The Ninth Divine Region beyond the wall of mist had been utterly transformed. The nine islands that had once floated in the air now plummeted like arrows loosed from broken bowstrings. The golden stars representing the Sword Masters shattered into thirteen streams of light. Twelve sank into the Divine Lords' palace, while the last shot straight toward Chu Mo's brow. His Twin Pupils suddenly contracted as he saw that every stream carried a different memory: a red-haired Divine Lord burning her own Fate Pearl upon an altar; a white-robed Divine Lord driving a sword into his heart to extend a mortal's life; and that figure forever wearing a bronze mask, standing atop Hong Meng Hall and devouring starlight.
"Chu Mo, your swords!" Yun Che's cry jolted him awake. At some unknown moment, the Chaos Sword and Fate Defying Sword had left their scabbards and joined together in midair into a star map. The Light Orb Race on their sword tassels transformed into thirteen light butterflies, each flying toward a falling island. When the first butterfly touched the collapsing Mount Guiji, the bones of the entire mountain suddenly rang like a bell. Those sword graves polluted by the Demon God began to sprout anew, and condensed upon those tender shoots was the power from the dawn of chaos brought by the Light Orb Race.
"Starfall isn't destruction. It's rebirth." Chu Mo caught the shard of starlight before his chest and discovered that it bore the same pattern as the rings of the Old Scholar Tree. "The Sword Master's thirteen stars were actually thirteen talismans of released fate left for the Chaos Sword Body." He looked toward Hong Meng Hall, where the Bronze Masked Figure stood. Within the black mist there, the phantoms of twelve Divine Lords were being absorbed by the sword tassel in the masked figure's hand.
Yun Che suddenly pointed at the sea. "Look! A giant sword-shaped tree has grown from the ruins of Godfall Island!" The colossal tree, condensed from Chaos Power, was absorbing the falling starlight. Every leaf reflected Chu Mo and Yun Che from a different time and space—some slashing apart mirror images in the Mirror Abyss Corridor, some embracing cocoons of light on Mount Guiji, and some teaching children swordsmanship in the Dawn of Primordial Chaos Land. "So every choice we make is reshaping the laws of the Divine Region."
The masked figure suddenly turned around, a cold smile curving beneath his mask. Raising a hand, he flung open the gates of Hong Meng Hall with a thunderous boom. Twelve Divine Lord corpses floated within, their chest Fate Pearls already gouged out and replaced by marks of the Chaos Sword Body identical to Chu Mo's. "Welcome back, the 108th host of the Chaos Sword Body." His voice scraped like rusted chains. "Or should I call you... the new Sword Master?"
Chu Mo's Twin Life Force suddenly boiled over. On the wrist exposed beneath the masked figure's sleeve, he saw the same Dao Protector emblem as the silver-scaled man's. "You're the youngest of the twelve disciples..." Chu Mo's voice carried the chill of a blade. "After thirty thousand years, are you still obsessed with becoming the Sword Master's shadow?"
The masked figure removed his mask, revealing a hideous sword scar on the left side of his face—the mark left when a finger bone from the Sword Master's skeleton had cut him during the battle of Mount Guiji. "A shadow?" He burst into laughter, mingled with the mournful cries of twelve Divine Lords. "The twelve of us willingly became demonized only to prove this: without the Sword Master's lineage, the Divine Region can still function!" With a lift of his hand, the twelve Divine Lord corpses opened their eyes at once, dark violet flames identical to those of the Demon God's Heart dancing within them.
"Their spirit veins have long since withered. You're forcibly reviving them with remnants of the Demon God's souls!" Yun Che's flexible sword swept out an ice prison, only for it to turn chaotic gray the instant it touched the corpses. The Light Orb Race's butterflies suddenly flew back and circled around her. Those light orbs that had once been saved willingly merged into the ice prison, transforming it into an Original Heart Cage capable of purifying delusions.
At that moment, Chu Mo's Twin Life Swords completed their star-map formation. An overarching principle never recorded by the First Generation Sword Master emerged upon their blades—"Thirteen stars fall, ten thousand Daos return to silence; take the heart as scales, and weigh the decree of fate." When he swung his sword at the masked figure, the blade passed straight through his body, yet carved a crack in the wall of Hong Meng Hall behind him—a crack leading to the Dawn of Primordial Chaos Land.
