Fictional Truth

Xia Lun had pondered this question before.

Why did Aise... possess the power to grant blessings?

Where did his ability to deliver revelations and bestow strength come from?

At first, Xia Lun hadn't thought much of it, simply assuming it was a new skill Aise had acquired during the thousand-plus years he'd wandered the spirit realm... but now that he considered it more carefully, something was clearly amiss.

Aise had mentioned before that he'd corrupted certain historians, turning them into Twilight Apostles to serve his bidding.

But what about Elesha?

Why would Aise have contacted a sheltered young lady like her? Was he trying to leverage her family's influence? Yet in the end, the Norman family had played an utterly negligible role, cast aside like a discarded pawn.

Was it merely because Elesha had come into contact with Xia Lun himself?

In any case, Elesha should never have been Aise's target—she was of little use to him... The revelation Elesha received was that of wisdom, but when faced with raw, unreasonable power, such mortal wisdom could only accomplish so much.

And Elesha's mind now seemed utterly twisted by whatever had been done to her.

Her very existence... was somewhat inexplicable.

But Xia Lun wasn't about to assume this was some blunder on Aise's part.

What troubled him even more was that a third party had impersonated Aise—that false hero—to deliver revelations to Elesha.

Could Aise have been unaware of this? Or perhaps this mysterious third party was working alongside Aise?

Yet from beginning to end, this figure remained hidden in the shadows, never surfacing... Even after Aise had been eradicated, that person still hadn't shown themselves.

This sent a chill down Xia Lun's spine.

As Xia Lun mulled it over, he felt as though an invisible web had long since been cast, and they had yet to glimpse the face of the one holding the strings. The undercurrent lurking deeper below continued to flow silently, carrying with it a bone-deep coldness.

"Could it be..."

Beside him, Aina suddenly murmured. Her expression visibly darkened, and those eyes—usually brimming with languid laziness or playful teasing when she was with Xia Lun—now sharpened like a hawk's, locked firmly onto Elesha.

This method of granting power, called "blessing," struck her as vaguely familiar, dredging up fragments of unpleasant memories.

"Xia Lun, keep an eye on her!"

Aina let out a cold snort. A crimson staff, as though forged from congealed blood, had already materialized in her hand. She didn't even chant a single incantation—she merely tapped the staff once, and an immensely complex magic circle instantly expanded outward from her as its center.

In the next moment, space collapsed. The surroundings warped rapidly: the stone walls, the iron doors, the glow of the magic lamps all faded as if wiped away by an invisible hand. In the blink of an eye, Xia Lun and the others had been transported from that underground prison cell into an endless void.

All around them, countless stars glittered. The sudden change caught Xia Lun off guard.

The void was far from silent. Xia Lun keenly sensed countless powerful, ancient wills converging from the darkness in every direction, like sharks drawn to the scent of blood—but with a single cold snort from Aina, those wills scattered just as quickly.

"Huh?"

Xia Lun finally responded to Aina. He was still dazed, and Elesha before him remained in her befuddled state. He had no idea why Aina had suddenly made such a spectacle.

But Aina must have her reasons. Xia Lun didn't dare let his guard down; he immediately tensed into readiness.

Soon, something unusual began to manifest in Elesha. Her memories were still drifting in the void, so she shouldn't have been stirring... yet now she began to convulse violently, as though something inside her was trying to break free. Her joints cracked with unnatural pops. Her head arched backward at an angle that nearly bordered on breaking, and a broken, wheezing sound escaped her throat.

"I..."

Xia Lun wanted to know what he should do.

This was the first time Aina had brought him somewhere like this. It was obviously no ordinary spatial rift—this was beyond the world itself.

"Don't go near her!" Aina's eyes were deadly serious. One hand barred Xia Lun's advance, while the other raised the crimson staff, pointing at Elesha as fearsome energy gathered at its tip. "Come out!"

"Ahh—haa—!!"

Elesha's convulsions reached a peak, and great clumps of thick, ink-black mist erupted violently from her mouth, nose, tear ducts, and even her ear canals! Like something alive, it churned and coalesced above her head into a shifting, formless mass of chaos.

Thump... thump...

The mass of black mist began to pulsate slowly but powerfully, like a heartbeat, and with each contraction and expansion, it exuded a sickening aura of malice and madness.

"So it's you after all." Aina gave a cold smile, the staff in her hand radiating waves of power so dreadful that even Xia Lun felt terror.

One after another, ethereal, pale-white eyes with slit-like pupils opened within the black mist—dense and countless. They rolled about without any discernible pattern, until finally, all their gazes crossed space itself and fixed dead upon Xia Lun, standing beside Aina.

As if injected with violent energy, the black mass erupted into frenzy. Bubbles burst across its surface and popped one after another, producing sounds akin to blasphemous murmurs. A distorted, overlapping, hoarse shriek rang out:

"My... eyes..."

"These eyes no longer belong to you, you piece of trash." Without giving the black mass another chance to speak, Aina's staff thrust forward fiercely!

"Crimson Oblivion."

BOOM—!!!

An unparalleled burst of blood-red light, like a breached flood, erupted instantly from the tip of the staff, engulfing the writhing black mass, engulfing Elesha's figure, and even engulfing Xia Lun's entire field of vision.

It was as though the whole world had been reduced to nothing but this purely concentrated crimson, laden with the force of utter annihilation.

Xia Lun felt a stabbing pain in his eyes and had to shut them, but the blood-red light Aina had released seemed to pierce through his eyelids, searing crimson imagery onto his retinas, as if his lids offered no barrier whatsoever.

Xia Lun now understood why Aina had brought him here... Even a spatial rift might not have been able to contain such terrifying power—any sliver of energy that leaked out and fell upon the original world could wreak catastrophic destruction.

Unbelievable... He was Xia Lun, after all—by Aina's own account, already among the pinnacle existences of this world. He'd always had a fair amount of confidence in his own strength.

Especially after Aise had said his terrifying power could already trade blows with certain ancient evil gods... Xia Lun had even thought he wasn't that far behind Aina anymore.

But now, he once again felt how small he was. He had zero confidence in weathering that horrifying attack of Aina's—and this probably wasn't even her full strength.

Xia Lun let out a faint, inward sigh. The gap between him and Aina was simply too vast.

Who knew how much time passed before the crimson light before him gradually dissipated.