Chapter 64
A cultivator of Humanity, one who has let go of everything she built and chosen to become empty.
One who can no longer be called a Goddess, or a human, or a cultivator, or anything that bears a name—because names are shackles, and she has cast off every chain that once bound her, except one: her hatred toward those who killed her mother.
A hatred she keeps in the darkest corner of her consciousness, one she will never release, one that will become the compass guiding her wherever they hide, wherever they flee, wherever they feast upon the bones of the Gods they slaughtered.
For the second time that night—or perhaps for the countless time, because in a place where time remains frozen and space is still trying to remember its original form, the counting of seconds no longer holds meaning—Ling Xu opened her eyes.
Not with a sudden motion like someone waking from a nightmare.
But slowly, like petals reluctant to bloom in winter.
Like a gate opening after thousands of years untouched by human hands, Gods, or any being.
And when her eyes—new eyes, born from her own sea of consciousness, not made of flesh or light or darkness but of understanding—finally captured the figure of Huan Zheng sitting cross-legged before her, only three steps away, she lowered her gaze.
She observed her slightly raised hands, her open palms.
Her fingers, once trembling with pain and anger, were now still, calm, like the surface of water at the bottom of a well untouched by wind, pebbles, or shadows.
"I succeeded, Huan Zheng," she said.
Her voice no longer trembled.
No longer hoarse.
No longer sounded like someone who had just finished crying for days.
It was clear, pure, like water flowing from a mountain spring untouched by human hands, like the sound of a bell gently struck in the distance on a misty morning.
"Humanity. I have reached the Humanity Level."
And behind those simple words, Huan Zheng could hear something else.
Not pride, because Ling Xu was never one to take pride in herself.
Not relief, because their journey was far from over and nothing was certain yet.
But certainty.
A cold, absolute certainty.
A certainty born from the awareness that after letting go of everything she had built, after submerging Star, Longitude, Crystals, and Dew into her sea of consciousness, after dying eleven times and rising eleven times, there was nothing left that could shake her.
Not pain.
Not fear.
Not doubt.
Not anything.
Huan Zheng, hearing that, smiled.
Not his usual lazy smile that made others want to punch him.
Not the bitter smile he wore when speaking of his friends who failed their trials.
Not the empty smile he used when explaining the ineffable Dew of the Supreme Dao.
But a strangely warm smile.
A smile that appeared only once in several hundred years.
A smile he reserved for moments he truly valued, like now—when Ling Xu, the girl who once could only crawl on the ground with wounds covering her body, who once slept upon moss and the same recurring nightmares, who once had nothing but vengeance and rare streaks of white hair—now stood before him as a cultivator of Humanity.
Equal to him.
Beside him.
No longer behind.
No longer ahead.
But right at his side, just as he had imagined since the moment they first met.
Within his heart, between the pulses of the Realm of Humanity he had just regained after so long—pulses that felt like reuniting with a long-lost twin, like smelling the earth after the first rain of the dry season, like returning home to a place he never realized he missed so deeply—Huan Zheng murmured in a voice no one could hear, not even Ling Xu who stood only three steps before him with eyes born from her own sea of consciousness.
"Sooner or later," he whispered inwardly.
His inner voice was no longer lazy, but heavy, measured, like a general arranging strategies over a battlefield map spread before him.
"We will stay for a while in the dwelling place of humanity. In their homes. In their palaces. In the deepest nest of spiders, where those who call themselves the Second Divine—beings who were once only shadows beneath the feet of the Gods, who now walk with their heads held high because they believe their victory is eternal, who forget that history always turns, that those who rise will fall, that those who laugh now will cry later—gather every night to feast, to celebrate, to forget that in the darkest corner of the universe, a little girl grew into adulthood with a single purpose in her life. And beside that girl, a lazy man who is still one of the three monsters that make the entire universe tremble now stands patiently, waiting for the right moment to remind them that death never truly dies."
He drew a breath.
A breath that felt like swallowing memories of his past as a condemned prisoner of the Supreme Court of Humanity.
Of the times he stood in a grand courtroom bathed in blinding golden light.
Hearing the verdict delivered by judges who never knew the truth.
Who only accepted reports from those who wished to see him fall.
Who laughed behind their robes as his name was erased from the list of honored cultivators and replaced with the mark "death row," stamped in red ink that would never fade even if washed by a thousand years of tears.
Then he exhaled slowly.
Letting the air leave his lungs like a river releasing its waters into the sea.
Carrying with it the burdens he had borne alone all this time, without ever telling anyone, not even Ling Xu who had died eleven times just to stand beside him.
"I can't relax like before anymore," he continued.
And this time, his inner voice trembled.
Not from fear, for he had faced death too many times to fear anything.
But from the realization that he was no longer responsible only for himself.
That beside him stood someone who had chosen to walk with him despite the path being steep and drenched in blood.
That he must protect Ling Xu—not because of a contract, or a debt, or guilt—but because he could no longer imagine what it felt like to walk alone in this cruel world.
"Not only because the inhabitants of humanity's domain possess cultivation realms above average—around the Abdomen and Head stages of Humanity, beings who have perfected their foundations for thousands of years, who will not be shaken by empty threats or sharp gazes or overwhelming presence—but also because there are two other shadows beginning to move behind the curtain. Two names I can never forget, no matter how hard I try. Two beings I once called brothers. With whom I once laughed in a bamboo pavilion at the edge of the universe. Whom I believed would always stand beside me against the world. Until the world itself tore us apart, one by one, without mercy, without explanation, without even the chance to say goodbye."
Fhuuuuh!!
To be continued…