Chapter 89
Yet amidst the vortex of golden light that began to wrap around her body from head to toe, among the vibrations that made every strand of reality around them tremble like harp strings plucked too forcefully, The Singer—or at least what remained of her that could still be called The Singer, the third of the three Cultivation Wheels, the red-haired woman whose flute could crack the sky, split the seas, and force a thousand cultivators to kneel without being able to raise their swords—lifted her head.
Blood still flowed from her temples, soaking her pale cheeks, dripping onto her now-worn red robe.
But her eyes—eyes that only a moment ago had dimmed with pain and confusion—now burned with a different flame, a flame no longer born of unrequited love for Huan Zheng or burning hatred for The Silent One, but a flame born from the realization that she was not a victim, that she was not a puppet, that she was not merely a vessel to be taken and used at will by a soul older than herself.
"I don't care," she said, her voice no longer melodious like when she sang in the bamboo pavilion, no longer breaking like when she wept over The Silent One's betrayal, but flat, empty, like the surface of a lake undisturbed for too long by wind, by humans, or by beasts.
And when her blazing gaze fell directly upon the Silent One—the man still standing with arms outstretched, with a smile beginning to crack because he could not understand why his physical nature did not immediately submit, why the body he had sought for thousands of years still resisted, why the Singer could still speak with an unwavering voice despite the blood still flowing heavily from her head—she continued, her voice softer, deeper, heavier, like a gravestone dropped into a bottomless well.
"You have long been corrupted by the soul of the God of the Vast Cosmos."
The Silent One did not respond with words.
He only laughed—a laughter no longer bitter as when he admitted his role as the mastermind, no longer resentful as when he spoke of his rejected love for The Singer, but booming, shaking, reverberating through every fragment of dust still floating in that artificial hell, a laughter even louder, wilder, and more insane than when he confessed to being the orchestrator behind the brutal violation of all the Goddesses who had surrendered in the Harmony Conflict.
"How unusual," he said after his laughter subsided ten seconds later—ten seconds that felt like ten centuries for Huan Zheng, whose hairs stood on end once again that night; ten seconds that felt like ten deaths for Ling Xu, whose third eye pulsed faster as the Cancer plague within her grew restless from vibrations she could not identify; ten seconds that felt like ten new wounds for the Singer, whose blood still flowed heavily from her temples, yet whose eyes never blinked.
"How unusual it is for a host or vessel to have complete control over something that has invaded it."
Within the silence of his heart, amidst the pulses of the Realm of Humanity that began to beat in a strangely steady rhythm like war drums struck by tireless hands, Huan Zheng murmured, his inner voice no longer lazy nor flat, but sharp—like a scalpel slicing through layers of lies he had allowed to accumulate for thousands of years in the darkest corner of his consciousness.
"If what the soul of the God of the Vast Cosmos says is true—that it is highly unusual for a host to have full control over what inhabits it—then right now, The Singer is The Singer.
Not a body that has been taken over, not a physical nature drowning out her consciousness, but herself—the red-haired girl who loved playing her jade flute at the age of nineteen, who once laughed with me in the bamboo pavilion at the edge of the universe, who embraced me every night even though I never embraced her back."
He looked at The Singer, who still knelt on the ground with blood covering half her face, her body trembling as she held back something she could not control, her eyes burning not with anger or pain, but with a determination that would never fade.
And for the first time in thousands of years, Huan Zheng felt something warm in his chest—something he could not name, something that might be called hope by those who still believed that miracles were real.
"The Singer is not corrupted. Not like The Silent One, who is now completely controlled by the soul of the God of the Vast Cosmos, whose body has become nothing more than a puppet dancing on a stage designed long before he was born, whose voice is no longer his own but an echo of something older than time itself. She is still herself. She is still choosing. She is still resisting."
The Singer stepped back several paces.
Not with steady steps as when she walked onto the battlefield with her green flute at her lips, but with unsteady, broken steps, like someone walking barefoot over shattered glass.
Both of her hands rose again to her forehead, pressing against her temples that still bled, holding back something that felt as though it might explode at any moment within her head.
"My head… it feels like… like something is knocking from the inside…" she whispered, her voice no longer flat as when she said she did not care, no longer empty as when she accused The Silent One of long being corrupted, but breaking, wet, like harp strings snapping in the middle of the most beautiful melody.
As her body began to lose balance, as her knees—already scraped by the stone floor—started to weaken, as the world around her began to spin like a mad windmill—Ling Xu did not wait for Huan Zheng's command, did not consider whether her actions would be deemed foolish or dangerous, did not calculate how many risks she would have to take by approaching a woman who was transforming into the physical nature of the most powerful being in the boundless universe.
She simply moved.
Her body, light from having let go of everything she had once built and chosen emptiness, shot forward faster than lightning, faster than awareness, faster than fear.
In an instant, she was already beside The Singer, her warm and steady hands catching the woman's shoulders, slowly lowering her to the ground, letting that blazing red hair scatter across dust, ash, and the remains of shattered bone walls.
"Rest," Ling Xu said, her voice no longer cold as when she threatened Huan Zheng, no longer breaking as when she shouted at The Silent One, but gentle—very gentle.
Like a younger sister stroking the hair of her sick elder sibling, like a friend wiping away the tears of someone grieving, like a woman who—although moments ago had been blindly jealous because this woman pressed her body against Huan Zheng's chest and licked his ear with a warm, wet tongue—could not let anyone suffer alone, no matter who they were, no matter what they had done.
Because Ling Xu knew—she knew with absolute certainty—that no one deserved to suffer like this.
No one deserved to feel their head splitting from within because something was trying to take over their body.
No one deserved to become a victim of the ambitions of an older being that never asked for permission before destroying another's life.
To be continued…