There was a woman on this card, too.
She wore a pale yellow dress, her expression gentle and kind, with none of the admirers who had crowded around the previous two figures.
She stood between the boundless heavens and earth, the lights of countless homes before her and shattered mountains and rivers behind her. In her eyes, there was only the Great Dao, only the multitude of living beings.
"Meihao."
Or rather, Yun Ruyi in her previous life.
The Eldest Princess gazed at the card, a trace of deeply complicated emotion surfacing in her eyes.
She had never met Meihao. After all, by then, she herself had long since been beaten stone dead.
But someone like Meihao, even if one did not admire her, hardly deserved any harsh words about her path.
Everyone had their own path, she supposed.
"I heard that madman never rejected Meihao back then. She even once sat before him and listened to him expound the Dao."
But...
That was all.
Meihao had not fallen in love with him, nor had she tried to shake him. She had merely followed her own path, walking into the midst of all living beings.
That day, Heavenly Origin trembled.
Even the Heavenly Dao seemed to fall silent for a long time before quietly gathering the scattered fragments of her true spirit.
Looking at the same cracks on the card, the same blood-red word "Defeat," the Eldest Princess sighed softly.
"What was Heavenly Origin thinking? You can't expect someone like her to carry out missions, all right?"
"You finally grind out a little affection, and then she turns around and-snap!-dies for her principles, sacrificing herself for the beings of another world. All that work for nothing."
In the void, a faint ripple of the Heavenly Dao seemed to emerge.
It