342 Please, Don't Drop By

[POV: ???]

The mirror cracked before him in a quiet sound, yet it reverberated through the Hollowed World like a wound tearing open in the fabric of reality. Its surface rippled once, then shattered entirely, dissolving into black dust that vanished into the air.

He gazed at the remnants in silence. The faint trace of dark fire still clung to his hand, Ru Qiu's doing. The flames were stubborn, clinging to him as though mocking his power. Even when he smothered them with his own quintessence, it took effort, and the pain lingered. The skin on his palm remained blackened and cracked, the flesh slow to knit back together.

He frowned. "That's… rather unexpected."

The words came out calm, but irritation tugged beneath the tone. He had expected resistance, of course, but not this kind. A connection reaching out from the Hollowed World to burn him, that shouldn't have been possible.

"How did he of all people escape the False Earth?" he mused, narrowing his eyes as he stared at the dying motes of mirror-light floating in the void. "Is the Warden slacking off? No… that can't be. The Warden never falters."

A pause. The faint twitch of a smile that didn't reach his eyes.

"It seems," he said softly, "someone is scheming behind my back."

The thought of the Heavenly Demon twisted something unpleasant in his chest. He felt the repulsion deep in his bones. The taste of corruption. The same taste he remembered when the heavens first cracked and their dreams began to rot.

"I guess," he muttered, staring into the swirling darkness around him, "I have to approach the problem differently…"

He lifted his hand, and threads of light and darkness both emerged from his fingers. They weren't mere energies, but karma itself. They were strings of destiny that wove across the Hollowed World, connecting all living things. Souls, empires, beasts, dreams… everything pulsed within his sight like veins under skin.

He tugged on them gently, testing their resistance, tracing every anomaly. Each disturbance, each cut thread, each flicker of fate that strayed from his design… he recorded them all in the vast archives of his mind.

He had gone by many names through the ages. Yuan Shen. Shenyuan. Heavenly Master. All of them had meant something once. Symbols of reverence. Worship. Fear. Now they were nothing more than echoes. He was no longer a master of anything, merely a servant and a lapdog to powers far beyond his reach.

The enormity of the universe had broken him long ago.

Still…

"I am going to make it right," he whispered to the dark. "Eventually."

For a time, only the silence of the Hollowed World answered. Slowly, a faint, hoarse, and pained voice cried out to him. "Shen… You should give up…"

His head turned slowly toward the sound.

Chains clinked in the distance.

There, half-buried in the shadows, hung an old man. His once-white robes were torn and soaked with blood. Thorns grew through his arms and legs, rooting into his flesh. His hair, long and silver, was matted with dust and dried crimson.

This old man was none other than Shouquan, the supreme leader of Ward. Once, he had been a companion. A friend. A man who dreamed of a better world beside him.

Now he was just another prisoner of the Hollowed World.

Yuan Shen's jaw clenched. "Give up? Give up?" His voice cracked like thunder, echoing against unseen walls. "That's what you say after you recovered your memories? Of me? Of the world we dreamed? Of the hopelessness that was shown to us!?"

Shouquan lifted his head, eyes blazing even through his exhaustion. "And I died in that mountain!" he roared, spitting blood that hissed against the floor. "You think your pain is more than mine? You think your loss justifies this… this prison!?"

"Don't make this difficult for yourself, Shouquan." The words came sharp, each syllable heavy with restrained fury. "Who gave you the Arch Gate? Who was colluding with you?"

The old man's breath hitched. For a moment, it seemed he might finally answer.

Then he laughed, low at first, a quiet chuckle that grew into something unhinged, almost joyous. It filled the Hollowed World, bouncing off the endless dark until it became indistinguishable from madness.

"You want to know?" he wheezed between laughs. "The powerful master who bestowed upon me the Arch Gate… the one who made me guardian of this cursed realm… You really want to know who he is?"

He smiled, eyes gleaming with spite.

"Then you'll have to do better than this… torture."

"I pity you," said Yuan Shen, his voice low, cold, and reverberating like a whisper through an empty cathedral. "If only you could see the truth that, in the end, we are just dust in the cosmos. No matter how much we reach for the stars, we will never be stars. No matter what kind of power we wield, it will always be a poor imitation of the real thing."

His burned hand twitched as he spoke, the faintest hiss of scorched flesh breaking the silence. The pain grounded him, a reminder of how far he had fallen, from celestial heights to this pit of regret and ashes.

"I pity you, more, brother," spat Shouquan, the chains around him rattling as he strained against them. "What did they do to you, to turn you into this? You… who once defied even the heavens to build something better?"

