Chosen: Beyond Fate

Lian Cheng’s emotions changed in less than a second, from furious rage to panic, and from stubborn resistance to immediate compliance. His movements were so fast that even the Lord floating in midair failed to react in time.

He got absolutely screwed. Nothing had gone right since the moment he descended.

He’d been a premature birth from the very beginning. The moment he opened his eyes, he saw the lair his followers had painstakingly prepared for him blown sky-high. Just as he was about to fly into a rage, some insignificant little nobody pulled out some bizarre thing, and that very thing proceeded to pin him to the ground and beat the living hell out of him. He hadn’t even gotten the chance to fight back.

And then came the betrayal.

The bone wheel in the sky trembled fiercely, letting out piercing howls mixed with rage and panic. No one could make out what it was saying, only that whatever curses it was hurling had to have been extremely vile.

Inside this body that had not yet fully developed, a massive maw seemed to open. The greedy, ravenous mouth had a taotie-like hunger, sucking and devouring greedily. Like someone squeezing a milk carton dry, it latched onto the very essence that was more important to it than blood or soul and slurped away greedily.

In just a few breaths, even the sinister light in its eyes began to flicker, unable to sustain itself, yet its opponent showed not the slightest trace of sportsmanship. It instantly went into a berserk state.

Amid the fierce blaze, the Sage’s Remnant Shadow unleashed its myriad hands. Countless invisible swords slashed, swept, and hacked down upon the bone wheel in an unstoppable torrent, tearing through everything in their path like dry weeds before a blazing wind. Sparks exploded in every direction, as if hammering steel at a forge.

One after another, horrific gaps were blasted open across the bone wheel. And then, within that storm-like onslaught, millions of invisible swords suddenly converged, piercing straight from the center and driving through its core.

The following collapse and disintegration could not be stopped.

At the very center of the bone wheel, the evil eye embedded within the flesh tumor blinked wearily. A single drop of blood, like a tear, slowly slid down its surface.

The evil eye cast one final glance behind. In a surge of rage and grief, it glared viciously at the two tiny insects below.

I’m tired. I’ve truly had enough of this. Just let it all end already. There are too many scams in this Time Ruin. I want to go back to the Vortex. You damned cultists! You stole my blessings, drained my divine essence, tricked me, and then beat me half to death! If I ever see you again, you’re dead!

And then, as if unable to endure the humiliation any longer, it suddenly swelled. Every last trace of sinister light burst out. The collapsing bone wheel once again began an endless frenzy of growth and expansion, multiplying and mutating wildly until it reached its limit.

Then, under the ravaging pressure of the Sage’s Remnant Shadow, it exploded.

A boundless storm erupted from within, spreading in all directions and engulfing everything. In the terrifying quake that shook heaven and earth, the entire Time Ruin seemed unable to hold itself together. It was on the verge of total collapse.

Immediately after, countless invisible hands once again reached out and seized everything. They tightly gripped the spreading destruction, locking it within a cage woven from countless interlaced hands. Spirit matter circuits formed and dissolved within the storm. Wings withered one by one, and eyes slowly closed, turning into fragmented speckles of light that rose into the sky and scattered in all directions.

A flash of light, as terrifying as the explosion of a star, was gradually smothered beneath the cover of those endless hands.

Upon the Sage’s Remnant Shadow, the final wing unfurled. Its remaining eyes gazed at the land below, as if it were looking at the young man who was glancing up at it. And then, its eyes curved ever so slightly, almost as if it was smiling.

Then, it departed in silence.

All that remained was a fading thread of spirit matter light drifting before Ji Jue’s eyes before settling gently into his hand. Like a firefly, it faded away without a trace.

Ji Jue instinctively clenched his fist, staring up at the empty sky. The immense, solemn figure was already gone. He wanted to say something, but no words came out. In the end, he could only let out a wistful sigh.

And then he heard it. A sharp, piercing laugh came from behind him.

“Heh... hehehe... hahaha... hahahahaha...”

In the ruined hospital building, a hand slowly pushed out from beneath collapsed bricks and rubble. It was drenched in blood, and the bone was exposed through torn flesh, yet it clamped down fiercely on a length of rebar.

Like a demon crawling out of hell, Lian Cheng dragged himself up from the writhing pool of blood. He laughed wildly, hysterically even. Even though he was gravely injured and on the verge of death, his eyes shone with an impossible brilliance. A twisted, sinister aura rose from him, growing ever more violent.

He had turned disaster into an opportunity.

The moment the Upper Abomination self-destructed, he seized the final opportunity and bit back hard. Not only did he survive the impact, he even seized fragments of the rampaging, uncontrolled essence belonging to the descending Abomination.

Then he went a step further. Beneath that shattered shell of a body, his soul was undergoing an endless transformation, rising to a new state until it revealed an entirely new form. One black eye after another opened along both sides of his face. Sinister light swirled within them, and malice surged like a rising tide.

