Calamity

Doubt? Of course. Xu Yuan had asked her this question more than once, but her answer had always been the same—he was a drop of ink in a pool of water, polluting the visible future. That answer might have been enough for the Overseeing Heaven Pavilion, but it was far from enough for Xu Yuan. He wanted to know why he was that drop of ink. Before this, Xu Yuan had always assumed it was because his soul hailed from another world. Just as the laws of a fallen dynasty held no sway over the people of the present, the Heavenly Yan Art naturally could not divine a soul from an alien realm. Yet after comprehending his Life-Death Dao domain, he had realized with a sudden jolt that, at the level of soul imprints, there was no difference whatsoever between the soul of a past life and the present. The Overseeing Heaven Pavilion's designation of him as a calamity had to stem from another cause—one whose effect they knew, but whose true nature they did not. Xu Yuan fell into silent thought before asking in a low, measured voice, "The you of the past probably wouldn't have lied to me—or rather, couldn't have deceived me. Bringing this up again now... Tianye must have shared some lost secrets dating back before the Pavilion's discontinuity?" Extermination was the highest form of respect one could pay a faction. When the cultivation world, ruled by the Overseeing Heaven Pavilion for countless ages, united to overthrow it, they naturally obliterated everything in their wake. Tianyan did not deny it. She said, "When those sects destroyed the Overseeing Heaven Pavilion ten thousand years ago, the vast majority of our sect's confidential records were lost—including the fundamental nature of how the Heavenly Yan Art divines the future, and the definition of the Evernight Calamity." "The fundamental nature of divining the future?" "Communicating with Him." *He?* No, not an ordinary person—a divine entity. "That thing in the heavens?" Xu Yuan was quick to react. "Yes." "And what is the nature of how It divines the future?" Xu Yuan blurted out the question, but the moment the words left his lips, he realized she had no reason to disclose secrets touching upon the inner workings of her sect's cultivation method. Yet to his surprise, Tianyan did not conceal it. Instead, she asked softly, "Do you still remember the Meishen illusory realm?" "Of course." "That illusory realm was a falsehood Yuchu created to mend her regrets. But if placed twenty thousand years ago, it would have been a dream divining the future." "..." Xu Yuan hesitated, though an inkling formed in his mind. "Are you saying the way It divines the future is similar to the Meishen illusory realm?" "While there are vast differences, you could understand it that way." "And what does that have to do with me being the Evernight Calamity?" "..." The curtain of falling snow between them drifted with the night wind. Silence fell over the dilapidated cottage. The young girl's golden eyes stared directly into the young man's, speaking in a calm, measured cadence: "You will kill Him in the future." "..." Xu Yuan's pupils constricted slightly. "...What?" Tianyan cast a glance toward the entrance of the Qionghua Secret Realm. "Just as dying in the Meishen illusory realm would mean real death for us, His divination of the future also uses Himself as a medium. If He is killed within that divination, He truly dissipates." Xu Yuan caught the flaw: "But the problem is, He isn't dead right now." Tianyan proved remarkably patient: "Unlike us in the Meishen illusory realm, He is the master of the divination. Naturally, He can forcibly terminate it before He is slain." "And forcibly terminating it carries a price?" "Yes. It depletes the power He accumulated over countless ages." "No wonder the future became invisible." Upon hearing this answer, Xu Yuan was unexpectedly calm. From the moment his father told him of the existence of Heaven's Will, he had vaguely guessed its connection to the Overseeing Heaven Pavilion. Yet the truth behind the definition of this calamity still left him with an ineffable trace of disappointment. *Guard the human race until the end of time.