"Let me tell you, when I arrived at the capital,
Uncle and Auntie came to welcome me,
But at that moment, I suddenly saw an assassin coming to kill me!
So I jumped 5 meters—no, 500 meters high in the air and 'BAM!' hit him with a flying kick!
Then 'BAM!' another kick, and the guy was like,
'How is he so strong?!'
But it was too late for him! He spat out blood everywhere and exploded!
After the assassination attempt, I lost my temper.
I didn't care anymore and went straight to where the Emperor was!"
At this point of the story, Lady Butterfly, who didn't know who 'Uncle and Auntie' were, thought to herself,
Rest in peace, random assassin.
Rest in peace, human Emperor.
The excited Little Mortal continued,
"Then I went to the Emperor's garden!
There, I saw a group of people talking and laughing as if they were at their grandmother's garden or something!
But at that time, I was so angry that I didn't care and just went inside!
The moment I saw the Emperor, I shouted at him,
'How dare you try to ruin my plans, you little brat? I'll fight it out with you!'
And then a bloody battle..."
At this point, he stopped and looked at Lady Butterfly to finish his sentence, as if trying to see if she was listening or not.
So Lady Butterfly said the obvious,
"...A bloody battle broke out?"
But he shook his head,
"No, it didn't. My sister-in-law came forward and begged for mercy!
She said, 'It's a misunderstanding, don't kill my husband!'
So I gave them a second chance to explain themselves!"
Lady Butterfly:
"-_-"
Who is your sister-in-law? The Empress?
We have Uncle, Auntie, little brat, and sister-in-law?
Were you on a trip to your hometown?
Wait, 'little brat' is the Emperor...
"So I listened to their explanation.
And guess what?"
"They were innocent?"
"Yes!
It turns out, the capital was under a terrorist attack!
Can you believe it?
And guess where the terrorists were gathering?"
"In a dark, hidden hideout inside the capital?"
"No!
The terrorists were that bunch of guys who were at the Emperor's door when I went inside! The ones in the garden!
Can you believe it?
The fact that they had the audacity to attempt a terrorist attack in front of me was so ridiculous that I couldn't believe it!
And guess what fake identity they were using to infiltrate the capital?"
Now Lady Butterfly was interested.
"What?"
Little Mortal answered in disbelief, as if he himself couldn't believe it,
"Sect Masters!
They called themselves Sect Masters!
And they were the same Sect Masters whose real identities I knew—the bandit bosses!
But it turns out, they're terrorists who use the bandit boss identity for cover!
And not only that, they were using the Sect Master identity to cover the bandit identity!
It was one cover on another cover to hide their real terrorist identity!"
Lady Butterfly felt dizzy from all the covers.
"What happened next?"
Little Mortal shrugged,
"I don't know what exactly happened."
Lady Butterfly was confused,
"Why?"
"Because when I found out they were here to kidnap my sister-in-law, I completely lost it!
You might not know, but when I'm angry—and by angry, I mean really angry—
I can't see anything but blood!
I can only see red!
That's why I only vaguely remember hands breaking, heads flying, and bodies exploding...
When I came back to my senses, I saw corpses and blood everywhere.
The whole capital was in complete silence!
At that moment, I thought to myself,
Human life is so fragile... so vulnerable... like a weak candle flame that can turn to nothingness with only a gust of wind."
Little Mortal sighed at the end...
Lady Butterfly's hair stood on end just from hearing the story.
She didn't know anymore if he was bluffing or serious!
Did he just kill everybody in the capital while he lost control?
Then she heard him continue,
"I looked at my hands, covered in blood, then at the scared faces of the Emperor and my sister-in-law—the only two survivors of my rampage—
And felt disgust... Not towards the blood, and not the corpses... but myself...."
He took a deep breath and said with regret,
"At that moment, I asked myself,
What gives me the right to kill?
What gives the right to anyone with power to kill?
Does power itself give you the right?
Or do we all have a monster inside that only needs enough power to awaken and show us our true selves?"
By now, Lady Butterfly's forehead was covered in sweat.
She wished Rose was here to bring him back to his senses from this presumably broken state!
She didn't know anymore if he was messing around or really had a mental breakdown!
If it were the latter, the Apocalypse was going to start right here and right now!
Or had it already started in the capital?
But why is he so clean?
Where is all the blood he's talking about?
Oh, and he finally found shoes for himself?
