WebNovels

Chapter 31 - Final Denial

Chapter 31

And if it were true, then the threat of annihilation against the world—which encompassed the Gods, the place Ling Xu hailed from and still stood as a part of—was not empty rhetoric or a momentary outburst of anger, but a calculated plan merely awaiting its moment.

The Celestial Awareness did not interpret, nor did it judge based on prejudice.

It merely weighed the facts, and from those facts arose a conclusion that left no room for naivety or denial.

The world was on the brink of forced purification, and the victims would not be evil, but the very existence that had once been worshiped.

Without any signal or reminder, reluctance had long been engraved, nesting deep within Ling Xu's heart, accumulating like cold dust on some altar, never to be used again.

She neither hated nor desired.

There remained only a flat emptiness, a void of reaction whenever she glimpsed the shadow of Huan Zheng.

Especially since the revelation had been delivered, explaining that humans were planning, preparing a full-scale systematic massacre of the Fallen Gods, stripped of their own meaning after the Harmony Conflict.

Ling Xu listened, understood, yet refused to respond.

For long before Huan Zheng's sentences were fully formed, she had already carved, already imprinted a conclusion in her mind that Huan Zheng's fate would not improve.

And more than that, he was hardly worth saving.

Beneath the calm of her face, a poison had been set in motion.

She herself had planted it, slipping it in gently, like inserting a prayer rejected by heaven.

Mustraya's toxin, unknown to the Fallen Gods, yet subtle enough not to create a wound, only to freeze, gradually silencing time.

And if all went as intended, Huan Zheng's body would yield, surrendering long before his intentions could grow into disaster.

It was not merely punishment, but a setting of limits.

That not every betrayal needed to be answered with anger; it was enough to end with a conclusion beyond protest.

The spoils Huan Zheng had once carried nearly changed hands, though those items had never truly belonged to him.

Ling Xu's possessions, no matter how valuable their form, could not be given, arbitrarily used as bargaining tools in something as simple as the safety of a human.

Even the flaws of Lintang, the offerings once personally handed to Huan Zheng, now felt no more than burdens disproportionate to all complexity.

Clearly, they emerged alongside him.

The identified value was significant, too great to be borne by someone whose position was now questioned even as a protector.

The most troubling aspect was not the value itself, but the harsh reality that the safety of a single human, with all the depravity of desire, had nearly shaken a decision that should have been absolute.

Delayed cultivation, miscalculated strategies, all intertwined because of doubt, sprouting from places that should have remained untouched.

So rather than allow him to live with opportunity, Ling Xu chose to bury it, extinguishing the remaining sympathy.

Drop by drop, like the poison silently at work.

Amid the whirl of thought that found no shore, Ling Xu's steps continued, moving even as the heart's direction spun in a circle of uncertainty.

Huan Zheng's previous statements lingered, unvanished despite being consciously ignored multiple times.

The confusion was not unfamiliar, yet this presence felt profoundly unsettling, as if something that should not enter consideration had settled, crystallized in the recesses of thought beyond ordinary logic.

After long navigation, mental instability transformed, merely declaring an accidental opening, the door from which a memory shot out unbidden.

Loyalty.

The word had been uttered by Huan Zheng, not merely as a promise, but as a condition, a pledge accompanying his request for Mustraya's toxin to be removed from his body.

A vow of obedience, that no will could oppose the Young Master's steps, that everything would be surrendered into absolute emptiness for Ling Xu.

At the time, the sentence felt like a fragment, a small part of a survival strategy.

Now, unexpectedly, its meaning resurfaced, opening a gap, an opportunity for considerations never before imagined.

Not emerging from affection, nor from compassion.

Rather, it leaned toward the strangeness of an idea, almost primal instinct—arising from the tedium of human pretense.

The notion of not killing Huan Zheng, but instead transforming him, making him a personal guard, a servant without will, arose swiftly, leaving a faint trace that continued to grow.

It was not a priority, nor something deliberately sought.

Yet in the empty space between decision and doubt, the idea found its place.

A subtle game, not to make Huan Zheng a slave in the literal sense, but a creature, a loyal dog with no home beyond the footsteps of its master.

Ling Xu had never aspired to have followers.

The path she chose was too solitary to share, too steep for others to traverse.

Yet in this state, where the toxin had been planted and loyalty offered openly, rejecting such devotion felt only more cumbersome.

So, in silence, she repositioned Huan Zheng within the scheme.

No longer a figure to be discarded, but to be utilized.

No longer a threat, but a tool.

And if he ever wished to remove the toxin, first he must give, proving the utility of the body at stake.

The decision began to take shape without hesitation, as if fragments of thought long scattered gradually found power, authority to unite.

Besides seizing the freedom that should have been an absolute right of a human, elevating Huan Zheng as a subordinate offered advantages, almost too obvious to ignore.

Wherever her steps led, Ling Xu need no longer worry, no longer fear unseen dangers.

No longer relying on excessive vigilance, often a burden to cultivators on cliff edges.

For now, she possessed something that could be thrown, delivered first into the vortex of conflict.

Not as an inert tool, but as a living being, one that had forfeited free will since Mustraya's toxin coursed through his body.

Even caution lost its value at this level.

No room, no small gap for doubt masquerading as deliberation.

Every emerging option, every possibility once imagined as a trap, was now verified as null.

No harm awaited from recruiting Huan Zheng, clearly as an unnamed guard.

On the contrary, benefits began appearing one by one, approaching like fragments of fortune, too neatly aligned to be coincidence.

As long as Huan Zheng continued to follow, continued to live like a shameless animal that had lost its fangs but still had legs, every step Ling Xu took forward would become lighter.

To be continued…

More Chapters