"W-World destruction?!"
Kong Huang stammered, staring wordlessly at the absurd statement uttered by the shadow king.
Normally, he would not pay much attention to something like that said by someone else, but that alien and bizarre being saying such a thing made him, unconsciously, doubt whether it could be true.
While Kong Huang reacted in shock, Wang Mei did not. She merely seemed surprised by the sudden question, not by the unusual topic itself.
That reaction was all Aotian needed to make the eyes of his main body shine.
'Could it be that someone is finally going to tell me something?! Can people not make things a little easier for me to figure out?!' Aotian complained internally, but there was no doubt that his heart was filled with joy.
The end of the world was something seemingly uncontrollable, something that could happen at any moment, and it weighed deeply on his heart.
He didn't want to be the first reincarnator in history to die because the world itself exploded—without even fully understanding why.
Thus, his gaze grew increasingly intense as it fixed on the girl.
However, that attitude ended up being unintentionally interpreted by the two below the throne as impatience and irritation from the shadow king, rather than happiness.
'S-Should I… just say it?'
Wang Mei hesitated when she sensed the supposed irritation of the shadow king.
'Well, my master never forbade me from telling it, she only said that it shouldn't be discussed casually.'
She swallowed hard and, in the end, under the dual pressure of the shadow king's implicit threat and the not strictly confidential nature of the information, decided to reveal everything.
"I-I'll speak."
Swallowing hard, she replied, lowering her head.
Wang Mei was not truly cowardly… well, maybe a little. But if there was one thing she was certain did not define her, it was being stubborn, inflexible, or foolish.
["Say everything you know. If you do so, I will do my utmost to protect you and allow you to leave this small world."]
The shadow finally removed its cheek from its fist, abandoning its bored posture and sitting with dignity and seriousness. Its arms rested on the armrests of the throne, and its torso straightened like a sword.
Seeing the solemn posture of that powerful and sinister king, combined with the extremely tempting promise, Wang Mei bit her lip and decided to gamble, telling the whole truth.
In any case, it wasn't as if she had many options at that moment.
"I don't know much. Everything I know is what my master told me before she left. Perhaps she knew from the beginning that her chances of returning were minimal, and that's why she told me these things…"
In a low tone, she began to recount what she knew, no longer hesitating. However, when speaking of her master, a note of sadness involuntarily appeared in her voice and her eyes.
Aotian, despite being impatient inside, remained calm on the outside and listened carefully to the girl's story.
"That day, my master told me some mysterious things. She said that the world might not last many years and that, if she didn't return, I should simply enjoy my life."
"She also said that her enemies didn't harbor a hatred deep enough to come after me, because, with the end approaching, powerful cultivators wouldn't care about a mute young girl like me, who couldn't change anything and had no significance."
"But since my master's death, I haven't enjoyed life and have only focused on cultivation, because her enemies might not do anything, but those beneath them would, and they are not something I can deal with at the moment."
Sighing, Wang Mei finished speaking in an exhausted and sorrowful voice.
Aotian's mouth, however, almost twitched upon hearing that.
'Who the hell wants to know about your life story?! Can you focus on the important parts?!'
If the shadow king's eyes were not completely black, the two below might have noticed him rolling them.
["And did your master tell you the reason why the world is so close to destruction?"]
He asked directly, with an imposing and firm voice, more as if he were testing her than out of genuine curiosity.
"Hmm…" She nodded softly.
Aotian waited anxiously for the answer, his heart racing.
"..."
"..."
"..."
Silence filled the tent.
Kong Huang swallowed hard in fear and cast a helpless glance at the girl, who remained silent, standing obediently with her head lowered, apparently waiting for the next question.
As for Aotian, he almost felt a vein burst in anger.
Controlling himself so as not to smack the back of the girl's head, he asked authoritatively.
["And what was it?"]
The shadow king inquired, narrowing his black eyes.
"Huh? You don't know?"
The girl raised her head and looked at him, letting the question slip out in surprise.
"..."
"..."
Kong Huang beside her perked up his ears, curiously awaiting the revelation — which he now believed much more, considering that the source of the information this time was Wang Mei's powerful master — but he almost spat blood when he saw the girl, so oblivious, ask such a question.
And he was almost certain he saw the shadow king's eye twitch.
He was not wrong. In fact, Aotian nearly stood up this time. Fortunately, upon noticing the girl's innocent look, he confirmed in time that she was simply absent-minded.
Helpless, he truly did not know how to deal with someone like that. Normally, it was he who irritated others with his lack of convention, not the other way around.
Fortunately, while Aotian tasted his own medicine, the girl, Wang Mei, despite still being confused, explained.
"Well, my master said that the end of the world was connected to the being sealed in this small world—the Shadowfallen."
She explained with seriousness on her pretty face, as she tucked her long brown hair behind her ear with her hand, her heart still shaken as she recalled the news her master had told her back then, several years ago.
