Reality: the battle had reached a dead end.
The High-Cloud Quintet panted amid the ruins. Teng Xiao's Lightning-Lord was down to half a body, and the Ambrosial Arbor's roots were swallowing the last few streets not yet tainted.
"How many times has it been now?" Shuhu, the thousand-faced colossus tree, roared with laughter as it spread its branches. Each leaf seemed to reflect the Xianzhou people's faces—twisted and warped.
"I told you, Shuhu!" Teng Xiao forced himself upright, wiping the blood seeping from the corner of his mouth. "Today, you will sleep here!"
Bzzzz—
As if answering his vow, an extremely high-frequency vibration rose from underground.
Under the crowd's horrified gaze, the soil at the densest knot of Arbor roots churned—as if something were stirring it from below.
"A… black sun?"
Baiheng looked as if she'd expected this. Her gaze locked on the Arbor's root network—on the very place where Huo Linfei had been trapped.
A pitch-black "sun" slowly rose. Shuhu's flesh and the Arbor's roots offered it no resistance at all.
It wasn't a metaphor.
It was a black hole, a full hundred meters across, its surface threaded with red and blue streams of light. Anything in its path simply vanished—as though a layer had been deleted and removed from the world entirely.
"This is…" Dan Feng's dragon scales bristled.
Where the black hole passed, Shuhu's branches shattered like biscuits. Worse—those fragments were then dismantled at the molecular level, reduced into fundamental particles.
"No… impossible!" Shuhu didn't even know how many times it had said "impossible" by now. It always seemed to be either shocked—or on its way to being shocked.
And honestly, you couldn't fully blame It. It had only come to steal a piece of wood—so why did it keep running into unspeakable horrors like this?
The instant the black hole touched the Arbor's trunk, the entire golden giant tree withered at a visible pace. Bark sloughed away. Sap ran dry. The chanting faces embedded in it froze one after another—locked into masks of agony.
Then Huo Linfei's figure emerged from the black hole's center.
Red and blue energies coiled around his body. He lifted his right hand and lightly tapped the Ambrosial Arbor, now returned to a dull brown-gray.
[SYSTEM OPERATION RESTORED]
[CURRENT ABILITY-ENERGY UTILIZATION: 97.9999%]
[ABILITY-ENERGY THRESHOLD: 1.9 BLACK HOLES]
[DATA UPDATED]
"Impossible… impossible impossible impossible!" Shuhu screamed.
"If I still had eyes," It raved, "they'd be wide open right now! The Aeon is watching me—so why… why would It allow you to profane the miracle It bestowed?!"
"Your Aeon…" Huo Linfei's voice carried a cold, mocking edge as it reached Shuhu's last surviving withered branch.
"…was never watching you in the first place."
The Ambrosial Arbor fell completely silent—and Shuhu, unwilling to be separated from it even in death, sank into slumber with it.
Amid the Cloud Knights' cheers, Baiheng was the first to rush toward Huo Linfei.
"Little Huo!" She threw her arms wide, her tail trembling with excitement like a puffball exploding.
"Hello? Hello—can you hear me?" Yingxing's voice came through Dan Feng's jade communicator. "All the roots and abominations across the Luofu are withering—did you handle your side?!"
"Of course." Jing Yuan's tone was, for the first time since the war began, genuinely light. "Our 'hand' here is a lot bigger than Shuhu's."
Huo Linfei didn't move.
"Wait—Baiheng!" Dan Feng sensed something wrong and reached out.
Before anyone could react, a crimson longsword had already pierced straight through Baiheng's chest.
"…Why aren't you saying anything?" Yingxing sounded confused on the other end. "The connection's not cut, is it?"
A crescent-shaped sword arc, radiating icy chill, slashed toward Huo Linfei—but he merely raised an arm and shattered it with his bracer.
CLANG—!!!
Frost crawled up the Shattered Sword, yet when it struck Huo Linfei's shoulder armor it couldn't drive in a single inch further.
"Let go of the sword!" Jingliu snapped, eyes blazing.
Baiheng looked down at the blade that had run her through. Then she looked at Huo Linfei—whose body was already starting to fade—and suddenly smiled.
"So… this is how it is in the dream…"
Huo Linfei didn't answer. He only bit down hard on his lip.
If anyone here understood what was in Huo Linfei's heart, it was the utterly unshaken Jing Yuan.
