Chapter 846: The Soul Of The Two Suns World (Patreon)

Without a doubt, out of everything Azure could have said, that was the last thing I had expected. In fact, it wasn’t something that I had considered, and why would I? The soul of a world would want to meet me? That would sound unreal, even to cultivators who could create an entire world within themselves.

While I stared at the cracked crystal, I tried to figure out what the hell I was looking at.

What I knew so far was that there were two types of worlds.

The first type was the one within my soul – inner worlds. Every cultivator from the Cultivation World grew one, and they had an inner world spirit that looked after it. These spirits like Azure acted more than a caretaker for it, their whole life and purpose was intertwined with it. If there was no inner world, then in almost all cases, there was no inner world spirit remaining.

The second type of world were places like the Cultivation World. Usually, they were extremely large and complex, and within them were cultivators who had reached a god-level rank. But what really made me doubt they were merely advanced inner worlds was that they had Heavens watching over them.

In truth, my knowledge of the Heavens was shaky since most of it came from the webnovels that I’d read back on Earth. In most of those stories, the Heavens was impartial and sent down tribulations to test cultivators or to punish them for defying fate. Then there were those stories where the Heavens were in fact a really old grumpy man who had a personal vendetta against the protagonist. So yeah, every cultivation world was different, which is why I knew better than to assume that the worlds that I visited or lived in followed the rules that an author made up to satisfy a word count.

As for the word ‘soul’, I knew what it meant. Well, I didn’t truly understand it. I didn’t think even those Blue Sun elders who spent hundreds of years poking at them understood it, but I had a decent definition in my mind.

However, when I put the two words together, it brought up more questions than it answered. Did every world have one? Did the Cultivation World? Did it feel? Did it think? Had it once been human?

“Master,” Azure cut in. “I know what you’re thinking, but I don’t know more than what you know. Whatever it is that I am sensing is beyond me, beyond an inner world spirit. When I reach out towards it, it makes me feel very small.”

That didn’t reassure me in the slightest. Azure was many things, and most of them were annoying, but he wasn't easily impressed, so if he felt small, I should probably feel microscopic. That was not good.

As the purple energy in the crystal gave a tired pulse, I realised there was only one thing to do.

“Hello?” I called out. Interestingly enough, the white swallowed my voice so there was no echo. “Can you hear me?”

For a few seconds, nothing happened, and I started to feel stupid for talking to a rock. Then the crystal flashed, and purple light washed over me, pressing into my chest, and I understood it without hearing a single word.

I…see…everything. I…hear…everything… I…am…everything.

“W-what? Did that thing just speak?” Tomas asked, sounding lost. “But I didn’t hear any sound…”

The boy was right. Similar to Yggy, the crystal had no voice, so instead, the meaning arrived into my chest as a feeling, but that did come as a surprise to me as well. If this thing was beyond Azure, I would assume it would be able to talk. After all, Azure rarely ever stopped talking.

So, there were two possibilities that I could think of.

Perhaps, the soul was extremely weak after over a thousand years of trying to fight back an invasion. The cracks running through the crystal backed up that theory. Or maybe it had grown so old and so vast that it had simply outgrown speech. Words were something that mortals required to communicate. A primordial entity probably had no use for them.

Even though I didn’t know if it was either of them, or if I was completely wrong and it was some other reason, it didn’t really matter at the moment.

“What do you want from me?” I asked. “Why did you bring me here?”

The crystal flashed again, the white vanished, and before I could blink, images slammed into my mind one after another.

First, I saw the world as it was thousands of years ago, when a single sun looked down on it, a Golden Sun. But what made me unconsciously tense up was that past the sky, right outside the world’s barrier, there was a shape circling it. It didn’t have a clear form from what I could see, but it pressed against the barrier, again and again, and each time a little of its rot seeped through into the world.

Slowly, the Golden Sun became sick, and I sensed the panic the world felt at that moment. And then it happened, out of a tiny tear in the sky, a spirit appeared. This was Li Tianyu. The world’s attention locked onto him immediately, and I felt its hope rise when it sensed his power. Taking a risk, it inspired this outsider. Li Tianyu’s eyes narrowed as he realised what the state of the world was like, then he descended to chose his vessel – Alden.

After that, the scene changed to Li Tianyu standing on a mountaintop with a circle of elders, and together they tore the Golden Sun into two halves, one red and one blue, then sealed the barrier shut. This was the Sundering, an event I had seen before in the perspective of Li Tianyu and the Eldest Tree, but this time I saw something that neither of them had taken notice of.

In the chaos of the moment, before the barriers of the world could shut completely, a thin grey shadow slipped in. That was the lich. No one sensed it except the crystal. The natural defences of the world clamped down, and it dragged the lich into the Red Sun and locked it there. But I felt the world's worry. There was strain in that prison, which meant it was only a matter of time before the being escaped.

The years passed by, and the poison spread through both halves, until there were two corrupted suns instead of one. The Blue Sun corrupted by the Otherworldly Entity, and the Red Sun corrupted by whatever madness the lich was able to release from its prison.

Just as the world began to feel hopeless, Li Tianyu returned once more. He built the first walls of the Stone Haven Monastery on a mountain and taught a handful of monks to hide what little golden light remained until he returned. Then he walked through the sky and never came back.

The despair that the world felt when it realised that the saviour it had chosen was never returning hit me so hard that I nearly choked. Left with no option, the crystal searched for a different solution, and that is when it noticed the stubbornness of young Kal.

So, the crystal wrapped its own energy around him to change his Cerulean Vein into the Mandelbrot Recursion that Kal was now famous for. This allowed the crystal to send the young Lightweaver backwards through time, but affecting the entirety of the world like that came at a great cost.

