Chapter 12
"He blew himself up," Huan Zheng's murmur continued, "and gave an ultimatum to humanity: that he would rise again, that he would revert humans back to their original realm—as powerless beings, without cultivation, without strength, without anything."
And as a result of that explosion, the Gods lost their protector, lost their guardian, lost the war commander who should have been able to win the battle against humanity.
Without the God of the Vast Cosmos, the Gods were nothing more than a herd of deer abandoned by their leader in a field filled with wolves.
Huan Zheng let his eyes remain closed longer than they should have, allowing the memory of the God of the Vast Cosmos—a deity whose mere body could crack the sky and reverse the seas—to swirl in his mind like a vortex that refused to settle.
"But," he murmured inwardly, his inner voice suddenly turning colder, more analytical, like a judge examining evidence in a silent courtroom, "the speculation that the old man was the God of the Vast Cosmos... still feels far too far-fetched."
He opened his eyes, staring at the small river flowing before him—its water was clear, yet at the bottom, he could see strange black pebbles shaped like tiny bones worn down by time.
"Because from what I know," he continued, unconsciously picking up a dry blade of grass and playing with it between his fingers, "the God of the Vast Cosmos carried a very different aura. An aura bound with hope. And also with destruction. But not ordinary hope and destruction—rather, the hope and destruction of the inner wills of all gods and goddesses. Like an ocean made of both tears and laughter at once, like a fire that burns yet also warms."
Ling Xu, who knew nothing of the long murmuring inside Huan Zheng's mind, simply sat quietly on the slick stone, occasionally washing her wounds, occasionally glancing at him from the corner of her eye because he had been silent for too long—silent in an unusual way, not lazily silent as usual, but silent like someone witnessing the death of someone they once knew.
"But the aura emitted from the fifty-one fragments of the Humanity Star within Ling Xu," Huan Zheng murmured more deeply, his gaze shifting from the river toward Ling Xu—specifically toward her chest, where the fragments pulsed softly like tiny tireless hearts, "is not hope. Nor is it destruction in any noble sense. That aura is... suffering."
He frowned, searching for the right word within the vast dictionary of his experiences filled with thousands of battles and thousands of deaths.
"A cold suffering. A suffering that does not scream. A suffering that simply sits in the corner of a room and stares at you with empty eyes until you realize there is nothing you can do to drive it away."
And beside that suffering, he sensed something else—something darker, hungrier, more terrifying than anything he had ever encountered in his life as one of the Wheels of Cultivation.
"Ruin," Huan Zheng whispered inwardly, the word tasting like ash on his tongue, "not ruin born of war, not ruin born of natural disaster, but ruin that settles. Like the condensed essence of a plague that once made the entire universe tremble."
Huan Zheng exhaled slowly—a long breath, like someone releasing smoke from burning lungs.
"The Cancer Plague," he murmured, and for a moment, the hairs on his neck stood on end despite the absence of wind, despite the morning sun beginning to warm the eastern horizon, "the plague that disregarded cultivation levels. The plague that forced me, the silent number one, and the singing number three to hide in the deepest cave at the edge of the universe for months, just to avoid infection. Not because we couldn't fight it—but because no one could."
He remembered those times, when even cultivators from the realm of Humanity fell one by one, their bodies turning into lumps of swollen flesh emitting that sharp fragrance—the same fragrance he could now smell again for the first time in years, because of Ling Xu.
"And the condensed residue of that plague... residue that should never belong to a single individual... residue that even the Gods would not dare to touch... that residue exists within the fifty-one fragments of Ling Xu's Humanity Star."
Fuuuh!!
They walked along the river for nearly two hours before Ling Xu finally spoke.
Not to ask about the future, not to lament the past, but to satisfy the curiosity that had been gnawing at her mind since the previous night.
"Hey, Huan Zheng," she called as she leaped over a tree root rising in the middle of the path, "how did you defeat all of them? So Weihao, Xing Haoran, dozens of Fourth and Fifth Level subordinates—while you're only at the First Level of the Lower Star like me?"
Huan Zheng, who walked behind her with a staggering gait like someone on the verge of sleep, yawned widely before answering.
"Oh, that? They killed themselves, actually."
Ling Xu stopped, turning around with her eyebrows raised nearly to her hairline.
"What?"
Huan Zheng scratched his stomach absentmindedly, then explained in a lazy tone that sounded like he was reciting a dull cooking recipe,
"They all attacked me recklessly—at the same time, without coordination, like a flock of chickens spotting a worm. And since I can move slightly more agile than the average Lower Star, I just needed to... dodge. Their attacks hit each other. So Weihao got struck by Xing Haoran, Xing Haoran got stabbed by So Weihao, and the subordinates—"
He shrugged.
"... They were too close to the explosion. All dead. Story over."
Ling Xu stared at Huan Zheng with an expression she could not hide—a mixture of disbelief and the urge to hit something.
"You're joking," she hissed, but Huan Zheng only yawned again, this time accompanied by a "kreeek" sound from his jaw that had not moved properly for too long.
"No," he replied, "why would I joke? They were stupid, I was agile. That's all. Now, can we stop talking? My mouth is tired."
But Ling Xu was not satisfied.
She walked faster, matching Huan Zheng's pace, then looked at him from the side with narrowed, suspicious eyes.
"Fine, if the matter of the battle is settled—I don't believe your story, but for now I have no evidence to refute it—then I have another question."
Huan Zheng let out a long sigh, the sigh of a man who knew his rest would not come anytime soon.
"What is it now, Miss Poison?"
Ling Xu also sighed—a strange form of solidarity—then asked in a softer, more serious voice,
"How do you raise your cultivation realm in this world? I've never learned. I was just... given this Humanity Star, and suddenly I could sense Qi. But after that, no one taught me anything."
Huan Zheng stopped walking.
He looked at Ling Xu—truly looked at her.
Not lazily, not with the scrutiny of a surgeon, but with the gaze of a teacher who had just realized that his student did not even know how to hold a book, let alone read it.
"You really don't know anything, do you?" he said, half asking, half stating.
Ling Xu shook her head, and for the first time, Huan Zheng felt a trace of pity.
Not because Ling Xu was weak—she clearly was not—but because this girl had been walking in the world of cultivation for weeks without a map, without a compass, without anyone explaining that the numbers beneath her would determine her fate.
To be continued…