Chapter 838: The Week After the War (Patreon)

A/N

Hi everyone,

It turns out I severely underestimated how long the epilogue chapters will be. To make sure the two suns world is wrapped up properly, I’ll have to post chapters next week before I get to take a break. In next week’s chapters, we’ll find out what the consequences of Ke yin’s actions are and what Tomas’s true role in all of this actually is.

Two chapters combined to 3.5k chap, enjoy!

Chapter 838: The Week After the War

A week after the world lost the two suns that it was named after, I stood on the eastern terrace of the Stone Haven Monastery with my hands on the stone rail. It was the same spot where I’d watched nine hundred monks march into a war that they had not truly understood.

When I looked up, the sky was clear, the only thing that hung in it was something that nobody in this world had seen in over a thousand years, a Golden Sun, which turned the shadows warm instead of that bruised blue-purple that everyone had grown accustomed to.

“Master,” Azure broke me away from my thoughts, “what are you doing standing there?”

“I just saved a world,” I retorted mentally, “surely, I’m allowed to stand and stare at nothing.”

“You’re not staring at nothing,” he shot back, “it’s been seven days since you saved the world, but you’re still checking on the sun like it’s going to explode at any second.”

“What can I say?” I shrugged. “It’s a nice sun.”

Despite my nonchalant response, Azure was right to sense my unease. It was something that had bothered me for the past week. It made me look up every few minutes to make sure everything was still okay, that it wasn’t going to go out or break apart because it was difficult to accept that I had accomplished something that even a Civilisation Realm World Tree Sutra had failed at. 

Who could blame me for feeling this way? For the past year, I’d seen things go wrong at the last second in this world, but somehow no matter how much I stared at the sun, nothing happened. It just sat in the sky and kept shining.

As for the rest of the world, I had to admit, things had gone smoother than I’d expected considering the massive changes that taken place. This had been a world of cultivation that rivalled the Cultivation World. 

Every single Blue Sun practitioner on this continent had spent their entire lives drawing from that blue disc in the sky, storing it in their meridians, refining it, spending it, and drawing more. It was the same for the followers of the Red Sun, just with a different flavour of it and a lot more screaming involved, but whether it be their techniques or their runes, everything ran on a power that was borrowed even if they hadn’t realised it at the time.

So, when Yggy had swallowed both power sources, the time to pay the loan had arrived, and they had immediately been cut off from their battery and returned to mortal form. I wasn’t omnipresent, but I was certain that somewhere in this world, there had been someone who was standing in some courtyard ready to show off his power. And just as he finished the long, drawn-out speech that he had prepared about the magnificence of his power and raised his hand, nothing happened.

I could just imagine him looking at his hand with a confused expression, wondering what was going on, before he shook his head and tried again, only for the same thing to happen again, causing his face to turn red. Events similar to this had happened to most practitioners who were alive on the continent at the exact same second, and the confusion that followed gave an idea of the week that the Two Suns World was having.

However, I hadn’t taken cultivation from these people. In fact, I’d given them back the true cultivation of this world. After all, the Blue Sun and Red Sun had been two corrupted halves of a corrupted entity. And cultivating any of them was like drinking poison and calling it strength, not realising that it was eating away at the mind and body. 

But now there was no need to harm themselves to gain the power required to protect themselves. Instead, now there was a clean slate. Whether it was an elder, a beggar, or a snotty eight-year-old brat, they all had the opportunity to cultivate it. The problem, of course, is that right now almost nobody knew how to do so.

Which meant that for the first time in over a thousand years, there was one power on this continent that mattered, and it was the place that I was currently standing, looking over its terrace – the Stone Haven Monastery.

Originally, the monks had been founded on the Golden Sun energy, and even though they’d done it with whatever they could scrape out of the world, a few of them had reached a genuinely terrifying ranks doing that, so who knows what level they would reach now they didn’t have to worry about capacity.

It was ironic how overnight nine hundred pacifist monks had become the most dangerous institution in the world. An institute that might even give birth to a Rank 9 being some day, something the world hadn’t seen in who knows how long. 

