Deprived of the support of madness and power, that maddened Archon could no longer maintain her divine form. She gradually dissipated, collapsing into a mass of dense yet slowly flowing primordial elemental energy, tightly locked within the dark depths of the water by the indestructible stone prison.
As the external corrosive forces were purified, a wisp of faint yet clear consciousness quietly awakened in the depths of her shattered soul.
She regained the gnosis that belonged to her, sensing that the filth within her body, once like maggots in her bones, was rapidly vanishing.
She traced the source of these changes, her perception spreading out in the direction where the filth was disappearing.
Finally, her "sight" landed on an artifact emitting a warm, lustrous glow. It was a sharp sword carved from emerald jade, the texture of its blade inexplicably familiar.
As the dust of memory was swept away, she remembered. She had once gifted a piece of jade named "Jade Cutter" to that powerful neighbor and friend, Rex Lapis Morax, as a symbol of friendship and covenant.
She even recalled how she had once, with a hint of feigned reproach, complained to the Lord: why would he carve such spiritually beautiful jade, born of heaven and earth, into a weapon for strife and slaughter, when he clearly disliked conflict?
She understood now. Without weapons, no one could protect their beloved things in this chaotic world.
"My Lord? Are you here?" she attempted to send out a voiceless inquiry.
She gathered all her remaining mind to perceive, yet the only response was the chaotic, malicious ravings filling her mind.
These ravings stirred a wave of terror and immense bewilderment in her heart.
She sank into that sea of broken memories, retracing what exactly she had done...
Endless darkness, bone-eroding fear, a deathmatch with her closest friend, twisted hatred, and that destructive flood intended to drown everything...
"Are you here?" she asked once again.
This time, even those unsettling ravings disappeared completely. There was only silence in the void. No response whatsoever.
It makes sense... she thought dejectedly. Liyue is already rife with chaos, and the grief of Guili Plains has not yet been soothed. For her to personally brew such a monstrous catastrophe would undoubtedly add chaos upon chaos. The Lord surely has no time to attend to anything else.
At this moment, the last trace of dark filth remaining in her body was thoroughly stripped away by the power of that emerald sharp sword, vanishing into the blade without a trace.
She had found no way to counter this dark substance that corroded the mind and twisted the will, nor could she remember when it had invaded her body.
Now that the filth was gone, all that remained was a core riddled with a thousand holes.
She felt like those deep-fried crispy balls common in mortal markets; the exterior looked whole and solid, but the inside was long since full of hollows. A gentle squeeze would be enough to shatter her completely.
"Humans..." This word rippled with complex emotions in her heart.
She thought of those three adepti with their distinct temperaments. Their smiles, their worries, their figures guarding this valley—all flashed across her heart. She thought of the mortals in Chenyu Vale who built fields by the mountains and lived by the water, their singing voices when picking and processing tea, their gazes when praying for good weather... All of this was the beauty she had once been willing to protect. Yet she had nearly destroyed it with her own hands.
With endless regret and a final shred of lucid resolve, she mobilized all her remaining divine power, transforming it into brush and ink. Upon the blade of the Primordial Jade Cutter, she inscribed her final message:
"I have violated the contract and plunged the people into misery. This is entirely my fault; the blame lies with me alone and involves no others. Those who break their contracts shall suffer the Wrath of the Rock. However, Liyue faces many tribulations, and the Lord toils in body and spirit; I dare not burden my old friend further with my broken body. I only pray that the Lord shows mercy, taking custody of the survivors of Chenyu, that they may have support and their vitality may endure..."
Once the message was inscribed, she seemed to unload all her burdens.
Thump...
A dull, massive sound came from the abyss. Under the continuous crushing of terrifying water pressure, the stone prison that confined her shattered.
At the same time, that emerald Primordial Jade Cutter seemed to have fulfilled its mission. It quietly transformed into specks of flowing light, dissipating into nothingness.
The next moment, an incomparably pure and gentle elemental force flowed slowly out from the center of the shattered stone prison.
It carried no attributes of rage or destruction but was filled with the aura of nourishment, gently blending into every inch of land and every stream of water in Chenyu Vale. In the quietest manner, it fed back into this land she had once deeply loved, and also hurt.
...
"Let's go. We're going to find Fujin and Changsheng!"
Before her voice had even faded, Columbina was already anxiously dragging Coppelia, flying toward the interior of the valley.
However, just as they skimmed over that newborn dam made from the Stone Lance, she stopped abruptly, hovering above the orderly waterfall, her eyes blank.
"Where... do we look?" she whispered.
Coppelia staggered slightly from the sudden stop. After stabilizing herself, she did not answer immediately, casting her gaze toward the south.
Deep in the river valley, amidst the permeating mist, the silhouette of a massive Jade Votive, comparable to a mountain range, loomed faintly, standing erect over the surging river channel.
Seeing it, Coppelia felt a sense of certainty.
"Let's search along the river first," she gave the direction.
Columbina obeyed, taking her down to the bottom of the waterfall, and immediately began flying at low altitude along the turbid river water.
The scene before them was one of devastation after a catastrophe. The river channel had clearly been widened significantly; the banks were covered in mud and traces of landslides, along with exposed tree roots. The river water remained unbearably turbid, frothing with yellow-brown foam. Broken timber and animal carcasses floated on the surface, telling the tale of the flood's past savagery.
They had not flown for long when, at a slightly cramped bend in the river, the sight caused both their hearts to tighten.
A section of a giant snake's body, covered in pure white scales, was wedged between chaotic rocks and accumulated driftwood.
The surface of the snake's body was stained with black sludge. At the massive cross-section, the muscles that should have been pale pink had turned pale and swollen from long immersion. The edges bore an ominous dead grey, and the deep folds were embedded with mud and fine gravel. There was not a trace of blood, nor could any pulse of life be felt.
"Is this... Changsheng?" Columbina's voice trembled. She remembered that Changsheng's true form was a white snake. The cold, massive remains before her undoubtedly belonged to a snake.
But what made her heart sink even further was that the remaining elemental power within this segment of the body was constantly dissipating, as dead and silent as the stones at the bottom of the river.
"She..." Coppelia started to speak but choked up. She felt that whatever she said would only make Columbina sadder.
Columbina actually understood in her heart. Seeing Coppelia's silence, she asked no more. She pulled Coppelia and plunged headlong into the thicker mist ahead, searching even more persistently along the river channel for those familiar traces of adeptal energy.
Very quickly, they successively found three other severed body segments, scattered across different sections of the river. But like the first segment, they were all cold, stiff, devoid of life, and sunken in the muddy water.
____
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