[World of "The Path to Nine Heavens" · Sea of Wuwang · Peak of the Final Battle]
The wind screamed across the pitch-black sea, carrying the stench of iron and death.
Crimson lightning split the heavens. Below, the waters churned with the bodies of the fallen—cultivators and demons alike, their blood turning the waves into rivers of rust. Tens of thousands of immortal sect disciples clashed with the demonic army, their battle cries shaking the very foundations of existence. Swords sang. Spells exploded. Beasts roared their last breaths.
This was the war that would decide the fate of all three realms.
And at the apex of this mountain of corpses, far above the chaos, two figures faced each other across the void.
One stood in robes white as freshly fallen snow, untouched by the carnage below. He gripped his bonded spirit sword "Frost's Edge," its blade humming with three thousand years of accumulated killing intent. Cold phoenix eyes stared forward, beautiful and merciless, holding nothing but absolute resolve.
This was the leader of the immortal sects, the Sword Sovereign who had never known defeat—Xie Qingyan.
The other wore black robes stained with blood that was not his own, standing barefoot upon empty air as if gravity itself dared not touch him. A careless smile played at his lips, lazy and dangerous, like a predator who had already decided his prey wasn't worth the effort.
He was the Demon Sovereign of the Nine Hells, the calamity that had haunted the cultivation world for three millennia—Yin Wuwang.
"Yin Wuwang."
Xie Qingyan's voice cut through the howling wind, hoarse from days of battle. "Today, you die."
His sword hand trembled—not from fear, but from the price he had paid. He had burned a hundred years of his lifespan to reach this moment. One hundred years of existence, sacrificed for the power to end this war.
It's finally over.
He had not failed his master's dying wish. Kill the demon before him, and the world would know peace at last.
So why did his heart feel so hollow? Why did some treacherous part of him hesitate?
Yin Wuwang gazed at the man across from him—this man he had watched from the shadows for three thousand years. This man he had loved in silence, in madness, in despair.
Fuguang.
That was his courtesy name. "Supporting Light." How fitting. How cruel.
Something soft flickered in the depths of Yin Wuwang's eyes, there and gone like a shooting star.
Burning a century of his life just to kill me? Does Fuguang truly hate me this much?
He thought of those three thousand years. The war he had started—not for power, not for conquest, but simply because he couldn't bear being forgotten. Because being Xie Qingyan's enemy was better than being nothing to him at all.
Pathetic. Three thousand years, and this is how it ends.
Fine. Dying by his hand... that's not so bad.
Yin Wuwang spread his arms wide, his smile turning soft in a way that didn't match his words. "Such bold words from the Sword Sovereign. You want this sovereign's life?" His voice dropped, almost gentle. "Come and take it—if you can."
"Die!"
Xie Qingyan exploded forward, becoming a streak of silver light. His strike carried the weight of three millennia of cultivation, enough force to shatter mountains, to split the heavens themselves.
The blade plunged toward Yin Wuwang's heart.
Unavoidable.
Inescapable.
And Yin Wuwang didn't move.
Squelch—!
The wet sound of steel meeting flesh.
Frost's Edge buried itself to the hilt in the Demon Sovereign's chest, piercing straight through his heart.
Yin Wuwang looked down at Xie Qingyan, now close enough that he could count his eyelashes. Close enough to see the faint shadows under his eyes, the tension in his jaw, the way his lips pressed together like he was holding something back.
Beautiful. Even now.
A smile of release crossed the demon's face. "Fuguang... you win."
Xie Qingyan's brow furrowed. Something was wrong.
The Demon Sovereign—the most powerful being in the demonic realm, the calamity who had slaughtered his way through countless battlefields—hadn't even tried to dodge. Hadn't raised a single defense.
He wanted to die.
The realization hit like a physical blow. Grief and panic surged without warning, emotions that had no place on a battlefield, feelings he had severed long ago—
Why? Why does this feel wrong? Why do I—
His lips parted, words forming—
Bzzt... bzzzzt...
A bizarre crackling sound exploded across heaven and earth, cutting through his thoughts.
The blood flowing from Yin Wuwang's chest wound began to change. It didn't drip—it dissolved, breaking apart into cascading black characters that tumbled downward like broken code.
[Yin Wuwang coughed blood and collapsed—]
The words fell and scattered, meaningless symbols against the void.
Then Xie Qingyan noticed the silence.
The battlefield had stopped.
The cultivator frozen mid-swing. The demon beast suspended mid-roar. The wave hanging motionless in the air. Ten thousand warriors locked in place like figures in a painting, their colors slowly bleeding away into grey.
"What..." Xie Qingyan looked around, his analytical mind racing even as his heart pounded. "What is this? A time-space technique? A forbidden seal?"
No. This didn't feel like any technique. This felt like reality itself was breaking down. Like the world had simply... stopped being real.