"You think killing me will end this?" The masked figure retreated into the crack and raised a hand to recall the sword tassel absorbing starlight. "Look at your sword, then. The core of the Chaos Sword Body... was seeded with the Seed of Finality by the Sword Master long ago."
Chu Mo lowered his head and saw that cracks identical to those on the Sword Master's coffin had appeared on the Chaos Sword's scabbard at some unknown moment. What seeped from them was not golden Divine Blood, but black chaotic delusions. Yun Che suddenly grasped his hand and pressed her Ice Clan Fate Pearl against the cracks. The Light Orb Race's streams of light poured in as well, forcing the delusions back into the depths of the scabbard.
"The Seed of Finality he mentioned should refer to the... obsession with self-sacrifice that the Sword Master left within every host." Yun Che recalled an ending she had seen within the cocoon of light, where Chu Mo willingly became a new Sword Master skeleton to seal the Demon God. "But our Dao hearts have long since ceased to be something the Sword Master can control."
Light rain suddenly descended from the sky of the Ninth Divine Region. With the help of the Light Orb Race, the mortals affected by the starfall were condensing physical forms. Chu Mo saw a girl wearing a purple-scale hair ribbon running hand in hand with her mother. Her eyes were exactly like those of the little girl Yun Che had saved in the Dawn of Primordial Chaos Land—a new life remade by Chaos Power, with no memories of sacrifice.
"Chu Mo, look!" Yun Che pointed at the gradually clarifying star map. The Sword Master star representing them was reforming, while beyond the map, a brand-new thirteenth star had appeared. Upon it were blank runes identical to those on the Old Scholar Tree's stone tablet. "This is the Dao that belongs to us. There is no predetermined path, only the possibility of striking wherever our hearts lead."
The masked figure's form gradually blurred within the crack. What he threw out at the end were the Fate Pearls of the twelve Divine Lords, each reflecting Chu Mo's image in the Dawn of Primordial Chaos Land. "Remember: when the Chaos Sword Body begins absorbing delusions, that will be the true finality of the Divine Region..." Before his voice vanished, the rustling of the Old Scholar Tree came from within the crack, as though answering the response within Chu Mo's heart.
The Chaos Sword suddenly let out a clear, resounding cry. The cracks on its scabbard healed completely, replaced by new runes woven together from the Light Orb Race and Twin True Intent—patterns that had never appeared in any sword art, like a sword, like a heart, and even more like the overlapping palm prints of Chu Mo and Yun Che.
When the two stepped onto the stairs of Hong Meng Hall, the twelve Divine Lord corpses within suddenly knelt as one. The Chaos Sword Body marks on their chests turned into light orbs and merged into Chu Mo's Endless Body. Deep within his Sea of Consciousness, the Sword Master's remnant soul and the Demon God's remnant soul coexisted peacefully for the first time, as if waiting for this youth who had shattered every rule to draw an end to their thirty-thousand-year grudge.
Yun Che suddenly pointed at the starry sky above the hall. At some unknown moment, a galaxy formed from light butterflies had appeared there, every butterfly carrying a rescued member of the Light Orb Race. "Chu Mo, do you think we can create a truly free Divine Region in this sea of stars for those lives that were never corrupted?"
Chu Mo looked at the starlight reflected in her eyes and recalled the crack they had once cut with wooden swords beneath the Old Scholar Tree in the Dawn of Primordial Chaos Land—there had been the scent of green grass, soft laughter during sword practice, and the purest life that belonged to no lineage at all. He suddenly understood that the responsibility of the Fate Defying Sword Sovereign had never been to protect some predetermined world, but to grant every life the right to choose its own Dao heart.
"We can." Chu Mo took her hand, and their twin swords pointed toward the starry sky at once. "With our swords, we'll cleave open a road for all those unwilling to be bound by fate... a road without end or beginning."
The bells of Hong Meng Hall rang once more. This time, there was none of the desolation of thirty thousand years in their chime, only the clear, hopeful sound belonging to a new Sword Sovereign. And amid the lingering echoes, a new forest nurtured jointly by chaos and primordial creation was growing from the ruins of the Ninth Divine Region. In the rings of every tree was carved the same name—Chu Mo and Yun Che, and the legend of the Endless Sword Dao they were about to create.
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