A Third Possibility for Death

The earth became sand; the daylight turned to night. Believers of the Transcendent Cult were swept along by an invisible torrent of fate. Not even the subterranean Transcendence Building could stem the tide of their movement. The barren, scorched wasteland seemed eroded by that same current, ground down into dense, fine sand where several young Transcendent believers excitedly traced patterns with their fingers. Faced with this sudden cataclysm, the vast majority of the Transcendent faithful felt neither grief nor joy. Though no longer connected to the computing nexus within the Transcendence Building, years of having their consciousness held in trust had thoroughly dulled their sensitivity to reality. To them, the only thing real was the beating of their own hearts, which sounded like the countdown on the ticking bomb of death. Compared to the Transcendent believers, those of other factions were in far more disgraceful states. Most were screaming and shouting in sheer pandemonium: one-winged sorcerers cast spells to save themselves, two-winged sorcerers unfurled illusory wings in an attempt to take flight, sanctuary sorcerers deployed their sanctuaries... Now and then, when two sects collided, lethal brawls broke out. Perhaps compared to an unknown destiny, dying in a holy war offered greater solace. Soon, they saw their destination. Across the boundless wasteland, a colossal green spear pierced the sky from the Silent Spiral, coiled in a storm of spiraling crystals. Swirling green crystal shards blotted out the sun, plunging Senluo's afternoon into a nocturnal realm of despair. Sorcerers trembled from head to toe at the sight. They had an inkling of what was happening, but none wished to dwell on it—nor did they have time to think. "Aaargh!" A sorcerer's shriek cut off abruptly as he stabbed his own heart, dying with a smile that blended terror and relief. Within the wailing, dark-green tempest, hysterical screams rose without pause. In the face of this sudden calamity, death seemed the only refuge. Yet amidst the roaring despair of heaven and earth, a clear prayer rang out through the vicinity: "Transcend consciousness; shed the self." Transcendent believers rose to their feet. One-winged sorcerers summoned their sorcery spirits; two-winged sorcerers spread their illusory wings; sanctuary sorcerers unfurled their sanctuaries. Ordinary followers stood tall with chests out, while children clutched adults' hands, fighting the urge to collapse. Crack crack crack! Countless arcs of lightning gathered in the hands of the Transcendent faithful. Their cult specialized almost exclusively in the lightning school, and this was their first time casting spells in the outside world in nearly fifty years. Its might crashed down like a deluge of thunderbolts—a marching storm! "The perfect twin, the spiral of fate. Therein lies salvation." On the other side, the Dark Snake Twins of the Twin Cult chanted loudly, completing their god-hosting ritual in an instant. Other twin sorcerers followed close behind, readying doubled miracles! "To forge bronze into arms, to lay laws for all lives, to inherit past arts from the gods, to bring lasting peace to Senluo." Followers of the Bronze Law chanted in unison, each gripping a bronze weapon as they aimed toward the domineering, dark-green storm! "The sun is a furry monster, licking away every sorrow with its golden light..." "For a clear, azure world!" "The calamitous fire shall never die!" The closer they drew to the dark-green tempest, the louder their battle cries became! Not every believer commanded a grand law; some were even faithless apostates who had defected to the Four Pillar Cult. Yet at this moment, without exception, they all chanted the prayers they had heard millions of times. These words gave them no strength, nor could they rescue them from their plight; in fact, they used to find them grating. But right now, those prayers served as their spine and their courage, propelling them into a final charge against the dark-green storm that was engulfing the world! Faith might not produce miracles, but it could make mortals fearless. In the face of the apocalypse, mortals were not entirely helpless. The sorcerers of Senluo were blazing with their final light. ... "Do you think Weixi might already be dead?" On the eighteenth floor of the Silent Spiral, a raging storm of dark-green flames had swallowed almost every inch of space. Only a sliver of pale yellow crept underground, slowly approaching the eye of the storm. Hearing Yaxiu's naive question, Weise shook her head gently and said in a calm tone, "If even you can hold out this long, Weixi will only have far more trump cards. By now, he has likely taken control of Fire Cat and left Senluo." She paused, then explained, "Unlike us, Weixi came here specifically to trigger the apocalypse from the start. He was bound to have a way out of a crumbling Senluo; he would never allow himself to be buried alongside this rotting realm. Though he certainly wanted to seize White Dove and Blue Bird as well, under the current circumstances, he has no choice but to abandon that plan unless he's willing to wait months." Yaxiu nodded in disappointment. He looked up through the pale yellow Sword