A pink, ribbon-like object as thick as a bucket was instantly sliced in two ahead of them.
The thing was like a giant rubber band. Once severed, it snapped back and whipped violently, leaving a trail of afterimages in the darkness and producing deafening cracks.
The Sword-man continued forward, expressionlessly swinging his sword as he walked.
One red or pink “rubber band” after another blocking the passage was severed by his cold blade, snapping away and vanishing into the darkness.
Dark red liquid mixed with fragments of “Meat-food” oozed from the severed ends of the “rubber bands,” but was quickly swallowed by the darkness.
“The Heavenly Dao says that all things have their time, dictated by the rules.”
“Upon death, cultivators undergo liberation to return to heaven, giving back to the world. This is part of the cycle of rules.”
“Those who break the rules undermine the very foundations of the world.”
The Sword-man's pace suddenly quickened. Evans had to speed up to keep pace.
“Unfortunately, he refused to accept this.”
“Even more regrettably, he felt absolutely no attachment to this world.”
Suddenly, the Sword-man stopped in front of a thick, white, cord-like object.
It was pure white, its surface covered in dense, longitudinal ridges, resembling a bundle of tightly bound fibers.
It lay across their path like a withered, long-dead white python.
In that brief moment, Evans caught a bizarre sight in the dim light.
The moment light touched the surface of this white python, countless tiny, dense spots of light abruptly surfaced.
It looked as if a vast starry sky had been shrunken and engraved onto this section of the object.
Every single point of light flickered at a different frequency and brightness.
They seemed to be converting light into some kind of information, using a language Evans could not comprehend.
This time, however, the Sword-man did not swing his sword.
He merely cast a cold glance at the white fiber, then followed the direction of its extension, walking deeper into the darkness.
“He began to think, if the Heavenly Dao does not permit eternal life, then why not just replace the Heavenly Dao itself?”
The Sword-man's voice echoed in the darkness.
“He wanted to tear down the Heavenly Dao with his own hands and become the Heavenly Dao himself.”
Evans remained silent. He noticed that the surrounding darkness was changing.
Up ahead, the “fiber” branched along with the path, spreading out through the twisted rock strata like old tree roots.
Standing at the fork, the Sword-man slowly raised his longsword above his head. The tip of the blade emitted a brilliant green light, illuminating their surroundings.
In that instant, Evans finally saw exactly where they were.
They were standing at a massive, cross-shaped intersection.
The surroundings consisted of a grayish-white, soft substance, its surface covered in intricate, lace-like patterns.
The patterns writhed slowly, as if breathing.
Without the slightest hesitation, the Sword-man chose the middle branch and stepped onto it.
“The story of the bead I just told you was merely one of the many things he did on a whim to achieve this goal.”
“He took that bead... the one that makes people crave the flesh of others, and intentionally dropped it into a major faction.”
“That faction was one of the obstacles to his unification of the world. The chaos caused by the bead disintegrated them from within.”
“Without deploying a single soldier.”
“There are many, many similar stories.”
The Sword-man's voice carried no warmth whatsoever.
“Ultimately, he initiated a world-ending blood sacrifice, treating all living beings in the entire world as mere dross in his alchemy furnace.”
At this point, he sneered.
“During this process, he was abandoned by everyone.”
“In the end, even his personal sword—the one that had accompanied his rise and received countless offerings—refused to follow him any longer.”
“But considering his cold-hearted nature, he probably didn't care anyway.”
Abruptly, the Sword-man stopped.
“Using the essence blood and resentment released from the obliteration of those billions of lives, he forcibly refined a... divine pill that could allow him to touch the Heavenly Dao.”
The Sword-man's voice suddenly grew very quiet, almost swallowed by the surrounding silence.
“He swallowed that pill, refined from billions of lives.”
“Then... he reached out and plucked the very thing in the sky—the Heavenly Dao itself.”
“He swallowed the Heavenly Dao.”
“He stuffed it into his mouth, chewed it up, and swallowed it.”
“And then, he went mad, becoming a madman once again.”
No, it wasn't just madness.
Listening to the Sword-man's words, Evans suddenly realized that this could not be simply described as “once again.”
It was a distortion that transcended madness.
A person's ego torn to shreds, pieced back together, torn to shreds, and pieced back together again.
With every reconstruction, some things that shouldn't be there were added, while other things that should never have been lost vanished.
The darkness ahead suddenly brightened.
The light had long since vanished; the “brightness” here was more like an illusion.
The points of light from the white roots projected their information here, but having suddenly lost their target, they could only disperse into the air, casting the data of light directly into the minds of the visitors.
From a thick, ink-like black, it turned to grayish-black, then deep gray, then light gray, and finally...
They stood in a massive, empty space.
There was only a vast void, like a giant cranial cavity stripped of all its organs.
The Sword-man stopped.
This space was simply too vast. At this moment, they were merely standing at the absolute edge, with the far distance still hidden in darkness.
The strange things in the surrounding darkness were gone, leaving only a hollow void.
Perhaps something had once existed here, but it was no longer present.
Evans stood behind the Sword-man, remaining silent.
He noticed the Sword-man's hand—the hand holding the light-sword—was trembling slightly.
It was not from fear, but a subtle tremor, as if suppressed by some intense emotion.
“His mad actions...”
The Sword-man's voice sank to an absolute whisper, almost a murmur to himself, “...finally summoned an existence.”
“I do not know what He was called. Longevity, Death, Immortality? Or perhaps He had no name at all.”
“That existence... promised him eternal life.”
“The price was to hand over the world's Heavenly Dao.”
“How ironic...”
The Sword-man suddenly burst into laughter, his laugh echoing through the empty space:
“If only He had arrived a moment sooner! That madman could have handed over the Heavenly Dao as a matter of course to exchange for the eternal life he so desperately dreamed of!”
“But without that madman's act of forcibly swallowing the Heavenly Dao, he would have had no way of summoning that high-and-mighty existence in the first place.”
The corners of the Sword-man's mouth curled up into a grotesque grimace, but there was not a trace of warmth in his astonishingly bright eyes:
“A hair's breadth makes a world of difference.”
“But since he was already mad... he came up with a more wonderful solution, one he had far more experience with.”
“He was going to eat that existence.”
Smiling, the Sword-man slowly turned around and stared intently at Evans.
“Would you care to guess... what the final outcome of that game was?”
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