The sky of the World of Fate was a pure, pristine azure, and the sun hanging high above was forever warm and bright, gently enfolding every living thing on that bountiful earth. The heavens stretched boundless, without a single stray cloud, and now and then a cry — soaring or piercing — cut across the empty plain.
This was north of the City of Heaven’s Stars, likewise a plain of pleasant surroundings and docile monsters.
The Son of Heaven, clad in splendid armor, stood elegantly upon the green plain, gazing silently at the emptiness ahead, an unfathomable light flickering in his handsome, narrow eyes. “A beautiful place. This world is always more comfortable than that filthy one. To become king of this world — what a gratifying thing that would be.”
A whistling gust of wind blew past, carrying the Son of Heaven’s voice off to dissipate in the air.
“King? That title belongs only to the strongest. To that man called Xietian, for instance. Am I wrong, my dear brother?”
A woman in a sky-blue mage’s robe had come to stand behind him without a sound. The somewhat close-fitting robe displayed her figure to the fullest. Beneath the blazing sun she smiled charmingly, a glimmering rose flush showing on her snow-white face, her eyes gleaming in the brilliant light.
Her hair fell like satin, her lovely neck flowing with a lustrous sheen, her eyes like stars, her lips like cinnabar. She was an astonishingly beautiful woman — yet compared with that face of hers, beautiful nearly to the point of the uncanny, the first thing anyone noticed on seeing her was invariably her eyes.
They were beautiful eyes that, apart from being excessively bright, seemed at first glance no different from anyone else’s — and yet, as though drawn by some power too mysterious to name, one’s gaze always fell first upon them. And if you had eyes to see, you would realize with a shock how deep those eyes were: deep as a bottomless sea, as a boundless starry sky, so deep that a single look bred a terrible desire to drown in them, to be lost in them. The feeling was intoxicating, and at the same time stirred an instinctive dread in the heart.
The smile at the corner of her mouth was so faint it might not have been there at all. She stood plainly before him, and yet her face and her form seemed veiled in a thin mist, her image drifting and indistinct in the eye… as if she had appeared in a dream.
She was a woman one would remember for a lifetime after a single glance.
“Xietian?” Recalling that glaring name atop the Level Rankings, the Son of Heaven’s narrow eyes narrowed further, and a cold light flashed past like the edge of a knife, carrying who knew what meaning. “Xietian. Heh. He probably stumbled luckily onto some hidden quest, or passed the Abyss trial by some opportunistic trick. Everything has only just begun. What qualifies him to be ‘king’?”
A soft sigh escaped the woman’s lips. Her gaze shifted, resting quietly on the distance, her voice gentle as the wind. “Never invent reasons for another man’s strength. You still haven’t grown up.”
She was seventeen this year.
The Son of Heaven, her elder brother, was twenty-four.
A sister seven years his junior, sighing with disappointment that her brother hadn’t grown up… It should have been a comical scene. But the Son of Heaven — famed for his arrogance, who permitted no one to defy him — did not laugh. Nor did he show any displeasure or scorn, nor offer a word of rebuttal. The corner of his mouth merely twitched slightly.
He had not forgotten that it was this sister who had made him what he was. Otherwise he might have been reduced to a beggar by the roadside, or lost his life altogether. He could defy, berate, even mock his own parents without hesitation or scruple — but he had never once spoken a disrespectful word to his sister.
Only his blood family knew that this girl, of whom the outside world knew nothing but her name, and to whom no one paid the slightest attention, was the most terrifying person in his household. So terrifying that when he thought of her, his whole body would sometimes tremble faintly.
Beneath conscious thought, he feared her. She was, one might say, the only person he feared, and the only one who could scold him and keep him in check.
“Do not overvalue your strongest rival, and do not underestimate anyone — not even a beggar by the roadside. I told you this long ago.” the girl said softly, her expression as serene as blossoms opening and falling, as clouds drifting on a light wind. Though she knew perfectly well that even if he took it in now, it would be scrubbed clean from him within the hour. The hardest thing in a man to change is always his nature.
“I will pay attention to this Xietian. But that does not mean I fear him.” the Son of Heaven said. A background vast enough to look down upon the world had forged his confidence and his arrogance. He liked — and was accustomed to — the feeling of holding everything in his grasp.
“Then why, back then, did you never dare provoke Tian Moxie?” Her gaze stirred, and she cast him a mild glance. The words struck the Son of Heaven’s fatal point.
“Because… hmph. Because he never encroached on my interests, that’s all. Otherwise he would long since have fallen beneath my hand and lost every scrap of glory he ever had… One man may defeat ten, or a hundred… perhaps even a thousand. But before the million men of my Wings That Shroud the Sky, he is in the end nothing but an ant.” The Son of Heaven laughed with contempt and disdain — though his smile was somewhat warped.
“The Tian Moxie of old could not have stood against ten thousand, true. But he could have taken your life from within the protection of a million men. Do you believe that?” the girl said mildly. Her gentle voice fell on the Son of Heaven’s ear like a gust of freezing wind.
The smile on his face froze… Tian Moxie. That name he could not help fixating on, could not help fearing. He had never met the man in person, but he knew every rumor and every video of him inside and out. And after watching those brief fragments of footage, the shadow of Tian Moxie had been stamped indelibly on his heart… a shadow in the darker sense.
To take a commanding general’s head from within an army of a million… That phantom of a man — could he really do it?
“Since you have chosen to give offense, you must bear all the consequences of that decision. I do not wish my words to shake your resolve.” the girl said slowly, and from those star-deep eyes shot two beams of starlight that pierced straight into his heart.
“You worry too much… In fact I’d very much like to see whether, under the provocation of my Wings That Shroud the Sky, he has the nerve to make an enemy of me!” The Son of Heaven’s expression eased, and he laughed with perfect ease. “And besides — that man who shares my renown, he is my greatest rival.”
The girl’s gaze shifted, and at last a distinct ripple of feeling showed on her tranquil face. “Heaven has granted me new eyes. I really ought to go and see what sort of peerless beauty this woman is, that she could drive you all so mad.”
The Son of Heaven turned and looked at her. “Speaking of which, I’m more interested in what sort of man could ever catch your eye.”
“That man hasn’t appeared yet. Perhaps he never will.” She gave a light laugh, and in her voice there was no regret or sorrow — rather, a faint sense of release.
“…And in truth I can’t think of anyone in this world worthy of you. Even that man styled the Son of God, the only one who can stand shoulder to shoulder with me — even he falls far short of you. And in distant Jinghua, that Zuo Pojun who runs riot unchecked, whom even he dares not offend — he is unworthy of you as well. Were you and I not brother and sister, then before you I could only feel ashamed of my own coarseness and dare not harbor a single profaning thought. You do not belong to this world, my sister.” The Son of Heaven gazed at her, and rare traces of desolation and self-mockery showed on his face.
“The man of my fate is a true king.”
She murmured it in a low voice — whether to herself or to him, there was no telling. She turned elegantly and walked slowly away, and a voice came drifting from that figure, borne as if upon clouds, into the Son of Heaven’s ears: “Your true enemy is not Zangshen. It is Xietian — and the true… Tian Moxie. If you can crush him underfoot, then you can crush Zangshen with ease, and obtain what you desire… Liu Qiyue.”
(End of Chapter 94)