Anyway, right now it was time for me to say goodbye to the man who had welcomed me with everything he had to offer, someone who was instrumental in helping me save this world, and someone I considered my master – Head Monk Cairan.

It didn’t take long to find the old man, he was sitting cross-legged in front of about fifty young monks in the lower courtyard. Honestly, he still looked pale, the color hadn’t returned to his skin after the events in the vale. But I guess that’s what happened when you lost an arm of a Dharma Vessel and had to face existential threats. Even though I had been able to regenerate it back with Sect Master Yuan’s karma technique, the monk would now and then rub his arm as though it was a phantom limb, and I hadn’t seen him manifest his avatar since.

At the current moment, he was sitting there with a small stone bowl in his lap, showing a boy with a shaved head for the hundredth time how to hold his hands in the proper form to channel the Golden Sun energy.

“My child,” Cairan smiled, displaying centuries of patience. “You are gripping despite there being nothing to grip. Relax and open your fingers to allow the energy to settle.”

With a shaky nod, the boy opened his fingers and clenched his jaw, staring at the palm of his hands like it had insulted nine generations of his family. A second later, a thread of gold pooled in his palm, and wobbled left and right before going out.

“That’s better,” the old monk nodded.

“But it went out,” the boy frowned. “Why…why doesn’t it listen?”

“It’s because you’re trying to force it, you need to relax,” Cairan explained a concept that I had learned multiple times in my cultivation journey. “What matters is that it appeared, that is the most difficult part. As for learning to manipulate it to your will, that will come with time, my child.”

The boy’s frown dissipated and he bobbed his head vigorously, ready to try again.

As the others took their own turn channeling the Golden Sun energy and began to discuss amongst themselves what they could do differently to improve, the head monk's face turned towards my direction.

“Saint,” Cairan greeted me, rising to his feet to walk over to me.

“You know I hate it when you call me that.”

“Everyone knows that,” his smile widened. “It’s one of the reasons why we call you by your title. The main reason being that you deserve it.”

I didn’t bother arguing with that since it was a battle I had no hopes of winning.

As we walked down the mountainside together, I saw hundreds of grey robes scattered throughout the compound, they were breathing in a light that no longer had an end to it, and a thought came to my mind.

“If you really wanted to,” I began, “you could take it all. There’s no one in this world that could stop you after I leave.”

“Oh?” the old man’s eyebrow arched. “And then what?”

“You’d run the world.”

“Yes, that is true,” he nodded slowly, a serious expression on his wrinkly face. “But then I would have to manage the affairs of everyone under my rule. I am not interested in wasting what little time I have left settling grain disputes and deciding which noble house gets the eastern road.”

“You know some people would love that.”

“They are welcome to it as long as they do not cause corruption within the land or harm innocents," he took a deep tired breath. “I am an old man near the end of my lifespan, and I have everything that I ever wanted. There is no poison left in this world, so we do not need to hide what we teach anymore.”

I nodded, his words were affirming what I had assumed, but I let him continue.

“Yesterday, two farmers walked up this same path and asked if the rumours were true. I sat them down and showed them the first form." He looked genuinely delighted about it and his face looked decades younger because of the enthusiasm. "Saint, in a thousand years we have never once been able to say yes to that question. Why would I ruin that for power I do not care for?"

“I just had to make sure,” I admitted to him with a smile.

Honestly, hearing the monk say it out loud took a weight off my chest that had been sitting on it since I realised the power dynamic of this world had shifted entirely in one direction. After all, every time that happened, the power was used to abuse. I had read the histories in my own world and I’d read the histories in the Cultivation World. The pattern was clear because power seduced and corrupted, but it was good to know that the monks' pacifist nature broke that pattern. And even though things might change as the centuries went on, I could only do so much.

“You’re leaving today,” the Head Monk said, breaking the silence.

“Yes,” I nodded. “How did you know?”

