Death Demon and Heavenly Demon were "conversing" within the universe.
Around them, the deaths of all things and the "change" upon which living beings depended were coming to a halt.
Most civilizations vanished without a trace in the blink of an eye, as though they had never existed. Occasionally, a few scattered surviving worlds lived primitive lives in absolute isolation from the world.
Then the civilizations in those surviving worlds began to decline as well. They either self-destructed in boundless darkness or slowly dimmed away among the stars.
Throughout the entire universe, there was nothing left but endless darkness and drifting clouds of dust.
The universe was empty of all things. A deathly silence that should have taken countless billions of years to arise rapidly filled the cosmos. Before long, everything gradually cooled, and in this region of space where they stood, even the last trace of "change" was exhausted. At a glance, there seemed to be nothing left in the universe.
"Should we make a great fuss?" Beneath such deathly silence, Death Demon suddenly smiled.
It was not an exaggerated smile, but a subtle one.
Compared to her corpse-like face from before, the girl's sudden smile sent chills down one's spine, yet also displayed a startling allure.
Heavenly Demon laughed as well.
Look.
Wasn't this quite nice? How beautiful.
But after that brief smile, Heavenly Demon sighed. "Sigh, being with you is truly unpleasant."
"I'm not very comfortable either. Let's disperse," Death Demon said.
"Fine." Heavenly Demon let go.
Death Demon vanished from where she stood in an instant.
Almost at the same moment, "change" reappeared all around them, while Heavenly Demon's shell began to twist.
The universe became mutable once more—the change of the Book of Changes.
The transformations of the four seasons and yin and yang; the