“Ye Weibai,” Lina said, her voice smoothing like a lake after wind.
The faint tremor from before felt like a heat mirage over frost.
The black-haired youth lifted his gaze, confusion drifting like fog in his eyes.
It was the first time she’d used his name for real, not titles like 【Demon King】, masks that glittered like crowns yet bit like thorns.
That knot couldn’t be sanded smooth even by walking the entire 【World】, like grain in old wood that refused to fade.
As he’d said, he’d always known it: Lina—the 【Hero King】’s Deity—held a hatred etched in bone, like a knife-line in jade.
Before this, he barely cared; urgency pressed like a blade at his throat to break the game and flee this 【World】.
But after he saw the dense mist that clung to truth like damp to stone, and felt his life run thin like falling sand, he understood.
This wasn’t a knot one person could cut, not even with clean steel.
As with the 【Hero King】 tale, he hadn’t shattered the millennial 【Cycle】 by 【Demon King】 might alone, like a lone hammer on a millstone chain.
Without the torch passed between countless Hero Kings and Demon Kings, he’d have been a key with no door, a spark with no tinder.
So he’d bared his chest to Lina, hoping that in this white world they could clasp hands like figures on fresh snow.
He hoped to borrow her strength, like a lone boat borrowing wind.
Yet she suddenly called his name, and the old bitterness was gone, sifted out like grit from tea.
He was startled, unsure if she hid it like a blade in velvet, or if something had shifted like a tide under ice.
By habit, he scanned their talk like a knife over silk, found no snag, and banked the doubt like an ember.
“Let me in,” she said, the words dropping like a stone into a well.
Lina didn’t know how many sparks flashed through his mind in that heartbeat, and even if she did, she’d clamp shut like a shell.
Which word brushed her heartstring, she would never confess; that note would drown like rain in the sea.
She only went on, calm as still water: “Ye Weibai, let me enter the 【World】 again.”
“No.” The refusal shut like a door in a gust.
“You don’t trust me?” Her question pricked like a thorn tip.
“That’s not why. Lina, I don’t know what state keeps you alive, but losing a piece of soul must be like winter wind through cracked bone.”
“Rest easy,” she said, voice light as drifting snow. “I’ve lived millennia as a Deity; this small 【World】 can’t gnaw much off me.”
“Even so, what good would it do? Without a full plan, who would you be inside? Where would you land, which scene would take you?”
“It’s all fog, too few stars to steer by,” he added, like a sailor peering at a moonless sea.
“That’s why I must go—” Lina said, steady as iron. “You watch me tight, and from me find the way to break the board.”
“You said it yourself: dead water can’t break; throw a stone, and the ripples net the fish below.”
“You’d be the test subject?” His voice thinned like a thread in the wind.
“Yes. One set of data won’t do,” she said, beads clicking like an abacus. “Then more runs, more deaths, until you get what you need.”
Ye Weibai fell silent, the hush packing down like new snow.
Reason told him she was right: track that 【impurity】, stir the orderly timeline into eddies, and a seam in the silk would show.
That was sound, solid as stone in the palm.
But some shard hidden in him, like glass buried in flesh, whispered no.
It made sense, but it wasn’t right, like a clean blade aimed at the wrong throat.
He closed his eyes slow as dusk, opened them like dawn, and spoke.
“Lina, you hide in the sword now, and I can’t see you. But through the mirror just now, I saw clearly.”
“What?” Lina startled, like a bird lifting off a branch.
“Your eyes in that 【World】—cold as a winter sea.”
“So then—” She stopped, the word catching like silk on a thorn, because his next line fell.
“It hurts, doesn’t it? A human’s… death,” he said, the words stinging like salt in a raw wound.
Silence stretched like a taut bowstring, until Lina’s voice came, cold as hoarfrost: “【Demon King】—you talk too much.”
The black-haired Demon King smiled without a sound, a slim crescent cut in ink.
“Ye Weibai, you—” she began, then paused, the thought snagging like a fish on a hook.
“What is it, my Deity?” he asked, teasing as a flick of wind.
She swallowed the line and changed course. “Then what good is sitting here?” she asked, like a runner stamping in place.
“No. We go into the 【World】. But we go together,” he said, two shadows stepping into snow.
“Ye Weibai, are you dying and losing memory? I said it: in this state you can’t enter,” she replied, like a gate rimed shut with ice.
“That’s why we go together,” he said, like two oars set to one boat.
He fixed his gaze on the long sword, pupils steady as stars. “Teach me how to draw my soul out.”
“I can,” she said, the word coiling like smoke, “but that means entering your body.”
“Welcome,” Ye Weibai smiled, the syllables opening like a door on warm light.
“You—” Lina hesitated, her voice fluttering like a moth. “Do you know what my power inside you means?”
“That you could seize my body anytime?” he said, offering the hilt like a steady hand.
“So you knew already,” she murmured, a shadow skimming like a cloud.
“Weren’t you the one egging me on?” he said, a nudge toward the cliff’s edge.
Lina snorted, a cold puff like frost from steel. “I still plan to.”
Ye Weibai’s mouth tipped up. He gripped the black blade on his knees.
His thumb pushed the guard, and as the blade slid free, threads of pale violet light ran like spring water, brightening the snow-white space in a single breath.
It was Lina’s soul made visible, a veil of light like wisteria in moonlight.
He felt the cool substance in his palm, mist winding his fingers, seeping through skin, flesh, and bone, into the deep well of his soul.
In that moment, both of them felt a subtle tide rise, a hush before rain.
Fragments of their souls overlapped like petals, and more than that—if souls had grain and pitch, theirs aligned with startling harmony.
Like gear to gear, they meshed with exquisite perfection, teeth kissing like clockwork prayer.
He was about to ask what came next when a sound went KRAK, like a war chariot of thunder rolling across the sky, drawing closer.
“Master Bai! Behind you!” Lina’s cry burst in his mind like a flare.
He turned, and his pupils pinched to needles, like stars collapsing to points.
The seam in the white 【World】 split open like ice under a sudden thaw.
A black scar crept from the far “horizon,” a thorn whip flung from the world’s edge, swelling in his vision in a blink.
It smashed the 【World】’s mirror-shards like brittle glass and lunged to his face like a striking viper.
There was no time to move; Ye Weibai and Lina vanished from the spot like sparks snuffed by wind.
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The next heartbeat.
Ye Weibai had become Yexiaobai, through and through, like ink washed and drawn into a new stroke.
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