“You’ve been pacing around with a concerned expression for the past few days, each day looking more anxious, since the threat had been dealt with, I could only assume you were worried about what would happen after you left.”

“Nothing escapes you,” I shook my head with a smile.

“It is one of the benefits of reaching an old age,” the monk laughed before his expression grew more serious. “Will you be returning in my lifetime?”

“I…I honestly don’t know.”

“Then I will speak on behalf of my people." He put his palms together and bowed deeply, his forehead nearly touching his own knees. "Thank you for our sun. Thank you for everything.”

Around a hundred monks saw their leader bowing, so they immediately fell over themselves to copy him, a chant of appreciation ran through the crowd. My ears began to burn, so I quickly grabbed Cairan’s sleeve to pull him upright, but the old man surprisingly didn’t budge an inch.

“Get up.”

“No,” he said with a wide smile.

***

When I had finally freed myself from the embarrassing situation, I searched for the Stone Haven Monastery’s newest and most powerful recruit. He was on the third terrace, but I nearly walked past him because I wasn’t used to seeing him bald.

Elder Thorn sat there in the fifth row of a meditation line between two monks who were both younger than his boots, which he had no need for anymore. The old man was wearing grey robes, his feet were bare, and there was no sign on his body that he was one of the most powerful beings alive.

This was a Rank 7 who had spent centuries hunting down Saints across a continent, a man who wrote characters in the air to end lives, and he was sitting in a row with what he would have called infants a week ago with his eyes closed and doing the same breathing exercise as everyone else. 

Sensing me walking over to him, his right eye opened and fixated on me.

“Saint,” he greeted, quickly rising to his feet.

“Elder,” I bowed back.

“Only Thorn now. I am just like any other disciple here,” he replied, rubbing a hand over his shiny, smooth head. “They shaved it yesterday. I had agreed because I had not thought I would mind the least. But strangely enough, I do.”

"It suits you."

"It does not." He almost smiled. "But I am no longer a youngster. Appearances no longer have any importance at my age. I will get over this. Eventually."

As we made our way to the edge of the terrace, which was secluded, allowing for a more private conversation, I thought about how far the former elder had come, and I couldn’t help but be happy for the man.

His life had been lived in secret after he had found out that the Blue Sun was feeding off the sanity of its own worshippers, and believing that no one could be trusted and that no one would believe him, he set on a personal mission to save his people from this terrifying threat.

It didn’t matter how much he schemed, or who he killed, they were all fair game to him because for him nothing mattered more than the survival of the world and the return of the true entity that he worshipped - the Golden Sun.

Even though I found it strange that a person would submit to an entity that had no real consciousness from what we could see, it made me happy to see that the elder had finally got what he had wanted throughout his long life.

There was no need to plot anymore or check corners of rooms in fear that he was being spied on, he could just spend the rest of his life meditating and teaching a path that didn’t care about personal power.

The life of a monk was not something I ever expected from him, but if it made him happy, that was good enough.

“Saint,” Elder Thorn broke the silence. “There is something that has been on my mind, and I feel that if I wanted to truly leave my past life behind, then I must talk about it.”

"Go ahead,” I replied, curious what was eating away at him.

“Elder Kal told me that in one of the cycles of the time loop, I not only killed you, but I tried to destroy your soul…”

An awkward silence enveloped us, and after some time, I decided against dressing it up.

"Yeah. That did happen..."

At that, the elder’s shoulders came down, and I could tell that he had hoped that it was some sort of exaggeration or he had misheard.

"I…I do not remember it."

"I know. No one but me and Kal kept our memories through the loops, so there’s nothing to feel guilty about."

"That may be so, but it does not make it less true." He turned and faced me fully, and then this centuries-old killer bowed to a teenager in patched sandals. "I am sorry. I severed the soul of a person who had come to save my world, and I did not give you the chance to say a word. That is inexcusable. At the very least, I should have given you a chance to speak."

Despite this having been a traumatic memory that still haunted me to this day, I’d learned a lot from that experience, and I knew better than to blame something a different version of themselves did.

