Chapter 11
Ling Xu fell silent.
She could hear it now—the steady march of footsteps, the grinding of metal, and most terrifying of all, the screams.
From afar, from the direction of the tents in the south, the voices of gods who had not yet become cultivators began to cry out.
Not cries of war, but cries of death—cries she knew all too well, because she had once heard them from her mother's mouth, before a silence more terrifying than those screams descended.
"You think I didn't hear it?" whispered Ling Xu, her voice trembling.
Not from fear, for her fear had long been buried alongside her mother, but from anger—anger because once again she had to run, once again she had to leave something unfinished, once again she became a helpless victim before a greater power.
"But at least let me—let me tear it apart once—just once—let me feel—"
She could not finish, because Huan Zheng suddenly pinched her cheek.
Not a harsh pinch, nor a playful one, but a precise one, like an older sibling waking a younger one from a nightmare in the middle of the night.
"Listen, Miss Poison," said Huan Zheng, his voice suddenly serious—serious in a strange way, like a clown removing his mask backstage, "you can tear apart a thousand corpses tomorrow or the day after. You can burn the entire universe if it makes you feel better. But not now. Not when six armies are surrounding us from every direction, and the only thing that separates us from the screaming gods in the south is the fact that we can still run."
He released his pinch, then let out a long breath—the breath of someone who had seen death too many times and knew exactly when to fight and when to become a coward.
"Trust me. I've seen too many people die because they refused to leave flesh that was already lifeless."
Ling Xu stared at Huan Zheng for a long moment, then looked at the pulsating mass of Whou Ming's flesh behind him, and for a brief second, she felt something she had never felt before.
A forced acceptance, like swallowing bitter medicine because she knew it was the only thing that could save her life.
"Alright," she whispered at last, her voice as faint as a wind running out of breath, "but someday—"
"... You'll tear apart corpses to your heart's content," Huan Zheng continued with a smile—a lazy, familiar smile, the kind that made people want to punch him, yet strangely made them feel safe.
"I promise. I'll even hold your hand if needed."
So they ran.
Not flying—because in the sky, the armies of humanity had already set Qi nets that would trap anyone attempting to soar—but running, with their feet pounding the damp ground, with ragged breaths, occasionally glancing back only to hear the screams of the gods gradually weakening one by one, like candles extinguished by the night wind.
Morning mist began to creep among the trees as they finally stopped at the edge of a small river, far from Xuelan Camp, which was now nothing more than a plume of smoke on the eastern horizon.
Ling Xu sat on a slick rock, washing her face with cold water that felt like a gentle slap, while Huan Zheng stood beside her with his hands in his pockets, his lazy eyes suddenly observing her in a different way than usual.
Not with mockery or boredom, but with the precision of a surgeon dissecting a corpse to uncover the cause of an unnatural death.
"Hey, Miss Poison," he called suddenly, his voice still lazy but carrying something that made Ling Xu tense, "that Humanity Star you shattered into fifty-one pieces... who gave it to you?"
Ling Xu blinked, slightly surprised by the abrupt question.
"A human," she answered shortly, her hands still busy cleaning the wound on her arm, "an old man. Tattered robes. He gave it to me inside a cave, then vanished like dust."
Huan Zheng did not reply.
He simply kept staring—at Ling Xu's chest, then her head, then her chest again, as if calculating something invisible to the naked eye.
And in his mind, a voice only he could hear began to murmur, not in ordinary words, but in vibrations that felt like an ancient bell tolling in a dark underground chamber.
"These fragments of the Humanity Star... both those within her and those within me... all carry the same aura. An aura not born from humanity. An aura older, heavier, more... divine."
Huan Zheng shifted his gaze from Ling Xu's chest to her head.
Not to her face, but to the crown, the forehead, the temples—the places where spiritual energy typically gathered within a Goddess.
And there, amidst the chaotic flow of Ling Xu's Qi from the recent battle, he sensed something strange.
Not one aura, but two.
Two auras rotating along the same axis, like two serpents entwined without ever becoming one, without ever truly separating.
"The Humanity Star and the Singularity Star," Huan Zheng murmured inwardly, his eyes narrowing, "within a single Star Foundation. Within a single body. Within a single soul."
He had never seen anything like this.
As one of the three Wheels of Cultivation, as a being who had once reached the realm of the Head of Humanity and fallen back into the mud, he had seen thousands—tens of thousands—of cultivators from various races, levels, and anomalies.
But never, never had he seen a goddess whose Star Foundation carried two auras at once.
"What is it?" Ling Xu asked suddenly, turning as she felt Huan Zheng's gaze lingering too long, too deeply.
"Is there something on my face?"
Huan Zheng gave a faint smile, shook his head, then looked away—but in his mind, the murmuring did not stop.
It only grew louder, clearer, like someone assembling scattered puzzle pieces across the floor.
"But I have heard of this. Once. In records that even other Wheels of Cultivation dared not read. About a God—not an ordinary Goddess, not a lowly God, but a God who became a terrifying specter in the Harmony Conflict. A God whose Star Foundation also bore two auras. The Humanity Star and the Singularity Star. Within one body."
Huan Zheng closed his eyes briefly, allowing long-buried memories to surface one by one from the darkest corners of his consciousness.
He remembered the days when the three Wheels of Cultivation—himself, the silent number one, and the singing number three—still gathered in a bamboo pavilion at the edge of the universe, discussing war strategies against the Gods.
He remembered a name they never dared to speak aloud, a name written only in golden ink on silk scrolls locked within a chest sealed by a hundred incantations.
God of the Vast Cosmos.
"That is why," Huan Zheng murmured inwardly, his eyes opening again, staring blankly at the small river flowing before him, "that is why the Gods lost in the Harmony Conflict. Not because they were careless. Not because they were weak. But because he—God of the Vast Cosmos—sacrificed himself."
He remembered the explosion that shook the entire universe, an explosion he felt even from three galaxies away, one that split the sky into seven layers and made the earth tremble as though it were being expelled from the womb of the cosmos.
To be continued…