Chapter 514 |
The mages now understood why the Primordial Heavenly Sovereign had acted as he did. The Immortal civilization had failed to provide him the “missing one” — it had failed to transform the Third Epoch’s Ancient Path into a system suitable for the Fourth Epoch — and he himself was exhausted, his lamp running out of oil; he would not last long.
Perhaps, proud as the strongest among all, he could not bear to cling under another’s roof and join the Mage World as a dependent. And the True Spirit Mages would never accept a foreigner becoming lord of their world. He had no other option but to unleash everything he had left and risk one final, all-out attempt.
Perhaps he had truly found a way to transcend, and wanted to try with all his remaining strength while what he had left could still be elevated.
In any case, he would not cowardly cling to life. He took a step forward — carrying forward and opening the future.
Truth be told, it was an agonizing choice. Between life and death there is terrible dread; the higher one sits, the greater that dread. Whether the Primordial succeeded or failed, he deserved the mages’ respect.
What’s more, he had given the mages a vital piece of information: only nine Super-Void Lifeforms remained.
“Something undifferentiated came into being before Heaven and Earth. Silent and solitary it stands, unchanging though it revolves; it may be called the mother of Heaven and Earth. I do not know its name; I force a name and call it Dao—forced and named, I call it the Great.”
“Man models himself on Earth; Earth models itself on Heaven; Heaven models itself on the Dao; the Dao models itself on Nature.”
“All things under Heaven are born of Being; Being is born of Non-Being. Dao produces One; One produces Two; Two produces Three; Three produces the myriad things. The myriad things carry yin and embrace yang; their breath mixes to create harmony.”
A vast voice, as if coming from the distant edge of the skies, filled the mages’ ears. They all stepped back — this was how one honored a seeker of the Way.
Nearly all the demonic qi and monsters across the Cataclysm Zone surged into the Primordial’s domain. The domain then contracted at a speed that seemed to defy understanding — many, many times faster than light. The Primordial’s aura strengthened in seeming reverse of time. When the domain finally shrank to his body surface, and when the symbolic meaning of the Cataclysm Zone had been effectively erased, he fully recovered the terrifying power of one of the Aetheric Void’s strongest beings.
A titan rose, towering to the heavens, tearing open the conceptual roof above, and plunged without hesitation into that rift — gone without trace.
No one could tell if he had succeeded or failed, for a calm like no other settled over the void. Perhaps this was the quietest moment in the Cataclysm Zone since the Primordial had first arrived and the region began to mutate, across hundreds of millions or billions of years.
Wanxiang, who had drifted about in stupor, suddenly seemed to awaken. She staggered out of the fleet and surged upward into the Aetheric Void. The Void had no true ceiling; she climbed ever higher and farther.
The mages said nothing; they watched in silence.
After some time, energy rain began to fall through the void. The drops fell in sheets upon Wanxiang, and her strength swelled. But she did not rejoice — she collapsed in the void and wept, soundless.
She was a flesh-and-blood life, yet she had no biological parents; the Primordial had fashioned her himself and made her strong and unsubject to Aether’s rejection. The Primordial had been her father — and now he was gone.
The drops circled her for a long while, then scattered outward. Wherever they fell, once-dead planes in the Cataclysm Zone bloomed back to life.
Wendy asked quietly, “Did he succeed?”
Adam hesitated. The Primordial’s visions had been lifelike, but the final ascension had been silent and invisible — not tragic, nor heroic — and somehow it made his heart ache; he could not help but hope the Primordial had pulled it off.
But facts are facts.
“I don’t know,” Adam answered finally, “but most likely he failed. He never found the missing one he sought, the Ancient Path or the old road. If it had been possible, he would have succeeded back when the Fourth Epoch first began.”
— — —
“A lot of you must have already guessed,” Wanxiang told the assembled mages a few days later, once her emotions had steadied. “The Great Sovereign’s life had been drawing to an end. He was still very powerful, but every day he grew weaker.”
Now nobody doubted how strong he had been — not even Prometheus. Had the Primordial displayed the strength he had at the end of his attempt when the mages first arrived, even the True Spirit Mages would not have been his match.
“If time had continued to flow, and he fell from what you thought was tenth-tier, then he could not have climbed back to a peak even after maxing his elevation,” Wanxiang said. “That’s why he sought change. We tried and failed. Daoyuan thought he betrayed the Primordial, but everything he did was still part of the changes — he only took the wrong path. Not only did he fail to change, he regressed and drained the Immortal Realm’s last reserves.”
Wanxiang spoke calmly and without rancor. She did not think the mages had forced the Primordial’s final step.
Although the Primordial’s lifespan, even after degradation, could still be measured in millions of years, he did not need to gamble now. Yet he had chosen to.
Wanxiang did not wish to say more. “After the Primordial’s attempt, nearly all ninth-tier demonic beasts and demonic qi in the Cataclysm Zone were destroyed. For you mages, this place presents no real difficulty now. If there is nothing else, I would like to take the remaining immortals and leave.”
As she said, only a few ancient monsters still retained autonomous minds, but they were no longer a real threat. The Cataclysm Zone had been utterly transformed into a place where mages could harvest energy and resources; the wartime losses would be replenished quickly and with a surplus to spare.
Of course, for the True Spirit Mages and the Sanctums the most valuable prize was the Heavenly Dao itself, and the remaining immortals.
Laura said, “Very well. In a few days you may return with us to the Mage World. Though immortals remain only you and yours, Immortal civilization still deserves parity with the Mage civilization. You and your people will receive the best conditions.”
Wanxiang cared little about such promises of comfort. Living in the Mage World might even be better. She was willing to preach the Immortal Way on behalf of the mages, to hope that collisions between Immortal Dao and Mage civilization would spark new outcomes and carry on what the Primordial had left unfinished — to find the missing one.
At that moment the Sanctum starships were already en route to Xinyati. The Heavenly Dao — the Immortal civilization’s core — was a formidable thing; though less vibrant than the Mage World’s origin, it was not any weaker in rank. The starships would have to jointly perform sealing arts to ensure it caused no accidents.
Once back at Xinyati, the True Spirit Mages other than Nehem would cooperate to expand the Dimensional Nexus and return the Heavenly Dao and Wanxiang and the others to the Mage World.
Wanxiang nodded. “Good. I hope the remaining Immortal forces can leave together.”