For once, Baal did not speak at that moment. Standing before him was the dried corpse from earlier—Yan.
Baal remained a shapeless mass of black mist.
Yan’s phantom still took the form of a dried corpse, its body surrounded by faint, gentle golden motes of light that flickered in and out.
“You’re awake.”
There was a trace of amusement in Baal’s voice, familiar as though old friends had reunited.
“I thought you were going to sleep until this world had rotted away completely.”
Yan’s phantom had no features, yet Baal could sense a pair of calm eyes watching him, just as they had in life.
“I was never asleep. I was annihilated. I was already dead.”
Yan’s ancient, peaceful voice rang out directly.
“It was the power from your side that disturbed the peace of my annihilation.”
“Don’t blame me.”
Baal gave a derisive laugh.
“It was you humans who dug your bones out of the grave, then tried to force clothes that didn’t belong to you onto your own child.”
His tone was filled with disdain.
“The child is innocent.”
Yan’s voice remained gentle. “She should not have had to bear this karma.”
“So you gave her the name of your power, shouldered the final consequence yourself, and then vanished into nothing.”
“How noble. How boring. How… foolish.”
“You guarded that worthless rule until you turned yourself into dust. Was it worth it?”
Yan’s phantom replied calmly, “And you locked yourself away as well, willingly becoming a beast trapped in a cage.”
“There is no difference between us.”
Baal’s laughter stopped.
“I’m not like you.”
His voice sank, carrying a hint of anger born from embarrassment.
“I was simply tired. The heroes never stopped coming, and the weeds never stopped growing. It was too noisy. I only wanted to sleep in peace.”
“Enough about me. What about you?”
Baal immediately changed the subject, with a rare trace of curiosity in his voice.
“What were you doing it for?”
“To protect humanity? Don’t make me laugh. Does humanity need protecting? Whenever it’s about to perish, a new hero appears.”
Yan’s phantom fell silent for a moment.
The golden motes of light drifted slowly around him.
“What I protect isn’t humanity.”
“It’s the story itself.”
“What?”
Baal’s laughter was filled with absurdity. He had lived in the modern world for far too long; he could no longer understand the way these ancients spoke.
“On opposite sides of a scale, there can only be black or white, this or that—yin and yang in balance.”
Yan’s voice drifted through the air.
“But what the world has always needed was never absolute equality between the weights on either side.”
“What it needs is for the scale itself to exist.”
“For the story to continue.”
Yan’s phantom raised an arm, his withered fingers pointing distantly toward Baal.
“Your existence gives the story conflict, with all its twists and turns.”
Then he pointed at himself.
“The existence of heroes gives the story the passion that carries it toward its climax.”
Yan’s phantom turned back toward Baal.
“Once the story comes to a standstill, do you know what will happen?”
“At that point, there will be neither demons nor heroes.”
“Neither struggle nor hope.”
“Neither you nor me.”
“Everything will return to nothingness.”
“That will be the true ending—the greatest boredom of all, as you put it.”
Baal looked at him with great interest.
“That’s rather intriguing. The Yan I knew in life would never have said something like that. After death, what did you see?”
“I was once the hero of the story.”
Yan spoke slowly.
“Now, I am merely the kindling.”
The outline of his phantom grew increasingly transparent.
“I have burned away completely. There will be another hero.”
“Baal, your long-cherished wish has also been fulfilled.”
“Hey!”
Baal’s voice could not hold back the fading figure. He could clearly feel that Yan had truly disappeared.
This hero who had once dominated an entire era had finally fallen to the passage of time.
…Leaving without answering Lord Bael’s question. He really was as rude as he had been in life.
Watching the place where Yan had vanished, Baal tried hard to make sense of his words.
What did he mean by saying that his long-cherished wish had been fulfilled?
What was his long-cherished wish?
Even Baal himself found it difficult to answer that question. For an old monster like him, there was no longer anything he desired that he could not obtain.
No, no. He had to start from the beginning.
The hero. The Demon King.
For the story to continue, it could not escape these two roles.
With Yan’s complete death, the position of hero had become vacant. A new hero would probably emerge from among the younger generation. And he, old Baal, would remain the Demon King.
…Would he?
Baal suddenly realized that escaping the identity of Demon King was also one of his wishes.
…
“This place has stabilized completely.”
Huo Qixing stared at the compass in his hand, its needle perfectly still, and muttered to himself as he confirmed this utterly unbelievable reality.
Su Yuehe withdrew her gaze and glanced at An Changqing. He was supporting her by the arm, the steady warmth of his palm passing through to her.
She shook her head to indicate that she was fine, then took half a step forward and moved out of his support.
An Changqing’s fingers paused in midair before finally withdrawing.
He looked at Su Yuehe’s profile. Beneath the pallor of her face, something had settled there—something he had never seen before.
“How do we get out?”
Qin Wu broke the silence. Supporting a limp student from Yanjing Academy, he said, “The entrance has disappeared.”
Everyone’s eyes converged on Su Yuehe almost in unison.
The person who had tied the knot had to be the one to untie it.
At this moment, the most unfathomable person in the group had become this Huaqing prodigy who had just returned from the brink of collapse.
Su Yuehe said nothing.
She closed her eyes and sensed the power within her. All its former violence had faded away, leaving only a gentle current flowing through her.
The sensation was strange. A long-lost part of her body had been restored, fitting perfectly into place without the slightest trace of rejection.