Every loop took a piece of the world's life. Every reset made the crystal a little more cloudy and a little more cracked, but since it was the only solution the world had, it kept paying, hoping that its investment would pay off.

But it didn’t. Kal failed again, and again, and again. Hundreds of times, thousands of times, until the world was running out of lives to spend. Realising that its own inhabitants wouldn’t be enough to deal with the extraterrestrial threat, it searched for another Li Tianyu.

What I saw next caught my breath.

A tiny, flickering soul shot through the dark between worlds, travelling from a small blue planet toward a massive realm crowned with Heavens. This was my soul. This was me. As I passed by the Two Suns World, the crystal reached out and stamped a faint mark onto me. A mark that could not be sensed by any soul.

Then I saw myself in the Azure Peak Sect, sitting in my quarters in cultivation, and in the middle of a breakthrough, the mark activated and the world pulled hard. The last image was a pair of eyes snapping open on a dirt road outside Porvale, with an arrow flying straight at them. Then the white came back, and I was floating in front of the crystal again, breathing hard from what had been revealed.

“That…that was you, wasn’t it?” Tomas’s voice trembled. “You went from one world to another, then to mine?”

“Pretty much,” I admitted for the first time to anyone.

Honestly, most of what the crystal had shown me, I had already pieced together through the loops, but it was nice to have confirmation from the world itself. I always knew it hadn’t been an accident that I had kept waking up in this world in Tomas’s body, and now I knew why.

There was clearly something special about transmigrators, and I’m not talking about World Tree Sutra users, but genuine transmigrators that passed from one world to another without any technique, just like I did to arrive in the Cultivation World. As for what it was, I had no idea, and when I tried to ask the crystal, it just sat there, silent as though it couldn’t hear me.

Realising that it wasn’t going to answer my question, I decided to let go of what else was on my mind.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I tried. I really did. I thought it was done.” I swallowed. “Is there anything I can do? Anything at all?”

The crystal pulsed.

No…you…cannot.

My legs nearly gave out under me, and I heard Tomas cry out like I had never heard from him before. It was over. We had done everything we could, but it hadn’t been enough. We had failed. And now an entire world was going to be destroyed because of it.

Boy…can…save…everyone.

Even though I didn’t totally understand what it meant, the fact that there was still a chance sent a powerful wave of relief through my body that I nearly cried out in happiness. As for Tomas, his despair turned into confusion.

“Me?” he squeaked. “No. It must be a mistake. I think it means you, or Elder Kal. I'm the miller's son. I can't even lift a full sack without Da helping. You two are the ones who save worlds. I can't compare to either of you.”

Instead of responding to him, I thought about Ignis and the prophecy. He had foretold that someone untouched by either sun had a huge part to play, yet up until now Tomas hadn’t done much except watch the show play out before him.

I had been wondering if Ignis had made a mistake, or if the prophecy had been changed somehow, but this must have been what Ignis had foreseen. This was Tomas’s time to act. I nodded, thinking that it made sense.

“Why are you nodding?” Tomas said. “Stop nodding!”

Once more, the crystal flashed, and this time I saw the Golden Sun that I had created, the one that was now crumbling away. A small glowing figure walked into the centre of the sun, causing the cracks to seal and the light to steady. And when it was all said and done, what came out was not a mortal or a cultivator, it was something else.

The feeling that followed explained the situation in simple terms. If the sun didn’t have a pure soul at its core, then it would collapse no matter what procedures we had in place, it was inevitable. But if Tomas became the spirit of the Golden Sun, then there was still hope for the people after all.

“Spirit?” Tomas whispered. “A ghost? I’m going to die…”

The fear in his voice was raw, and I couldn’t blame him for it. He was only a teenager at the end of the day. Sure, in the vale he had offered to sacrifice himself so this world could have a sun, and yes, that had taken real courage. But volunteering to die in the heat of a great battle with adrenaline and everything else clouding your mind was different to being told that you were the only hope left.

The crystal answered, which surprised me because I didn’t think it could hear Tomas. However, it had said it sees and hears everything. Maybe it could see and hear its inhabitants no matter where they were.

Dangerous…you…fail…you…die.

If…succeed…you…live…everyone…live.

You…become…more…than…human…more…than…cultivator.

Tomas went quiet.

“Azure,” I called out inwardly. “What do you think? Can we really trust it?”

“Master, I can’t sense any lies from it,” he replied slowly. “But I don't know if a world's soul follows the same rules as an inner world spirit. We can't lie to our masters, but it might not have that restriction.” He paused. “Master, its world is ending. It doesn't have much to gain by tricking us, and we don't have much left to lose.”

He had a point, and the more I thought about it, the better it sounded.

Let’s say the world was saved, then Tomas would emerge as its protector. I had planned to give him some Golden Sun cultivation, but that would be redundant at that point. The boy would literally become the source of everyone’s power in this world. There would be no one who could ever get close to him, no matter how much they cultivated. And even though he wouldn’t be completely human anymore, with his power, he could still have a body for himself. He would be able to walk around Porvale, eat his mother’s stew, help his father at the mill. He’d still be their son, even if he was also their immortal sun.

But as good as it sounded in my head, it wasn’t my decision to make.

“Tomas,” I said. “It’s your choice. If you say no, I won't be angry, and I won't think any less of you. I'll do everything I can to find a different solution. I promise.”

For a moment, there was silence, then the boy let out a small, wet laugh.

“There isn’t a different situation. You heard what it said,” he paused. “But…thank you. You’ve been kinder to me than anyone. I won’t forget it.”

I didn't reply, because deep down, I knew the boy was right that this was the only option.

“I’ll do it,” Tomas said, and this time his voice was steady and determined. “I’ll become the spirit of the Golden Sun. I’ll even become the Golden Sun if I have to.”

A/N

Have a good weekend. See you next week!

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