CRACK.
The storm-clouded sky above them split open.
Through the rift poured infinite blackness and streams of sickly green light. And from that void emerged a hand—massive beyond comprehension, formed entirely of ink-brush strokes, each finger the size of a mountain. Its palm alone eclipsed the entire Sea of Wuwang, casting a shadow over the frozen apocalypse below.
An ancient, bone-tired voice boomed like thunder:
"Enough! Stop fighting already! The author got hit by a car and ended up in the hospital. This novel's been abandoned."
Xie Qingyan's face twisted.
Author? Novel? Abandoned?
What madness was this giant hand spouting? What kind of illusion technique tried to shake its victim's conviction with such obvious nonsense?
How dare it disturb his Dao heart!
"What manner of demon are you?!"
In fury, he ripped his sword free from Yin Wuwang's chest and slashed upward. A rainbow of sword light, carrying three thousand years of cultivation, shot toward the impossible hand.
"Demon?" The voice dripped with the bone-deep exhaustion of an overworked bureaucrat. "The world is literally falling apart and you're still trying to finish the finale? Forget it—come with me. Mending Heaven Station needs some temp workers."
The ink-formed hand reached down.
Two fingers.
A casual pinch.
Like grabbing toys from a claw machine.
"Ahhh—!"
Two beings who stood at the absolute pinnacle of the cultivation world were lifted away without the slightest resistance.
Dignity? What dignity?
[Mending Heaven Station · The Lonely Isle on the Ink Sea]
Thud! Thud!
Two figures crashed onto hard ground.
Xie Qingyan flipped to his feet the instant he landed, battle instincts overriding shock. Though Frost's Edge had lost its spiritual glow, its killing intent remained sharp enough to cut. He feared nothing—not displacement, not illusions. The greatest illusionists could create pocket dimensions indistinguishable from reality, and he had destroyed dozens of them throughout his long life.
His sword could cut through any falsehood.
He leveled the blade at the old man behind the desk.
Said old man was currently... picking at his feet.
"Demon! Dispel this illusion at once, or I will cut you down where you sit!"
The administrator of Mending Heaven Station—Immortal Dumu, known as Elder Mo—took a leisurely sip of tea. He glanced at Xie Qingyan with the mild interest of someone watching a particularly confused ant.
"Cut me down? With what? That sword?" He snorted. "I spent ages coming up with that name, you know. 'Frost's Edge.' Classic protagonist weapon naming conventions. Very symbolic."
"Nonsense!"
Xie Qingyan thrust forward. The strike contained three thousand years of sword cultivation—enough to split mountains even without spiritual energy.
Ding!
The blade stopped three inches from Elder Mo's brow. It trembled once—
—and dissolved.
Not shattered. Not deflected. Dissolved—into a single line of black text that hung in the air:
[A sharp, cold longsword symbolizing the protagonist's lonely fate.]
The words scattered like leaves in wind. Xie Qingyan's hand held nothing but emptiness.
"What..."
His pupils contracted. His mind, which had remained calm through countless life-or-death battles, finally stuttered.
What cultivation level could unmake a heaven-grade spiritual weapon with a thought? What power could reduce three thousand years of bonded sword cultivation into... a sentence?
Elder Mo waved his hand lazily. Whoosh—countless scrolls unfurled from the darkness above, cascading down like waterfalls until both men were surrounded by walls of paper and ink.
"Alright, alright, settle down. This is Mending Heaven Station, under the Department of Novelists, which serves the Literary Emperor of the Heavenly Court. I'm the unlucky bastard running this place—Immortal Dumu, but you can call me Elder Mo."
He sighed heavily, summoned a wine jug from thin air, and took a long swig.
"I manage abandoned manuscripts and help incompetent authors fill in the plot holes they've dug themselves into."
Two fingers flicked through the air. A scroll materialized before Xie Qingyan.
"The Dao creates all worlds. And within those worlds exist infinite more worlds. Worlds born from authors' pens are naturally among them." Elder Mo's voice lost its laziness, turning almost gentle. "Open your eyes. This is your entire life—as written by a human author."
Xie Qingyan looked up.
He saw himself. In words.
[Chapter 3: To prove his commitment to the righteous path, Xie Qingyan severed his emotional bonds with his own hand, pushing the small demon creature off the cliff. His heart was being carved by knives, but his face showed nothing. "The righteous and the wicked walk different paths," he said.]
[Chapter 150: His master died in his arms, blood soaking through white robes. With his last breath, the old man told him to protect all living beings. Xie Qingyan swore an oath to the heavens: This life, he would never fail the world.]
Every single character matched his most vivid memories. Every emotion. Every scar. Every choice he had believed was his own.
"Fake..." The word came out as a whisper. "It's all fake?"
