This matter was as vast as the stars, and worth hearing.
Upon the Path, at the moment of audience, I became a star, and you became a world.
—This lay beyond Fang Jie's understanding. It was a genuine blind spot in his knowledge.
The Nihility's IX would not glance at anyone, equally shrouding the starry sky.
Nihility—what was Nihility?
0.
Meaninglessness.
It encompassed everything, yet denied the meaning of all existence.
And Nihility—once one stepped into IX's shadow, all forms of existence, body, cognition, memory, would gradually perish in oblivious self-annihilation.
But Destruction was different. This was the blessing a normal Pathstrider, especially one who had received an Aeon's glance, ought to possess.
Stunned and silent at the thought, What, I'm a self-annihilator? Fang Jie had no time to hesitate before once again experiencing the novelty of Granny Liu entering the Grand View Garden.
Knowledge welled up like instinct.
A first breath, a first heartbeat.
It was so natural.
It made you thoroughly understand: this was the Path, this was a Pathstrider—no ordinary being, but one who walked alongside gods.
Every Pathstrider's birth and progress would leave footprints upon the Path.
That was the Imaginary Space, subspace—whatever one wished to call this Path-space, a collection of philosophical Imaginary concepts created by Aeons, where travelers could advance as far as they could, seize as much as they could, expand as much as they could...
Become a star, create a world.
But there was one question, one that neither you, nor I, nor anyone else could answer.
Fang Jie raised his head and looked at himself, black and increasingly dazzling.
Who was watching?
Was it himself?
But could one watch oneself?
He was probably different from the other travelers who had set foot upon Destruction or Nihility.
They were furious. They were terrified.
They grieved. They went mad.
Yet he quietly devoured everything, only one step away from complete death.
Fortunately, he was still alive.
Tragically, he was still alive.
But who was watching me?
"Then how am I able to see 'myself'?"
Without a mirror, how could a person recognize oneself? One could only rely on the observation and feedback of an 'other' to construct a self-awareness that felt unfamiliar when reflected in an actual mirror.
And now, without a third party, Fang Jie saw himself.
It was too strange, just like this Path beneath an Aeon's glance, endlessly expanding through generous blessings... strange.
So, was it Fang Jie?
If a piece of calcite was transparent enough—and it did not matter if it was not—what mattered was that it possessed the structural properties of an anisotropic crystal.
Then, when light passed through it, double refraction would occur, splitting it into two polarized rays with mutually perpendicular vibration directions, differing propagation speeds, and unequal refractive indices.
Of the two rays, one had a propagation speed unrelated to its direction of travel, a constant that obeyed ordinary laws of refraction; the other had a propagation speed related to its direction of travel, a variable that did not obey ordinary laws of refraction.
And within calcite was a special direction along which the two rays traveled at equal speeds.
In other words, the two refracted rays could couple.
Before Fang Jie's eyes, 'March 7th' and 'Kiana' appeared once more. He tried... and he was disappearing.
The black version of himself, motionless and passively devouring everything, disappeared.
No.
It had overlapped.
Upon this Path, I and I became one.
This was the complete Fang Jie, the complete self-annihilator, the complete... me.
In an instant, he could no longer see or feel anything. His mind recoiled from that gloom, his soul felt as heavy as lead, and his body became utterly numb.
He could only look at the sole light: two icon-shaped lights, the only change within the darkness—no, within Nihility.
Suppressing the urge to leave immediately and activate the 'Teleportation' that had become like an instinct, Fang Jie stopped. Then he saw himself again: black, quiet, having devoured far too much Destruction Path energy and gained a shell that shone with boundless radiance.
"This question already has a preliminary answer."
It was an answer he could not, and did not wish to, evade. An answer to be faced directly.
Was that black thing you?
Was it me?
Was it?
It was.
Back then, I was still so accommodating, accepting all comers and unable to resist. The moment I stepped into the galaxy, the blessing followed.
Or perhaps that was not me at all.
So the 'Winter' he had gradually developed and come to rely on—playing dead, enduring survival, even paralyzing his body to absorb energy...
Good things. All good things.
Her precious Wubbaboo!
"Fine, that's enough. I understand now. It's okay, it's okay. Everything is normal. Everything is great. The galaxy I want to see is no grand sight a coward can reach. I have to do extraordinary things and become an extraordinary person. At the very least, a person ought to be operable."
What it originally meant no longer mattered. Fang Jie meant that people still needed to be capable of doing something.
He did not cry and throw a tantrum, swearing like some Little Island Boomcrow to defeat Honkai. Fang Jie merely...
Raised his eyes toward the new world.
Though shocked, he did not really care, because he had long known that the galaxy—and this world—was filled with danger and uncertainty.
