Threnodian of Nihility

Christopher had no time to deal with Kexi. The thing in front of him was the real threat.

It floated in midair, like a giant black hole or an enormous eyeball come to life. Nebula-like light swirled deep within its pupil, and its stare made his scalp tingle.

Christopher swallowed. His voice was reasonably steady when he spoke. "What are you? How did you get into my world?"

The giant eye turned slowly, and a hum rang out, as though it had come from the depths of space:

"I am the Threnodian of Nihility."

Christopher's pupils contracted sharply, and a cold sweat broke out on his back.

"Aleph-1? Weren't you sealed in Lahai-Roi by the Threnodian?"

Aleph-1 let out a long sigh, its voice weary and aggrieved. "It's a long story..."

For the next half hour, Christopher listened to a story that upended everything he thought he knew.

The more he heard, the more alarmed he became, and the harder the corner of his mouth twitched.

"I had victory in my grasp,"

Aleph-1 said, its voice thick with indignation.

"But then those ants started shouting about bonds and conviction and affection and love, and one after another, they unleashed ridiculous amounts of power. All that power turned into light and slammed into the Tuner. It was like the bastard had activated a cheat, and with one strike-"

Aleph-1's voice brimmed with humiliation. "One strike, and he fucking stabbed me to death."

Christopher: "..."

Stabbed to death? A mighty cosmic-scale calamity Rover got stabbed to death by a bunch of humans shouting hot-blooded speeches? He almost lost his composure.

"Human." Aleph-1's voice suddenly turned serious. "I need your help."

Christopher raised an eyebrow, his carefree expression returning. "Well, well, even a Rover asks for help? Let's hear it. Why should I help you?"

"Haven't you been studying my power at Lahai-Roi all this time?" The giant eye's light flickered. "I can provide you with complete material, as long as you help me break free. When the time comes, I can also take you off this planet and into the real universe."

Christopher's heart skipped a beat. Leave Solaris?

He licked his lips. "Those terms... are certainly tempting. What exactly do you need us to do?"

"Very simple." Aleph-1 lowered its voice. "Offer Leviathan to me. Once I've recovered some of my power, my proxy will go to Lahai-Roi. When he does, you will cooperate with him and help me break the seal completely."

Christopher considered it for a moment, then nodded. "I can't make that decision. I'll have to discuss it with the president."

"Once you've decided, use this wisp of power I'm leaving behind to contact me." With those words, the giant eye's light abruptly vanished, leaving only a black crystal the size of a fingernail, trembling faintly as it hovered in the air.

Christopher reached out and caught the crystal, a smile slowly curling his lips.

An unexpected windfall.

He weighed the crystal in his hand, already calculating his bargaining chips.

But what he didn't know was that, the moment he turned to leave, a mocking glimmer of red flashed deep within the crystal.

Aleph-1 was laughing.

Once those idiots helped it recover its power, it would contact its projection in Lahai-Roi and break free of the seal completely.

Then it would immediately establish an anchor with its main body and summon the true Aleph-1.

When that happened, the Tuner, who had yet to reach his full potential, would be devoured along with the entire planet of Solaris.

As for its promise to the Fractsidus?

Heh.

As everyone knew, it was the noble Aleph-1, and also the evil Threnodian of Nihility.

It did not keep its word.

Ever since it came to understand the emotions of these humans, it had found it increasingly difficult to understand why it had lost to such filthy creatures in the first place.

When greedy humans were weak, they were sincere to everyone. But once they gained power and influence, the evil in them would grow without limit, never to be satisfied.

Some claimed at every turn to be acting for justice, yet did filthy things under its banner.

Some spoke of love while using it to coerce others. If you opposed them, you didn't love them.

A good person could do good deeds all their life, but commit one bad deed and they were utterly wicked.

A bad person could do evil all their life, but put down their butcher's knife and become a Buddha on the spot.

Greed. Selfishness. Envy. Sloth.

Indifference. Arrogance. Wrath. Lust.

Humanity's deep-seated flaws were beyond counting.

Ridiculous. Utterly ridiculous.

Only nihility was the essence of the world.

None of these things should exist.

Pursuit. Boundary. Destruction. Lament. End. Silence.

A spectacular transition.

Standing on a flying sword, Kexi wobbled his way through the clouds.

As it happened, he had only learned to fly on a sword from Yangyang the night before.

He didn't know where the final chapter of this script was.

After Christopher threw the four of them into this world, he had vanished without a trace and never shown himself again.

Cioccolata, Yaoyue, Rosinante-where had the three of them been thrown? Had they been shoved into some immortal sect as disciples like him, or stranded somewhere out in the wilderness?

This world wasn't particularly big, but it certainly wasn't small either. In the two days since he had flown out of the Mystic Sect alone, he had seen more than a dozen mountains, rivers, and cities.