She opened her eyes again and looked toward the empty ground at the edge of the camp. A golden character lit up deep within her pupils, then vanished in an instant.
“Door.”
The space before them silently rippled outward. A circular entrance, its edges flowing with a faint blue radiance, appeared out of thin air—the exact same one they had entered through.
“This…”
Wang Shuo’s gaze moved back and forth between the doorway and the unruffled Su Yuehe. He felt as though his entire worldview had been smashed to pieces and rebuilt again and again.
“Let’s go.”
Su Yuehe’s voice was soft, but every word was clear.
An Changqing walked at the front and stepped through without hesitation. Long Ao and Qin Wu followed close behind, protecting the two Yanjing students who were in poor condition.
Chen Guan walked at the rear of the group.
As he passed Su Yuehe, the girl’s steps slowed.
“Chen Guan.”
She called out to him.
Chen Guan stopped. His left hand remained in his pocket as he merely turned his head to look at her.
“Your hand…”
Su Yuehe’s gaze fell upon his arm. Amid the chaos earlier, she thought she had seen something strange there.
A flash of black light. After it vanished, his sense of control over his body had become clear again.
“Nothing serious. It’s not getting in the way. I might just have to trouble Doctor Zhou when we get back.”
Su Yuehe’s lips moved slightly, but in the end, she did not ask any further questions.
s + Rent Collection Wealth】 At the start, he inherited a rundown house in the urban village from his grandfather. The house had no tenants, but the moment he was diagnosed with a terminal illness, a self-proclaimed empress from the Tianxuan Continent arrived as his first tenant. Ye Chuan soon discovered that with every new tenant moving in, not only did he receive massive daily payments, but he also obtained unique items related to their backgrounds. 【Acquired Bai Qianshuang’s related item: Tiger Strength Pill—dramatically enhances physical power!】 【Acquired Bai Qianshuang’s related item: Deer Blood Pill—significantly boosts vitality!】 …… From that day on, all sorts of bizarre tenants began appearing in the house: the empress from Tianxuan Continent, an apocalyptic sorceress from the Magic Realm, a mysterious scientific girl who fell through a spacetime rift… Every single day, he received strange, powerful items and endless money. Then one day, he suddenly realized—he had become invincible. Enough, enough! Stop giving me more!
ing gift was a patch of barren land, and disciples were all picked up along the way. He spent fifty years diligently building three "ramshackle little sects," thinking he could finally live a carefree life relying on his disciples. But right at the fifty-year mark, he was suddenly swept away by a spatial rift and exiled to the Chaos Desolation, the Disorderly Ruins. There was no spiritual energy there, only slaughter. Relying on the cultivation feedback from his disciples, Gu Changyuan hacked his way through a sea of blood for eleven hundred years. When the system finally fished him back out, he discovered the ramshackle little sects he'd built back then had developed a rather... unusual style. Hold on... I vanished for a thousand years, so how did my ramshackle little sects become holy lands?!
nd fell into a coma while saving his younger sister from an out-of-control car. He became a vegetable. No one knew that his consciousness had crossed into a world of cultivation. Over the course of sixty years, he began as the lowest kind of mine slave, struggling to survive amid mountains of corpses and seas of blood. By sheer chance, he eventually obtained the complete memories of a fallen Immortal King. Alchemy, medicine, formations, feng shui, physiognomy, artifact forging… Every great inheritance of the cultivation world was now his. But when he opened his eyes again, he discovered that ten full years had passed in the modern world. To pay for his treatment, his father had sold the family’s shop and house, leaving himself covered in lasting injuries and illness. His mother had cared for him day and night, and more than half of her hair had already turned white. His younger sister, who had been only fifteen back then, was now twenty-five. To help repay the family’s debts, she had been forced to lower her head and put on a smiling face in places of glittering lights and endless revelry. Only then did Chen Xuan understand that what he had lost was not merely ten years. He had lost the life his entire family was meant to have. The good news was that he had brought back the memories of an Immortal King’s entire lifetime. The bad news was that his soul had returned alone—his cultivation had not come with him. Spiritual energy was scarce, resources were depleted, and the modern world still had firearms, surveillance, capital, and laws. If he wanted to protect his family, break free from everyone’s control, and become truly invincible beneath the heavens, he would have to start all over again.
y came from. The chests contained supplies, currency, class-change scrolls, skills, talents… and even godhood! The laws of the world were completely rewritten. This became a world where everyone gambled with their fate! Some people, despite having nothing, opened a divine artifact and rose to the top, eventually ruling the world. Others went bankrupt, opened nothing but worthless junk, and leaped from skyscrapers in despair. Lin Ye arrived in this world from another reality, utterly bewildered. “What is going on? Why is everyone a gambling addict?!” “Opening chests? No way. I refuse to gamble. I’ll start with myself!” Until— On his first chest, he obtained a Mythic Talent: Void Incarnation! He could become completely intangible, pass through all things, and reduce everything to nothingness! … On his fiftieth chest, he obtained a Mythic Weapon: Blade of Karma! With a single slash, karma shattered, twisting the universe and overturning the myriad phenomena of creation! … On his ninety-ninth chest, he obtained a Mythic Divine Treasure: Primordial Purple Energy! It could split open the heavens and earth, create all things, and evolve countless worlds with a single thought! Lin Ye: “Now that I think about it… shouldn’t someone have told me that every chest is guaranteed to contain something Mythic?!”