Then she sensed something, looked around, and said,
"Sorry to interrupt you, Sect Master,
But I think we're surrounded..."
Little Mortal broke character in a second
And said in panic,
"What?
Where are they?
Who are they?"
And looked around vigilantly.
"I think the Imperial Army followed you.
With the blue smoke coming out of you, it shouldn't be that hard for them to track you down..."
Lady Butterfly didn't know if she should be happy now or not.
If he killed everybody in the capital, then what was the army doing here?
Little Mortal, while shocked, looked up and saw the smoke he was emitting rising high into the sky, and he became speechless.
"Wait, did you say Imperial Army?"
Lady Butterfly nodded.
She could sense a circle of thousands of them around the whole area, with the sect close by at the center.
Little Mortal patted his chest and sighed in relief,
"Lady Butterfly, you scared me for a moment.
They're with us."
Lady Butterfly raised an eyebrow,
"With us? For what?"
"To catch the rest of the terrorists.
I made a plan with the Emperor.
They're going to surround the 12 terrorist hideouts,
So the two of us can catch them without worrying about them running away and causing trouble again."
Lady Butterfly looked toward the sect far away and said,
"Do you have a plan on how to catch them?
If not, I can do that."
Little Mortal, who didn't have a plan, became interested,
"You do your plan first. If I see it's better than mine, we'll do it your way.
If it's too slow, I'll tell you my plan."
Lady Butterfly nodded, waved her hands, and thousands of butterflies appeared, moving toward the sect. Soon, they became invisible, as if they never existed.
Little Mortal raised his hand in astonishment, and one of them flapped over and sat on his finger.
It was a small butterfly, its wings with a dream-like appearance, like glass with colorful light effects moving across it, making it appear and disappear magically.
After a while, Lady Butterfly said,
"Alright, they're unconscious now.
Let's get them here."
Then she waved her hands again, and another group of butterflies appeared—all brown, with wings bearing an 'eye'-like pattern.
Not long after, thousands of sect members started flying over from the sect.
All of their heads were drooped down, as if they were sleepwalking—no, as if they were sleepflying.
Little Mortal looked at the unconscious group of people in the sky coming toward them, each carried by a little brown butterfly gripping their collars, in astonishment.
Then he looked at Lady Butterfly.
Then, at the unconscious crowd.
Then at Lady Butterfly again.
He then said in admiration,
"So fast, so effective, so clean..."
And suddenly became shocked,
"Wait a minute!
I don't remember you ever using these techniques before!"
Lady Butterfly nodded,
"Yes, it's new.
I tried it today to see if it works. It's nothing special."
Little Mortal said suspiciously,
"So you're creating new techniques now?
Are you getting ready to deal with me for one last time?"
Lady Butterfly suddenly felt nervous.
How did things get back to this topic again?
"Sect Master, you misunderstood.
Didn't we already forget about our past?
And I thought you said it wasn't even real!"
Little Mortal, while still looking at her suspiciously, patted the little cage on his waist, and all the sect members in the sky disappeared.
"Your plan works fine.
How about I go back to my followers, and you catch the terrorists?"
Lady Butterfly nodded,
"Leave it to me."
Little Mortal took off both the crystal and the cage from his waist and said,
"Go with Lady Butterfly. You catch the terrorists, Little Cage, and you record their hideouts in detail, Little Crystal. We'll need it later."
And hung them on Lady Butterfly's waist.
After that, with a whistle, the horse—with all kinds of light effects—appeared.
He jumped on its back, turned to Lady Butterfly (who thought he was going to say 'goodbye'), and, while still looking at her suspiciously, pointed two fingers at his own eyes, then pointed at Lady Butterfly with the same two fingers.
The message was clear without saying it:
'I'm watching you!'
And rode his horse away, leaving a blue trail of smoke in the sky above...
Lady Butterfly, while speechless, could feel that he liked to mess with her specifically. So she shook her head, became serious, and, with the map in hand, began the cleanup mission.
But when she was about to fly away, a hand caught her ankle and brought her down.
She knew who it was without looking...
The little boy, who had brought her down, started tapping the crystal a couple of times and then said,
"Alright, now you won't be bored on the way. Bye."
Then he ran back to the jungle, jumped on his horse, and left.
Lady Butterfly, who was confused about what he had done, suddenly heard music start playing, with a woman singing:
[Laughing bright, I dance through the storm,
Blades like rain—I am the swarm...]
...
