Subduing

Ysera's eyes widened as she stared at Deren, as if she wanted to etch him into her gaze forever.

Even Aegwynn could not help rising to her feet and standing beside him. "Deren, boy, you've truly astonished me today. You never said these things before. Hearing you suddenly say them now has completely shocked me."

Deren gently shook his head. "The time wasn't right. Now, let's talk about how order and chaos were originally one."

He first gestured for the two "old ladies" to sit down. After all, one was over a thousand years old, while no one knew how many tens of thousands of years the other had lived.

"Chaos is unknowable, yet it contains every possibility. Isn't that right, Ysera?" Deren asked first.

"That's right. The Void is chaos—endless chaos. You cannot even imagine what might emerge from the darkness of the Void. Of course it contains endless possibilities." Ysera spoke calmly, her eyes fixed on Deren, wanting to see what even more astonishing words this man could say.

Instead, he laughed happily, as though he had been waiting for her to say exactly that. "You said it yourself. The chaos within the Void contains every possibility, so how could it fail to give rise to order? Order is also a special kind of chaos. That is why chaos and order are fundamentally one!"

"Huh?" The Void Elf flushed red from Deren's rebuttal, yet she vaguely felt that he had a point. "So the words you said earlier—'Form is emptiness; emptiness is form'—mean that the Void and order are fundamentally one?" She had begun addressing him respectfully.

But Deren did not nod. Instead, he waved a hand in denial. "Emptiness or nothingness, form or existence—none of those are the world's true nature. Because we can only describe things