Chapter 843: Devil (1)
An hour later...
Rustle~
An hour later, the alpine winds carried a faint, haunting fragrance of snow lotus through the cherry blossom drifts, delicate white petals trembling like forgotten promises against the eternal snow.
It was a fragile miracle in this fractured realm, one that bloomed only when winter and fleeting spring collided in quiet snow.
Wang Xiao sat with his back against the cold rock, legs stretched out, Shuangshuang nestled between them like a fragile porcelain doll.
Her small frame pressed warm against his chest, yet the silence between them had grown heavy, with the ghosts of old scars.
He exhaled slowly, staring at the distant, unchanging mountains.
The taste of Zhae’Kyrra’s broken submission lingered on his tongue like bitter ash from a forgotten altar.
A necessary cruelty.
A fleeting release.
Or was it?
One who has tasted blood can never forget its crimson echo. Why else do the gods eternally toy with mortals, if not to slake their own unquenchable thirst, to project their godhood upon the fleeting world, and thereby affirm it within their own eternal hearts?
For a god needs no worshippers merely to dwell in the minds of others; he needs them so that he may truly become divine in the mirror of his solitary self.
Yet the harshest decree of Heaven is this: to stand atop the mountain’s solitary peak, where no higher path remains. The joy of ascent has dissolved into mist, leaving only the long, weightless march of inexorable strength, an empty summit where even the wind grows still.
Thus boredom and duty stirred once more, like autumn leaves whispering of forgotten cycles.
Wang Xiao shifted, rising to his feet.
"...? You are leaving...?"
A voice trailed after him, soft, almost mechanical in its flatness, yet with a rare tremor of loss. She rose swiftly, as if to follow, her delicate hand instinctively clutching the edge of his sleeve.
Wang Xiao paused. His large hand descended, gently but firmly pressing her shoulder back down. "Stay here. I will return in some time."
The wind sighed through her cyan hair like forgotten rain drifting across an ancient plain.
"..." She gazed up at him with wide, unblinking eyes, quiet desolation pooling in their depths like still water beneath the moon.
A small shake of her head. "No."
"Shuangshuang..." His voice dipped with weary irritation. "When did you become so stubborn?"
"Am I stubborn?" she whispered, tilting her head with aching delicacy. Her gaze searched his face, as though gathering scattered petals of memory. "Father... you are the stubborn one. You left me last time... in the rain."
"???"
Wang Xiao’s eyes twitched, a flicker of something ancient and dark crossing his sharp features, like thunder veiled behind eternal clouds.
He reached toward the delicate parasol she always carried, that cherished, ridiculous talisman shielding her from a world that had already scarred her enough. "After all these years, you still remember this? Perhaps I should simply remove the root cause..."
She stepped back protectively, clutching the parasol to her chest with surprising resolve. A flash of fear, "No... Father may take other things. Not this..."
He regarded her for a long moment, then exhaled sharply, his words heavy with the indifference of the cosmos. "Do you wish me to send you back to being chased by those ghosts again?"
She shook her head slowly, curls swaying like willow fronds in a mournful breeze.
"Then be quiet."
He turned and walked away, his tall figure soon swallowed by swirling snow and blossoms. Shuangshuang remained behind, small and motionless against the vast white expanse, her parasol clutched like a fragile ward against the unchanging heavens.
Above, the clouds devoured themselves in slow, silent spirals. No matter how the winds shifted, the patterns endured.
Repetition.
Often the world grows so monotonous that one begins to see ghosts and illusions of the past, as though the moment has already been lived.
Yet for her, it was no ghost, but cruel reality resurfacing.
Wang Xiao did not look back. His life moved upon a different scale; what felt like abandonment to her was but the blink of an eye to him.
Deep within his consciousness, Yin Yue observed it all with quiet detachment. [Wow... I wouldn’t say I am not amazed.] She had not expected him to slip back into this rhythm so seamlessly.
Whether for good or ill mattered little to her.
It simply echoed the earlier days they had shared, when his hunger knew no bounds and nothing could bind his path.
She had begun to think he had strayed from it.
But now she was forced to reconsider, was it all an illusion?
In truth, she had misjudged him.
Where once he lacked knowledge, he now carried something far heavier: the accumulated storm of countless lifetimes.
A cloud can only burst when it has gathered enough rain; to let it dry too soon would merely hollow and disperse it.
Wang Xiao was no longer merely acting.
He was shaping the world around him.
To glimpse his true intentions was to peer through layered veils of reality, unfathomable, like chasing the dragon’s shadow across an endless abyss.
At the outskirts of Xianthera’s capital stood its grandest castle, like the opulent mansion of some long-fallen royal house.
Yet all knew only one woman dwelled within its halls: Victoria.
Unlike Amelia, that mad science freak who presided over the academy where Wang Xiao had studied, or Eleanor, who pulled every string from the shadows, Victoria’s reputation thundered loud and unrestrained.
The strongest publicly known warrior in all Xianthera. Once said to have tied with a monk of the ancient temple, she had long eclipsed him in both fame and raw might.
Her vast wealth flowed not from silk or spice, but from the bloody subjugation of evil spirits and ravenous demons, work as crude as it was necessary.
Xianthera did not bend to Aether’s refined dance.
No, its people wielded something far more primal: the sheer, unfiltered will of their evolved minds.
They could hurl that will outward as psychokinesis, bypassing the grinding toil of Aether entirely.
A shortcut to godlike strength.
Yet every shortcut carves its own scars. The brain leaks thoughts like a cracked wine jar; superior beings such as Victoria or Eleanor could dam the flow with iron discipline, but lesser souls spilled constantly.
Without extreme emotion, the leaks stayed contained. Still, the risk, especially among the mighty, where a single slip of thought could birth catastrophe.
Those bound by Aether fared better; it acted as a shock absorber, containing the harm.
But Xianthera had none.
Wang Xiao had once flooded the realm with it, only to withdraw the gift when he saw how ill it suited their crude ways. No one died, their adapted bodies endured the pressure, but it disrupted the savage rhythm they called life.
Without Aether’s restraint, the lower beings’ constant leaks twisted reality itself.
Mutations bloomed like festering sores.
Ghosts and demons clawed into existence.
Even the land grew twisted, eerie beyond the tolerance of the stoutest hearts, where mortal frailty painted nightmares onto the world.
The black mist shrouding the mountains, cordoned by lantern-lit ropes, was no mere fog.
It was the physical manifestation of those unconscious thoughts, a hellish realm where leaked desires and fears had solidified into unlivable torment.
The talisman-lantern array was an ancient spell, laid down by the first settlers who had glimpsed the true horror and, in their wisdom born of terror, chose to isolate it upon a forsaken corner of Xianthera.
Even now, their descendants maintained it with dutiful, almost vigilance, like fragile lanterns swaying against an endless, devouring night...
Yet the beings grew stronger by the day. Warriors sent to subjugate the growing hordes sometimes returned corrupted, minds shattered into howling insanity.
Behind Xianthera’s gilded facade lurked this darker, festering underbelly, a melancholic joke played by indifferent heavens.
"Should we end it once and for all? How long must we tolerate this filth? Before, we lacked the power... but what of now?"
Far away from the towering castle, deep in the city’s hidden heart stood a modest old-Japanese style dwelling, unassuming as a forgotten shrine
On the ground floor, two silhouettes sat in tense discussion, their words like unspoken storms.