Countless demons wandered among humankind, demons who could not even be bothered to eat people.
Countless beings lived brief lives and died. A swift death would be fine; the frightening thing was that they might have been perfectly fine a few days ago, only to find life worse than death a few days later.
Compared to that, the manner of death was not important at all.
What mattered was—
I'm still alive.
"You sure are something."
Fang Jie said to himself,
"Now, I'm a Pathstrider."
He saw what the new world looked like.
Before him was a world of light, a world of fire, and a world of darkness. This was the world of Paths.
The scene it manifested looked no different from the galaxy at first glance. He could merely see more, and farther. Yet the galaxy was vast, countless stars shone, visible but beyond reach...
Wait, I'm floating?
Because he could not see himself, Fang Jie had been unable to 'look in a mirror.' Only now did he discover that he was drifting through the dark galaxy like a star.
Not far away, his other self was a sun that had seized the brilliance of countless lights, illuminating the 'world' where he stood.
'Every star is a Pathstrider.'
Everyone stood within this bottomless galaxy, shining.
Everyone stood upon this endless Path, drawing power from it.
His side was shining and drawing far too much, so much that dense nebulae wrapped around it. Rampaging lightning, energy pulses and fluid matter thrown out by repeated supernova explosions, and even more astronomical phenomena he could not understand... all converged into a passable 'sun,' black at its core and swelling ever larger.
Fang Jie floated amid interstellar matter between stretches of space. He sensed that he was naked and unrecognizable, with all his senses losing their function except for his eyes.
Huh? His eyes could work?
They were eyes that had finally opened from their original grayness, bursting forth yet tranquil, silently driving away the blackness.
They had turned dark green.
His pupils had changed from their original smooth roundness into angular shapes, becoming diamond-shaped gemstones that gleamed brilliantly.
People always stopped squarely and moved in circles. Many times, merely managing to stop already took everything they had.
Frankly speaking, it looked somewhat... strangely tragic and beautiful. Tragically beautiful.
Destruction resisted Nihility.
Knowledge of the Path surged forth as though it had finally struggled free and turned over, bringing tears to one's eyes and making one burn with shame and anger.
They really did only know how to bully self-annihilators.
Yes, knowing too much might make one less happy, but this was taking things too far.
This should have been instinct, something usable the moment one unlocked the skill. Like how a Herrscher could wield Authority through instinct alone. That precious self-annihilator business had made Fang Jie spend all this time as cannon fodder without even knowing where he stood.
Even if he might indeed be cannon fodder—at most, some kind of future warrior.
In any case, he saw himself. If the side bearing both Nihility and Destruction had become a sun, then the other side was merely a tiny satellite.
Mm, a moon.
If ordinary Pathstriders began by blindly drawing energy from the Path, rarely realizing or approaching its essence right away, understanding themselves and thereby undergoing a dramatic transformation—
Then those graced by an Aeon's glance could become stars overnight upon the Path's course.
Fang Jie went a step further. He had also set foot upon the Nihility that never glanced at anyone, possessing the ability to construct a star system at this intersection of Paths.
A binary star system... no, a ternary star system.
Upon the magnificent course of the Path, I and I possessed a powerful gravitational pull between us, stirring ceaseless ripples through this Path-space that had just been opened for him.
The soul from another land had once tried to touch Trailblaze as well, snatching quite a bit of energy.
And so, the little broken planet was born with a boom, positioned between the two and resisting Nihility's gravitational pull. Countless energies manifested as light were siphoned away as well.
It was the Cosmic Island!
Thus, within the Path manifested as a vast galaxy, countless and endless streams of energy emerged like golden ribbons of starlight, flowing into this star system. The overwhelming majority were siphoned into that black outline, while only a small fraction could rush elsewhere.
A thirty-seventy split.
Meaning seventy percent of what rushed elsewhere was siphoned away too.
That was the galaxy.
What lay beyond that light?
Fang Jie, whose eyes had likewise turned dark green, swept his gaze across the stellar expanse and the boundless black sea of stars. A trail of black blood, sprayed out in order to open his eyes, ran down his cheek.
'Other stars.'
The Path answered thus, and he understood.
What exactly did Pathstriders walk?
Not merely progress through tangible reality, but progress through these Imaginary concepts as well—exploring the footprints of those before them, leaving marks for those who came after...
"The road ahead is truly long."
Still, setting aside how Nihility was supposed to advance, what about Destruction?
Fang Jie sensed himself. The version of himself that could only see had been sealed away first; from now on, he would have to use those powers with the utmost caution. He sensed the 'Destruction' surging within him, the self capable of wielding the power contained within stars.
"Boom—!"
Before you continue