"I'm sorry."
Lin Chuan looked at the trembling old man before him. After a long silence, he offered Old Neil a sincere apology.
The unexpected apology made Old Neil jerk his head up, his eyes filled with astonishment.
Lin Chuan gave a self-deprecating smile, his voice losing some of its divine remoteness and gaining a little warmth. "I'm sorry, Mr. Neil. I shouldn't have tested your suffering this way."
He looked at Old Neil and said earnestly, "Making you guess over and over from my lofty perch, just like those gods-it was arrogant and despicable."
"That wasn't right," Lin Chuan said, as though speaking both to Old Neil and to himself. "Perhaps I still have problems I haven't noticed, but regardless, wrong is wrong."
He looked into Old Neil's dark red eyes and said softly, "Then let me answer your question directly-I can save her."
Old Neil's breathing abruptly stopped. An unbelievable light burst into eyes that had already gone dim.
"In this world, once an ordinary person's spirit body dissipates, all that remains is one final record: a death mark."
Lin Chuan explained calmly:
"A death mark is a mark left within the essence of death. Ordinary humans can leave only one, while certain pathways allow people to leave many once they reach certain Sequences."
"At the same time, just like the Spirit World, these marks are eroded by death, gradually dissolving until death assimilates them completely."
"The higher someone's standing in life, the greater their ability to resist this dissolution, and the longer they can endure. An ordinary person's death mark can probably last only a few days."
"Once the River of the Underworld has completely assimilated a person's death mark, that person can be said to have died utterly and vanished."
"Even true gods must fear the essence of death, let alone resurrect someone who has died completely. But as I said, I can save Shaliste."
"The dead belong to the God of Death's Underworld, while those who have been completely erased and returned to nothingness..."
Lin Chuan raised his eyes slightly, his tone calm yet unquestionable. "Belong to my divine kingdom."
Old Neil listened, somewhat dazed.
Lin Chuan did not explain anything too abstruse to him. In fact, the conditions for automatically entering the Boundless Void were extremely stringent: absolute emptiness, with one's fate, traces in history, parallel worlds, and even everyone's memories of them completely gone.
But there were two exceptions: either the deceased had been his believer and followed the divine kingdom's process, or Lin Chuan invited them in.
Lin Chuan had always believed that the transparent, ethereal, almost nonexistent spirit body that appeared in the original story was Old Neil's wife.
After all, that spirit body played the piano for Old Neil and always followed silently by his side. After Old Neil lost control and died, it vanished as well...
Didn't that look, by any measure, like a story of pure love, with Shaliste's remnant soul having lost most of her consciousness and simply staying silently beside the man she loved?
Of course, Lin Chuan had considered other possibilities, such as it not being a spirit body at all, but a hallucination caused by corruption.
Or perhaps Old Neil had inadvertently attracted a remnant spirit whose behavior resembled his wife's. That would also explain why its figure and appearance were never described.
But none of those possibilities was as absurd as what Lin Chuan had encountered the previous night, because he hadn't found a spirit body at all.
Never mind a spirit body that might have been Shaliste-even the spirit world creatures throughout the area around Tingen City were gone. The density of spirit bodies in Tingen was now comparable to that in the Evernight Goddess's cathedral in Backlund.
That raised a question: what exactly had happened to Shaliste? Lin Chuan did not dwell on it for long, because he soon received his answer.
"I" did it.
Somehow, he was certain Shaliste's absence had nothing to do with his earlier friendly exchange with the Hidden Sage. After all, he hadn't seen a spirit body following Old Neil when the old man first came through the door, either.
Then "I" must have done it. Given that his main body out in the starry sky had shown no sign of activity, it most likely had something to do with the Western Continent.
So my sefirah leaked out too?
Tsk, the Celestial Worthy really was a fool. He put up a barrier to seal away so many sefirahs, yet they kept leaking out one after another, and he couldn't stop them.
"The dead return to the Underworld. Those erased from existence return to me." Lin Chuan stopped following that train of thought, looked at Old Neil, and gave his final conclusion. "So you need not worry, nor must you pay any price."
His tone solemn, he said slowly, "Those who have passed shall return. The living shall perish, and those who perish shall rise again."
This is the covenant I have made, Lin Chuan silently added.
Old Neil's tears finally spilled over. Twenty years of bitter wandering were washed clean in that moment.
Trembling, he tried to kneel in worship, but an invisible force gently held him up.
"All right. Now that I've made my promise, let's begin the preparations at hand." Lin Chuan changed the subject. "Go perform the ritual. Complete the transmutation sooner rather than later. There's no need to drag it out."
The materials had all been prepared well in advance: 100 milliliters of water from the Golden Spring on Sonia Island, 50 grams of star crystal, half a pound of gold, 5 grams of phlogiston, 30 grams of hematite, blood from a living person...
Old Neil took out the materials in an orderly fashion. Only the blood was insufficient, short by a full two-thirds of the required amount.
Lin Chuan paid no mind to such trivial details and gestured for Old Neil to proceed without concern. He did not even set any requirements for the human body to be transmuted.
"It's fine. Just use these materials for the ritual. Don't bother shaping it, either. Even a ball will do," he instructed casually.
A human transmutation ritual did not simply mean gathering a pile of materials, praying to summon a god, and handing all the work over to that god. In fact, the preliminary steps accounted for most of the work, and were little different from brewing a potion.
After watching from the side for two minutes, Lin Chuan announced that he would wait in the living room. Old Neil could call him once the preliminary preparations were finished and it was time to perform the ritual.
Old Neil simply assumed that His Excellency found the human transmutation ritual too simple to bother watching.
When it came time to choose the herbs and essential oils required for the ritual prayers, he had no idea which to use, so he asked Lin Chuan, only to be told, "The herbs and essential oils don't matter. Whatever Evernight uses, I'll use."
Although Old Neil was somewhat surprised by such a casual requirement, it spared him the trouble of blending new essential oils. He followed the instructions meticulously, choosing the moon flower and deep sleep flower essential oils commonly used by the Church of Evernight.
Once the complicated preliminary mixing was complete, the liquid in the crucible finally stabilized and slowly thickened into a jellylike substance. It was time for the final step.
Lin Chuan casually waved a hand.
A dark red symbol resembling an eye filled with stars flashed briefly in midair, then merged into the candle flame.
"Write down my honorific name, and direct the ritual toward me at the end." His figure had vanished at some point, leaving only his voice echoing through the room.
"The beginning of hope, upside-down fate;"
"The essence of the Boundless Void;"
"The negation of existence's meaning."
Before you continue