That wasn’t all. Staggering forward, he dropped to all fours and lunged toward the massive, fleshy tumor that had fallen to the ground. Ignoring the countless wailing faces writhing within it, he reached his hand into the split left behind by the vanished evil eye. He grasped something and yanked it out with all his strength.

A twisted, grotesque, black spine shaped like a wicked blade emerged in his hand. Within that pitch-black surface, faint currents of five colors and shifting iridescence flowed. Just looking at it was enough to drive him almost into an ecstatic frenzy.

Yes, yes! This was it!

“The essence of a Foolish Abomination...” he murmured in fascination as he stroked the blade and held it close. He looked as though he wanted nothing more than to merge with it completely.

Every ascent carried the seed of downfall.

The seemingly glorious path of Ascension, radiant and magnificent beyond comparison, had lured countless fools who knew nothing of the world’s true heights, yet no one had ever reached its end.

No matter how desperately they climbed, no matter what they sacrificed in pursuit of that single leap beyond the Dragon Gate[1], the result was always the same. In the endless cycle of failure and downfall, they lost everything, as if everything were a cruel joke.

They spent their entire lives going in circles, struggling in vain, forever suspended between ascent and downfall. And when, at last, they came to their senses and looked at themselves in the mirror, the spirited, ambitious person they had once been was nowhere to be found.

They had long since become unrecognizable. If the former self had already perished in endless struggle, then what exactly was the reflection that remained now?

One must imagine Sisyphus[2] as happy, even if he was never fortunate enough to be so. When every last hope had been burned away and the moment of true despair arrived, the dreams and desires one pursued for an entire lifetime became a curse, crushing both soul and reason beneath their weight.

The paradise said to lie beyond the heavens had never existed. It was nothing but a lie.

After nine days and nine nights of downfall, what awaited every climber was not salvation, but a void more terrible than any torment. And this hollow realm, where even despair could not survive, was the final destination of all sentient beings.

This was the mortal great abomination corresponding to the Ascension Supreme Benevolence—the Absolute Abyss.

The darkness of Absolute Abyss manifested upon the skeletal remains in Lian Cheng’s hand. Although the Upper Abomination had died before it could be fully born, perishing midway through its descent, the blessing and true essence of Absolute Abyss had completed its final transformation within the vessel of the Undying Disease.

It was born from an endless cycle of despair and hope. Time and time again, countless souls had come to the brink of death, only to be denied even that final release. They exhausted every possible path, tried every conceivable method, and sacrificed everything they possessed, yet still could not find a way forward.

From the yearning of innumerable souls for a death that would never come, and from their desperate hope for an end to their suffering, this divine aberrant essence was born. It embodied a longing for death, a longing for destruction, and a longing for the complete annihilation of both self and ‌soul.

Thoughts:

Hi guys! I wanted to share the Chinese folklores behind the idiom “A carp leaping over the Dragon Gate,” as many of you seem to enjoy these extra tidbits of information.

There are two legends surrounding this idiom.

The first legend tells the story of King Yu. After King Yu opened the Dragon Gate (Longmen), the river currents became swift. Carp from the Yellow River would swim upstream and attempt to leap over the Dragon Gate. Those that succeeded transformed into dragons and ascended to the heavens, while those that failed fell back into the river, marked with scars. Over time, the Dragon Gate became a symbol of achieving greatness through perseverance and overcoming immense challenges. This legend gave rise to the saying: "Leap over the Dragon Gate, and your worth increases a hundredfold."

In the second legend, a great school of carp from the Eastern Sea journeyed upstream to the Dragon Gate after hearing that King Yu would allow any fish that crossed it to become a dragon. Despite repeated failures, they continued practicing. When some began to lose hope, King Yu encouraged them to work together.

A clever golden-backed carp devised a method: the carp would leap one after another, using each other’s backs as stepping stones to gain enough height to clear the gate. Through cooperation and perseverance, the carp succeeded. The golden-backed carp, who sacrificed the most to help the others, crossed last and was transformed by King Yu into a golden dragon and appointed leader of the Dragon Gate’s guardians.

-Wey

1. I have already explained this before in a previous footnote, but I’ll explain again for those who have forgotten. The Dragon Gate here comes from the idiom "a carp leaping over the Dragon Gate" which symbolizes overcoming great adversity, perseverance, and achieving a massive, sudden elevation in social or career status. So the Dragon Gate here symbolises life’s challenges.

For more information, refer to the Translator’s Thoughts. ☜

2. In Greek mythology, Sisyphus or Sisyphos is the founder and king of Ephyra. He reveals Zeus’s abduction of Aegina to the river god Asopus, thereby incurring Zeus’s wrath. His subsequent cheating of death earns him eternal punishment in the underworld once he dies of old age. ☜