'Shadowfallen…' Aotian quickly recalled the legend Mu Luyin had told him back then, about a being divided into pieces and sealed in different locations.
As he reflected, he continued listening to the girl.
"Everyone normally knows about the Shadowfallen, but my master told me a secret that very few know about it. The Shadowfallen was once a being of our world, and one who reached the Mahayana realm," in a mysterious tone, she explained, with Kong Huang holding his breath at her side. "However, on the day of his ascension, something terrible happened."
Her voice then became solemn, carrying a trace of fear.
"When the gates of the immortal plane opened, the immortal world—bright and filled with immortal energy as told in the legends—was no longer there. There was only a desolate and black world, overtaken by something extremely corrupting…"
At that point, she swallowed hard as she narrated, unconsciously looking toward the world beyond the tent where they were.
Kong Huang immediately understood and, seized by horror, completed:
"... Impurities?"
Even he himself found his guess unbelievable, but the simple nod from Wang Mei was enough to make him feel his strength drain away.
If even the immortal world had succumbed to that, what hope would they have had if the gates of immortality had opened and such things had inevitably entered their world?
'No, they've already entered; they're the things outside!' he realized quickly, horrified.
Under such shock, he now looked like nothing more than a frightened little boy, not the powerful cultivator he was supposed to be.
Aotian observed all of this but did not allow himself to be affected, for he had far more important questions in mind. Even so, even he felt a certain fear and panic regarding the future.
'The immortal plane fell?!' he thought in disbelief, but soon shook his head, regaining his composure.
He still lacked far too much information to draw any definitive conclusions.
["And what happened next?"]
Taking a deep breath in his main body and calming himself, he continued questioning the girl, this time without trying to hide that he truly did not know. At that moment, he needed answers at any cost.
Hearing the sincere question, Wang Mei hesitated only for an instant before revealing it, biting her lip in distress.
"Then the cultivator was rapidly corrupted by those ferocious impurities, failed the ascension, and never surpassed the Mahayana realm. And, as if it couldn't get any worse, he ended up transforming into an extremely terrifying and immortal irrational monster, one that could not be killed by any means."
"At that point, the world was on the brink of collapse, with many Tribulation Transcendents falling in the battle to stop him, yet still failing. Later, he came to be narrated as an invincible being."
"And when it seemed there was no more hope, something changed. Because the chaos and death had been so intense, in the end, the Tree of Life was forced to intervene."
"She imprisoned the monster with her powerful branches and, around it, created a small world, isolating it from all the life it could otherwise destroy." Her eyes flickered. "That world is where we are now."
Wang Mei pointed to the ground beneath their feet with her finger and, like a machine gun of words, set the drama aside and summarized the entire story in just a few lines.
Aotian took a deep breath as he narrowed his eyes, for the moment ignoring the girl's peculiarities in the face of the importance of the information he had received.
He still felt the story must be more complex than that, but he could not demand much from someone who clearly did not know more details.
["Continue."]
He ordered firmly, and fortunately, Wang Mei nodded.
"Well, after that there isn't much more. The Tree of Life saved the world and isolated the corrupted Mahayana cultivator. But at the same time, she absorbed all the impurities that leaked from the higher world with her enormous branches and kept the Shadowfallen imprisoned. However, this severely polluted her, placing her on a slow path toward death."
"My master said that if the Tree of Life dies, not only will spiritual energy completely disappear, decreeing the end of cultivators, but the world itself will collapse. In the end, the only thing that would probably remain would be the Shadowfallen sealed here, which would then be free."
She explained, shrugging helplessly. The girl had already accepted the fate her master had told her was unchangeable, even if, deep down, she did not want to accept it.
But unlike her, Aotian had not accepted that end at all and was already devising solutions in his mind as he tried to understand everything.
'The immortal plane is still far too distant for me. My focus is the here and now. First save this world, then think about the rest.'
'Let's see. The Tree of Life, apparently the origin of spiritual energy. I still know very little about it, but there may be some relation to the planetary tree I read about in the information from Liu Taixuan's necklace—perhaps they are even the same. That would make sense, since only something from the immortal plane could be capable of resisting the powerful impurities of the same plane.'
'Then, the problem is precisely those impurities. I can try to resolve this issue using Feng Shui and heal the tree with my ancestor from the Alchemy Pavilion. The problem is that if those impurities are truly of immortal level, I will at the very least need to synthesize Mahayana-level inheritances to deal with them, which seems almost impossible with the current level of cultivation of this world…'
That was, by far, his greatest concern at that moment.
'There's no need to rush. Let's first deal with what I can control right now, which is preventing the Silent Cadaver Orchid from falling into the wrong hands and further reducing the little time I have.'
With his thoughts gathered, his hands trembling, and forcing himself to swallow his panic, he prepared to expand his operations within that small world.
Urgency grew in his heart, now that he knew the origin of the problem and understood that it would be anything but simple to resolve.
And time seemed shorter than ever.