He'd guessed this outcome long ago—yet he'd still hoped Huo Linfei might truly change the past.
"Let me see what you do next…"
A black hole appeared in Huo Linfei's hand—identical to the one that had just crushed the Ambrosial Arbor. Smaller, but rapidly expanding.
In the end, both he and Baiheng were swallowed whole.
All that remained was a few strands of Baiheng's hair, a smear of dripping blood—
…and the small bell that had once hung from the corner of her clothes.
Phantylia drove the massive body remade by the Ambrosial Arbor. Lotuses—symbols of flourishing and rot—bloomed and withered around her in endless cycles. Golden Abundance power and Shuhu's undying, unkillable aura of "immortality" interwove into a near-tangible pressure, crushing Jing Yuan, Welt, Dan Heng, and the others beneath it.
"Useless~" Phantylia's laughter was lazy and cruel. Her enormous wooden palm casually scattered the gravity beams Welt unleashed. "This body carries the blessings of two Emanators. Especially Lord Shuhu's… this immortality is simply intoxicating."
Her words carried a thread of seduction, as if she were trying to speak to the other will hidden deep within the Arbor:
"Lord Shuhu? Why not show yourself? Let Destruction taste what 'undying' feels like?"
But deep within the Arbor, there was no reply.
Only boundless Abundance power continued to surge, reinforcing her body, healing her wounds—yet offering no conscious response at all.
As if that power were nothing but a hollow treasure, and the dragon meant to guard it had already fallen into eternal sleep.
"Immortality?" Welt looked to Jing Yuan. "So the Arbor holds something besides Abundance?"
"Mr. Welt, don't ask me that right now—I'm hearing this claim for the first time too." Jing Yuan gave a bitter smile, driving the Lightning-Lord to withstand Phantylia's assault. "If that's true, then it explains a lot…"
"You mean…?" Welt tapped his cane to the ground. A pseudo black hole tore Phantylia's surrounding lotuses into fragments.
"An old debt. But now's not the time!"
Dan Heng hurled the Cloud-Piercer spear, commanding water to form a colossal dragon that lunged at Phantylia. Jing Yuan moved in sync—thunder erupted from the Lightning-Lord, racing along the water to strike the Arbor-made body.
"Why won't you answer me?!" Phantylia finally showed a flash of agitation. She smashed the water dragon apart—only to be pinned by lightning. The massive body toppled backward, and the Cloud-Piercer, hidden within the currents, punched clean through her brow.
Even under their combined strike, Phantylia remained vigorous—almost gleefully alive.
"Shuhu! Are you truly willing to sleep here forever?! Join me—together we can turn the Luofu into an eternal apothecary garden…"
Still no response.
That silence was more unsettling than any attack.
And deep within the Ambrosial Arbor—where no one could sense—
a faint, nearly scattered consciousness was drowning in an endless ocean of self-doubt.
…The Aeon… never once looked upon me?
Everything… was just an illusion the Arbor made me believe?
My faith… my immortality…
No… that can't be…
Then why… was I so utterly helpless before him…
How could an "invincible" god be defeated in a single move?
Eight hundred years later, that black sphere—the one he'd thrown—was still Shuhu's eternal nightmare in sleep. The image of the Ambrosial Arbor withering in an instant replayed endlessly, gnawing away at Its will bite by bite. And that final, lightly spoken, heart-killing line—like the most venomous curse—had shattered the foundation of everything It had been for countless ages.
Phantylia's calls from outside, the surging power—none of it could penetrate the barrier formed from despair and self-destruction.
It simply doesn't care anymore.
Join here to read ahead.
In Star Rail, Ultra-Beast Armored — Have I Caught "Equilibrium"? l (Chapter 80)
Uma Musume, But I Only Have Five Years Left to Live (Chapter 90)
Zenless Zone Zero: I'm a Doctor, Not a Bangboo (Chapter 95)
Ben Tennyson Wants to Join the Justice League (Chapter 80)
TYPE-MOON: Redemption Beginning with the Holy Grail War (Chapter70)
Yu-Gi-Oh! — Transmigrated into the White Dragon Girl (Chapter70)
"Is this chat group even serious?" (Chapter50)
I, Lord Ravager, Utterly Loyal! (Chapter60)
Can Playing Games Save the World? 20
Crossover Anime Multiverse: The Demon Hunter of an Unnatural World 20
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