The words struck deep.

Yuan Shen froze, the lines of fate before him flickering uncertainly, like candlelight before a gust. For a brief, quiet moment, there was no divine master here, no ancient manipulator of destiny, just a man haunted by memory.

He remembered once believing in change, compassion, and unity between mortal and divine.

When the world still remembered his name hundreds of thousands of years ago, he had been called teacher, sage, and deliverer. Now his name had been excised from history, his existence whispered only among gossiping higher beings for entertainment.

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That bright fire within him and the hope that once drove him had long turned to ash.

Yuan Shen turned away from his prisoner. His gaze returned to the shifting lattice of light before him, the threads of destiny. They shimmered faintly in the infinite black, golden lines connecting every living being in the Hollowed World. His fingers danced over them like a weaver's loom, tracing the source of the disruptions that had thrown fate into disarray.

Every thread led to a single point, a shining existence whose light pierced through the web like a spear of defiance. Da Wei.

The man was like a paradox in human form, a convergence of karmic contradictions that refused to be defined. His thread pulsed brightly, bending the flow of destiny around him, changing even the fixed paths of stars.

Yet… when Yuan Shen tried to touch it, the thread slipped from his grasp.

The flow of karma that encircled Da Wei was not his own. It was woven around him with hundreds of smaller threads bound to those who followed him, loved him, hated him, and fought beside him. Each person surrounding Da Wei seemed to carry a fragment of his light, and together they made something even his power could not unmake.

"So that's how it is…" he murmured, his lips curling faintly. "Not one destiny, but many. The boy's strength doesn't lie in himself… but in those who choose him."

The realization filled him with an emotion he couldn't quite name. Envy, perhaps, or a sorrow so deep it mirrored wonder. The threads shifted again, the vision before him warping as the karmic map of the world gave way to imagery that only gods could see.

He saw battle.

The sky bled red as fleets clashed across the torn lands of Riverfall and Evernight. Armies collided in a storm of fire and spirit light. He saw Gu Jie in her flagship, eyes glowing with foresight; Ren Xun standing tall among dragons; Bai Rong thrashing within a cage of divine scales.

The Civil War was approaching its end. The karmic storm reached its crescendo, every fate screaming in unison. The image changed. The noise fell away, and cold silence consumed everything. The threads dimmed, and in their place came the void of endless black and the faint glow of starlight.

There, suspended between heaven and nothing, two figures faced each other. It was Da Wei and Jia Sen. Their auras clashed, bending even the light of the moon, shaking the very fabric of the Hollowed World.

"Tell me who it is, you fool!" roared Yuan Shen, his patience unraveling like frayed silk. "Tell me who resurrected Da Wei! Tell me who is the Game Master! Speak, before I rip your soul from your spine!"

His will stirred, and the chains of thorns that bound Shouquan groaned under his command. The barbs twisted deeper into the old man's flesh, splitting skin, biting through bone, until the chamber resounded with the wet crunch of agony.

Shouquan's body convulsed, but his laughter echoed louder than the pain. "Oh, you must be stressed, old friend," he wheezed through blood. "Still trying to hold the sky with your hands? Still playing god while the heavens above mock you?"

The words stabbed deeper than any thorn could.

"I know you," Shouquan continued, his tone drifting between delirium and pity. "You can't cover the entire firmament anymore, can you? The cracks are showing. The Heavenly Temple pushes against your will. You wage war upon a creature you cannot name, and yet, something… someone hinders you. Tell me, Yuan Shen… is it a coincidence, or has fate finally turned its eyes upon you?"

Yuan Shen's expression twisted, not with anger, but with unease. "What do you know of Da Wei?" he asked, though the words came quieter, almost unwillingly.

"Oh, I barely knew the man," replied Shouquan, coughing out a spray of blood that shimmered faintly in the dim light. "We crossed paths briefly, not long enough for me to grasp what he was. But…" His ruined eyes glimmered faintly with something beyond madness. "I've walked the Greater Universe before I created Ward… A pilgrimage, if you must… You wouldn't know what that is like, brother…you were erased before history even remembered its own name. I thought the heavens beyond our world might hold answers, or mercy, or perhaps a place for those like us. I was wrong."

He shifted slightly, the thorns dragging through his ribs. "So, brother, would you like to know what I learned? Something about Da Wei… and something that shouldn't exist?"

Yuan Shen said nothing, but the silence was an invitation enough.

Shouquan took a slow breath, blood bubbling at his lips, and began to recite:

"At the end of existence, when the stars dim and the rivers of creation run dry,

"The Lost Supreme shall return.