* He had never imagined that beneath such a noble ideal lay the same selfish desire to rule for ten thousand generations. There was nothing inherently wrong with that—countless people throughout history had done the same. Yet to find it clothed in the guise of the Overseeing Heaven Pavilion, a colossus that had stood for untold millennia, could not help but bring a sense of regret. Suppressing the wandering train of thought, Xu Yuan looked up at the girl opposite him and suddenly asked, "Why tell me this?" "I already told you the reason." "I mean you yourself." "..." Tianyan remained silent. Seeing her silence, Xu Yuan rose and stepped slowly through the curtain of snow dividing the cottage, walking toward her. "Telling me this goes against the Overseeing Heaven Pavilion's stance." "It was Tianye's wish." "The State of Godlessness strips away emotion, not one's brain." Xu Yuan walked up to her and said, "You once told me that the Pavilion's Saintess and the Pavilion Master are both Heaven's earthly proxies, equal in standing, with no superior or subordinate between them. The Pavilion Master has no authority to order the Saintess, especially after the Saintess enters the State of Godlessness. If you judged that this would harm the Overseeing Heaven Pavilion's interests, you would have refused, even if it were an order from the current Pavilion Master." Tianyan's flawless golden eyes trembled almost imperceptibly for a fraction of a second before she asked coolly in return, "Are you going to claim again that my State of Godlessness has been dispelled?" "Hasn't it?" Xu Yuan countered. "Your excessive self-importance is like a peacock fanning its tail. It's revolting." "You know that level of venom won't work on me." "..." Tianyan fell silent once more. Snow fell silently. They looked at each other without a word. After that fleeting lapse, nothing was amiss about the girl, but the answer he sought had already been confirmed the moment she spoke those ancient secrets. Though he did not know why Tianyan's State of Godlessness had been broken, piercing through this final veil would only become a burden to two people who were now sworn enemies. She understood this. He naturally understood it as well. In the end, Xu Yuan took half a step back, pressing her no further, but the question rose to his lips nonetheless: "Even knowing all this, you still choose to stand against me?" A flicker of complexity flashed deep within Tianyan's eyes. In a cool voice, she asked in return, "I am the Saintess of the Overseeing Heaven Pavilion. Do I have any reason or motive to take your side?" "You misunderstand." Xu Yuan looked up through the gaping hole in the roof toward the pitch-black vault of heaven. "I merely feel that such an already rotten ideal is not worth people like you and Tianye throwing yourselves into the fire one after another. You still choose to stand with Heaven's Will—could it be because the Heavenly Yan Art placed some form of shackle upon you?" Tianyan stared at Xu Yuan, her tone turning cold. "Xu Yuan, please stop flattering yourself. Both Tianye and I chose the Overseeing Heaven Pavilion out of our own will, out of alignment with His vision. The ideal upon which the Pavilion was founded has never decayed, and His existence has never degraded." Seeing her resolve, Xu Yuan realized the girl before him had changed considerably as well. At the very least, she was no longer naive. With an emotional sigh, he asked leisurely, "Then why does He forbid the emergence of another supreme powerhouse? Why must He eradicate any existence capable of threatening Him? For the human race, isn't the birth of a supreme powerhouse a good thing?" Tianyan did not immediately reply. She stepped into the veil of falling snow in the center of the cottage, her dark hair dusted with white as she slowly levitated into the air. "That is one of the reasons I came to find you. If you want the answer, come with me and see it with your own eyes." Xu Yuan watched her without moving. They were enemies now, locked in a feud that could end only in death. He could not blindly follow her on a whim. So he merely chuckled teasingly: "Did you make a special trip just to tell me this joke?" Tianyan did not pause in the face of his doubt, replying indifferently, "You once said that in this world, goodwill never comes without cause, and risk always accompanies opportunity. Without taking a risk, why should the Overseeing Heaven Pavilion tell you any of this? "Besides... "Aren't you curious where your father went during the month you spent traveling the world?" Her golden eyes flickered in the wind and snow as she looked down at him, then shifted away without a shred of lingering sentiment. Without waiting for Xu Yuan's reply, the petite figure transformed directly into a streak of light, streaking off toward the southwest. Xu Yuan stood where he was, gazing up at the sky in hesitation for a long moment before finally taking