He opened his eyes.

"Okay," he said.

She looked up at him, disbelief flickering across her face.

Then she moved quickly, standing and touching the chains binding Neo.

"I know the Qi inscription passwords for all the locks in the royal prison. Heaven designed them, but he told me how they work."

The chains loosened.

Neo stepped free.

He escaped that night.

The years that followed blurred together.

Neo fought Heaven again and again.

And again.

Each time, he was crushed.

The difference was that now, he knew what he was fighting.

He couldn't defeat Heaven. Not directly. Not yet.

But he could move faster than Heaven expected.

He saved the children.

Kidnapped them, if one wanted to be precise.

He rescued the Empress before Heaven could devour her.

And yes, Neo confirmed it with his own eyes.

Heaven had been planning to eat them.

When Heaven realized what Neo had done, his fury shook the world.

He united kingdoms, empires, sects, armies.

Neo was branded the Heavenly Demon.

The enemy of the entire world.

The war began.

Neo still couldn't defeat Heaven.

So he gathered allies.

The children grew quickly. Their talent was absurd. Even with Neo's knowledge and experience, they advanced at terrifying speed.

This time, when they reached the rank of Dao Emperors, their Daos were different.

They didn't hijack bodies.

They didn't rot Paths.

They were clean.

Even so, victory never came.

Years passed.

Then centuries.

Then eons.

The war dragged on with no end in sight.

One day, while moving through a battlefield long abandoned, Neo found a ruin.

Ancient. Broken. Foreign.

There, he learned of Martial Dao.

And everything clicked.

Martial Dao wasn't native to this world.

It was what Heaven practiced.

Cultivation Dao—what Neo and the Dao Emperors followed—was different.

He realized something else too.

The reason no one could reach the Fourth Realm through Martial Arts was simple.

Heaven forbade it.

He refused to share his Path.

Even the inscription of the chains that Heavens used to bound Neo looked similar to the runes here.

After uncovering several such ruins, Neo reached a conclusion that sent a chill through him.

"Martial Dao didn't originate here. It came from another True World."

The Witch of Greed confirmed his suspicion by revealing that Heavens had first learned of Martial Arts (Extreme Arts) from one such ruin.

"So someone from another True World planted knowledge of Marial Dao here. But why?"

He never found the answer.

Still, he gained something else.

By understanding and reverse-engineering the technology embedded in the ruins, Neo learned how objects—and information—had been transported between True Worlds.

From there, he spent another mind-numbing stretch of time developing a method of communication with other True Worlds.

The reason was simple.

It was impossible to defeat Heavens.

Not quickly. Not cleanly. Not without condemning everyone else to suffer alongside him.

So the natural answer wasn't victory.

It was departure.

Neo and the others had already spent dozens of eons fighting Heavens, and nothing had changed.

No matter how many times Heavens was wounded, no matter how many plans were overturned, the end never came.

Heaven was too strong.

Since Neo had saved the Empress and her children, Heavens could no longer grow stronger by devouring them.

Because of that, his behavior shifted. He stopped wasting effort on expansion and turned all his attention toward hunting them down.

Neo wasn't worried about himself.

But he had begun to care about the Dao Emperors. About the Witch of Greed (fragment of the Empress). About the Empress herself.

He didn't want them to die.

So the moment Neo established contact with a safe True World, he made a deal.

That world would provide land, protection, and a place to live for the Dao Emperors, the Empress, the Witch of Greed, and all the allies who had stood with Neo against Heavens.

In exchange, Neo would give them the knowledge of his Dao and several of his Heavenly Records to research, which had grown to a level second only to Heavens itself.

It was an unequal deal.

But the Neo accepted without hesitation.

Not long after, Neo opened a passage to that True World.

One by one, those who had fought alongside him stepped through.

They were supposed to leave happily.

They didn't.

They hesitated.

Because Neo wasn't moving.

"Just come with us. Why are you staying back? To save the people who are helping Heavens kill you? They call you a demon!"

"They do not know the true face of Heavens."

"You [Fate] is Seat of Virtue! Do you not realize what is happening!? If you don't leave now because of your kindness, you will remain stuck in this hell!"

"I know."

"Come with us… sniff, sniff… please…"

"I'm sorry."

The Dao Emperors—beings who had once been destined to become monsters, beings powerful beyond imagination—broke down in his arms like children.

They clung to him, and cried into his shoulders.

When had they grown this close?

Neo didn't know.

He smiled gently and patted their backs, waiting for them to calm down.

He never asked them to stay behind and fight with him.

He knew better than that.

They were terrified of Heavens, and after countless wars, that fear was carved deep into them.

