Chapter 155: The Solution

"What was that just now?"

Gazing at the long-unhealed wound across the shattered firmament, the youth asked the girl shrouded in thick mystery behind him, his voice trembling with as much composure as he could muster.

"It was darkness—" Jiashu paused with a rather subtle tone, "the darkness of the Dark Chaos itself."

"Looks like I've really provoked an extraordinary existence," Amy Ulysses sighed deeply. "The Dark Chaos... You mean..."

—Are the Dark Chaos and the Endless Abyss different names for the same concept?

Reason made the youth cut off his subsequent words.

Putting aside whether the knowledge originating from *Al Azif* was the truth of the world, even if it were, the petite girl standing behind him with her somewhat peculiar relationship to him was hardly a good person to ask.

Was she trustworthy?

The answer was naturally no—the young Glorifier had never forgotten the heavy scars left behind by that seemingly friendly transaction at the House of Dice.

Therefore, heart-to-heart words were quite unnecessary.

"I mean? What do I mean?" The petite girl blinked. "Are you asking why you aren't dead, or why the Dark Chaos itself descended upon this place?"

"Both, I suppose."

"You certainly have a lot of questions." Jiashu shrugged, her dark, brilliant eyes sizing the youth up from top to bottom before she clicked her tongue. "Though I still haven't figured out your identity, I've confirmed one thing—you're no casual, expendable pawn, but the most crucial link in an entire grand design. You've earned the qualification to know a portion of the truth."

She paused. "You are special—that is beyond doubt. But I never imagined you would be special to this extent. Lucifer's Sword of Dawn indeed holds immeasurable potential, I won't deny that. Yet it is also a double-edged sword. As the guide and restraint of this power, you must possess strength matching it—or at least comparable in scale and texture. Otherwise, the first thing swallowed by the raging torrent of light will be none other than yourself."

"So?"

"There is no such thing as a free lunch." Jiashu skipped over to him and spread her hands. "Although I didn't expect beforehand that you could liberate Lucifer to this degree, a human attempting to wield transcendent power beyond mortal comprehension can only reap destruction. If not for your unique constitution, even if you had sacrificed your life and everything else, you would likely have burned to ashes halfway through swinging your first sword, reducing yourself to an ember without fire."

"But I am special." Amy was well aware of this.

"That's right," the girl smiled brightly. "I don't know who he is, nor what purpose he ultimately intends to use you for, but he sealed the fire within your body. Your life is already fundamentally different from the vast majority of people—do you know who the last person treated this way was?"

Fire... Could it be the Fire of Ana?

Hesitating slightly, the young Glorifier did not pursue the matter further, asking instead, "Who?"

A natural question.

Jiashu gathered a strand of hair falling beside her ear and uttered a name—a somewhat unfamiliar name.

"Augustus."

"Mm," the youth murmured softly, then asked again, "Who is that?"

"The God of the Earth, many call him that." The black-haired, black-eyed girl was momentarily caught off guard by his question, shooting him a slightly reproachful look. "Though perhaps you'd be more familiar with him by other titles—the founder of the Church, the strongest being in the Realm of Order, and... the King-Slayer."

The God of the Earth, the founder of the Church, the strongest being in the Realm of Order, the King-Slayer—

Each of these titles carried the weight of a thousand mountains... Wait, the King-Slayer?!

Amy Ulysses could not hide the astonishment on his face.

"It seems you've finally woken up a bit," Jiashu nodded in gratification, appearing immensely satisfied by his look of shock. "That's right. He was the gravedigger of the ancient Era of Kings, playing a pivotal role in the arrival of the Dark Millennium. And you... might just be the protagonist of the next millennium."

"I'd rather not be that kind of protagonist." The young Glorifier politely declined.

"Too bad, you don't have a choice. If you ask why, the answer is simple—" Jiashu seemed to thoroughly enjoy the feeling of lecturing, her pretty eyes curving into crescent moons. "You're too weak."

Unfortunately, her voice was so sweet that it sounded more like a joke than a sermon.

Yet Amy did not take it as a joke, because it was the truth—a hurtful truth.

"Of course, just joking." Seeming to notice the youth's seriousness, the girl playfully stuck out her tongue. "Don't take it to heart—weakness and strength are only relative concepts. Even those who reach the pinnacle of this world are never omniscient or omnipotent; they always have their limits, their points of vulnerability. Besides, no one in this world is strong from birth. Being manipulated by fate and used as a pawn by others is a necessary process everyone must undergo."

"Just as a sapling grows into a towering tree, how can it mature without weathering storms and hardships?"

"In this regard, humans are no different."

