"Are you… willing to forge your own path and burn the destiny the Heavens wrote for you, Miss Ying Shuang?"
Shen Xuan's voice was not sound alone. It bypassed flesh and blood, striking directly at the core of Ying Shuang's soul like a divine verdict.
He stood over her, his silhouette cutting through the pale light of dawn, his silver-gray eyes locking onto hers with a clarity so absolute it felt like judgment.
The world tilted.
Ying Shuang's breath caught, her heartbeat stuttering beneath the weight of his gaze.
"What are you saying…?" she whispered. "To unmake a physique… to dissolve Yin and Yang… that violates every law I have ever learned. You speak of the impossible as if it were a simple choice."
Her words carried instinctive resistance—not defiance, but fear. Fear of abandoning the rules that had given her suffering meaning.
"Hm. So you think my words are hollow?"
Shen Xuan did not sound offended. He simply withdrew his hand. The metallic sphere, the condensed heart of a dead plane, vanished into his Sea of Consciousness with a silent ripple.
Its disappearance made the hut feel unnervingly light, as though the mountain itself had exhaled.
"I didn't mean that," Ying Shuang said quickly.
"It's just… every scripture says the same thing. Yin and Yang are complementary halves. Where there is Yin, there must be Yang to stabilize it. This is the root of cultivation. How can everything be wrong?"
She searched his face, hoping for reassurance.
Instead, Shen Xuan regarded her with glacial amusement.
"If something is written, Ying Shuang, that does not make it Truth," he said quietly.
"It only means the one who held the brush lacked the courage to look further."
He leaned closer, his presence pressing down like a descending star.
"Ask yourself this: why would the primordial Chaos - absolute, unbound...create a so-called 'Top Fifty Physique' that is defective by design? Why would it forge a treasure that requires another living being to function?"
He straightened, his aura expanding until the wooden walls groaned beneath invisible pressure.
"The Heavens did not design your Yin-Yang Dao Embryo for dual cultivation.
That corruption came later.
Cultivators of a weakened era found a door they could not open alone and convinced themselves it required two keys.
It was easier to become parasites than to become whole."
His voice dropped, merciless and calm.
"Look at me. From which perspective am I lacking?
Is the sun incomplete because it does not merge with the moon? Is the void a failure because it contains no light?"
He turned toward the window as dawn ignited the Spirit Mountain Range.
"To seek balance in another is to confess insufficiency. I am not offering you power, I am offering you autonomy. The chance to turn your 'Embryo' into a 'World.'"
Ying Shuang's thoughts spun violently.
The logic was brutal, heretical, and terrifyingly coherent.
"But if self-sufficiency is the truth," she asked softly, "why does the world exist in pairs? Why did the Primal Chaos divide life into man and woman at all? If we were meant to be singular worlds, why not create only one form?"
Shen Xuan did not turn immediately.
"You mistake functional design for spiritual necessity," he replied at last.
"Nature divided flesh for the same reason it created seasons and decay, to ensure continuity among the weak."
He turned, his gaze striking her chest like a mountain settling.
"The division of man and woman is the Law of Flesh. It is how soil produces seed. But you are not wheat, Ying Shuang. You are a cultivator. Why should one who seeks the stars be bound by the reproductive logic of a field?"
He stepped closer. Space itself warped faintly around him.
"The Great Dao is not dual. It is singular. Absolute. Every step toward the apex is a step away from dependency. At the height of Chaos, gender is discarded. There is no Yin, no Yang, only Sovereign and Void."
He leaned down, his expression unreadable.
"Relationships are comforts for the lonely. Balance through others is a chain woven from silk. Do you wish to remain a bird that loves its cage because it is familiar, or a dragon that burns the forest just to feel the cold of the sky?"
Ying Shuang's heart trembled. Lifelong beliefs fractured under the pressure of his certainty.
"Then… is there no room for anything else?" she whispered.
"There is room for loyalty," Shen Xuan answered.
"For followers. For those who walk in the shadow of a Sovereign. But do not confuse companionship with necessity. I do not need the sun to confirm I am the night. And you should not need a man to know you are divine."
Silence fell.
Outside, the rising sun pierced the mist, and at the same moment, the earth shuddered.
A crushing pressure rolled across the Spirit Mountain like a tidal wave.
A Saint's aura.
The dawn air thickened into a pressurized void, heavy with the encroaching will of a High-Plane Saint.
The mist froze mid-air, silenced by a power that claimed ownership over the sky itself.
Shen Xuan's expression flattened.
He reached into the void and withdrew a crystalline jade slip pulsing with ancient law.
"Nature is the first boundary," he said calmly. "If you cannot look past flesh, you will never see the stars."
The jade hovered before Ying Shuang's brow.
"This is the Sacred Script of the Primordial Monad. A top-grade Holy Technique. It will guide your reconstruction until the threshold of the Quasi-Emperor Realm."
Her Chaos Sea churned violently at the laws contained within it.
"But understand this," Shen Xuan continued, his voice sharpening.
"This script is a ladder. When you reach the height it allows, you must burn it. Any cultivator who relies on borrowed truth at the summit will find their path sealed by their own cowardice."
He stepped closer.
"If you cannot accept solitude, then this technique is wasted on you. You would be better served as a concubine to a High-Plane King."
The words struck like a divine trial.
After a long moment, Ying Shuang reached out and grasped the jade.
Silver fire roared through her Chaos Sea.
"Everything is prepared," Shen Xuan said, turning toward the door as the Saint's pressure intensified. "The Cage of Heavens is closing. Move south. Use the Void-Circulation path."
He stepped to the threshold of the hut, his silhouette a blade of shadow against the terrifying brilliance of the descending formation.
To a Sovereign, departure was not tragedy, only the severing of a completed karmic thread.
Behind him, Ying Shuang stood amid swirling remnants of silver Qi, clutching the jade to her chest as if it were the only solid object left in a world dissolving into smoke.
Her heart beat with a heavy, silver rhythm.
"Shen Xuan!"
Her voice rang out, fragile, desperate, yet burning with resolve.
He paused, his hand resting on the wooden frame. He did not turn.
"You speak of the Void and the Monad," she said, her eyes blazing.
"You speak of burning scriptures and walking alone… but tell me, do you believe in Destiny? Do you believe we will meet again?"
Silence answered her.
The waterfall froze solid. The birds had fled. Even the wind was murdered beneath the Saint's pressure.
Shen Xuan tilted his head slightly, silver-gray hair catching the light like frost.
"Destiny," he murmured.
"That is the excuse the weak use to justify failure, and the comfort the blind use to explain luck."
He turned just enough for his profile to be visible, divine and unyielding.
"I do not believe in destiny, Ying Shuang. I believe in Inevitability."
His golden-purple eyes flared, piercing through her soul.
"If you possess the Will to climb the ladder I have given you, and if you survive the fires of the Quasi-Emperor threshold, then the Dao will have no choice but to bring you to the Northeast."
"We will meet again not because the Heavens decree it, but because I have commanded the world to move toward a certain end."
"If you are there, that is your triumph. If not… then you were merely a ripple in a river that has already reached the sea."
Without another word, Shen Xuan stepped into the white-hot brilliance of spatial displacement.
"Wait—!"
Ying Shuang reached out, but her fingers grasped only cold, ionizing air.
The mountain convulsed. The hut, and every trace of the boy with gray eyes, was swallowed by silver-white light.
She stood alone in a displaced dimension, the Saint's aura pressing down like a mountain.
But she did not kneel.
She clenched the jade slip until her knuckles whitened, silver flame igniting in her eyes.
"Inevitability," she whispered.
"Then I shall make my path inevitable."