Dead Knot

Rewind the white cow's footsteps just a little. "...That's how it is. The reason the Silver Lantern is so single-mindedly bent on destroying the world stems from the Grey Fox legacy inside the Dead City. Perhaps when she was young, the Silver Lantern wandered into the Dead City by mistake and managed to walk out, but she isn't Black Crow—she couldn't pass through the mist gate without paying a price. And the prerequisite for crossing the mist gate is to unconditionally accept and inherit the final will of the Grey Fox sorcerers." "The moment she left the Shelter, she was fated to face it head-on." On the sixteenth floor of the Silent Spiral, Igola laid out all the intelligence to Yaxiu. Yaxiu listened and nodded silently, but then asked an unrelated question: "You actually already knew this back in the Dead City, didn't you?" *Because you didn't ask, either...* Igola's instinctive reaction was to brush it off like that, but when he saw the cult leader quietly gazing at him, the retort died on his tongue, turning instead into a blustering counterquestion: "Are you accusing me?" "I'm not accusing you. Why would I take my anger out on you? If the Silver Lantern guided us to the Dead City just so we'd learn the truth, then it was up to her to tell us, not your responsibility. Besides, I'm keeping plenty of secrets from you too. What right do I have to blame you for holding things back from me?" Yaxiu said softly. "Selfish though I am, I'm not so selfish as to expect everyone else to be selfless." "I'm just a little sad." "I'm sad in just the right measure—enough to appreciate your good intentions, and to understand that the problem lies with me. It was I who gave you doubts, which is why I haven't earned more of your trust." *You bastard...* Igola couldn't help but grit his teeth. Was this the power of Bard's Words? He made it sound so genuine that even Igola couldn't detect a single flaw. Even though a smile still hung on Yaxiu's face, he gave the impression of having his brows drooping in dejection—like a dog minding its own business on a walk, only to be suddenly kicked into the water. "You aren't me." Igola looked away, arms crossed over his chest. "Not everyone can remain indifferent to tragedy. Since we're going to leave this place anyway, why not let it be somewhere reasonably worthy of remembrance, rather than recalling only these irremediable tragedies?" "Some tragedies have no answer; they're a dead knot. One more person seeing the dead knot is just one more person distressed." "Thank you," Yaxiu said with a smile. "Your explanation means a great deal to me." "I'm not explaining," Igola retorted. "I'm just letting you know that you never had my trust to begin with. The only person a deceiver trusts is himself." Yaxiu smiled faintly and added, "Still, you were wrong about one thing." "Hm?" "As long as one more person sees the dead knot, one can never say there's no possibility of unraveling it." Yaxiu waved his hand. "All right, I understand. Hurry back and help Tamashi. And Gwen, you go too. I'll deal with the Silver Lantern alone." "Besides, you're better at supporting Igola." Yaxiu winked at Gwen. "Coordinating with me would just be a waste of your talents." Gwen lowered her head with a small nod, concealing the faint blush rising on her cheeks. Igola turned to leave, but suddenly paused. "I know where you get your confidence when dealing with the Silver Lantern, but don't go thinking you have her wrapped around your finger. For someone whose heart is as cold as iron, the gentleness born from that tiny sliver of sentiment is far too insignificant." Yaxiu couldn't help feeling a bit embarrassed. "Like I said, I'm not selfish enough to expect others to be selfless." "I've gathered intel on the Silver Lantern's past over this period and put together a psychological profile on her," Igola continued. "At first, I thought she guided us... guided you to the Dead City because she wanted you to understand her, become her companion, or even save her. After all, destroying the world and slaughtering tens of millions of living souls, with zero personal benefit to boot—that's something any normal person would find almost impossible to accept. That's why not a single person has been able to walk out of the Dead City for a hundred years." "Even if the Silver Lantern was the sole exception, could a will forced upon her in childhood really remain unshakable forever? Could it be that once she grew up, she began to resist this mission, yet couldn't completely abandon it, remaining trapped in an agonizing struggle—treating you as a lifeline, hoping you could pull her out of the mire?" Yaxiu couldn't help nodding. Right after hearing Igola unravel the truth, a similar thought had indeed crossed his mind. "You'd better not harbor such naive illusions," Igola said coldly. "If I'm not mistaken, the Silver Lantern's initial intention may indeed have been for you to understand her. But she has always walked alone and doesn't need your help at all, so she has no need for you to join her." "She simply wants you to know what an extraordinary feat she is accomplishing." "What do you mean?" Yaxiu asked, somewhat baffled. "To put it plainly," Igola said, "she's proud of her life's work." "She's actually just showing off." ... "I am the world-destroying spell." The sunlight was