The circle of soldiers responsible for surrounding the sect, at this moment, were looking at the scene of thousands of sect members flying out and then disappearing the next moment, with fear in their eyes!
Nobody knew what had happened.
Not long after, a middle-aged lady, with background music, flew away.
"Who are we teaming up with?"
"Who was the lady who just passed by with music?"
"Maybe the Great Warrior's mother?"
Thousands of people gulped in fear of the unknown people they were working with...
....
Not long after,
Close to one of the targets for cleanup—the one marked at the center of the map—the Emperor was waiting with a special team of army members.
They were all veterans with considerable power, ready to reinforce any target that needed backup at this place.
While they were waiting, far away from them,
Above the sky of the target sect, brown butterflies descended like rain.
Not long after, to their shock, thousands of sect members, all unconscious, were carried out of the sect toward the sky by those butterflies.
The sky above the sect was full of people—an unbelievable scene!
"Is the other party here for the cleanup?"
"When did they get here?"
"Who made them unconscious?"
"Don't tell me everyone there is sleeping at this time of day!"
While shocked and confused, with many questions in mind, the soldiers heard the sound of music—with a woman singing—getting closer to them.
Then it passed by them and went toward the floating sect members.
Before they could see what it was or who it was,
All of the sect members disappeared—and so did the butterflies!
The only thing that could prove they weren't dreaming was the sentence left behind by the singer...
[No sect shall stand where my butterflies fall,
The heavens weep as their fortress crawls.
I'll carve my name 'til the stars go cold—
Now watch me rise... unstoppable and untold.]
In all marked places on the map, with the army surrounding them, the same scene happened.
First, butterfly rain.
Then, the music.
And at the end, the disappearance of the unconscious sect members.
By night, the cleanup of the 12 'terrorist hideouts' was done.
The Emperor was speechless.
The army soldiers were speechless.
If this wasn't the easiest war of their lives, then what was?
They all thought,
'Can we team up with this group from now on?'
...
Meanwhile, high in the sky, the small orb finally reached its destination.
It dropped into the withered hand of the dying old man lying on the bed made of clouds.
After a while, something began to rotate inside the orb, and just like a generator gives the old man energy, spiritual energy started to be infused into his body from the orb.
But there seemed to be a limit on the amount, one that didn't let him do as he pleased with the stored spiritual energy inside.
It was enough for him to get back on his legs,
but not enough to recharge the whole world.
Not long after, the old man's eyes slowly opened—they were blue like the sky.
With difficulty, he muttered a sentence and closed his eyes again...
....
[Immortal Realm – The Neighbor Planet of the Cultivation World]
The planet to which cultivators with 90 levels of power or higher would ascend.
Looking at the planet from above, it was at least 10 times bigger than the Cultivation World.
High up in the sky, in a place made of clouds—that you could enter only if the Immortal World manager allowed you—a group of people were gathered.
Even the chair and the big round table in front of them were made of clouds.
At the main seat, an old lady in a blue robe with white cloud patterns sat with her eyes closed.
Her appearance was similar to that of the old manager of the Cultivation World.
The rest of the people were silent at this moment, waiting for the old lady, who seemed to be in the middle of doing something important.
After a while, she slowly opened her eyes.
Seeing her blue eyes made these high-and-mighty cultivators of the Immortal World feel lost for a moment.
It was like they faced an endless blue sky ...
The old lady said with concern,
"First, I lost contact with two of them, and then the group leader was attacked and sealed before sending his last message..."
The rest, hearing her, were shocked.
One of them asked,
"Aren't all of them stronger than the power limit of cultivators on the other side?
How could they get caught?"
"I don't know about the first two—they just disappeared.
But the team leader was sealed when he was fighting the Sword God and Snow Goddess."
When she said that, she looked at another old lady on her right.
The lady in a white robe, with white eyes and a cold aura around her, smiled politely in response and said,
"That little disciple of mine isn't bad, but I'm sure she couldn't do anything to either of them—unless they already broke through but were stuck there due to the passage being closed.
Even so, I doubt they could deal with the team leader you sent. So, what exactly happened?"
The old lady in blue said,
"There was a third party helping them.
From the last message I got, it was the Cultivation World's 'Will' who interfered."
An evil-looking man with red hair and a red robe said in an angry tone,
"Didn't you and he have a deal?
Why would he do that?"
The old lady, who didn't like the way he was talking to her, said,
"Go and learn how to speak first, then I'll answer you."
