Deceit had once said:
"...In light of the fact that the Clown once trusted his Benefactor, I'll give you a choice.
One — the Clown continues to trust his Benefactor, becos that universally revered Servant God of Void, Yu Xi, and then departs this world alongside his Benefactor to save the Real Universe.
Two — the Clown betrays his Benefactor, chooses to stay and embrace Fixed Destiny, and then dies with this world in Fate's Misfortune..."
"..."
At the ti, Cheng Shi hadn't thought anything of it. But now, looking back — one leaves, one stays. Didn't that perfectly mirror his current predicant?!
That wasn't all. Deceit had also said:
"...You will not die, but neither can you live. You will be trapped in the Void, locked in an eternal choice, until you make your decision.
Of course, to ensure the Sacrifice's integrity, I will not turn you into a puppet or a shell of despair. I will preserve your desires, hide your goodness, bury your evil — until you've made your choice, and only then pour them all back into you..."
"..."
He never imagined that Deceit had truly hidden every answer within that despairing Curtain of Falsehood.
Perhaps it was because despair breeds hope.
Put away your desires. Hide your goodness. Bury your evil. Wait for the result — then reclaim everything that was yours... Wasn't that exactly the question he was grappling with right now?
"...But I need to remind you — ti is not infinite..."
"..."
Indeed. Whether the Origin or the "Origin," whether Cheng Shi or "Cheng Shi" — none of them had infinite ti. No experint had ti to spare...
"...It was you who gave up the chance to offer the Real Universe the hope of life, choosing self-preservation instead. Naturally, you must bear that guilt and sha..."
"..."
So He had guessed even then — that Cheng Shi would inevitably choose to join the experint's cycle, to et Him and them again!
And yet He had still paved every road, left the world its final answer, and told him: if you choose to start the experint, you will be burdened with the sin and guilt of robbing the world of its future!
"...For the sake of what master and servant once shared, this is the absolute limit of what I can do..."
"..."
Cheng Shi had believed that once everyone had left him, he would shed no more tears. He was wrong.
In that mont, tears poured like rain.
His Benefactor had done everything He could possibly do.
He had rebelled against the Origin for an entire era because of His twin god's death — only to discover, in the end, that the Fixed Destiny He had been sheltering was the Origin... How despairing, how devastating that mont must have been.
Yet He had not destroyed everything. He still chose to continue sheltering His followers!
He had clearly found the world a future — a future free of the Origin — and yet He still embraced His follower's choice, warning him even then: you may bear eternal guilt.
That guilt did not co from Deceit. It ca from Cheng Shi himself.
It was he who chose to start the next experint, plunging everyone back into infinite despair.
Deceit was right. He had already reached the absolute limit of what He could do.
"My Benefactor..."
Cheng Shi's entire body trembled. He wept for a long, long ti — so long that he had to remind himself the universe had no ti. Even if the world still had ti, Ti and Hong Lin outside the Real Universe did not. Danger surrounded them on every side.
Cheng Shi wiped his eyes. His gaze turned resolute once more.
"My Benefactor, you underestimated the Clown's greed.
I'll take the world's future. And I'll take the reunion with all of you."
Cheng Shi looked at the now fully ford experint in his hands. His thinking grew clear. He connected everything — and now he knew exactly where to hide his goodness, his evil, his desires, and his emotions.
There was a place almost no one approached. And even those who did would never uncover the secret within. If any living creature in the experint happened to discover the truth, then let them be silenced forever.
That place was called...
The Sea of Desire!
'I will create an ocean of converging desires to mask my own. Then I will peel away my emotions and hide them at the Sea's bottom. From that point on, I will discard everything and beco the "Origin." The experint begins.'
'To ensure nothing goes wrong — and to give the universe's creatures the courage to resist the gods — I will siphon off a portion of the universe's fear, concentrate it, and shape it into a guardian of the Sea of Desire, one that will turn back anyone who stumbles too close to the "Origin's" truth.'
'And as for who shall be that guardian... I think I've already made my choice.'