Both this loop and the previous cycle, Elder Thorn didn’t try to kill me, instead he submitted fully to me, so how can I blame him?

"Like I said, there’s literally nothing to worry about," I helped him upright. "But I appreciate you bringing this up because I get to tell you that I understand exactly why you did what you did. 

"That…that is very mature of you, Saint."

“Anything else would be ridiculous on my part,” I shrugged. “But I’d like you to learn from this, even though it was a different version of you that did it. It’s better to ask before you act.”

Thorn was quiet for a long moment.

"You are right. Even though it was not this version of me who did it, it was still something I myself would likely do in a situation like that,” he said slowly, looking down at his own hands. "So I will learn the lesson he did not learn." A sliver of a smile appeared on his face. “But I am certain the monastery will make sure I learn patience. They meditate even more than any practitioner of either sun I have met in my life.”

That made me laugh because it was true. The monks cared more about power over yourself rather than power over others. And since they knew the truth of the world, they had always focused on self-control. After all, that had been a method available to everyone to protect themselves from the suns’ influence.

“I guess this is it,” the elder sighed. “I will not see you again after this, will I?”

“I’m not completely sure, but yeah, probably not.”

He looked up at the sky, then he did something that surprised me, his right arm reached out and gripped my shoulder with a firm grip.

"Then take care, Saint,” he whispered, looking directly into my eyes. “And try to help others like you have helped us. I do not have anything to offer you as a thanks except words, but the world is not dead. It sees everything, it rewards those it deems worthy, and you are certainly worthy.”

The cryptic words made my eyebrows rise, but when I asked what he meant by that, he simply shook his head and turned his gaze to the hundreds of monk disciples going about their daily life.

So instead, I said, “I don’t know how long the peace will last, but while you’re here, look after them please.”

"Of course, with everything I have left."

As I left the Stone Haven Monastery, my thoughts turned towards the fate of the former giants of the world - the two academies.

Honestly, with the disappearance of their power source, I had half expected them to fall apart immediately and everything to break into mindless chaos that I would be forced to deal with.

Fortunately, things turned out a lot better than that.

The Blue Sun Academy still had thousands of disciples, its elders, and its headmaster, even if the old man was sealed up in a room somewhere, focusing on regaining his lost power. And despite the Red Sun Academy being slightly worse off, with their lack of headmaster and some of their elders locked up in monastery custody because of their refusal to follow the new world order, things were slowly getting back on the original track of the world.

Both institutions had spent the past week teaching their disciples how to cultivate the Golden Sun, even though the elders themselves were trying to learn the basics. Because of last week’s events, Yggy devouring the two suns, the names of the institutes meant nothing now, but old habits die hard, and it was likely that a few centuries will pass before the administrations let go of their pride and abandon the name of the entity that enslaved them.

I knew that everyone in this world was weak at the moment, bar a few exceptions, but I'd bet my Legacy Disciple Pavilion that those ancient monsters would climb back fast. 

After all, they had already comprehended a part of the Golden Sun’s power to a high level, it was only a matter of time before they comprehended the remaining part, and when they did, their arrogance would return backed with dharmic power.

So yeah, I’d give it around a half-dozen years before this world had monsters again.

I just hoped they were better ones.

But I shouldn’t worry about a future that I wouldn’t be a part of, instead I should focus on what I am about to do next, which was pay a visit to a fellow Saint, to someone whose life had drastically changed because of my actions.

It was time to say goodbye to Lady Laelyn, and I had to admit that was not something I had been looking forward to…

A/N

Comment below which character's fates you want to see in the epilogue of the Two Suns Arc. We have Lady Laelyn, Beric, Elder Molric, Kal, and Tomas left. But I wanted to see if I missed any that you all want to see. As for the characters I've mentioned, comment what ending best suits them in your opinion. I already have ideas in mind, but I'm open to suggestions, and I'll use the weekend to make this the best epilogue that I'm capable of writing.

Have a nice weekend!

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