And with a flick of her finger, the guy was sent flying out of the cloudy place like a mosquito.
Only the sound of his scream could be heard, growing farther and farther away.
The rest just shut their mouths.
They weren't crazy enough to think she was so weak now that she couldn't deal with them.
And on top of that, she was the Will of the Immortal World—
and didn't have a good temper either. So questioning her was a stupid act...
When they ascended to the Immortal World, they didn't even know that both the Will of the Cultivation World and the Will of the Immortal World were real entities!
It wasn't until more than 300 years ago that they arrived here, and she invited them to the 'Sky' to talk about the hidden danger they were in.
At first, they didn't know what danger, because at some point, all the cultivators of the Immortal Realm had suddenly vanished—except them, who were in the passage between the two worlds, in the middle of ascension.
So when they arrived here, there were no other cultivators around—just them and some normal animals here and there.
Later, they learned from this old lady, the Will of the Immortal World, that the source of spiritual energy had been cut off from their world for an unknown reason, and this world was destined to become a world without spiritual energy.
So now they needed to do something about it, or they would revert to being mortals.
Knowing the result of a world without spiritual energy meant death to them, they naturally decided to help.
After a while, the Immortal World's Will—or Immortal Manager in the eyes of a certain little boy—said,
"The Will of the Cultivation World only told me one sentence now before going to slumber again:
'A guest has arrived, with a request that can't be refused. I can only obey—the deal is off.'"
The crowd frowned upon hearing that.
A middle-aged man with bright eyes like stars, in scholarly robes, said,
"I assume it's not possible to open another passage to the Cultivation World to send others anymore.
And if two of the three disappeared without even Your Excellency, the Immortal World's Will, noticing, then the 'Guest' on the other side can't be simple... and we can't do anything about it."
At first, there were three more of them, but those three had sneaked back to the Cultivation World for a mission.
Hearing him, the Immortal World Manager waved her hand, and all of them were sent down to the Immortal World below.
They just heard her saying,
"I did what I could, and now I am powerless.
Let's leave the rest to the hands of fate."
The scholarly man asked,
"Is there no other way to choose a Guardian?"
The old lady said tiredly,
"I don't even know what conditions should be fulfilled exactly to make one of you a Guardian.
I get some broken messages from the outside world.
But that wasn't a complete and explicit instruction for choosing a Guardian."
After their solar system was separated from its main universe, the Immortal Manager received a message from an unknown source.
In the message from the 'outside world,' she found out that there was a title called 'Temporary Guardian'—one that someone could take for a limited time and maybe help them with the current situation of the world.
Through the messy instructions, she knew that if there was nobody on the side of the Cultivation World with a certain level of power, then she could choose a temporary 'Guardian' from her side and place both worlds under that Guardian's control.
So she shared the message with the neighboring old man, and they came up with a plan.
But what would happen after choosing this Guardian? How could they help them?
Neither of them knew.
The only reason she believed the message when she received it was because she could feel the sender—while extremely weak—was an entity of a higher position than her, but the same kind as her. So, the other party was another 'Will' like them.
That's why, to execute the plan:
First, the Will of the Cultivation World started a war on his side, forcing cultivators to kill each other. With the spiritual energy released from their dead bodies, the problem of lacking spiritual energy was temporarily solved.
But because of restrictions on Heaven's Will, he could only force those with bad karma into this massacre and get them killed.
At the same time, the Immortal World didn't have any problem with the shortage of spiritual energy, because at some point, all the cultivators on the planet had disappeared together, leaving nobody around to use the remaining spiritual energy.
The second part of their plan was to send all the cultivators with good karma (those who couldn't be killed) to the Immortal World.
To execute this, the Will of the Cultivation World was supposed to:
Gather all remaining cultivators (those without bad karma, whom he couldn't get rid of) in the Forbidden Jungle.
Then, force them—alongside the Big Turtle and the White Tiger—into the Immortal World using the remaining power he had left.
The lady manager of the Immortal World was aware of this aspect. Still, she didn't know that the Cultivation World's manager had been forced to use his remaining power to close a certain passage that had opened in his world—near the Wise Turtle in the Forbidden Jungle—to stop a disaster.
The same passage that had suddenly opened and brought the so-called 'invaders' to the Cultivation World.
And it was at the same time as the arrival of the little unknown boy, who, as he claimed, stopped the invasion and made an official request to enter the competition for the Guardian position.