to the air, pursuing her toward the southwest. Soon, he caught up to her, as she was intentionally waiting ahead. Two escaping streaks of light tore through the darkness like shooting stars. Once upon a time, he and she had traveled side by side under the stars and moon countless times like this. Yet this time, there was no dazed nostalgia in Xu Yuan's eyes. He remained vigilant, using his spiritual vision to monitor the path ahead. Although he did not believe a Tianyan who had regained her emotions would use such a crude trick to lure him into an ambush, what if? Once the seed of suspicion was planted in one's heart, its growth could no longer be stopped. Without a single word, they traveled west from the Guanyin Mountain Range. Soon, Xu Yuan recognized where this route led. Yet as the two plunged deeper into the endless mountains, the light of Xu Yuan's flight gradually began to slow. He noticed that the source qi ahead had turned chaotic, and the range detectable by his spiritual vision was plummeting at rapid speed. A qi flow sea had manifested in the Wanxing Mountain Range—and its degree of chaos far exceeded anything Xu Yuan had ever witnessed before! In merely half an hour's journey, the range his spiritual vision could monitor had dropped from several dozen li to a mere few li! Looking at the girl beside him, he asked, "What happened up ahead?" Tianyan's answer was blunt: "Don't you already have the answer in your heart?" "My father and Wen Xinyun?" "Won't you know once you look?" "..." Time trickled by in that silence as the two penetrated deeper into the center of the qi flow sea. Eventually, they reached their destination at daybreak. It was the place where Xu Yuan had first come to know this world. The Wanxing Mountain Range. Revisiting the old place from high in the void, Xu Yuan felt no sentimentality, for the instant his eyes fell upon the horizon, his dark pupils began to tremble uncontrollably. The snow in the sky had ceased at some unknown point, with only the occasional mountain wind stirring up drifts of snowy mist. Looking into the far distance, beyond the snow-laden sea of trees lay an immense peak. Like a prehistoric behemoth, it crouched in the final darkness before dawn, its colossal shadow blotting out the sky. A bloody gleam flashed across Xu Yuan's eyes as he tried to find a trace of his memories upon that giant peak named Tianmen Mountain, but he ultimately failed. That was the place where he had stepped onto the path of cultivation. Great Yan's foremost peak, known as Tianmen Mountain. Yet at this moment, the circular opening known as the Heavenly Gate had vanished! Because this colossal peak had collapsed. The upper half of Tianmen Mountain had bizarrely vanished into thin air. No, it was more accurate to say it was still there. It was just that the shattered rock had turned into colossal boulders suspended in the sky, each as massive as an island. Even though the battle had already ended, the lingering might still held them hanging inverted across the heavens. When the first ray of the morning sun pierced the darkness from behind Xu Yuan, he was finally able to clearly see everything ahead through the intensely dense qi flow sea. The dawn cast a warm, golden rim over the world. At the foot of the collapsed Tianmen Mountain, the boundless forest had been leveled to the ground. Countless giant trees a hundred fathoms tall were snapped like twigs and piled haphazardly, crushed by overwhelming might. Terrifying fissures scarred the earth like wounds, and massive abyss-like craters were scattered across the landscape like festering sores on the forest. Amidst the drifting snowy mist, floating islets and heavenly isles drifted in and out of view around the severed mountain. A duel of individual might, a battle that had almost completely eradicated the topography! Without a single word, Xu Yuan quietly watched the collapsed Tianmen Mountain on the horizon. He had many questions to ask, but faced with the ruin wrought by such appalling might, he did not know where to begin. The dawn gradually rose in the east, illuminating that battlefield of beings beyond the Saint Realm. The young girl standing beside him floated slowly before his eyes, her dazzling golden pupils facing the sunlight as she looked into his eyes and asked, "If the mighty power possessed by those beyond the Saint Realm is already like this, what of realms higher still? "Xu Yuan, "tell me... when individual power surpasses the limit of what anyone can balance, what will become of this world?"