bright, the sea breeze sweeping over them. Weise stood barefoot on the sandy beach. She squatted down, scooped up a conch shell in both hands, and tilted her head slightly to look at Yaxiu, her eyes seeming to shine. It was as though they were discussing not the life and death of Senluo, but the spiral pattern on a conch. Yaxiu pondered. "You've become the Dream Lord of the Senluo realm... which means the responsibility of sustaining the Senluo realm has fallen into your hands?" "Yes." "But..." Yaxiu weighed his words carefully. "Up until now, it was always the Senluo Azure Lord sustaining the Senluo realm. Silver Lantern, can you really... bear that burden?" "Of course not." Weise smiled and shook her head, continuing along the beach. Yaxiu caught up and walked beside her. Just then, Weise's Square Cicada suddenly emerged, and Yaxiu's Round Cicada surfaced in response. These two Four-Wing sorcery spirits from the same source peered curiously at the oddly shaped cicada across from them. "Right now, I've inherited a tiny portion of the Senluo realm," Weise said, pinching her index finger and thumb close together to indicate a minute interval. She thought for a second, then narrowed the gap even further. "I'm already affecting reality—somewhere out there, a peripheral oasis is probably withering, a river drying up, and a wasteland whipping up a storm." "The dreamscape I can maintain is only as large as the dream bubbles you witnessed in the Distant Sky Realm. Yet how could the size of the Senluo realm be measured by merely tens of millions of dream bubbles? What's more, after thousands of years of development, the Senluo realm has accumulated countless 'affixes' that require the Dream Lord's utmost effort to sustain." "The Senluo realm may look desolate now, but even this is the result of the Azure Lord striving with all His might to hold it together. Once it is handed over to me, everything will turn to ash and vanish, bursting like foam." "Here," Weise pointed to the sandy beach, "is the place closest to reality. This is where the Senluo Azure Lord started, slowly weaving the Senluo realm out of dreams. Have you ever stacked building blocks? The way the Senluo Azure Lord constructed the dreamscape was rather like stacking blocks: piling them higher and higher, and then pulling out the blocks at the foundation—which are floors one through seventeen of the Silent Spiral—all to prevent ordinary mortals from reaching the bottom floor." "Doesn't that make it a castle in the air?" Yaxiu asked. "It is a castle in the air, but as long as the Senluo Azure Lord props it up, even a castle in the air can be as solid as bedrock," Weise said. "Yet if the Senluo Azure Lord dies, a Senluo realm with no foundation will instantly collapse. I don't know what will happen either, but when a building without foundations falls, there's hardly any outcome other than becoming ruins." "Still, the Senluo Azure Lord didn't leave things entirely unprepared. Under normal circumstances, so many grand laws would never appear in the Senluo realm. Usually, sixteen cults competed against each other—precisely one fewer than seventeen—because the Senluo Azure Lord deliberately suppressed the number of grand laws. Only when the Azure Lord lost control over the realm did the grand laws undergo explosive growth... Right now, the total number of grand laws in the wasteland should be around thirty." "Then, the people of Senluo need only slot the grand laws into the Silent Spiral, and they will serve as the foundation to stabilize the realm." Yaxiu asked, "Can this stop the final doomsday?" "No," Weise shook her head, kicking away a spray of sand with force. "This is meant to welcome doomsday." "It's like pulling the plug from a water reservoir; the water flows down the pipes into the drain." Weise looked at Yaxiu. "The Silent Spiral is both foundation and plumbing." A chill swept through Yaxiu's heart. Mortals could not bear the Senluo dreamscape, yet the Azure Lord had practically scrambled to thrust it upon the Silver Lantern. The Silent Spiral was the path to inheriting the Senluo dreamscape, but it was also a smooth highway straight to doom... "...Then when will this plug be pulled?" "Anytime. For instance, I could pull out a small piece right now." Weise spread her hands. "And then the Senluo dreamscape would begin collapsing, and all living souls would rush into the Silent Spiral, plummeting downward until they flow into our eternal resting place—the Void Realm." "Aside from that, when I fully inherit the Senluo dreamscape, the plug will completely shatter," Weise said with a laugh. "The so-called plug is 'the power sustaining the continued existence of the Senluo realm.' I don't know how the Senluo Azure Lord managed it, but it likely requires the power of a god to perform such a miracle. Naturally, I am powerless to do so." "That is why I said I am the world-destroying spell." She scooped up a handful of sand, letting the grains slip between her fingers to scatter on the wind. "On the day I enter the dream, all living beings will return to the cradle and fall into slumber." Weise suddenly looked at Yaxiu. "You know by now, don't you?" Though the question came out of nowhere, Yaxiu understood. "Igola deduced the truth of the Dead City and told me everything just now. His description of you was: you know