Stars

Starry Kingdom, Woodland Theater. When the shower of meteors was unleashed across the Realm of Stars, dawn was already fast approaching in the Starry Kingdom. As meteors soared one after another from the ground toward the firmament, tears ripped through the false starry sky. The light that countless people had envisioned in their minds yet never dared pray for was now squeezing, bit by bit, into this land that had been sealed for a thousand years. Of this venue, once considered the landmark and pride of Yudunling, nothing remained except the main stage. The earth had been churned over multiple times, leaving water pipes and electric cables exposed on the ground as if a monster had wreaked havoc here. Of course, there was no monster—only sorcerers engaged in battle. Sonia drew a sword mark spanning a hundred meters, across which nothing in sight could pass. Behind her, the phantom image of the Extinction Resentful Blazing Dragon flickered in and out of view, and the Love Letter battlefield she had erected stood as impregnable as an iron fortress. The Starry sorcerers looked up at this four-winged Sword Princess. Even though they outnumbered her a hundred- or a thousandfold, a deep sense of powerlessness still welled up in their hearts—as if they were facing a landslide or a tsunami, a sheer force of violence that no number of people could ever overcome. This was the girl's first battle outside the academy, her first life-and-death struggle unbound by rules, her first time baring her true fangs—yet right on her first try, she tasted what it felt like to trample the world beneath her feet. "Peak right at debut" was the wail mortals uttered when confronted with a monster like her. Suddenly, the Starry sorcerers receded like a tide, pulling back beyond the cordon. Watching them retreat from midair, Sonia gradually let her frayed nerves unwind. Only now did she realize her cheeks were flushed pink. The intense exertion made her very breath run warm, and her undergarments were soaked through, clinging stickily to her skin. Only her hands remained dry and free of sweat. This was completely different from training. She was the type who sweated easily and had to wear gloves during training to control it. Adele had previously told her about how embarrassing it got when sweaty hands ruined holding hands on a date, which had made Sonia rather nervous. Not that she was afraid of embarrassment, but if Yaxiu ever dared laugh, she would definitely not be able to resist bashing his head in. Yet the moment battle began, her body became thoroughly obedient, shutting down every physiological reaction that could hinder combat. It left her without any excuse to shirk blame; if she ever lost, she would have no choice but to admit her skills were simply inferior. Though, as far as she could recall, she had never lost yet. When Sonia returned to the main stage, countless pillars of starlight suddenly rose in the distance, their misty luminous arcs blending into a seamless expanse that brushed across the Starry land like ribbons of aurora. The Starry sorcerers had not retreated after all; they were merely praying—or perhaps celebrating. The only certainty was that they had not conceded defeat. "The blockade around Ruby Mountain," Diya suddenly said, "seemed to crack open for just a moment, though it closed again almost immediately." Sonia froze. "Could it be that inside, it's already..." They looked over at Yaxiu and the others, who still lay in deep slumber, their expressions darkening. If it wasn't over yet, that was one thing. But if the Angel Hunt had ended and Yaxiu still couldn't return... There were already more than enough people trying to lock Yaxiu away. They didn't need yet another existence beyond their power to contend with. Just then, they saw Daedalose staring blankly up at the sky, her face radiant with pure, unadorned joy. Resplendent and glowing with vivacity, she smiled more brilliantly than anyone Sonia had ever seen in any cinematic drama. "Daedalose...?" Sonia asked tentatively. "It's going to succeed!" Daedalose took Sonia's hand, as eager to share her joy as a child. "It's almost a success! The Four Pillar Gods have already felt the pulse of destiny! The Watcher is about to fulfill his glorious mission! Wonderful, simply wonderful—we are about to witness the birth of a new world!" Sonia and Diya exchanged a look, both sensing the unease in each other's hearts. Only now did they remember: shattering the celestial canopy was never the primary objective of the Four Pillars of the Stars. Shattering the canopy was, at best, a side task; even Daedalose did not know the true goal of the Four Pillar Gods. The only certainty was that the executor chosen by the Four Pillar Gods was Yaxiu. The Four Pillars of the Stars and Daedalose were nothing more than tools meant to assist him. What did the Four Pillar Gods truly want? What did they want Yaxiu to do? At that moment, Sonia noticed Felix slumped silently on the floor, leaning helplessly against Yaxiu's wheelchair. She walked over, crouched down, and asked, "What's wrong?" "Ah..." The second young lady of the Vosloda family looked up blankly and shook her head. "I'm fine." "Then why are you crying?" Felix touched her cheek, only to realize that two tracks of tears had run down her face. Staring at the moisture on her fingertips, she tilted her head, her golden hair cascading like a waterfall as she whispered softly: "Yes... why am I?" ... ... Across the expanse of the Grey Plains, the Canaan continued to faithfully carry