"He shall come bearing the flame of all beginnings, "To liberate the bound and humble the proud, "To unmake the tyranny of his brothers and sisters — "Those who call themselves gods, but are merely custodians of decay.

"In his eternal name, he shall be known Immortal. "In his valor and virtue, he shall be declared Knight of the People, "Be they beast, ghost, demon, demi-god, celestial, or man.

"And when he sits upon the Throne of Creation, "He shall be both the End and the Beginning.

"Upon his tongue, his name shall be uttered foreign, "Beside him shall stand the serpent who devours itself, "And bearing his principles shall be six heavenly flags, "Each carried by his chosen disciples."

The words carried an ancient resonance, the echo of prophecy that seemed older than the cosmos itself. The darkness quaked faintly, as if reality remembered the verse and flinched.

Yuan Shen's eyes widened.

"No…" he muttered, shaking his head. "The Lost Supreme…? That prophecy could only refer to the Supreme Void! You would dare twist such a sacred scripture to mock me? If you mean to deceive me, Shouquan, then try harder!"

But his voice trembled.

Because somewhere in the deepest corner of his soul, in the place where all knowledge met silence, he knew Shouquan could not lie to him.

Shouquan smiled faintly, his teeth red with blood. "Perhaps you're right, Yuan Shen… or perhaps you're wrong."

He leaned forward, chains creaking as the thorns dug deeper. "That prophecy came from the Greater Universe… a place beyond our ken. Maybe it was a misdirection. Maybe a translation lost in time. Or maybe…" His voice lowered, turning almost reverent. "…maybe you already know the truth, but you're too afraid to admit it."

Yuan Shen said nothing.

"Brother, I know you cannot leave this place the same way I do," said Shouquan. "That's why you can only send your shadows to the Hollowed World. Your reach may be vast, but you are still bound! With the Heavenly Temple's politics and its gilded rot, I imagine it isn't easy to move your pieces anymore."

He tilted his head slightly, a smirk splitting his bloodied face. "After all, unlike chess, people have wills, desires… interests that even eternity can't erase."

"Hah!" Yuan Shen's laughter echoed like thunder in a sealed cavern. "You speak as if you know something worth knowing."

"I do," rasped Shouquan. "And it's definitely not nothing. I know what you did to The Ward."

Yuan Shen's eyes narrowed.

"You twisted them," Shouquan went on, voice trembling between fury and pity. "You took the order I built after the fall of the Heavenly Temple's ideals… men and women who believed in something greater… and you corrupted it. You turned them into your dogs, your enforcers of fear and false purpose. But not all of them will break, brother. Some are stronger than you think."

Yuan Shen's tone cracked into disbelief. "What did you do, Shou!?"

The old man's grin returned, teeth red with blood. "I am going to escape these bindings and this prison…" His eyes flared with a strange, defiant light. "…the moment Da Wei wears the Hollow Star!"

Yuan Shen's expression froze. "How do you know about the Hollow Star?"

Shouquan only smiled, cryptic, almost pitying.

Yuan Shen's voice dropped to a chilling calm. "Never mind that. Since you seem so confident in this Da Wei of yours…" He straightened, eyes gleaming with cosmic malice. "…how about I increase the challenge for him?"

A low hum reverberated through the void. The darkness began to bend. Threads of destiny coiled tighter around Yuan Shen's fingers as he reached beyond the Hollowed World, beyond the veil of starlight, to the cold expanse of the outer cosmos.

Every hundred years, new realms descended upon the Hollowed World, a natural cycle, or what used to be one. In ancient times, it took thousands of years before a realm would fall. Further back, tens of thousands. Hundreds of thousands. The acceleration of collapse was unnatural. It was the symptom of a hunger that devoured creation from the shadows.

That hunger had a name: The Supreme Void. And Yuan Shen had found the mechanism through which it clawed at the world's shell.

He smiled faintly, a ghost of divinity twisted into cruelty. "Such an elegant system… a pity it falls into my hands."

His quintessence surged. The stars trembled. Across the distant reaches of space, a massive planet shuddered as if seized by an invisible hand. Its orbit fractured. Mountains cracked. Oceans boiled. And slowly, inexorably, it began to move.

Shouquan's scream tore through the void. "WHAT ARE YOU DOING, YOU MONSTER!?"

Yuan Shen's laughter came low, cold, and unrepentant. "I might not be able to harm Da Wei directly from where I am," he said, his words echoing like the toll of judgment. "But I can hurt his people."

His eyes burned brighter than any star.

"And I will do so…" His smile widened with malice. "…by dropping a planet on them."

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