"Do not pity yourself because of this, nor blame the heavens or others, let alone resort to desperate measures in pursuit of power."

"You must always remember—"

"In this world, power is merely a means, and fate is not always your enemy. What you truly need, and what you ought to do, must be asked of here."

She leaned in and gently poked the youth's chest.

"Most of the time, even we ourselves do not know what is right or wrong before putting it into practice. Therefore, the only thing we can trust from beginning to start is our own heart. We may walk down the wrong path, we may reap evil consequences, and our hands may ultimately be stained with blood and sin, but we must never forget our original intention."

"—This is the absolute truth."

Concluding with this, Jiashu's pretty face bloomed with pride, wearing an expression akin to a little girl waiting for praise, practically shouting, "How's that? Aren't I amazing? Wasn't that well said?"

Amy could not help but chuckle.

*I—am—not—happy!*

Predictably, the black-haired, black-eyed girl puffed out her cheeks.

*—And I refuse to answer any further questions.*

From her stiff expression, the youth gathered as much. He felt a helpless resignation toward this girl who could be as mature as an adult one moment and worse than a child the next. "That was quite well said."

He began to applaud.

"Naturally." Jiashu lifted her chin like a proud peacock.

*She really is a simple and easy-to-understand creature,* Amy thought.

"As for the descent of the Mother of Black Goats, it was entirely within reason." Having answered the first question, the girl dutifully moved on to the second. "The Deepest Night, which breeds numerous demons and monstrosities, is itself a projection of the Dark Chaos. Although its connection to Shub-Niggurath is not deeply profound, it remains a counterfeit that has intercepted a portion of her concept. Coupled with the fact that you invoked the Dawn Power of Lucifer, the sacred power at the apex of the Order side was sufficient to provoke the backlash of the blind and idiot will of the Dark Chaos."

"Sounds like I brought this on myself?" The young Glorifier couldn't help a dry smile. To defeat a demon, he had summoned an even greater, insurmountable demon king; that was essentially how it sounded. The only relief was that the magnificent existence dubbed the Mother of a Thousand Young in *Al Azif* had not truly descended into this world. "Though come to think of it, back then... it must have seen us."

He used a tone of certainty.

"Saw us? Perhaps." In contrast, Jiashu's tone was far less definitive. "People always like to say that when you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes back. But honestly, just as we pay no attention to invisible bacteria and dust in the air, the abyss simply doesn't have the energy to spare for every single person who gazes at it. Do you really think a vast will like the darkness of the Dark Chaos would care about a speck of dust flashing past its eyes?"

"No, it wouldn't." Without giving him a chance to answer, the girl immediately shut down the possibility. "In the eyes of such a colossal existence, the entire Realm of Order is nothing more than a slightly larger speck of dust. If not for Lucifer's Dawn Power, it wouldn't even have cast its gaze here in the first place—as you can see, even the vast and boundless firmament cannot bear a single glance from it."

"That sounds terrifying," the youth remarked with heartfelt emotion.

"This was never an enemy humanity could fight," Jiashu calmly affirmed, a flame seemingly burning within her pitch-black pupils. "Monsters can only be resisted by monsters. The only ones qualified to be enemies of the primordial darkness and primordial chaos—those that transcend the world and the constraints of rules—are naturally the formulators of all rules, the weavers of all destinies, and the creators of all order."

"Then where do we stand?" Amy asked.

"Isn't it right here?" Jiashu pointed downward. At this moment, the great void in the firmament had yet to begin mending; the primordial darkness spewed by the blind and idiot Dark Chaos was still writhing across the sky. The order, jurisprudence, and rules of the world remained in a murky, unformed state, with neither space nor time lingering in the slightest, making it impossible to see the ground beneath their feet. "This is a chessboard, and you, I, and everyone else within the Realm of Order are merely pieces. The only difference is that some pieces know what they are doing, while others remain entirely in the dark."

"Whose pieces?"

Hitting straight at the core of the matter, the young Glorifier awaited the girl's reply. Jiashu's origins were closely tied to the Forebears—she might even be one herself. Across the entire Realm of Order, those capable of answering his questions could be counted on one hand, but she was undoubtedly one of them.

"Who knows?" The black-haired, black-eyed girl wore a bitter smile. "Ah, who knows..."

—Humans are always fickle; how many can still remember their initial steadfastness?

After all, they had reached their limit.

Much like the Ship of Theseus, when everything from the past has been replaced and substituted, how much radiance of once-held convictions can remain today? For how many more centuries can one hold fast to them?

She did not know.

Even a witch who commanded fate could not glimpse the answer from within it.