He could see the trauma. The losses. The exhaustion.

'There's no need for everyone to suffer.'

'I'm enough.'

Eventually, they left.

One by one, they crossed into the other True World and disappeared.

When the passage finally closed, Neo stood.

Alone.

The war continued.

Eons passed.

Neo fought Heavens again and again, alone this time.

During those endless battles, he finally understood what his [Fate] meant.

[Endless Hell] meant he would keep passing through hell after hell, each one worse than the last.

And that [Fate] was necessary to defeat Heavens.

[Eternal Transcendence] meant something similar.

It meant he would never stop encountering stronger enemies.

Never reach a point where he could rest.

He would keep moving forward, dragged through endless conflict, and he would keep going through an endless hell.

Of course, Neo could ignore his [Fate].

If he stopped helping those in need, he would lose the [Fate] of Seat of Virtue.

Without kindness, there would be no reason for him to endure hell for others, and he would lose the [Fate] of Endless Hell.

Without Endless Hell, he would no longer be forced to confront stronger and stronger enemies.

And without that, Eternal Transcendence would fade.

One [Fate] still puzzled him.

He still didn't know why he possessed the [Fate] of Mad God.

The war dragged on.

Neo had long realized something else as well.

Heavens was unimaginably talented, and strong.

Perhaps even comparable to Cole.

It took Neo thousands of eons to finally kill Heavens.

And when it ended, the people of the world didn't thank him.

They mourned the death of their benevolent Emperor.

They cursed the Heavenly Demon who had slain him.

Neo didn't care.

He had no time for them.

Instead, he finally uncovered the truth behind Martial Dao.

The world where Martial Dao originated was searching for geniuses on the Martial Path.

That was why they planted ruins across multiple True Worlds and hid fragments of Martial Dao within them.

Their goal was simple.

Find geniuses.

Then raise them in their own True World.

"When I met Cole and Celestial Worthy, Heavens was already gone. What remained was only a fragment."

That explained everything.

Qi was no longer generated because Earth was dead, and Heaven had left for another world.

When the people from that Martial Dao world came to collect their chosen genius, they found something unexpected.

Neo had already killed Heavens.

A peerless genius of Martial Dao.

By doing so, Neo had destroyed their plans.

So they tried to kill him.

Neo fought them for an endless stretch of time.

And won.

Now, he had defeated the ruler of one world and the forces backing him from another.

That made him dangerous.

Other True Worlds noticed.

They labeled him a threat.

They tried to kill him too.

Neo fought back.

The pattern repeated.

Stronger enemies.

Bigger wars.

Longer battles.

Again.

And again.

As the cycle continued, as he realized he could never rest, he started going mad.

"No, I have to stay sane."

"I still have a promise to fulfill."

"I…"

The words faltered.

Insanity gnawed at the edges of his mind.

Eternity was far too long to walk while maintaining sanity.

And each time a new enemy appeared, each time he realized this was his [Fate] tightening its grip, pulling him away from his family, a deep sense of hopelessness settled in his chest.

"No. I'll succeed."

"Just a bit more."

"This time, I'll find a way to rest."

"This time…"

The words echoed into silence.

And Neo kept moving forward.

Because stopping—

Wasn't an option anymore.

He kept fighting.

And fighting.

And fighting.

At first, there was still a clear goal anchoring him.

He told himself that everything he was doing had a reason.

That as long as he stayed sane, as long as he endured just a little longer, he would meet his family again.

That thought was what kept him moving.

But time did not stop.

Eons passed. Then more eons. Then so many that counting them stopped making sense.

Somewhere along the way, something began to slip.

At first, it was small.

He forgot names. Not important ones, he told himself. Just people he had met briefly. Allies from wars that had ended long ago. Faces that no longer mattered.

Then he forgot places.

Entire worlds blurred together.

Victories and defeats began to feel the same.

Another ■. Another True World. Another enemy who believed they were righteous.

Still, he fought.

His goal remained simple in his mind.

'Stay sane.'

That was all.

He didn't realize when the reason behind that goal began to fade.

The memories of saving his family, his friends, and his acquaintances from the Dao Emperors slowly eroded.

Not all at once. Not dramatically.

They thinned.

For someone who had lived billions of eons, the memories of a single eon were fragile things.

They were grains of sand buried under mountains of time.

Eventually, those memories became fragments.

Then impressions.

"No… don't… forget…"

He reviewed those memories again and again.

He forcefully replayed them in his mind.

He refused to lose himself.

But…

...

End of Volume 2: Eternal Transcendence / Endless Hell

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