a future catastrophe is impending, and you possess a miraculous blade; those you slay will live happy lives in another world. Thus, in that other world, you are a hero, but in reality, you are merely a bloodthirsty maniac." "While I know Igola was trying to soften the blow for you, I rather like his description," Weise said with a smile. "Though in reality, there's no such pleasant outcome—there won't be any happy life, and no one will consider me a hero. Besides, 'bloodthirsty maniac' is far too low in purity for what I am." "In that case, you should understand now." Weise stopped in her tracks, looking at Yaxiu. "It isn't just me, nor is it just the Grey Fox sorcerers. Destroying the Senluo dreamscape and dragging everyone into Hell was the Senluo Azure Lord's own desire all along." "The Senluo dreamscape is simply too colossal, too intricate. For thousands of years, countless sorcerers have added bricks and mortar to it, building it higher and higher year after year... Behind Grey Fox legacies such as the 'Shelter,' the 'Twin System,' and the 'Kaleidoscope' lie hundreds or even thousands of special affixes... Yet for a system so vast and convoluted, the only worker responsible for its maintenance and operation was the Senluo Azure Lord alone. It is like a single person holding up an entire mountain range." "I doubt another divine lord could have taken over this system intact either. Now that the Azure Lord is gravely injured and near death, this system He had to maintain has become an unbearable burden, accelerating His demise." "That is why the Grey Fox sorcerers of the Dead City left that legacy inside the 'Shelter.' At the very second the Grey Fox sorcerers met their doom, thousands of sorcerers deduced together the root cause of the disaster. They found no way to save the realm, but they heard the plea of the Senluo Azure Lord." "And that is why, the moment I reached the eighteenth floor, I obtained the Senluo inheritance." "I've arrived two hundred years late," Weise said. "The Senluo Azure Lord has been waiting for me all along." Yaxiu was suddenly reminded of Igola's words: *Some tragedies have no answer; they're a dead knot.* At first, Yaxiu thought destroying the world was merely Weise acting on her own stubborn obsession. Later, he discovered that world destruction was the will left behind by the Grey Fox sorcerers. Only now did he realize that even the Senluo Azure Lord wished to abandon this declining realm. For ordinary people of Senluo, this was undeniably an unforeseen calamity, an extinction-level catastrophe. They had done nothing wrong, yet from birth they had lived in a realm doomed to perish. Yet could one blame the Senluo Azure Lord? As seen through the eras of the Fire Cat, Blue Bird, and Grey Fox God Eras, His original intention in constructing this "dream realm" had been good. Precisely because the Azure Lord had blended His dreams into reality, the sorcerers of Senluo had been able to forge such a splendid civilization. Even now, every person in Senluo still benefited from the Azure Lord's grace—the "infant incubators" where Senluo's people were born were phantasm creations that could only function in the Senluo realm, to say nothing of the fact that the Azure Lord was still keeping the realm running. What was more, the Azure Lord had had no other choice. Had He not been grievously injured and dying, the Senluo realm would have long since entered a Fifth God Era—perhaps even a glorious age of immense material abundance. Even the Silver Lantern was the same: if she hadn't come to the eighteenth floor of the Silent Spiral to become the Dream Lord, then when the Senluo Azure Lord met His abrupt end and the wasteland dreamscape shattered, the negative energy from the Azure Lord's death would wash over the realm, turning all living creatures into green beasts and plunging all life into a dark age of eternal torment. Everyone had striven their best, yet they were forced to choose between a bad ending and an even worse one. There was no perfect answer. A sudden realization struck Yaxiu—he had been summoned to the Senluo Wasteland as the First Gospel! He was not the First Gospel, so he had assumed all along that he had been summoned to combat the Four Pillar Cult. But looking at it now, the Four Pillar Cult was at most a festering wound, whereas the Senluo realm's heart was already on the verge of stopping completely. If it had been the true First Gospel, she likely could have uncovered the truth with ease and identified the crux of the Senluo Wasteland's plight. Which meant the reason he had been summoned to the Senluo Wasteland was neither to assist the Calamitous Fire Sanctuary nor to oppose the Four Pillar Cult, but... "Still, it isn't too late yet," he murmured softly. "So," Weise stepped up before him, tilting her head back slightly to gaze up at him. At such close range, there was not a trace of shyness or any other romantic sentiment in her eyes—only crystalline resolve. "Are you still going to stop me?" "I never came here to stop you in the first place," Yaxiu said. "I came to untie this dead knot." He raised his hand, and a strange sorcery spirit appeared in his palm. It looked like a blank white tile with a pair of transparent cicada wings, beating so furiously they were nearly invisible. "This is an Empty Gate sorcery spirit," he said.