What counts as “ridiculously strong”?

It meant Ye Weibai showed strength that stormed past the levee they’d set in their minds.

Granted. The current Demon King killed the mightiest of all Hero Kings—Augustine; the news cracked the sky like thunder. In mere days, with no herald and a few hands fanning waves, it swept across rivers and plains, across the whole World, into every ear that had crawled out of the Cycle alive.

Among them, some froze in shock like deer in snow; some burned with anger like torches; some went cold with sorrow like rain; some trembled with dread like leaves in wind.

Alongside Augustine’s death rode another tale, a worm-hidden whisper that should’ve stayed with the actors alone—it was It who lent the current Demon King Its power, and only then could Augustine fall.

No one knew who loosed that whisper, yet people took it as bedrock, as if a mountain had spoken.

It felt as though it had always been carved into stone.

Augustine’s power had gouged a canyon in their hearts—the Hero King who, one man and one sword, ripped open the X and Y world-lines, upright and unmatched like a lone peak.

Some who’d survived from far back let slip, like ash on the wind, that Augustine’s rise—his ferocity, and why he dwarfed the Demon King of his day and every Hero King before—was no accident.

An antique of a man, who escaped the Cycle by a hair and drifted on for a thousand years like bleached driftwood, said it plainly:

“Augustine is the ember the ancient Hero Kings and Demon Kings left behind, after hundreds of rounds of struggle and slaughter, once they had seen their tragic fate.”

There have been 9,679 Hero Kings to date; imagine a scroll of history unfurled beyond the horizon, long and hidden. For reasons lost in fog, people call everything before the 1,210th Hero King the ancient era.

When that old man said this, his body was failing like a crumbling wall, half buried in yellow earth in spirit, his words already slurring to mud.

He never had time to unpack it—once the ancient Hero Kings learned their destiny was a cage called the Cycle, how furious and how grief-struck were they, and what revolt did they raise?

Augustine was the 8,999th Hero King, almost eight thousand reigns away from that ancient era; they never met, not even as shadows crossing at dusk.

So why call Augustine, born thousands of turns later, the ember they left behind, a coal kept breathing under ash?

That ember means a seedling of hope—the hope those ancient Hero Kings, Demon Kings, and companions planted to fight the Cycle, to fight It—was that the root?

The old man never explained; his last breath went out like a candle, and he set off in peace, with a satisfied smile that seemed to say—

“—At last.”

In the empty sanctum where light and darkness braided like silk, the words hung.

“He finally got to say that line,” Qi said, voice cool as moonlight on water.

“A serene smile,” he added, a ripple fading on a black lake.

“Ha.” Xiuze, the Pope, bared a knife-edge grin. “Dead is dead. What’s serene about that tombstone calm?”

“No.” The chill hit first, and Qi shook his head after the feeling. “If you’d been there, you would’ve felt it—”

He lifted his face, and focus tightened like a drawn bow; a beat passed as memory rose. “He lived for thousands of years. I followed him for hundreds; he was always gentle, always smiling. Only when I saw that last smile did I learn how heavy and smothered the smiles of those hundreds and thousands of years had been.”

Qi turned to Xiuze; in the dark, his long, narrow eyes were sharp as knives. “You weren’t there on the last day, so you won’t get it. He—our teacher—Cres—found a vast release the moment he saw Augustine draw his sword and challenge It.”

Our teacher—the words slipped out and tied him to the Pope Xiuze and the old man, Cres, like a thread bridging years.

Cres had taught them both, and the two were brothers in the same hall, bound and chafing like rope and blade.

“Ah, is that so.” Xiuze, the elder of the two, spoke of the long-dead teacher with a face like a shuttered gate, unmoved. He let a cold laugh spill. “Our teacher didn’t see Augustine swatted down by It like a dog, slammed into the ground, torn and bleeding. He never stood again, and he died like a stray. That so-called ember was a dead seed from the start.”

Xiuze smiled, contempt threading every wrinkle like fine dust. “Had he seen that, our teacher wouldn’t have smiled.”

Strangely, not a drop of respect for Teacher Cres wet Xiuze’s tongue; the well was dry.

In truth, the brothers had never been at peace; they were oil and water in the same bowl.

Those grudges were stories from centuries ago; the words may fade like ink, but the hate and fury don’t wear down under Time’s grindstone.

Words curdled, and silence pooled between them like dark ink.

Qi’s figure was long, his robes still; shadow swallowed him, his outline flickering as if not of this World—here one breath, gone into the Void the next.

Xiuze settled back on the throne, the scepter in his hand pouring milky light that bathed him; his face was a statue, every wrinkle cut clear as chisel marks.

Between them fell a silver line from the heavens, braided from the moon’s argent, and it split the two cleanly.

Light and darkness stood apart, waters divided by a blade’s edge.

After a long while, Qi spoke, voice flat as winter wind. “If you have time, go back and take a look.”

He said it and didn’t wait for Xiuze to answer; he stepped back, and his body melted into the dark, vanishing in an instant like smoke.

This sanctum, bristling with wards and riddled with traps, couldn’t cage the Void Assassin.

On the throne, Xiuze held his tongue; he only tightened his grip on the scepter, and the gem set in its crown shone brighter, a glow uncannily like the moon above.

“Go back?”

In the dark hall, the lonely Pope let out a soft laugh, a lock clicking shut.

“There’s no going back, Qi.”