Body Barrier, gazing into the long, stormy night illuminated only by dying embers. Every second, every minute, people of Senluo were being corroded into green beasts, ground into crystal shards that flew through the lowest reaches in howling torment. Their agony was unending; they would be divided among different crystal fragments for all eternity, rolling slowly across the barren waste, embracing madness in the long night of suffering. Even crushed to dust, their consciousness would not fade. Their pain and resentment would become the sole hue of Senluo. This was the most brutal apocalypse imaginable—a despair that had once grieved even the extinct Grey Fox sorcerers, the very curse Silver Lantern had believed she could avert. Originally, negative energy could have flooded all of Senluo only upon the death of the Senluo Azure Lord. But fearful that too many mortals would perish, the gods had used themselves as wedges to pry open Senluo's laws of death. Ordinarily, even if the gods had stepped in personally, it would merely have killed the people of Senluo prematurely, allowing their souls to return to the Void Realm. But in this realm, the absence of the Abyss meant a second possibility for death had always existed: Strangling Green into beasts. Through their joint efforts, White Dove and Blue Bird had successfully summoned this dark-green tempest. Every living being that perished within the storm was effectively strangled green to death, transmuted into green beasts! Though the people of Senluo were dead, their anguish and resentment remained a crushing burden upon the Azure Lord. That was precisely the goal of White Dove and Blue Bird: the people could die, but they could not leave. Even in death, they had to endure eternal torment in Senluo! Even as they rotted, they had to fester upon the Azure Lord's wounds! The mortals currently wailing within the storm would never guess that the culprits forcing them into a state where they could neither live nor die were none other than White Dove and Blue Bird—the very gods they had revered since childhood. Yaxiu knew the deities had long shed their humanity, yet whether because they were slowly learning or for some other reason, the three gods could have triggered the dark-green tempest right from the start rather than attempting to seal the rift. Had they not been pushed to their limits by the uncontainable breach, they never would have unleashed it. Perhaps... as long as it did not compromise their overarching goal of slaying the Azure Lord, the three gods had actually been inclined to spare Senluo's people. Had it not been for Weixi, things never would have come to this. Yaxiu wished more than anything that Weixi had been swallowed by the dark-green storm—ground into millions of pieces of dust, forced to endure millions of shares of agony. Yet he had to admit Silver Lantern's speculation was the most probable. A monster wearing human skin like Weixi was not only likely to survive, but had probably already escaped Senluo, breathing fresh air in some new world while toying with the Fire Cat deity. There was no longer any need for Weixi to remain in Senluo, as this dark-green storm would persist for months at the very least. When the tempest first erupted, Yaxiu and Weise had assumed it wouldn't last long, which was why their initial reaction was to retreat and wait it out. But as time wore on, they gradually realized the gravity of the situation. Those crushed green crystals not only amplified the storm's power, but also reduced its energy consumption! Weise had been observing the gods with Clairvoyance and discovered that both White Dove and Blue Bird had regressed one year in age the instant they activated the miracle. After that, however, their appearances hardly shifted at all; sustaining the tempest was almost effortless for them. The storm would not abate until every single mortal in Senluo was dead. The people were its fuel. That was why Yaxiu had wondered if Weixi had died; amidst the raging storm, a sorcerer's sorcery power couldn't sustain a sanctuary for long. The protection currently shielding Yaxiu and Silver Lantern was his defensive miracle, Sword Body Barrier, and they crawled through the earth specifically to minimize the surface area exposed to the gale. One might wonder: didn't a defensive miracle consume sorcery power? Of course it did—only it didn't draw from Yaxiu's reserve, but from source crystals. Ever since he had driven the Awakening Dream deity with source crystals, Yaxiu had discovered their secondary application. This time, he had exchanged for source crystals directly and let his sorcery spirits feed on them to cast spells. Weise glanced at the source crystals without a word. Yaxiu had considered gnawing on source crystals himself to recover sorcery power, but after nearly breaking his teeth, he was forced to admit that source crystals were a long way from joining the human diet—unless one bred a Lalafell with a source crystal. As the energy source of gods, using them as power reservoirs for a few sorcery spirits was like crushing an infant beneath a carriage: laughably effortless. But did that mean the two of them could hold out indefinitely without a care in the world? Naturally not. Yaxiu checked on his sickly