out its mission, running along tracks that seemed endless toward the end of the world. Behind it, the fastest sports car in the Realm of Stars had already caught up. Yet the person in the car had missed his final chance, while the girl in the carriage was no longer the one he held dear. No one knew why the Canaan was still racing, nor why the Oracle Comet was still giving chase. It was as if this perpetually advancing yet relatively motionless distance happened to be the absolute limit of what they could bear. Or rather, the limit that allowed Yaxiu to keep his composure. If it had been a distance he could cross in an instant, even he didn't know what he might have done. The rain poured down in torrents through the gloom and the wind howled, yet only Yaxiu bore the ceaseless lashings of storm and rain. The flawless entity before him, bathed in starlight, remained untouched by even a speck of this world's malice. "Divine Lord of Stars." In the silence so suffocating it nearly choked the breath from his lungs, Yaxiu's voice struck like thunder, every note steeped in a rage folded countless times from the deepest depths of his soul. "That is your name, isn't it?" "That is my honorific, yet from your eyes, I see not an ounce of respect." Her voice was ethereal and aloof. Even with the exact same timbre, it filled Yaxiu with nothing but estrangement and disgust. "No need to force yourself. A name is merely a symbol. You may call me Fanxing, Yaxiu Heath." "You know me?" "From the moment you entered my kingdom, I knew of your existence." Yaxiu's first thought was the period when he had entered the Starry Kingdom, but he immediately realized: "Eight years ago—" "I was actually quite curious," Fanxing said. "Your personality is completely different from back then. The feelers of the Four Pillar Gods are truly wondrous beings." "You could observe the Realm of Stars the entire time?" "Before the blockade, I could observe from outside. After the blockade, I could only observe from within." "You were inside?" Yaxiu froze. "Didn't you wait until everything was accomplished before coming in from the outside to seize Feili's vessel and snatch her spoils?" "You seem to think I foresaw that Feili would inevitably claim the Supreme Holy Grail, so I leisurely stayed in my Kingdom of Heaven the entire time, waiting for Feili to defeat everyone before descending at ease to steal the victory." Fanxing chuckled softly. "To your disappointment, I am not a schemer like Weaver. "Besides, if I could enter from the outside, Weaver and the others could have done the same. Did you really think Weaver and the rest would dutifully withdraw from the contest just because they lost? What just tore through the celestial canopy to enter was merely a resurrection miracle—a miracle to resurrect Feili. "And fortunately, the Supreme Holy Grail had already precipitated out and the Prime Angel had lost all authority. Otherwise, I wouldn't have dared risk slipping even this resurrection miracle inside." Yaxiu's pupils shrank abruptly. "Resurrect... Feili?" "Yes. It was not Fanxing descending, but resurrecting Feili." Fanxing seemed quite pleased to reveal the truth to Yaxiu. "Do you really believe Feili alone could have overcome so many trials? In the first Angel Hunt, after you and Feili were separated, how did she stumble upon and drink from the first Holy Grail by sheer accident? In the second Angel Hunt, how did she evade the pursuit of the Six-Nation Legions and find you in the commercial district? "I was there the entire time." Her voice sounded like both a proclamation and a curse. "Feili and I are one." In an instant, countless thoughts flashed through Yaxiu's mind. He stared at Fanxing, his face ashen, bordering on despair. "Do not wear such a disrespectful expression." Fanxing's tone suddenly grew cold. "If it were truly I who deigned to bestow favor upon you, your only acceptable attitude would be feeling supreme honor, for it could have altered your final ending. "Yet the one who loved you truly was Feili," she said. "I watched as she grew increasingly mindful of you. I watched her heart flutter wildly at your words. I watched her agonize and grieve because your heart already belonged to others. I watched as she took notes listing every shred of evidence that you might like her, only to pull the sheets over herself with flushed cheeks afterward, kicking her calves pat-pat-pat against the mattress until it bounced up and down... "Though she and I were one, only when she did not know how to proceed would I hint at the right path. At all other times, especially when you were guiding her, I never interfered with her actions, let alone influenced her feelings. "She tried countless times to convince herself to let you go, but the moment she saw you, she fell for you all over again." Fanxing said placidly, "To this day, I do not know what kind of emotion love is, but I imagine she must have loved you very deeply." She raised her head to glance at the shower of meteors against the celestial canopy, then cast a sidelong glance at Yaxiu. "You shouldn't have told her things like taking a stroll together under the sunlight. Promises that cannot be kept will only leave her with one more regret before she disappears." Fortunately, Yaxiu was seated in the sports car; otherwise, he surely would have collapsed onto the ground like a dog stripped of its spine. Trembling hands gripping the steering wheel, he exhaled a breath of frosty despair, then looked up at Fanxing. "From the very beginning... Feili was your