Facing her questioning, the teacup in Lin Qingyue's hand stopped steadily in mid-air.
Her smile was calm and unhurried.
She also lifted the cup of tea in front of her, gently swirling it.
The amber-colored tea soup swayed in the cup, and in that light and shadow, there seemed to be hidden a miniature of all things in the world.
"It's not of much great use."
She blew gently on the steam rising from the cup, as if this were not the desperate Ash Illusion, but the balcony of her own home.
"It cannot let you break free from the cycle of Nirvana, nor can it grant you the deathly liberation you long for."
She paused, her gaze piercing through the emptiness in her eyes, directly reaching the sea of her exhausted soul beneath.
"But at least, it can let you taste a slightly different flavor in this endless ash."
Lin Qingyue raised her eyes, her gaze clear, staring directly at that pair of grey nebulae filled with eternal deathly stillness.
"Change does not always need to be earth-shattering, does it?"
These lighthearted words accurately tapped open a certain heart lock that had been sealed for a trillion years.
The dead-still eyes of the woman in red slowly lowered.
Her gaze fell upon the clear tea soup in the cup.
The tea soup reflected her utterly exhausted face, as well as a faint yet real warm light.
It was the deep blue charcoal fire in the stove.
It was the curling tea fragrance in the air.
It was a sudden and stubborn sign of life in this Ash World.
Within those empty pupils, ripples named "Reminiscence" stirred for the first time in a long while.
She slowly raised her hand.
This hand had once held up the newborn sun, and had also smoothed the boiling lava.
At this moment, her fingertips trembled imperceptibly in the air.
This was the first uncontrollable stir in the depths of her soul for ten million years.
The tremble was so slight that even she did not notice it.
She took the teacup.
The warm touch of the Ru-kiln porcelain transmitted through her cold fingertips.
The layer of deathly stillness around her body, which had solidified into substance, showed a very slight loosening.
She did not drink it immediately, but merely brought the cup close to her lips, deeply inhaling the tea fragrance that carried warmth and vitality.
This scent gently brushed away the dust accumulated over countless eons in the depths of her soul.
"Feng Yan."
Her throat again made a dry sound as she spoke her name.
Her voice was hoarse, deep, and bore the ancient imprint from the depths of time.
"My name is Feng Yan."
She slowly and solemnly announced her name.
This name had once been her pride, yet she had completely abandoned it during the long, nauseatingly endless ages.
After speaking, she closed her eyes and drained the cup of tea in a single draught.
The long-lost warmth and fragrance slid down her throat, like a slender clear spring flowing over the long-since dried and cracked riverbed of her soul.
Her rigid soul actually experienced a momentary loosening because of this.
Countless mottled and broken images flashed through her mind.
That was the morning sun of the Primordial Era.
It was the falling snow of the Ice Age.
It was the first cluster of bonfire lit in a cave by the first civilization she ever guarded.
It was also the soaring flames that stained the entire sky red when the last dynasty fell.
"I was once the Guardian Deity of this continent."
"Every Nirvana was meant to cleanse calamities and protect all living beings."
She slowly opened her eyes, and from her deathly still pupils flowed a bottomless irony.
That irony was so profound that it itself was stained with an indescribable sorrow.
"Nirvana..."
"The world praised my Nirvana, thinking it was a new beginning, a miracle of reincarnation."
Her voice remained dry, yet it now carried a vivid wave of emotion.
That was long-lost sorrow, a longing for the past, and an accusation against fate.
"But they do not know that each Nirvana is not an act of forgetting."
"But rather, bringing along all memories, consciously reliving everything."
She lifted her head.
Those eyes, which could not reflect any color, looked at Lin Qingyue, seemingly hoping for some resonance.
"Eternal life is not a gift; it is a curse."
Her voice revealed a sorrow that chilled to the bone.
It was not simple grievance, but a complete despair that had been stewed in time a billion times.
"I carry the complete memories of every life through reincarnation, watching the races I guarded rise and fall, the people I loved turn to dust, and once close friends become enemies."
Feng Yan's gaze passed beyond Lin Qingyue, cast upon the boundless ashes that she had personally created.
"Time is the cruelest thing in the world."
Feng Yan continued to narrate, her voice low, echoing throughout the Ash World.
"I witnessed the rise and fall of countless civilizations and personally experienced the life and death separations of countless friends."
"Every smile, every tear, every war, every peace..."
"All of it is replaying endlessly in my mind, never fading."
She gently stroked the warm teacup, the exhaustion nearly crushing her very soul.
The surrounding ashes seemed to grow heavier with her emotions.
"Eternal life has robbed me of the right to forget and the possibility of liberation."
"My soul is utterly exhausted from bearing the sorrow of too many eons."
The dead nebulae in her eyes began to swirl, a depth that threatened to drag Lin Qingyue's consciousness inside.
"I have felt death a billion times, yet I can never truly die."
"This pain gave birth to resentment, and resentment brought forth Wrath."
Feng Yan's words resonated through the Ash World.
Layer by layer, she peeled back the despair buried deep within her heart, exposing it all to Lin Qingyue.
"Anger was my last way to fight against this endless cycle of reincarnation."
"But when even the anger burned away, what remained... was this dead stillness."
She withdrew her gaze, focusing back on Lin Qingyue.
The emotion in her eyes was too complex to decipher.
"Despair is my true essence."
Lin Qingyue listened quietly without interruption, simply refilling Feng Yan's empty cup with tea.
She sensed the genuine emotion flowing through Feng Yan's words.
It wasn't any of the Seven Sins, but a deeper layer of nihility and numbness.
It was a complete weariness of "existence" itself.
Lin Qingyue's gaze fell upon Feng Yan's pale face.
Within the other's hollow eyes, a glint of light flashed.
That light came from the teacup in her hands.
It was the warm aura emanating from the tea.
Feng Yan lowered her head and drank the tea in the cup dry again.
She claimed the tea was useless.
But that warmth, that wisp of fragrance, did indeed stir a faint, long-forgotten ripple deep within her soul.
Feng Yan's story was finished.
This world once again returned to dead stillness.
But this dead stillness was somewhat different from before.
At the center of the Ash World, the giant scorched Parasol Tree, a stiff withered branch, trembled extremely slightly.
A touch of emerald green, extremely tiny, flashed and vanished at the tip of the branch.
That emerald green was incredibly fragile, yet it sprouted with incredible tenacity in this dead stillness.
Lin Qingyue sharply captured this scene.
This cup of tea was not useless.
At the very least, it gave this god, who had been numb for a trillion years, a faint, human-like response.
It was a fleeting response to "life."
Lin Qingyue picked up the teapot and refilled Feng Yan's empty cup.
She also poured herself another cup.
Raising her teacup in a distant toast to Feng Yan, a smile curved her lips.
"It seems this tea... is of some use after all."