Earth Sword, Heart Sword, and other sorcery spirits, then looked over at Silver Lantern crawling beside him. "How much farther?" Weise opened her glass-marble, transparent eyes, gazing toward the depths of the storm. "Five minutes away. Can you hold on?" "I'll have to, whether I can or not," Yaxiu murmured, continuing to crawl through the tunnel. Sorcery spirits were tools, and tools suffered wear and tear. Whenever he had used Sword Body Barrier before, it had lasted merely a few seconds, never exceeding a minute at most. Now, they had been traversing the miraculous tempest for more than ten minutes. Every passing second pushed the barrier near its absolute limit. This was no longer just overtime work; it was burning through his sorcery spirits to the point of exhaustion. Even with source crystals for replenishment, a human downing energy drinks every second couldn't work continuously for days without sleep, and sorcery spirits were no different. In another ten minutes—or perhaps five—every spirit besides the four-winged Heart Sword would die of exhaustion, just like Yaxiu in his past life. Once the sorcery spirits perished, all the source crystals in the world wouldn't do Yaxiu any good. That was why he and Weise had turned back, voluntarily venturing toward the core of the dark-green tempest. They had nowhere left to run; outside lay only an endless night. If they couldn't slay the gods and halt the dark-green storm, their only remaining choice was to pick a way to die that they liked—or maybe raise a grinning middle finger to the world right before the end, letting their defiant cheer pass down through the Sorcerer's Manual to future generations. Godslaying. Yaxiu turned the word over in his mind. To his surprise, he tasted neither fear nor excitement, nor joy. He had thought he would feel crushing sorrow for Igola and the others, or guilt toward Sword Princess and the Witch. Yet more than ten minutes of trekking through the dark night had quieted his turbulent heart, leaving him at peace to meet his destiny. *I am a legendary sorcerer,* Yaxiu thought. A legend was someone who, faced with the buffet of fate, could calmly savor every dish prepared by the chef of destiny. If he wanted to complain, he had more than enough grievances. They had been on the verge of leaving, only to be struck by this apocalyptic catastrophe. Looking further back, ever since arriving in Senluo, they had been dragged into the games between the Calamitous Fire Sanctuary, the Four Pillar Cult, and Silver Lantern, driven from pillar to post. Looking back over his journey in Senluo, it seemed as though fate had targeted them at every turn; nothing had gone smoothly. Even without an apocalypse, Yaxiu had sworn he would never return. Yet if asked whether the journey had been worth it, he believed it was. Setting aside the fact that gaining Tamashi as a dear friend made it worth the price of admission on its own, what Yaxiu found most unforgettable was the time spent with the Spectator during the Divine Fire Trial. Then there were the Transcendence Building, Black Robe Town, Dead City... and all the different cults, each a feast for the eyes of a supposed cult leader. More importantly, Yaxiu felt as though he had absorbed something from this wasteland steeped in fantasy and faith. Gradually, he had come to possess a conviction of his own. That conviction served no grand purpose, nor could he articulate what it was. But he knew it was forged from everyone he had ever known. Living or dead, near or far, the people in his memories had become his courage to defy fate. Even tramping through this long night, he was not alone. Still, it wasn't as if Yaxiu had nothing to grumble about. "In the end, I'm still dying with you," he said softly. "Are you thinking that if we were doomed to die anyway, we might as well have died together during the Divine Fire Trial?" Weise didn't look at him, yet she seemed to see right through his thoughts. "At least none of this would have happened." "A little, but that's just running away," Yaxiu replied. "As long as Senluo's people attempted a mass exodus, the three gods were bound to intervene. And if Senluo stayed as it was, it would have merely delayed this apocalypse to a later date." "At least the rest of you could have escaped Senluo," Weise said. "None of this was your concern to begin with." "Isn't that your fault?" Yaxiu said. "If you hadn't captured us back then, if you hadn't activated the Dragon Blood Cultivation System... maybe we wouldn't have ended up in this mess." "If you're waiting for self-reflection or an apology, I'm afraid you'll be disappointed," Weise said evenly. "I don't regret a single thing I've done—how many people I killed, how many evils I committed, or..." She paused. "Dragging you into this." Yaxiu's mouth twitched slightly, but he quickly answered, "Yeah, I know." "If it weren't for the three gods and Weixi, if we had been able to execute the plan I shared with you back then..." Yaxiu gazed into the stormy night. "Maybe it wouldn't have ended like this." "We still have a chance to change the outcome." "I know. But can we really slay a god?" "We can." Weise looked at him, an unreadable emotion flickering in her eyes. "Because there is a third possibility for death."