Cheng Shi paused, then produced the Lucky Tree Branch gifted by Prosperity. He planted it silently in the Sinking Land of the new Land of Hope.
At so point during the experint's future, the girl called Le Le'er — the Daughter of Prosperity — would be pushed into the Sea of Desire by a naless force. The Mother Tree of Fear would be born.
It would absorb the universe's fear, allowing living creatures to grow courage — and at the right mont it would die, returning that fear, enabling the Fear Faction to grow and endure.
Desire would attract on its own. Corruption would naturally coalesce. The Sea of Desire would slowly take shape. And then everything he had buried there — his hidden longings — would be drawn out by the pull of faith and beco: Tria, who pursued goodness; Drasilco, who pursued evil; and... Aph Ros, who yearned for both yet could never have them...
This was the Sea of Desire that the world shunned. It was also the Graveyard where his humanity was buried.
Everything was according to plan. Everything was within the script.
But that wasn't all!
He also needed to ensure every experint proceeded in the intended direction. For that, he needed those who turned away to fixate on distancing themselves from his Divine Throne, and those who drew near to remain devoted in their offerings. Thus, the Will of Void took shape.
That still wasn't enough!
The broad direction of the era was set, but there were too many variables. No one could guarantee that every "Cheng Shi" would make it to the end. To reduce redundant branches and bring the experint's progression closer to "the result," he needed one more safeguard.
Old Jia...
No matter how bizarre the universe beca, no matter how twisted the world grew — he never wanted Old Jia dragged into it.
He had already departed. He had finally shaken off reality's suffering and found the peace of death. He should never be swept up by his son's obsession into cycle after cycle of agony. So Cheng Shi would not allow him to appear in the next era!
But — for "him" to still beco him, "Cheng Shi" needed a father.
Then let
play the role...
'I can't be so selfish as to strip "Cheng Shi" of every happy mory of his father. I will present that mory to him in full. It's just that... within this rembrance of a father, there is no real "father."'
'Perhaps the father I knew was false too. But I am certain — Cheng Jia was real.'
'He taught
to be honest. He never lied to... ...'
'I've beco "cruel." And so I must atone for that cruelty.'
'I will fill Old Jia's love for him with reminders — telling him what I once experienced.'
'The old gods cannot contaminate the "Origin's" Will. No being could ever hand the answer to themselves so plainly. So the matter is simple: that mory in mory's Collection Hall was very likely never replaced by any god. It was always like that — never altered. If it was changed at all, it could only have been before the era.'
'For instance — right now.'
And so he rewrote the tistamp in the script, changing 220 to 221.
'I will not alter a single person or event connected to Old Jia. I don't know whether the "Destined Ones" he encountered were foreshadowing the Origin had written for . But I am certain that the "Destined Ones" whom "Cheng Shi's" Old Jia encountered are foreshadowing I have left for him.'
'These pillars of faith — far removed from the Fear Faction — are the fullest expression of my guilt toward him.'
'Ha. If that's the case, then the "true" number of Destined Ones should not be five — but six. Though by this point, that no longer matters.'
All was in readiness.
The two "Origins" shared one final look. If the plan held, this would be their last farewell.
The Fate "Origin" was solemn. The Deceit "Origin" sighed with bittersweet emotion.
They looked back across an entire ga — no, an entire era — and suddenly realized that in this absurd age of Void:
Birth had fulfilled birth. Prosperity had sheltered prosperity. Death had embraced death. Corruption had harbored desire. Decay had continued to decay. Oblivion had attained oblivion. Order had reshaped order. Truth had pursued truth. War had waged war. Chaos had thrown chaos into chaos. Folly had witnessed folly. Silence had kept silence. mory had archived mory. Ti had calibrated ti. Deceit had staged deceit. Fate had carried on fate...
The fearful had conquered fear. The defiant had achieved defiance. The devout had attained devotion...
On the surface, nothing had gone wrong. Yet no one had won.
