Chapter 1225: Defeat

Wang Zikai disappeared.

Gao Yang suddenly remembered one afternoon in his childhood, when he fell off the swing in a park. More than ten years flew by for him to finally crash land.

He hit the giant pillar of light.

A second later, Wang Zikai’s punch slammed into his chest. The pillar of fate toppled further, almost crashing down.

Gao Yang threw up blood. His energy pathway had broken entirely. At this moment, he couldn’t even howl in pain, let alone fight back.

The pillar of fate he had built for another ended up a judgment upon himself.

Wang Zikai seemed satisfied.

He took a rectangular box from his pocket. It hovered in the air, the packaging tearing away on its own. The box opened. Inside was a seven-inch crimson bone sting.

Wang Zikai took it and inspected it with interest.

“You never would have guessed that Wang Zikai extracted his bone sting for your birthday gift.”

“He believed it to be the most resilient thing in the world, just like your friendship.”

“It’s light, sharp, and able to seal energy pathways. Perfect as a personal weapon. He wished that you would carry it with you twenty-four seven.”

Gao Yang stared at the bone sting impassively as death approached.

Wang Zikai looked a little wistful. “Since you’ve rejected it, I have no choice but to give it to you with a little force.”

The bone sting pierced through Gao Yang’s chest, pinning him to the pillar of fate.

Gao Yang screamed.

He was surprised by how much vitality and despair he had yet to lose.

Wang Zikai listened to his once friend’s cries.

“Be patient, Gao Yang. Don’t die on me just yet.”

Wang Zikai looked up. A smaller Mirror of Pride the size of a manhole emerged under his feet. He stepped on it and leaped.

Like a golden shooting star, he soared through the night sky like a slit tearing the veil apart.

...

A few seconds later, Wang Zikai reached a few kilometers in altitude. The white moon hung behind him like a special effect that announced his presence. With his hands in his pockets, he looked at the man waiting a hundred meters away—Dragon.

The night wind tousled Dragon’s silver hair, fluttering his pristine cloak. His deep heterochromatic eyes seemed to contain the moonlight.

“What a pity,” Wang Zikai said. “Gao Yang didn’t create a real chance for you.”

Dragon said nothing.

“Can’t blame him, though. He did his best.” Wang Zikai’s lips quirked. “He’s facing me, after all.”

“Yes.” Dragon looked at Pride, or perhaps looking over his shoulders and into a greater distance. “A pity.”

“Let’s get started.” Wang Zikai held his neck with a hand and stretched. “I’ve gotten warmed up.”

Dragon’s mournful eyes slowly focused.

“Let’s get started.”

...

The air around Wang Zikai curdled, then instantly melted. Wang Zikai’s radiant blond hair scattered like flowing golden light.

Dragon closed his eyes.

Night fell.

Or it would be more precise to say that all light was gone from the world, leaving only boundless darkness and loneliness.

There was a sudden flash. It was Wang Zikai burning in the dark like the only star in the vast cosmos, the golden energy a mix of light and fire.

Before it, a pair of gigantic eyes of different colors opened slowly. The blue eye was deep and serene like the ocean cast under moonlight, serving as a gentle backdrop for the universe. The golden eye shone and blazed like the sun, the holiest light in the brilliant cosmos.

Like two celestial bodies, the eyes dwarfed the star Wang Zikai was by tens of thousands of times. They slowly overlapped and entered a silent explosion. The explosion then gave rise to countless stars and nebulae before they grew distant and faded away, returning to an unknowable, eternal limbo.

Like ashes scattered at a funeral, the limbo crashed into Wang Zikai in waves, trying to bury him.

Wang Zikai’s expression lit up with a hint of excitement. He had been waiting for this moment.

He clenched his right fist and pierced two bone stings into his chest.

Thump—

Thump—

Thump, thump, thump—

The Heart of Pride beat faster and more violently, shaking the world and generating impossibly potent energy that rippled endlessly to fight the limbo.

Wang Zikai lifted his left hand. Golden light drowned out the arm as one intricate golden wing unfurled from his left shoulder blade, making him look like an angel. It quickly spread and grew ever more radiant until the wing turned into countless scintillating leylines of light. They ran in the trajectory of an endless circle with Wang Zikai at the heart. Then the circle spread vertically, creating another perpendicular circle.

The two circles rotated to form a great sphere, at the center of which was an orb of absolute black.

A black hole.

Wang Zikai stood within it.

Heart of Pride, an eternal abyss.

Limbo swarmed to engulf Wang Zikai yet ended up swept into the black hole by the fluctuating light. After an unknowable period of time, the world returned to normal, and time, space, colors, sounds, and feelings returned.

No black hole, no limbo.

The white moon hung alone with only bleak wind as company. The two men remained where they had been in the sky, as if neither had made a move.

Crimson stains oxidized into brown on Wang Zikai’s black shirt. Some blood trickled down his lips. His golden eyes glinted with a hint of exhaustion.

“You lost, Dragon.”

Dragon’s hair had gone all white. His eyes were dim and greyed—blind.

“Yes, I lost.”

“Level 8 Overlord would’ve allowed you to put up a fight against me, but you never even considered it.” Wang Zikai narrowed his eyes slightly. “I wonder who the prideful one among us is.”

“Winning loses its meaning when I have to be the one fighting you.”

“So you just marched to your death?” Wang Zikai didn’t understand.

Dragon gave it some thought before saying softly, “Although I failed as a leader, I still wanted to do right by my companions.”

“How dreary.”

Disappointed, Wang Zikai made his final comment.

Dragon slowly closed his eyes as his body remained suspended in the night sky. The white moon crept up to him, the backlight turning him into a lone silhouette.

Wind rustled his hair, dyed black by shadow.

Dragon died.

...

Wang Zikai wiped the blood on the corner of his mouth. A few seconds later, he returned to the ruinous palace, standing before the leaning tower of fate. The black-haired man remained pinned to it by a crimson bone sting.

“See? Dragon died, too. This is humanity’s ending.” Wang Zikai smiled. “Are you happy now, Gao Yang?”

Gao Yang’s limbs slackened like tattered rags. His unfocused eyes didn’t show any reaction.

After seven seconds of silence.

Wang Zikai’s hand pierced through Gao Yang’s chest. Gao Yang didn’t even make a sound, as if it weren’t his body that was penetrated.

Wang Zikai extracted his bloody heart, watching it quietly as it beat weakly in his grasp.

Time crawled by.

A tear brimmed and fell from his eye, unbidden.

“Goodbye, Gao Yang.”

No one responded.

The black-haired man’s unfocused eyes dimmed. He had quietly died on the pillar of fate.

All was silent, natural, and serene, as if this pattern had persisted for ten thousand years would continue to be so.

The Divine Scion passed.