Finding three people would be like looking for needles in a haystack.

He felt the crumpled map tucked inside his robes.

Changli had slipped it into his pack. The towns and mountain ranges around the Mystic Sect were marked on it in neat handwriting.

He turned it over and found that Changli had thoughtfully written a line of small characters on the back: "Junior Brother, your original home is in Ragunna City. Fly eighty li southeast to get there. Be careful on the road."

Yangyang had mentioned it too.

That day on the flying sword, after crying in his arms, she had tearfully told him a great deal about "his" past.

She said he was the son of a nobleman from Ragunna City. Qiuyuan had taken a liking to him at first sight while passing through and brought him up the mountain to cultivate. He had never gone back since.

Yangyang had spoken cautiously, as though testing whether he really had forgotten all of it.

Kexi had given a vague response, but his mind had been on something else.

His role in the script was the Mystic Sect's junior brother, so could "his" home in the script-Ragunna City-also hold some other clues?

Maybe Cioccolata and the others were thrown there? He couldn't make sense of the script's logic, but following the main storyline couldn't be wrong.

I'll go check out Ragunna City first.

Having made up his mind, he urged the flying sword beneath his feet to go faster.

Just then, the urge to urinate interrupted his plans.

Kexi's expression instantly turned awkward. His legs involuntarily pressed closer together, and the flying sword beneath him swayed.

He looked around.

Below him stretched an expanse of forested mountains. A few birds occasionally flew past, but there was no sign of people anywhere in sight.

But just take care of it while standing on the flying sword?

You've got to be kidding.

He, Kexi, was a respectable man, at least. If he stood in midair and pissed into the wind, what would happen if someone below saw him?

Just imagine: an innocent passerby walking along a mountain path suddenly felt a few drops of warm liquid fall from the sky onto their face and looked up.

Some fucking jackass was standing on a flying sword, taking a piss.

The mere thought of it made his scalp tingle.

He sent the flying sword into a rapid descent, passing through layer after layer of clouds and mist as the scene before him gradually came into focus.

Below was a broad valley, carpeted with green grass and scattered with wildflowers. A mirror-like blue lake lay nestled in its center.

A vast white patch lay by the lake. From a distance, it looked like a spread of pebbles.

Kexi picked out a clear spot by the lake, put away his flying sword, and leaped down.

His feet had barely touched the ground, before he could even find his balance, when the white "pebbles" suddenly moved.

Wait.

Those weren't pebbles at all.

They were a group of white seals.

They had round, plump bodies, shiny black eyes, and a layer of soft white fur on their backs. Every one of them was as plump as a freshly steamed meat bun.

They all turned to stare at Kexi, their eyes full of wariness and hostility. Several at the front had already raised their upper bodies off the ground, letting out low growls as though warning the uninvited guest to get lost.

Wait, seals?

He rubbed his eyes and looked again.

Hold on. White, round, and with fangs.

Are these fucking seals? They're obviously snow leopards!

No, that's not what snow leopards look like.

Snow leopards, my ass. These are seals!

What are seals doing by a freshwater lake?

Is there something wrong with this script's ecological setting?

In the mere two seconds he spent wrestling with animal taxonomy, the white seal at the front let out a piercing cry.

"Awoo."

As though given the order to charge, the whole group of seals lunged at him as one.

Their plump bodies bounced across the grass at a startling speed.

Their fangs gleamed coldly in the sunlight, and their growls turned into piercing roars. Faced with such a fearsome force and so many of them, an ordinary person would probably have gone weak at the knees.

But Kexi was no ordinary person.

He was a Resonator now. Though a little weak, he had been trained by Carlotta, after all.

He drew the longsword at his waist with a backhand motion, its blade tracing a clear gleam through the sunlight. With a shift of his feet, he darted into the group of seals like an afterimage. He struck sideways with the flat of the blade, flicked its tip, and jabbed backward with the hilt.

He didn't strike to kill, merely using skillful force to send the round little creatures flying one after another.

The white seals arced through the air and thumped back onto the grass, leaving round, shallow dents.

The fight had started suddenly, but it ended even faster.

In less than a moment, more than a dozen white seals lay sprawled all over the ground, knocked unconscious with stars spinning before their eyes.

"Scared the hell out of me."

Kexi put away his sword and brushed the white fluff off his robes. "Where did these snow leopards come from-no, whatever kind of leopard you are, what are you acting so fierce for when you look like glutinous rice balls?"

No good, I can't hold it anymore.

The fight had distracted him, but now that he had stopped, the desperate urge to pee came rushing back, even stronger than before. It was so intense that his legs began to tremble.

He pressed his legs together and looked around anxiously. Then his eyes lit up-the lake.

Isn't that a natural five-star toilet?