Chapter 108
"I understand now. I understand the true purpose of the soul of the God of the Vast Cosmos. He never merely wanted to reunite his separated soul and physical nature—that was only a disguise, only an excuse, only a story he created to conceal his true intentions. His real goal, Ling Xu, is to destroy you. Not because he hates you, not because you threaten his authority, not because you possess something he desires—but because you, as the vessel of the Cancer plague, as the only being capable of matching his power, as the only one capable of stopping him, are the greatest threat to his plan of reclaiming dominion over this infinite universe once again. And because of that, he will do anything to kill you, Ling Xu. He will use all of his power, all of his deception, all of his depravity, simply to ensure that you will never rise again, that you will never threaten him again, that you will never stand before him once more with your blazing third eye and the Cancer plague ready to devour."
And amidst that explanation, between the words spoken by the Cancer plague Consciousness with increasing speed, density, and urgency it could no longer conceal, Ling Xu felt something warm within her chest.
Not the warmth of the Cancer plague, dark and cold, but the warmth of certainty, the warmth of conviction, the warmth of realizing that she was not alone, that within her existed a being older than the universe, stronger than any God, hungrier than death itself, a being that would help her, protect her, and fight alongside her even against the cruelest enemy imaginable.
"I will tell you everything you need to know about the realm of Humanity—the three common realms and the one extra realm within it, how to ascend them, their weaknesses and strengths, everything that will allow you to defeat The Silent One, defeat the soul of the God of the Vast Cosmos, defeat anyone who dares stand in the way of your love for Huan Zheng. But not now. Because right now, you must fight."
Amid the tension hanging like a mist that never truly faded—among the dust that ceased drifting as though even the smallest particles were afraid to move, among the still-smoking ruins whose smoke suddenly froze in the air like an unfinished painting, beneath the crimson sky slowly turning pale gray because color itself had forgotten how to move from one spectrum to another—The Silent One exhaled.
Not a long breath filled with despair or exhaustion, not a short breath released from shock or injury, but a breath so brief, so quick, so ordinary that if you blinked at the wrong moment, you would think nothing had happened at all, that The Silent One was merely breathing like any ordinary man standing at the edge of a cliff while admiring the sunset.
But Ling Xu—whose third eye burned with a grayish-green light, whose consciousness had connected to the Cancer plague older than time itself, who had died eleven times and learned to sense vibrations imperceptible to ordinary beings—felt it.
She felt how The Silent One's brief breath did not merely stir the air around his mouth and nose, but spread outward, reaching every corner of reality, every crack between space and time, every concept ever born and ever destroyed within the minds of beings throughout the infinite universe.
"You can feel it, can't you, Ling Xu?" whispered The Silent One. His voice was no longer flat and empty like when he described the deaths of Huan Mei and her children, no longer sharp and piercing like when he revealed his depravity, but gentle—very gentle—like a teacher asking a student whether they understood the lesson just explained, like a lover whispering into their partner's ear in the silence of midnight.
"This is the breath that stops time. Not time as you understand it—the seconds moving forward, the unnoticed passing of minutes, the hours governing the rhythm of your life. This is time as a concept, Ling Xu. Time as the foundation of reality, as the reason cause comes before effect, as the law declaring that what has already happened cannot be changed, no matter how desperately you try, no matter how much you cry, no matter how deeply you pray."
Inside Ling Xu's body, lightened after abandoning everything she had once built and choosing emptiness instead, deep within the axis of cultivation she had destroyed and rebuilt eleven times, something moved.
Not like a crawling serpent, not like spreading flames, but like a rising sea, like a flooding river, like a womb remembering that its purpose is to give birth.
The Cancer plague Consciousness, which had resided in the darkest corner of her mind from the very beginning, which until now had remained only a silent observer through every battle and every suffering, finally moved completely, spreading from the depths of her consciousness through every vein, every artery, every muscle fiber that had endured the agony of dying eleven times and resurrecting eleven times, and wherever it touched, it left a mark.
Not a visible mark, not scars perceivable to the naked eye, but layers—layers made from an aura neither hot nor cold, from slime neither wet nor dry, from living flesh pulsating in rhythm with Ling Xu's heartbeat, like an unborn child kicking inside its mother's womb because it longs to emerge, longs to see the world, longs to become part of something greater than itself.
"This, Ling Xu," whispered the Cancer plague Consciousness. Its voice was no longer clear and pure like when it explained the intentions of the soul of the God of the Vast Cosmos, no longer heavy and deep like when it soothed Ling Xu's panic, but soft—very soft—like a mother stroking the hair of her feverish child, like a nurse wrapping a patient's wound with clean and warm cloth.
"This is your nature. Not your nature as a Goddess, not your nature as a human, not your nature as a cultivator—but your nature as the vessel of the Cancer plague. And this nature, Ling Xu, will protect you from anything. From frozen time, from immobilized concepts, from The Silent One's brief and deadly breath. Because the Cancer plague does not recognize time. The Cancer plague does not recognize concepts. The Cancer plague recognizes only one thing: life. And as long as you are alive, as long as your pulse still beats, as long as your flesh remains warm, nothing can stop you—not the Silent One, not the soul of the God of the Vast Cosmos, not all the Gods and Goddesses who once ruled this infinite universe."
And together with that whisper, from every pore of Ling Xu's skin, from every strand of her white hair streaked with vein-like patterns, from every corner of her body mutilated by eleven deaths and eleven resurrections, an aura began to emerge.
Not an ordinary aura measurable by temperature, pressure, or humidity, but an aura made of living flesh, pulsating slime, and an essence indescribable by words because words were never designed to describe something existing between life and death, between existence and nonexistence, between reality and a nightmare that never truly ends.
To be continued…