Return Straight to Heaven, the Five Saints Attain Truth (March 8, 6,000 words; Journey to the West arc complete)

Light surged like the tide, boundless and unceasing, rising wave after wave.

The Dead Country symbolized the end of all things, and the River Styx represented eternal stillness. Yet beneath that light, they were like black fireflies.

They were encompassed within one link in the chain called nature.

It contained every law at its utmost and the mysteries of the Multiverse, displaying beautiful images of symmetry and asymmetry like a shattered kaleidoscope.

A lavender-purple haze rolled across the Divine Land, hazy and unreal. Immortals and gods gripped their weapons tightly. Even those who could cast death from their minds felt an emotion called fear for the first time.

The enormous, writhing bronze eyeball floated in that ocean of light like a jellyfish at sea.

Suddenly, a giant hand seized it. A towering giant of shadow lifted the eyeball to his mouth and chewed.

The eyeball burst like a bubble, spilling countless holy crystalline objects.

But before the giant of shadow could swallow it, countless tentacles covered in holy feathers raised waves from the ocean of light, wrapped around him, and dragged him into laws no one could perceive.

On the sea's surface, the writhing Ten-Thousand Character Seal and the Dao Scripture, which held every color, drifted like plankton. The currents gathered them, then scattered them, and whenever they collided—

It was as though one world was being opened, while still more worlds met their end.

Impossible to understand.

Impossible to think.

Impossible even to commit those images to memory.

All that remained in their minds and deep within their hearts was a warmth and acceptance like spring sunlight. Every wound of the heart had become a passing cloud.

A contradiction.

Impossible to understand.

They longed from the depths of their hearts to wander that ocean, but purple qi and the