Chapter 114
"Complexity Dao, Ling Xu," said the Cancer plague Consciousness, its voice no longer rushed as it had been when calling Ling Xu's name, but heavy, deep, like a gravestone dropped into the bottom of a well whose depths had never been found. Yet beneath that weight, something moved, something that people who still believed miracles were real might have called admiration, the belief that miracles could happen in the most unexpected places, at the most unexpected times, to the most unexpected people.
Haaah!!
"... Is a realm where a cultivator—after reaching the peak of Humanity Head, after understanding that the difference between Leg of Humanity, Abdomen of Humanity, and Head Humanity is not a difference of numbers or levels, but a fundamental difference, a structural difference, a difference so vast that those above cannot even be perceived by those below—chooses to alter their very existence, Ling Xu. Chooses to violate the laws of Dao and Tao. Chooses to become a disturbance within the orderly flow of Dao and its interconnected harmony. And to reach this realm, Ling Xu, a Humanity Head cultivator must undergo a trial known as the Destruction of Dao Meanings. A trial lasting sixty minutes, Ling Xu. Sixty minutes in which, every single minute, the cultivator must simulate themselves destroying the boundless flow of Dao. Sixty minutes where every successfully endured minute grants them a new trial with a stronger flow of Dao than the one before it. Sixty minutes in which the trial does not care whether the cultivator can complete the first, second, and subsequent trials within the allotted time of each one—namely, one minute each. And when this trial begins, Ling Xu, the cultivator will literally undergo transformation. Their existence will be altered, their nature reshaped, into a disturbance within the orderly flow of Dao, into a thorn lodged within the flesh of Tao, into something that cannot be ignored by anyone, not even by Gods who have reached the summit above all summits."
From afar, The Silent One watched Ling Xu's attack still streaking through the void—still moving, still gliding, still not yet reaching him, still requiring roughly one more second if the concept of time could even be applied in a place that should not possess time at all—and he raised his hand.
Not with the panicked motion of someone startled, not with the calmness of someone who had prepared for everything, but with movements born from thousands of years of experience, from the knowledge that no attack was impossible to block, no enemy impossible to defeat, no destiny impossible to rewrite, so long as he still possessed Manuscript Ink, so long as he still controlled this story, so long as he remained a puppet dancing upon the stage designed by the soul of the God of the Vast Cosmos before he had even been born.
And with a movement so swift, so precise, so effortless that it required no thought because it had long since become instinct, The Silent One caught Ling Xu's attack.
Not with his hand, for his hand was still occupied releasing Manuscript Ink, but with emptiness itself, with the void, with the white canvas that faithfully continued serving as the backdrop of their battle.
And with a single dismissive motion—lazy, indifferent, reminding Ling Xu of Huan Zheng while simultaneously feeling utterly different because there was no warmth behind that laziness, no love, no sacrifice, only boredom, only the desire to end all of this as quickly as possible—The Silent One hurled Ling Xu's attack toward the farthest reaches behind him, to a place where the void remained completely empty, where no foot had ever stepped, where no story had ever been written.
And the attack landed.
Not with a devastating explosion, not with thunderous noise, but with horrifying silence, silence born from the fact that in a place truly empty, nothing could resonate, nothing could echo, nothing could amplify sound. There was only nothingness, only emptiness, only a white canvas still faithfully waiting to be scribbled upon.
And from the place where Ling Xu's attack landed, from the impact that left behind traces of gray light pulsing in the same strange rhythm as Ling Xu's heartbeat, a fragment of a sentence emerged.
Not a short sentence like "I will kill you" written by The Silent One, but a long, winding sentence overflowing with rage, vengeance, and hatred too immeasurable to quantify because it had been born from wounds that never healed, from memories that never faded, from love for a mother stolen away in the vilest, most brutal, most inhuman way ever committed by beings who dared call themselves human.
"I will poison you, I will sever your heads, I will stab your bodies just as you humans blindly enjoyed my mother's body. NEVER AGAIN!!!"
Amid the spiraling reality slowly returning to its original form—where the empty canvas created by The Silent One was gradually repainted by colors that had forgotten they were once expelled, where time, which had briefly stopped like a horse suddenly refusing to run, now began crawling forward once more with hesitant steps, where dust frozen in the air slowly remembered its duty to fall to the ground—Ling Xu shot forward.
Not with speed measurable through heartbeats or blinks, but with speed born from determination that had never learned the meaning of retreat, from anger preserved through eleven deaths and eleven rebirths, from the awareness that behind him, Huan Zheng still lay weak upon the ground with blood still flowing from his wounds, even if slower than before.
"The first attack," whispered Ling Xu, his voice no longer bitter as when he heard about the necessity of killing fellow humans, but cold, as sharp as a blade freshly honed against the finest whetstone, "for my mother."
And from the palm of his hand, now covered by layers of Cancer plague flesh pulsing with an inhuman rhythm, burst forth streams of grayish-green aura.
Not an aura slithering like snakes, not an aura crashing like storms, but an aura that wrote, leaving trails across the air like a pen carving ink onto untouched paper.
The Silent One did not move.
He merely smiled—a smile that never reached his dark, glowing eyes, a smile that resembled the painted expression affixed to the face of a statue that had never learned what happiness felt like.
"Fool," he said. And before the sound of his voice had even finished trembling through the air, flames—not red flames known to blacksmiths, not blue flames from funeral furnaces, but empty flames, flames forged from the same nothingness with which he had transformed reality into a blank canvas—devoured Ling Xu's attack, burning it from edge to edge, from root to tip, from beginning to end.
Yet those empty flames, though capable of reducing the grayish-green aura into meaningless ash, could not burn everything.
Because amidst the ashes drifting like butterflies whose wings were made of despair, there remained residue, remnants, something left behind—something that had not burned because it was not made of energy, aura, or intent, but of words, of sentences buried deep within Ling Xu's heart for countless years, of curses that throughout eleven deaths he had never been able to scream aloud because every time he died, his mouth froze shut, his tongue became stone, and his voice vanished like mist chased away by the morning sun.
That fragment of a sentence appeared in the air, floating like a ghost with no home left to return to, and it read:
"You—you humans who raped my mother, who beheaded defeated Goddesses, who laughed while blood flooded the streets and screams became lullabies—you will never understand what it means to lose everything, because you have never possessed anything worthy of being called precious."
To be continued…