink; his face was winter-calm.

“It’s you, isn’t it.”

He raised a fist—no wind, no glow, just bare knuckles like a stone dropped from a cliff—and brought it down.

That simple punch cracked walls like shells, parted earth like water, shredded petals and leaves like rain in a grinder, and split the dazzling purple light like a dawn-knife—then slammed into Augustine’s face, hard with killing intent, too fast for surprise.

Vmm—

A vast, invisible ripple burst between them like a bell struck underwater.

The Void groaned under the weight, visible warps rippling outward like heat over a desert, and in a blink they ground to powder everything that dared to float around them.

Amid the drifting ash, a figure arced like a dead star and spat blood skyward before crashing down.

It was Augustine.

Boom!

The force speared in through the crown and out the soles like a lightning rod, and it poured into the ground. The earth bucked, and cracks raced from him in a spiderweb, ripping the already-ruined land until they hit the purple barrier and finally slowed. Even that violet screen creaked, on the verge of collapse.

Under the purple sky, nothing lay whole anymore—the road, the flower groves, the castle—everything had been chewed and trampled again and again by a blind giant.

Augustine lay in the rubble like driftwood after a flood, life or death uncertain.

“Wh—y—”

After a long hush, he coughed up a mouthful of blood, a dark flower on stone, and forced his eyes open. He was torn to the edge of death, body locked like frozen iron, yet he stared at Ye Weibai without blinking.

“—Why?”

“What—why?” Ye Weibai looked at him, a shadow across snow.

“Why… can’t I beat you.” Augustine ground his teeth like stones. “Why… after all this effort… can’t I beat you.”

Ye Weibai didn’t answer. He knew Augustine wasn’t speaking to him at all. He was speaking to—[It].

He was questioning [It]. And he was questioning himself.

His eyes lost their focus, tremor rolling through him like winter rain. “I… crawled and hid for so many years… I killed so many… I clung to a justice I bragged about, and I betrayed the vow I made when I became the Hero King… I paid so much. Why can’t I beat you?!”

“Why?” Ye Weibai couldn’t help but answer, voice like a quiet bell. “You already knew, didn’t you? Why lie to yourself.”

“Lie… to myself?”

“You’ve known every answer, Augustine.” Ye looked at the old man fading like a spent ember in the ruins. “You foresaw this ending—why keep up the mask? I know it all. You’re dying. Can’t you let go?”

Silence fell, heavy as snow.

The old man’s pupils, pinched to needles by pain, loosened like thawing ice when he heard Ye’s words.

After a death-still pause, he finally spoke.

“No—I wasn’t lying to myself.”

He lay half-buried in broken stone, the earth like a shallow grave, and after a long moment, blood-streaked lips curled into a smile. “No… I just wanted—to live.”

As he said it, the knots in his face unspooled, like clouds opening to a piece of blue.

At the instant death truly arrived, he seemed to see through everything, like a man standing at the last ridge and looking back at the valley.

His gaze slipped past the Void, falling into a far river of memory, and a smile bloomed for no reason on his face.

Ye Weibai was taken aback, like a candle briefly stirred by wind.

It was a look and a smile steeped in remembrance.

He was dying… and strangely, he was no longer howling.

“Yes. I just wanted to live.”

He smiled like someone placing a blade at his own throat.

At that thought, Ye Weibai held his breath for a blink, a fish under ice.

“You’re right… cough… I am a coward,” Augustine said, coughing blood like rust. “I knew… [It] was watching me, saw me long ago. But I pretended I knew nothing, and I did those things anyway, killed those people… I knew… they were what [It] wanted me to do…”

To kill those Demon Kings… and the Hero King’s companions—were those all [Its] orders?

Ye Weibai’s pupils tightened like a drawn bowstring, listening as Augustine spilled everything like a split wineskin.

“[It] can drop from Z to Y, and from Y influence X… but that only works sideways. Inside the Cycle, [It] can’t reach in with a hand—so [It] used mine, to prune the unstable parts—the actors who sensed [Its] presence!—gah!” He spat another mouthful of blood and sucked air in great ragged gulps. “All this—cough, cough—all this… I knew. I knew too late. By then, my hands were already soaked.”

“Once it starts, it hooks you—the desire to [Live On] is its own opium.” Tears welled in his eyes, cloudy and heavy as old glass. “I knew I was being led by [It], but to keep living, I still swung the blade.”

“I’m a coward… cough, cough—back then with them—cough—we swore we’d break the Cycle and free the whole World—and it all turned to air.”

“Do you know?! The Demon King—he was my master! He—was many times stronger than me! He should’ve been the Hero King! But because of the label [It] slapped on us, I became Hero King, and he became Demon King!”

“What ‘strongest Hero King’? What ‘easy kill over a Demon King’? If my master hadn’t let me—if he hadn’t let me— I couldn’t even touch him!”

“I promised him! I promised—I’d break the Cycle and let them live! My master—he smiled and let me take his head! But—I couldn’t do a single thing right—I couldn’t even live right!!” Tears ran straight down, cutting clean tracks through the blood and dirt on his face.

They… they must have been Augustine’s companions, faces lit by a fire long gone.

He must have loved them fiercely. To let them live beyond the Cycle, he hid his heart and went alone to slay the Demon King—his own master.

He thought he held the plan like a map in clear weather. But when he carried home the joy of victory, he found only news that every one of his companions had “committed suicide by accident.” The Augustine of that day—the one who thought his master’s life could buy salvation—must have drowned in a sea of despair.

“I couldn’t stop.” After a long hush, Ye Weibai finally spoke, his voice like a leaf landing on water.

“Ah, I know.” Augustine suddenly laughed, tears and laughter knotted like vines. “[It] watches us. Always.”

[It] watches them—such a simple line, and it was a bottomless well.

Why could Ye Weibai stand against the mighty Hero King Augustine? Why could he use the powers of Hero Kings and Demon Kings from thousands of Cycles past? Why did he always reach, at the exact moment, for the one power that countered Augustine? Why did his strength sit just a hair higher—just high enough to kill Augustine?

Because all of it—was a play directed by [It].

Just like [It] directed the play where Augustine cut down his master.