Embers Never Die

"Tuner! Think of something, quick!" Harmonic Leaptone cried. "Paradox is breaking down their confidence in their own existence!"

Violet-gold flames burned to their peak in Lin Ye's eyes.

Then he suddenly smiled.

"Trying to play paradox with me?"

He took one step forward, charging straight into the Eye of Paradox's field of observation!

"Come. Take a good look at me."

He spread his arms and stood completely defenseless before the eye that could drive a main god insane.

"Analyze my existence—see how many paradoxes I carry."

The Eye of Paradox paused slightly.

Then it began to observe Lin Ye in earnest.

The next instant—

BOOM!!!

The Eye of Paradox convulsed violently!

What had it seen?

It saw a man carrying the obsessions of three hundred and seventy-one devoured civilizations within him—obsessions that should have clashed, rejected one another, and torn each other apart, yet coexisted harmoniously under Lin Ye's will.

It saw a man walking between order and chaos in the name of the Tuner—belonging neither to the Blueprint nor to Paradox, yet regarded by both as an anomaly of value.

It saw a man who, in the depths of despair, had made pacts with the embers of two ancient civilizations and willingly borne endless karmic consequences—an act with no gain from the perspective of pure reason and far too heavy from the perspective of pure emotion, yet one he had undertaken as though it were only natural.

Most fatal of all—

Within Lin Ye, it saw the obsession with existence he had comprehended from the collapse node, the Dreamweavers' residual obsession with protection, Unfinished Crossing's obsession with continuation, and the entrusted obsessions of three hundred and seventy-one civilizations he had laid to rest, all woven together into a—

contradictory unity that could not be classified by any single logic.