Qin Xin was experiencing sothing similar.
After being swallowed by the darkness, he leapt into the white light without a mont's hesitation — for the sake of the light in his heart and in the future.
With [War]'s Authority wrapped around him, his concerns were far fewer than Cheng Shi's or Hong Lin's. As he saw it, the only things that could kill him in the Real Universe now were the unntionable Creator and gods from other worlds.
If this was the Creator's handiwork, jumping or not made no difference. If it wasn't the Creator's "trap," then whatever lay behind it, Qin Xin was confident he could put up a fight — at the very least, he wouldn't die looking pathetic.
If he had to die, the only death he could accept was dying on the road of passing the fla — not rotting inside a "cabinet."
So his leap was decisive.
He had expected a battlefield on the other side. When he regained consciousness, what awaited him was indeed a battlefield that belonged to Qin Xin.
What he never imagined was that this battlefield didn't belong to him. And this Qin Xin... wasn't him!
He had seemingly beco a cloud in the sky. Beneath that cloud, a gaunt player stood atop a mountain of corpses, his skeletal arm dragging bloodied fingers across a worn-out longbow, loosing arrow after arrow, pinning the last few war machines to the base of the corpse pile.
All his teammates were dead. Only he remained. Fortunately, the enemy had been whittled down to almost nothing as well — otherwise, he wouldn't have lasted even this long.
This was the twilight of the Civilization Era. The Tower of Logic's internal chaos had already begun to fester and spread unchecked. The Underworld's counterattack lood imminent. The scholars of the Southern City Alliance, unwilling to accept the rogue scholars' devastation of southern lands and their betrayal of faith to establish the Kingdom of [War], had seized the mont of the Erudition Presidium's waning control to muster their forces for a retaliatory offensive against the Kingdom.
They sought to reclaim resources once theirs from this war-torn, turbulent nation — and to divert the Underworld's chaos toward land that didn't belong to the Tower of Logic.
The battlefield below was the Kingdom of [War]'s southeastern flank — a defensive engagent.
This battle, Qin Xin rembered vividly.
Players had arrived on the battlefield as inspection officers dispatched from Volbelli, tasked with reinforcing the southeast. But no one had anticipated that the commanding officer had long been infiltrated and replaced by [Chaos] followers.
Halfway through the battle, the elite guard defected outright, leading the central army in a reverse charge that shattered the entire defensive line — then surged toward distant Volbelli.
The Afterglow Church was leveraging the chaos to strike directly at the Kingdom of [War]'s capital!
History had told the players that the Church ultimately failed. What history hadn't told them was just how catastrophically the southeastern line had collapsed.
With the center betrayed, the left flank routed, and the right flank annihilated, six players beca the last living souls on the front line.
What followed was predictably brutal.
Against an ocean of enemies, six players fought in terror.
Had the Southern Alliance army not been entirely drawn away by the Afterglow Church's thrust toward Volbelli, following them in pursuit, not a single player would have survived this trial.
The Qin Xin who endured to the very end collapsed face-up atop the corpse mountain, more dead than alive. He was utterly spent. Two days and two nights without rest had pushed him far past his body's limits. The only thing keeping him alive at this point was willpower.
But it wasn't the will to survive. It was the will toward a different kind of rebirth!
He had co to this trial for a heavy armor — the heavy armor of [War]'s war beast.
In the Kingdom of [War]'s archives, he had found descriptions of that armor. It wasn't just a suit with extraordinary defense — it was a vessel for the soul. It could house a broken soul and allow it to rejoin the battlefield in a renewed form.
This was the rogue scholars' latest research into [War]'s power. Unfortunately, the research never reached completion before the Tower of Logic ca crashing down on them.
The frail Qin Xin wanted it desperately. He knew a fire burned in his heart. He wanted to pass that fire on. But his body couldn't carry him that far. So he had thought of this workaround.
As a Dream Peeping Ranger with considerable expertise in the Dream Realm, Qin Xin intended to craft a grand dream of his own. And this heavy armor would serve as the foundation of that dream.
After catching his breath atop the corpse mountain, Qin Xin leaned on his longbow and began searching through the blood-soaked charnel for what he needed.
The trial had left him precious little ti — only half a day. Yet by the ti sunset fell and the trial neared its end, he still had not found the heavy armor anywhere on the battlefield.
In that mont, as the last glimr of daylight bled away beneath the crimson horizon, he crumpled to the ground. The fire in his eyes was dying too.
And the Qin Xin watching from above was stricken with shock.
At first, he had assud this was his own mory. But the more he watched, the clearer it beca that it wasn't — because in his mory, the heavy armor should have appeared right where the frail Qin Xin now lay. Yet the battlefield's Qin Xin still hadn't found it.
Why?
Had this world's Qin Xin failed? Had he lost the possibility of passing the fla from the very beginning?!
No — that couldn't be!
Watching a spark about to die with no power to save it — this was every Torchbearer's deepest, most devastating fear.
Perhaps even when facing the gods, learning of Origin, or stepping into the Real Universe, Qin Xin had never felt terror as acute as this!
He saw himself — helpless, past, future. He knew that if he did nothing, the fire in his heart would never be passed on.
Since it was all about passing the fla — since it was all about passing on hope — why limit it to a single world?
Before, he had trudged forward enduring hardship, swallowing bitterness, bearing the weight in silence to protect what everyone held dear. All because mortals compared to gods were as earth to sky — the slightest breeze might snuff out that fragile candle.
But now, with [War]'s full Authority upon him, he had the power to hold up the sky for the Torchbearers. And if he still had strength left over, shouldn't he also add a piece of kindling to the flickering flas of other worlds?
'What makes kindling?'
'Born to be kindling!'
So Qin Xin moved. He ignited every ounce of Authority, resonating with the battlefield's [War] power below. Though his body was but a cloud, he wielded divine force like a great hand, removing the heavy armor from his own form and placing it gently beside the frail Qin Xin.
This armor was his soul's anchor — the root of his existence. Losing it could very well turn him to ash...
But!
The frail Qin Xin of the original world had found him another soul vessel before dying. The Startled Bow could also nurture a soul — enough to sustain him and serve as the armor's replacent.
So rather than saying the armored Qin Xin had passed hope to another world's frail counterpart, it was more accurate to say the frail Qin Xin had given another world's version of himself a "new life."
On the battlefield, the frail Qin Xin drifted into unconsciousness. The trial's concluding light transported him and the heavy armor beside him away together. As hope sailed toward the distance, the cloud in the sky quietly dispersed into the night.
This world's beauty need never fear the eternal night again — for the fla called hope was about to kindle in the darkness.
...
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