The only thing the old manager of the cultivation world could do at that time was agree and permit him, for two reasons:
He had seen this little boy's power in action and didn't dare say 'no' to him.
Not only that, he no longer had the power to force the group in the Forbidden Jungle to ascend.
And after that, he was forced to enter 'power-saving mode.'
On the side of the Immortal Planet, the lady manager was utterly oblivious to these events and only suddenly lost contact with her colleague, realizing he had been forced into slumber for some reason.
With no other choice, she tried to send three experts from her side to the other world so they could locate the experts with good karma in the Forbidden Jungle and contact her, allowing her to help them ascend directly.
She could still feel a weak connection between the two worlds and tried to use it to bring the rest of the group to her side—but she needed to find their exact location first.
But another problem arose when the three experts returned to the Cultivation World (their home world).
After finding the experts in the Forbidden Jungle, they discovered three more experts at their level outside had recently broken through and needed to be sent to the Immortal World:
The Snow Goddess
The Sword God
Lady Butterfly
To handle the job quickly, the three experts from the Immortal World made a plan:
They knew they couldn't lure their targets into a shady place like the Forbidden Jungle.
So, they targeted Rose—the weakness of all three targets.
Their plan:
Two of them would kidnap her.
The leader would wait for them to take the hostage to a location close to the other experts inside the Forbidden Jungle.
Then, they would use Rose as bait to lure the Snow Goddess, Sword God, and Lady Butterfly there.
Finally, they would ask the Will of the Immortal World to take them all away together.
But in the end, a certain little boy interfered:
Two of them disappeared.
The leader was sealed with the help of a third party—the Cultivation World's manager.
The dying old man knew that what these three were doing was the best option for the original plan—but now, there was a new character in the story who made their actions the worst option!
The Cultivation Manager and Immortal Manager only knew scattered information about the Guardian position. But now, an overpowered entity had suddenly shown up with a Guardian Token in hand!
To him, it was clear who knew more about this Guardian position and who he should bet on in this matter.
The lady manager of the Immortal World—who didn't know about the arrival of Little Mortal, the so-called 'Guest'—felt frustrated and tired...
She could tell there was some vital information about this Guardian position that should be in her mind—but wasn't.
Just the word 'Guardian' was pleasing to her ears for no reason, feeling extremely important...
Feeling powerless and unsure of what to do, she decided to trust her colleague and fell into 'power-saving mode' as well.
The group of people who had been kicked out of her place looked at each other, then bowed to the sky and left.
There were too many places to explore in this world—now without any other strong beings...
....
Planet Blue Sea
At this moment, the massive dragon from before was silently waiting on this deserted planet.
Huge cracks were spread across the ground everywhere.
Except for the dragon itself, there was no sign of life.
Not long after, as it felt something, the giant dragon disappeared, and a middle-aged man with vertical pupils appeared in its place.
He then prostrated on the ground in a specific direction.
Time passed slowly.
The air temperature around the middle-aged man began to decrease.
White mist started coming out of his nose due to the sudden cold weather.
Even the ground began freezing.
Icicles started appearing on his face, as if he would freeze completely at any moment.
But the middle-aged man didn't move and didn't make a sound—still prostrating on the ground—until a cold voice sounded:
"Who was it?"
It was a man's voice—emotionless, but with absolute authority.
The Black Dragon, in his human form, without raising his head, answered:
"I didn't see what it was, my lord—Ice God."
At some point, a statue made of ice appeared in the sky above the dragon's head.
At first glance, it looked like a real statue—but if you looked closely, you could see its eyes moving around coldly.
The ice statue muttered to itself:
"A unique space treasure to open a wormhole that can't be tracked...
A unique entity that can't be tracked either...
And no laws have been used..."
It looked down, and the part of the ground near the dragon froze harsher than the rest—collapsing under the extreme cold.
An empty space (like a storage area) appeared.
Inside were all kinds of shiny objects belonging to the dragon.
But from the sky, the ice statue could see that the items had been placed in a specific pattern.
There was a message left behind with them—perhaps for him:
[ "Revenge is a dish best served cold!
Wait for me, you chunk of ice! "]
The hostility and disrespect were evident in these words!
The ice statue, for just a moment, became enraged and lost control over his power!
And that single moment of rage,
Froze the middle-aged man completely and turned the entire Blue Sea Planet into a frozen wasteland.
Now, this deserted planet was nothing but an ice ball, floating in space around its sun—with only one frozen creature prostrating on the ground...