What is it?

It wasn’t asked by It alone.

Little Ash of Misfortune asked it, and Wei, wearing the mask of Time, asked as well. Before Ye Weibai “died,” a girl asked him too. What current, like an unseen tide, drove him to acts the world called unfathomable?

What drove Ye Weibai, in the World of Monstrosity, to rip out his own Demon Core and save Philia?

What drove him to take the Detective’s bullet, so Mu Ling would live?

What drove him to erase his own future to rescue Aerin, as if cutting off a branch to save the tree?

Was it love? Was it justice? Was it hope? Some lofty, mist-wreathed moral law written in the clouds?

No. Not those.

Something more “selfish,” more “self-assured,” more “self-centered”… took root like a stubborn sprout.

What was it?

If It had read the two Worlds Ye Weibai had walked. If It had glimpsed his past—before he “died”—It might have understood a little. Under the black-haired boy’s cloud-light smile, what lived wasn’t arcane at all. It was the simplest, most direct thing under the sun—

Interesting.

All Ye Weibai chased was what was genuinely Interesting.

If it was Interesting, and fit the compass in his heart, then no matter the crowd’s stare, he would run it down like a hunter on fresh snow.

Knowing and doing were one. That was all.

But It did not know. Even told, It would never believe. It would never believe someone would throw away life itself for Interesting.

So It could calculate forever and still come up empty.

Unable to read Ye Weibai, It felt a faint stirring toward the black-haired youth. An emotion It had never tasted. It was called… awe.

Awe was a flavor It had never held on the tongue. It felt strange, like cold iron. But it wasn’t a problem, because the awe bled like ink, darkening into wintry killing intent.

It decided to erase him. Erase him, and everything would return to its old bed. Erase him, and the lake would lie flat again.

With that thought, It moved as naturally as frost at dawn.

Purple starlight slipped from her pale fingertips like dew.

It stood within the Z World layer. The casual scatter of purple starlight bored through the Y World layer and fell into the X World layer. Each ash-sized spark swelled in the wind, and in a breath bloomed into a vast violet rose. It covered half the sky, like an upturned bowl, sealing the Demon King’s Castle near the central ring of the Witchwood Forest.

Floating clouds were ground to powder by the descending force, then swept away like chalk dust. A clear sky showed for a heartbeat, then the flower stained it violet.

Before the blossom even fell, its pressure alone veiled the Witchwood Forest. The woods around the violet castle sank by an inch as if pressed by a giant palm. Countless leaves exploded upward, swarming like a flock, then were kneaded by an unseen hand and shattered into scraps. They hissed back into the thickets, and ancient trunks bowed under invisible weight.

Heaven’s might was no more and no less.

That was Its true power. Just a handful of stars, but once they pierced two Worlds, they swelled beyond imagination.

Such terror made countless Hero Kings and Demon Kings, once eager to draw, drink bitter defeat.

Before power like this, anyone could see their smallness, their bones of glass. Hope would gutter, and fighting spirit freeze, It thought.

But—

A sharp light flared.

To a flower large enough to embrace the sunrise, that light was a needle. Yet it was red-hot from the forge. It struck true at the root of the violet blossom, and with the crackle of breaking glass, shot straight up. It drilled through the stem, then stabbed into the flower’s heart.

It was a swordsman, and the long sword in his hand. He made his body the blade and joined with the bladeless scabbard at his waist. He dragged with him the world-shards he had just hewn apart.

Then, with unstoppable momentum, he drew that “sword” free.

The sword-light raced along the blossom, straight up.

Because the flower pierced the X, Y, and Z World layers, the sword-light, running upstream through sap and starlight, slid cleanly into the Y World layer.

“So this is the second layer of the World, huh—” Fused with the sword-light, the swordsman flew upward like white aurora, eyes sweeping the scene like a hawk.

It wasn’t his first time in Y. But never had he moved so freely, like a swimmer breaking into open sea.

Y and X differed little. They were body and shadow under the same sun.

But he had no time to look closer at this World that felt both foreign and familiar. The place he truly had to reach—the task he and the 9,679th Demon King had staged before It, schemed and waited for, shattering Worlds for a single opening—lay ahead.

He lifted his gaze. His eyes cut faster than the white radiance of his body toward the “receptacle” above. Past the receptacle, the “sepals” would still be within the Z World. Push through, and he’d reach the Z World layer.

He could finally see It.

At the thought, this swordsman—who had lived for who knew how many millennia and whose heart had long since gone dry—shook with a young man’s tremor.

He had been the master of the strongest Hero King, Augustine. He was also the Past-Self of the strongest Demon King of legend.

This Past-Self had been cut from the river of history at the moment of dying, meant to face It. Yet It shackled him in the river, made him repeat the Cycle, then released him at last to fight Ye Weibai.

But in the end, the swordsman still completed his return to the source. He bared steel at It.

And the will of the Past-Self held, whole and unbroken. The meaning of his existence was to “challenge the World’s strongest.”

Yes. The strongest in this World wasn’t the black-haired Demon King—mighty as he was. The truly overwhelming, spirit-crushing existence, the one that turned courage to ash, was—it. The World’s Deity.

His meaning was to draw on It.

Body and mind as one, he became sword-light, like fireworks that refused to die. He tore through the violet stem in a frenzy, and the Z layer hung above like a winter moon.

Up, up, up, up, ever up.

Until a cold voice, flat as slate, exploded like thunder across the entire Y World layer. The sky shivered like a drumskin.

“How foolish.”

In the next instant, the white light went out, snuffed like a candle in wind.

…

…

“How foolish.”

Pope Xiuze’s mouth curled into a thin, cold smile.

He had only seen the sword-light follow the stem into the second layer. He couldn’t see what followed. But the result was beyond doubt.

Beyond death and failure, what else could that swordsman grasp?

“In this World, every rebel thinks the real abyss is the World layers,” he said, eyes lowered, his furrowed face impassive. “They think if they break the walls between X, Y, and Z, they can kill It and change the World.”

“Self-deception,” he murmured, like frost on glass.

“The truly terrifying, the truly unsurpassable, is It itself,” he said slowly. “If you can’t win, you can’t. An ant may chew through cloth and reach the skin. So what?”

“It matters,” Qi said, meeting his gaze. “At least it gives others courage.”

“That’s why you bar my path?” Xiuze’s look was arctic. “You want to prove your righteousness with death?”

“No. Not righteousness.” Qi shook his head, like a reed in wind. “It’s my obsession. And our master’s.”

“But it’s not mine.”

Qi fell silent. He had shown Xiuze everything, like unrolling a scroll. Yet Xiuze did not sway.

When words fail, fists speak.

The two brothers shared a glance and understood, as silent as falling snow.

The next heartbeat, both moved at once.