Three thousand years of cultivation. Three thousand years of sacrifice, of loss, of clinging to duty when everything else had been stripped away. Nothing but ink on paper? Nothing but entertainment for some creature in another world?
Then what was the point of any of it?
Pffft—!
A spray of blood burst from his lips. His Dao heart—the foundation of his entire cultivation—cracked like glass.
"Fuguang!"
Yin Wuwang moved before he could think. He caught Xie Qingyan's collapsing body, pulling him close, one hand pressed against his back to steady him.
Then he turned to Elder Mo.
Killing intent rolled off him in waves, thick enough to suffocate.
"Old bastard." His voice was quiet. Deadly. "Shut. Your. Mouth."
His fingers dug into his own palm hard enough to draw blood, but he didn't notice. All he could see was Fuguang's ashen face, the blood on his lips, the emptiness in his eyes.
"Even if you're some kind of creator god—you made him. How dare you break him like this?"
I can't bear to see Fuguang shed a single drop of blood. This decrepit fossil destroys his entire world with one sentence?
I don't care if he's the Heavenly Dao or some novelist or the creator of the entire universe—
I want him DEAD.
Elder Mo studied the murderous demon for a long moment. Then he sighed, took another sip of tea, and spoke with unexpected gentleness:
"I'm just showing you the truth, boy. This novel has been abandoned. The world is going to collapse." He waved his hand; the scrolls rolled themselves back up. "If you don't want to dissolve into scrap paper, accept reality. Go work in other fictional worlds. Earn enough Wish Power to wake the author from his coma."
Xie Qingyan knelt on the ground, eyes hollow, soul shattered.
"...Save him?" His voice was flat. Dead. "If I am fictional, then so is every being I swore to protect. What is the purpose of saving illusions?"
"Because the pain is real."
Yin Wuwang's hand clamped down on Xie Qingyan's shoulder, grip almost bruising.
"Fuguang. Look at me."
His voice cracked, but he didn't care anymore.
"When you saved me back then—the warmth I felt was real. The sword you just put through my chest—that pain was real. As long as we still feel, as long as we still think, as long as something in us refuses to disappear—" He shook Xie Qingyan slightly, desperately. "Then we're alive. I don't care what anyone writes. I don't care if we're made of ink. You're real to me. That's enough."
Xie Qingyan trembled.
Slowly, he turned to face the demon who should have been his enemy.
"I... saved you?"
This man he had sworn to kill. This calamity he had sacrificed a century of his life to destroy. Now those crimson eyes blazed with something fierce and burning—not hatred, not madness, but raw, desperate life.
Like fire. Heavenly fire, karmic fire, the first flame of creation—burning through the void, daring the darkness to swallow it.
A long silence passed.
Xie Qingyan wiped the blood from his lips. Slowly, painfully, he rose.
Those eyes that had once been clear and righteous now held a new edge. Colder. Sharper. Touched with something almost unhinged.
"Very well." He looked at Elder Mo, and his voice could have frozen hell itself. "But if I ever discover you've lied to me... I will find my way back here. And I will cut down your brush."
Elder Mo grinned. "Deal."
Then his expression shifted—the tired bureaucrat replaced by a merchant who'd just scented profit.
"Now that we have an agreement—time to pick your equipment!" He snapped his fingers; another scroll unfurled before them. He tapped one glowing line and beamed with the warmth of a loan shark. "Right here! The 'Tianji System—Premium Deluxe Edition!' Only ten million high-grade spirit stones. Buy it, and you'll breeze through any world!"
At the mention of money, Yin Wuwang's hand flew to the storage ring hidden in his robes.
Ten million.
Ten. Million.
That's three thousand years of savings! My entire fortune! Everything I set aside for—for—
His eye twitched violently.
This old con artist! What is he, a highway robber?!
"Not buying!"
He lifted his chin, arrogance snapping back into place like armor. "This sovereign conquered three realms on strength alone! What need have I for such trinkets? A mere fictional world? I can handle it with one hand tied behind my back."
Xie Qingyan, still reeling from having his entire existence recontextualized, had no energy for haggling. He simply stood aside, face blank.
Elder Mo shrugged, a mysterious smile tugging at his weathered lips.
"Fine, fine. Young folks these days, so proud." He cracked his knuckles. "Then let me send you somewhere 'simple' to start. World Designation #9527/9528."
He paused.
"Interstellar ABO."
"Off you go!"
BOOM—!
The floor split open beneath them. Before either could react, they plunged into the howling chaos of the space-time void.
Yin Wuwang tumbled through the darkness, robes whipping around him, reaching for something—anything—
His mind screamed:
WAIT.
WHAT THE HELL IS ABO?!
YOU CRUSTY OLD FOSSIL—
WHEN I GET BACK, I'M GOING TO—
The void swallowed his curses whole.
[End of Chapter 1]
Next Chapter: In Which We Crash-Land Into a Genre Neither of Us Understands