Chapter 272: Chapter 270: The Realm-Breaking Dragon
The sun rose slowly, its morning rays gradually blanketing the giant dragon.
The dragon didn’t hesitate, chasing after the sun.
But just as Little Fish had tried to catch the moon before, the dragon flew for a long time, yet the distant sun seemed forever out of reach.
With no other choice, the dragon stopped in mid-air.
"Perhaps we’re going about this the wrong way," Lingyi said suddenly.
"What do you mean?"
"We shouldn’t be destroying these illusions. We should destroy what’s real in this scene—the thing that truly holds the Authority."
Hearing Lingyi’s suggestion, Little Fish was still a little confused.
’Real things? What here is real?’ Looking at the various scenes pieced together, Little Fish couldn’t tell what was real and what was fake.
"You don’t need to look. The real thing is right in front of you." Lingyi told Little Fish to look down at the sea.
A ferocious dragon was hovering above the surface of the water.
Little Fish stared blankly for a long time before it dawned on it.
’The only real thing... is us.’
"Do I have to kill myself?" Little Fish asked, stunned.
"You understand."
Little Fish was frozen to the spot. It never imagined it would have to make such a decision.
"If you can’t bring yourself to do it, I can," Lingyi’s calm voice said.
It seemed to think this was a very simple matter.
"No, I’ll do it myself."
Little Fish didn’t hesitate, nor did it doubt Lingyi’s words. The Authority of the sun instantly descended upon the dragon’s body.
Its scales began to char, and scorching heat seeped in from the outside.
Little Fish once again felt the despair of seeing the sun for the first time. An inescapable agony bored into its heart, destroying its body and will.
This time, there was no moon to soothe its pain.
It seemed to feel the heat tormenting it, intertwining with its thoughts, breaking through the heavens, and ascending to a higher plane.
Countless rays of light battered Little Fish. It was caught in a red storm, tossed about helplessly, going through an agony that felt like death and rebirth.
Until it lost all sensation.
Everything went black.
...
"You may wake now."
Lingyi called to it softly.
The searing heat was completely gone, replaced by a sensation like being in water.
Little Fish struggled, slowly waking up.
"Look down."
Upon waking, its vision still blurry, Little Fish groggily followed Lingyi’s instruction and looked down.
But one glance shocked Little Fish wide awake.
Below was no longer a calm sea.
Nor was it a landscape of ruins.
It was a bottomless chasm made of countless strokes—horizontals, verticals, and slants. Within the chasm was an endless black void.
"What is this?" Little Fish asked blankly.
"Those are characters," Lingyi explained flatly.
Little Fish stared at the chasms for a long time before it came back to its senses.
"My world... is a string of characters?"
For a moment, it couldn’t tell if the scene before it was real or an illusion.
’Could it be? Has the shoal not yet escaped the illusions?’
But a new Authority had appeared within its body.
"Dream?"
Little Fish carefully examined this Authority, its thoughts gradually clearing.
The Authority of Dream represented breakthrough.
It was the ability to cross boundaries.
"We found a way to break the shackles?" Little Fish was in disbelief.
It never imagined that this conquest would actually allow them to escape their cage, cross the boundary, and stand on a higher plane.
It was just that the truth of the world was a little too absurd.
Little Fish scanned the scenes they had once conquered. They were all just simple characters.
’No wonder.’
’No wonder those scenes were so pure—because the meanings of these characters were inherently pure.’
The sea was just the sea, the sun was just the sun.
The Authorities were the same. In a world of characters, the characters themselves were power.
These characters that depicted scenery also held other meanings, and those meanings were the Authorities.
Little Fish also discovered that on each of the characters conquered by the shoal, a fish-shaped chasm had appeared.
The fish-shaped chasms replaced the characters’ original strokes, yet they looked perfectly natural.
This also meant that the shoal now occupied a part of these characters.
And in doing so, they had obtained the Authorities of these characters.
"All the shoal has ever been doing is adding our own strokes to the characters!"
From this higher perspective, Little Fish instantly understood everything.
So, it began to search frantically among the chasms.
Finally, it found the character it had yearned for—Moon.
Now, it was a little fish curled into a ball, with slanting strokes representing the moonlight.
The strokes of the character for Moon had long been replaced by the shoal.
Little Fish looked with disappointment at the thing it had once longed for with all its being.
"They’re just strokes..."
The moon, and the moonlight.
"Was it all fake? Then what were my feelings?"
Looking at the chasms that formed the character for Moon, Little Fish also understood why the Authority of the Moon could control time.
It was simply because this character also meant "month." There was no other reason.
"So simple."
Because it was so simple, Little Fish’s entire perception was overturned. It froze on the spot, at a complete loss.
"Are you all right?" Lingyi asked with concern.
Little Fish stared blankly at Lingyi. "Don’t you feel any despair? We’re just characters."
It couldn’t believe how Lingyi could remain so calm.
"I did for a moment when I first saw it, but not anymore."
Lingyi looked at Little Fish intently.
"We’ve already succeeded, haven’t we?"
"What we were in the past has no bearing on what we are now. I too was once just a tiny dot that knew nothing. It is thanks to you that I was able to learn about this world and, eventually, escape this cage."
"We are already much better off than the other creatures living inside the characters. At least we know the true nature of the world."
"Rather than dwelling on where we came from, we should think about where we are going."
"The shoal was always meant to swim toward higher places."
Lingyi stated its feelings with perfect composure.
It was as if it had never viewed things from the perspective of an individual.
From beginning to end, Lingyi only ever thought from the perspective of the shoal.
"But don’t you feel like everything you’ve done is meaningless? Just messing around in a string of characters, our so-called conquests just scribbling, our past feelings all fake."
Little Fish asked Lingyi anxiously, its mind a tangled mess.
Some of the questions were really just for itself.
It wanted to see all this as calmly as Lingyi did, but it couldn’t.
Lingyi continued to watch Little Fish intently, listening until it had finished before speaking slowly:
"The fact that the shoal is standing here... that is the meaning."
