Yao Xian floated in darkness.
Not the darkness of the courtyard, not the shadow cast by her concept's manifestation. This was internal—a deep space within herself where consciousness retreated when something else took control.
She felt peace.
Oh. So this is what it feels like. Finally. Two thousand years and the bitch finally shuts up.
For the first time in two thousand years, she felt nothing but peace. No burden. No weight. No constant, grinding agony that had become so familiar she'd forgotten what its absence felt like.
Something tugged at her.
Let go, it whispered. Not in words, but in feeling. Release control. Rest. Be at peace.
She knew what this was.
Yeah, yeah. I remember you. Same trick as last time. Come on then, take the wheel. See how long you last before the pain gets bored and starts chewing on you instead.
The same thing that had happened two thousand years ago. Her concept trying to take full control, asserting itself over her consciousness, becoming the dominant force rather than the tool she wielded.
Outside, she couldn't see but could feel everything with crystalline clarity.
The opponent had peered into her soul. A standard technique—divine existences did it all the time, searching for weaknesses to exploit. He'd been stronger than her, technically. Past Domain stage while she remained at Attuned. The backlash from peering into a weaker soul should have been negligible.
He'd expected to brush it aside.
He'd been wrong.
Attuned wasn't really her stage.
Pain wasn't her true concept.
She hadn't even fought back—hadn't retaliated, hadn't opposed his intrusion. He'd simply looked into her soul and found himself sharing the burden she carried. Not all of it. Not even most of it. Just a tiny fraction—the smallest glimpse of what she endured every moment of every day.
Two thousand years of pain.
There it is. My loyal little parasite. Always shows up when someone gets too nosy.
Physical pain that never stopped—every nerve ending firing continuously, sending signals of agony that would have killed anyone else within seconds. Conceptual pain that attacked the very idea of her existence. Soul pain that gnawed at the core of who she was. Psychic pain that shredded thoughts before they could form.
All of it. Always. Without pause or reprieve.
The contaminated practitioner had touched that pain for less than a second.
His existence couldn't withstand even that brief contact.
The corruption that had transformed him into a monster—that fundamental wrongness that seemed unkillable—had been burned away by sheer agony. The contamination couldn't survive what she carried. His body couldn't survive it either. Reality itself couldn't bear the evidence of what had happened.
So it erased him.
Not death. Erasure. Complete removal from existence, as if he had never been.
This was what had happened two thousand years ago.
Someone had pushed too far. Someone had peered too deep. And they had discovered what Yao Xian really was—not a divine existence who had mastered pain, but something else entirely. Something that survived despite pain that should have been impossible to endure.
The Transcendents had heard about it.
They'd grown up—if beings that old could be said to grow up—hearing stories about the dangerous woman who could kill with her very existence. They believed it was a one-time thing. That if she lost control, she would die—but she would take her attacker with her. Maybe more than one attacker. Maybe everyone nearby.
They didn't know the truth.
Pain wasn't her real concept. It was what she'd developed to survive herself and the world—a way to understand and sometimes nullify the agony that would otherwise consume her. She'd learned to categorize it, compartmentalize it, occasionally push it aside long enough to function.
But it never stopped.
Of course it never stops. Why would it? It's the only thing that's been consistent in my life.
The Transcendents watched her carefully. As children, they'd been warned about her. As they evolved past her—rising through stages while she remained at Attuned—they'd stopped seeing her as a threat. She wasn't growing stronger. Her danger level remained constant. As long as no one provoked her, as long as no one pushed her to the point of losing control, she was manageable.
They didn't understand that she couldn't evolve further.
She couldn't. She'd been bound with a Heavenly vow. She couldn't evolve. She couldn't die. She couldn't save herself.
She was trapped.
Her existence persevered only because she had understood the pain that tormented her and made it her concept—deriving the power to nullify pain, and other actions, emotions, sensations that could lead to pain. It had become her state of living. Being numb.
For two thousand years.
And now, floating in this internal space while her concept handled the violence outside, she felt none of it.
Peace.
Perfect, absolute, boring peace. Gods, I could get used to this. Just… nothing. No screaming nerves. No background static of agony. Just quiet.
Perfect, absolute peace.
She could stay here. Let her concept maintain control. Stop fighting to retain consciousness, stop struggling to remain herself. Just... let go. Drift in this darkness where pain couldn't reach, where two millennia of agony became distant memory.
It would mean death, probably.
Not her concept—that would continue, running on automatic, defending itself, spreading pain and her real concept to anything that came too close. But Yao Xian the person, the consciousness that had endured impossibility for so long, would fade. Dissolve into the peace she'd been seeking since before the current Transcendents were born.
Why shouldn't I?
The thought carried no desperation. No emotional weight. Just calm curiosity.
She'd lived twenty centuries of pain. Had endured what no one else could endure. Had served, and watched, and done nothing of value with an existence that was nothing but suffering.
The Transcendents considered her dangerous but controlled. The children feared her indifference. The elders avoided her when possible. She had no friends, no goals, no purpose beyond continuing to exist in agony.
Why not let it end?
Why not embrace this peace?
She floated in the darkness, considering.
Outside, her body descended slowly, her concept releasing its grip on reality. The sky lightened. The ground stopped shaking. The overwhelming presence that had manifested without her conscious direction gradually withdrew.
But inside, in the space where decisions were made, Yao Xian weighed two thousand years of pain against an eternity of peace.
And made her choice.
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End of Chapter 57