Everything happened too quickly. Before Li Fufeng could react, endless light flooded over him like water.
In a world devoid of sight, the overlapping and undulating sounds from nearby became so clear – old people, young girls, youths, women… Various voices intertwined. As the last “survivors” of this world, since discovering the nature of their own deaths, they had fallen into a state of complete bewilderment. They kept muttering to themselves, ignoring everything happening around them.
“I remember now, I remember everything…”
“It was the Return to the Void! The Return to the Void catastrophe that drove the world towards its destined destruction! The inevitable end of every world!”
“…When drifting through the void, the Hanguang Sword accidentally passed by a world entering Return to the Void and was affected by the aftershocks – that was a force we couldn’t resist. Even though the Sword Master decisively took us away at the cost of severe injuries, the Hanguang Sword was still gravely wounded. But everything was already irreversible… The world was destroyed, everyone died… So, it turns out we had already died long ago!”
In the blinding whiteness, Li Fufeng heard a familiar voice shouting. It was the voice of Yan Wu, the city lord of Quanshou City.
This voice was no longer as frenzied and angry as before, but filled with shock, realization, and indescribable sorrow and melancholy.
“No, am I really still me now?”
At this moment, this man of rash and impulsive temperament suddenly became sharp and sensitive. “Am I really Yan Wu…”
…Or just an illusion labeled with the name “Yan Wu”?In Li Fufeng’s vision, gradually adapting to the light, blurry human silhouettes emerged in the previously vast emptiness, like splotches of colorful paint on a palette.
He barely made out the smallest “red paint” splotch among them. Noticing that the red was rapidly fading, like the other quickly paling “paints” around it, about to dissolve into the light, Li Fufeng instinctively ran towards her.
Liu Ningshuang beside him was faster, already running quickly towards her, as if trying to grab that silhouette, holding onto a dream destined to dissipate. “Qing Fei—”
The red shadow brushed past her fingertips, dispersing in large patches into the light like red ink dripped into water. Her fingers passed through as if through an empty illusion, grasping nothing.
In the reddened light, Liu Ningshuang vaguely saw the familiar little girl tilt her head. “…It’s you, Sister Liu.”
“Yes, it’s me. How are you now, what can I do, no, what should I do to help you…” Liu Ningshuang’s voice was almost incoherent and trembling.
The sudden changes that had occurred in this short time were too shocking for her. She hadn’t fully come to her senses yet, her brain had stopped thinking. Now all she knew was that she absolutely couldn’t watch these people disappear like this, especially Qing Fei.
…She had to do something, even if it was futile.
“No, there’s no need.”
Qing Fei’s silhouette had already blurred. She merged into this light-filled world like an invisible mist, even her voice becoming ethereal and elusive because of it, as if omnipresent.
“There’s no place for me in the future world. We are people who shouldn’t continue to exist.”
“But, but, we persevered for so long in the time loop, and we were finally about to return to the Land of the Rising Sun…” Liu Ningshuang found her own vision blurring.
…Damn it, the light was too dazzling.
“Sister Liu, do you remember the three realms of martial arts enlightenment I told you about?” Whether or not she noticed her sad and reluctant emotions, the girl’s ethereal voice spoke on its own, “—See oneself, see the world, see all living beings.”
“I’ve already told you about the first two. The realm of seeing all living beings, I couldn’t explain it clearly before, but now I can tell you.”
“—I see all living beings, as all living beings see me. In a single thought, the world is born because of me, and all living beings become one with me. This is seeing all living beings.”
She spoke the truth with her light and ethereal voice.
—The real Sword Realm had long been shattered, this illusory world was born from the Sword Master’s thoughts, and the living beings in this world were the same. So, those who had died before came “alive” in his dream, living as they did in the past.
“—Each of us is a manifestation born from a single thought of the Sword Master, an illusion in his dream. I am not the lingering soul of the deceased, but merely a false person in a dream.”
“…Now, it’s time for this dream to end.”
She said the last sentence with a tone full of aspiration:
“Go, follow the Sword Master to the Land of the Rising Sun, that is the true destination for us real people.”
“But… if I’m merely a person in a dream, why do I still choose to disappear as ‘Qing Fei’ in the end… If all beings are one, all manifestations of the Sword Master’s single thought, why do I still use an honorific to address that Hanguang Sword Master…”
Liu Ningshuang’s questioning whisper slowly faded away.
Her questions could no longer be answered by the person in question.
The sky split open.
More and more light poured in like water crazily filling a bottle, bursting the entire bottle in an instant. This blank world also shattered like a broken bottle.
The gray sky, Kun Mountain soaring into the clouds like a celestial ladder, familiar colleagues from the Special Investigation Department in the distance, and that feeling of being tossed into a washing machine, spinning wildly, then suddenly flying backwards, like the weightlessness of falling from a cliff. Various chaotic sensations and images intertwined in his dizzying, seemingly stirred brain, making it difficult to distinguish between reality and illusion.
Li Fufeng felt himself falling from a great height, head down and feet up. But a subconscious thought told him this was an illusion of crossing space.
He was falling from that shattered world towards the Blue Star, from a false dream into the real world.
He vaguely heard others’ exclamations, with Liu Ningshuang’s voice particularly clear. Li Fufeng’s wide-open eyes reflected the snow-covered mountain peak, large fragments of the illusory world scattering like light, and within that shattered illusory world, a pair of eyes finally opening.
Through countless flying shards of light, he saw a snow-white figure lying quietly in the center of a world bathed in endless radiance. As those ink-deep eyes slowly opened, all the light seemed to transform into the most real light of the outside world, causing that illusory world to burst apart.
Time seemed to stretch infinitely in his senses.
Li Fufeng’s falling body gained a sense of reality, landing with a “thud” on the ground, yet without the pain of falling from a great height.
He lay on his back, gazing dazedly at the sky.
In his pupils, that snow-white figure that had disappeared in an instant seemed to linger, and in his ears, that soft laugh still echoed.
“…This sleep has been a bit too long.”
” —I’m back.”
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