The universe had still marched toward nothingness. The era still closed with regret.
It was ti to end this absurdity...
Both "Origins" nodded simultaneously. Having identified the rhythm of Divinity dripping within the "Origin" Container, they transmitted the precise timing to Ti beyond the world through the Pointer.
In the Real Universe, the brilliant bloom of Prosperity exploded once more. Just as the entire world shook from the upheaval, the "Origin's" Divinity — not a second off — dripped right on cue!
In that maximally knotted instant of ti called 221, the "Origin" acted, the experint launched, and the universe ripped apart.
The "Origin's" Divine Throne erupted with a blazing corona of Will. The fifteen strands of new-god Will — each representing a step toward the "Origin" — wove themselves back together into a stage of faith.
And on the other side.
New faith expelled the old gods. A lonely world began a journey called "the future."
Thus, the era had fallen. Thus, the era began anew.
Such were the Gods of Yu Xi — and such was the Yu Xi of the Gods!
...
(The full story... isn't quite over. There's still a bit more...)
"Real Universe." The Place of Origin.
When Cheng Shi gathered the Will of Birth in his hands, placed it gradually into the experint, and spoke to the countless "Slice Universes" — "This, is Birth. Life's prelude. The origin of all things" — he knew everything would begin again. Everything would play out once more.
But the "Origin" was not the sa as the Origin. He was not the Origin — at the very least, he was not so heartless!
Though he had stripped himself of emotion and desire for the experint's sake, he had planted a failsafe before it began. He knew that he was Cheng Shi first, "Origin" second. And as such — he could not abandon the innocent lives that died in despair within his experint.
They had done nothing wrong. The fault was his.
To atone, before the experint launched, Cheng Shi added one new rule to this Creator's experint:
Whenever any living being died because of the experint, the body would beco recycled material — but the creature's mory would be "transcribed" and stored at the Place of Origin.
If the experint also had a future. If the cycle also had a solution. If this could truly be called atonent... then on the day the true future arrived, he would reconstitute every one of those mories, so that every being that had perished within his experint would know just how much undeserved despair and fear they had endured for the world's future.
He would apologize. And he would willingly bear whatever hatred ca with it.
Because he was Cheng Shi. Never the heartless "Origin."
In that sa mont, the assembled Mask of the Gods' Covenant transford back into a Ring and returned to his finger. The "Origin" looked down — and realized the Ring's twisting, looping shape looked exactly like the Ti of Eternal Imprisonnt. No — it WAS the Ti of Eternal Imprisonnt, with sothing extra. After the Prisoner's Awakening and the Awakened Shout, he now saw a third inscription:
【The Mourning of the Shouter】: You have found the answer at last — yet you are forever imprisoned within it.
Ti had given His answer long ago.
Cheng Shi felt neither sorrow nor joy. He tucked the Ring away, along with the seed that had beco the Crown of Prosperity. Then he sat alone, in silence, and began his own Ti of Eternal Imprisonnt.
But he firmly believed: the future would co.
...
Real Universe. The Place of Origin.
Noticing that one of countless Slice universes had suddenly vanished, the figure seated here thought nothing of it and imdiately began a new experint.
The world rebuilt. The era restarted. The Spaceti Storm arrived on schedule. Everything proceeded in steady, orderly fashion.
Behind that figure, the starlight was staggeringly brilliant. To any creature that ventured into the Real Universe, those lights would seem like impossibly distant stars on the horizon.
Only up close could one discover that these dazzling "stars" were not luminous stellar bodies at all — but row upon row, column upon column, of mories that had once been alive.
The present world's Faith Conflicts were projections of divine Will. The reason the past could be known to the future was that there had always been devout recorders who committed it to mory.
...
An unknown ti. An unknown place.
Darkness too terrible to look upon continued to gather. Countless strands of ti halted here, falling silent. Until — from within the unobservable black — a single arc of light burst forth, as if the stacked, warped, collapsing ti had spawned a fissure.
The fissure was growing.
How many had there been?
...
(End of Story)
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