demon?" "Yes." "You and Feili are one, but Feili was the dominant personality?" "I don't care much for the term 'personality,'" Fanxing said. "You can think of it as an iceberg. What you normally saw was Feili floating above the surface of the sea, while hidden beneath was me. After descending into the demonic vessel, I did not choose to overwrite her will. Instead, I chose to merge with her, then separate myself out. That way, while preserving her independent will, I could still influence her actions when necessary. "To use a concept you are more familiar with," she continued, seemingly devoid of malice, "just as you are a feeler of the Four Pillar Gods, Feili was my feeler." Yaxiu drew a sharp, shivering hiss of air, inhaling deeply. "Why?" "Hmm?" "Why didn't you overwrite Feili's will like the other demons?" Yaxiu lifted his head, asking the question weighing most heavily on his mind. "Why didn't you step onto the battlefield yourself, instead of having to use Feili to achieve your ends?" Hearing Yaxiu's question, the corners of Fanxing's mouth curled upward little by little into a sweet smile. The baby fat identical to Feili's even gave her an air of adorableness, as if Yaxiu had offered her a splendid opportunity to boast to her heart's content. "Because this was the wager I am most proud of. "Yaxiu, I am not proficient in the prophecy faction. To match wits and schemes against the likes of Weaver would be pitting my weakness against their strength, and hoping to outplot the Prime Angel that way was pure fantasy. However, I once obtained a legacy of the destiny faction. Leveraging the power of destiny, I successfully established a mapping between the Realm of Stars and the Starry Kingdom. "You should have realized by now that your relationships in the Starry Kingdom influence the destiny of the Realm of Stars to a certain degree. Encountering Harvey and Igola on your very first day didn't actually have much to do with Rose; it was because your destinies were too deeply intertwined in reality. "I chose Feili as my vessel for one reason alone," she smiled. "Because in reality, her original body was the person most deeply entwined with the Starry feeler of the Four Pillar Gods. "Even if I succeeded in locking the Prime Angel in a cage, the probability of me seizing the Supreme Holy Grail was exceedingly low. The other Divine Lords would never allow me to have my way, and the Prime Angel was not so easily slain. Therefore, what I had to do was stand beside the person most likely to claim the Grail. "And that person was you, Yaxiu Heath." Yaxiu had thought he could accept any truth Fanxing uttered, but hearing this still felt utterly absurd. "Me?" "In your current state, you cannot comprehend the stature of the Prime Angel," Fanxing explained. "The Void Realm dotes upon the Prime Angel to an extent sorcerers can hardly imagine. Without you, even if the Prime Angel died, no one would obtain its Grail. The far more likely outcome would be the Grail vanishing, only for a new Prime Angel to be nurtured and born a thousand years later. "Yet you altered the currents of the Void Realm. For you are a feeler of the Four Pillar Gods, and in the eyes of the Void Realm, the Four Pillar Gods are family second only to the Prime Angel. "If the Prime Angel truly had to die, you were the only one qualified to hold up the Grail." Fanxing seemed unwilling to keep standing, yet with no seats nearby, she sat down on the edge of the carriage, her dangling legs nearly brushing the hood of the Oracle Comet. "Only by drawing close to you was it possible to draw close to the Supreme Holy Grail. "Since Feili's real-world body was already entwined with you, the destiny mapping naturally ensured that Feili would come together with you. Thus, far from overwriting her will, I had to minimize my own interference as much as possible. Only then would the destiny mapping take effect to the maximum extent, binding her destiny to yours. "In fact, it was precisely because Feili followed you in complete ignorance that she could reap the greatest rewards. Even if I had entered the field myself, I could not have done better than her. Were it not for you, she never could have stood on the demons' battlefield; were it not for you, she never could have won in the end. "Countless times I thought she would lose, yet countless times she persevered for your sake. Because she wanted to seize the Supreme Holy Grail for you, even destiny yielded to her! The more she loved you, the more she yearned for you, the more genuinely she cared for you, the greater the aid the world granted her—to the point that even demons were left to swallow bitter defeat! "This Grail," Fanxing raised the Supreme Holy Grail in her hand, "actually belongs to you, Yaxiu Heath." She lowered her eyes and locked gazes with Yaxiu in the Oracle Comet. Eyes brimming with starlight met eyes black and profound; reflected in their pupils were each other's cold, callous gazes, like two genuine demons. Suddenly, Fanxing's heeled boots swung twice in midair, like gentle ripples spreading across a calm lake, stirring up Yaxiu's memories. When riding the cable car in Xiaguang Happy World, Feili had loved swinging her legs back and forth like that, swinging so hard the car swayed, only to hug herself in fright—yet she still couldn't resist swinging them, occasionally hooking her feet against Yaxiu's legs. Fanxing withdrew her gaze and let out a soft chuckle. "Look at that expression of yours. It's almost as if what I stole wasn't your Grail, but your girl."