Chapter 202: One Page

Sometimes, the person who understood you best wasn’t necessarily yourself, your partner, or even your enemy. It could very well be your craftsman. They knew your ability, matrix, blessings, preferences, style, habits, and even your weaknesses.

For Chosen Ones, all of these should be secrets so confidential that they had to never be spoken aloud, not even in one’s sleep. But to a craftsman, they were all laid bare.

It was like a middle-aged man sitting in front of an old doctor’s desk, finally mustering the courage to extend his hand and let the doctor take his pulse. The moment the doctor’s lips curved slightly and he looked up at the old man, the patient understood what that meant.

One shouldn’t make the doctor spell out the embarrassing part. Just take whatever the doctor prescribed, like a good patient. What else was one supposed to do? Hold up some search results from an app and argue with him? Here, a red fake clown nose on the ground. Guess who dropped it?

Tong Hua’s demonized account and Wen Wen’s earlier explanations had only given Ji Jue a rough impression of Tong Shan, a few simple labels to help him understand the man.

Ji Jue had only truly understood Tong Shan as a person when he took that flag from his hands. He didn’t even need to ask. Running Deus Ex Machina once was enough for him to grasp every detail of Tong Shan’s abilities in depth, including the Burning Star Manifestation that was now fading from the sky.

No way. Seriously? Those two idiots cannot possibly think the Burning Star Manifestation needs the flag as a medium to be unleashed, right? Hilarious.

During maintenance, Ji Jue had inspected that flag from top to bottom and inside out. There were only two blessings in it, one Ascension and one Aether, and both were support-type. Neither had anything to do with the Burning Star Manifestation at all.

It was like a walking stick for climbing a mountain, or a tripod for taking pictures. It was just something that made things easier and saved effort. Having it made the technique more convenient to use, but without it there wasn’t actually much difference.

After witnessing everything with his own eyes, Ji Jue almost couldn’t hold back his laughter. Who said the Origin Path was rigid and inflexible? Who said Mr. No-Fun didn’t know how to lie? This trap had been set for Yan Chong and Ling Zhi from the very beginning.

No, knowing Tong Shan’s habits, this trap had probably been there for years. Who knew how many people had already charged right into it?

And now, thanks to the “perfect opening” Yan Chong had created at the cost of his own life, Ling Zhi, a Chosen One of the Origin’s natural counter and the greatest hidden threat lurking nearby, had delivered himself right to Tong Shan.

High above, Tong Shan’s cold, solemn expression, unchanged since the beginning, finally shifted slightly. The corners of his mouth curved into a mocking smile. He looked so pleased as he finally revealed the Rebirth form he had kept hidden since the start of the battle.

The Raw Stone Stage comprised twelve levels that[1] were divided into four realms: Resonance, Metamorphosis, Rebirth, and Transcendence.

At the Resonance Realm, one obtained blessings and elevated the essence of one’s ability. At the Metamorphosis Realm, one chose a direction and determined one’s future path. At the Rebirth Realm, one shed the mortal body and was no longer an ordinary human. And at the Transcendence Realm, one established a domain and received the divine essence of Supreme Benevolence. From there, they continued onward until they crossed the boundary of Celestial Being and became part of the brilliance of this world.

As the shackles around Tong Shan’s telekinesis loosened layer by layer, his transcendent form, which surpassed mortals and advanced toward godhood, unfolded. There were no thousand hands or ten thousand eyes, nor any terrifying transformations. In the blink of an eye, Tong Shan’s skin lost all color and turned into a flawless, untainted pure white, as pale as paper.

His blood also changed from its usual scarlet. Under the transformation of his matrix and blessings, its color rapidly deepened until it became pure black.

An invisible brush dipped itself into that pitch-black blood and wrote furiously across the snow-white paper. A myriad of tiny characters linked together, wrapping in layers around his skin like chains in interwoven patterns. They laid the beginning of a grand chapter, wrote the order of Origin, and built toward a future that was distant, uncertain, and almost unreal. It was a longing, or perhaps a mad fantasy, for a generation without disasters!

Haizhou had always been plagued by disasters, and Cliff City had never known peace.

Ever since Tong Shan was old enough to understand the world, he had enjoyed wealth and luxury far beyond what ordinary people could imagine. He had experienced an opulent lifestyle, fine clothes, and exquisite food. Standing atop the mountain known as his family, he looked out over a turbulent and desolate world, read through the painful history of the past, and more than once, through the Aether records left by his elders, personally experienced the many disasters raging across the land.

Unfortunately, he had never felt any longing for the Aether Path. The beast of doom uprising in North Province one hundred and forty years ago, the Yunzhou Disaster one hundred and ten years ago, the flood tide and bloody rain that swept across more than half the Federation a century ago, the fall of Spring City decades ago, the barren sandstorm forty-one years ago...

And then, ten years ago, when he was sixteen, he’d personally witnessed the madness of the Tidefire Calamity. It burned across ten thousand li, reducing the fertile plains to ashes. Famine lasted for three years, and even now, the food supply had yet to recover.

The fire flooded all the way into the sea, causing it to boil for five days. The plague and poison it left behind had still not been fully cleared away. Countless people had died afterward, either from hunger and thirst or from losing everything they had.

Why had it come to this? And why did it have to go this far?

At that moment, Tong Shan had understood one thing with absolute clarity: Aether couldn’t change any of this.

Human disasters were endless and almost impossible to stop. The Heart Core Path and Ascension Path were too limited in scope, while the Ruins Path was far too removed from reality. At best, they could only solve a crisis in one place for a short while, but if one wished to reduce or even eliminate natural disasters in a more realistic way, then one had to seek answers from Origin.

For that, he didn’t hesitate to turn his back on his mission and the legacy of his family. There were enough uncles, aunts, and younger siblings to carry on the Tong family legacy. Why did they need him?

No matter how outsiders praised him for understanding the bigger picture, knowing his place, and caring deeply for Cliff City, he knew perfectly well that he was the selfish one, the one who had chosen so-called ideals over everything else. Greedily relying on the help of his family, he climbed the ranks, distorting and altering the Heaven’s Ear family legacy to strengthen himself.

In the end, under his grandfather’s guidance, he’d transformed himself into a node where Aether and Origin intersected. The moment he was reborn under the infusion of essence from Supreme Benevolence, what he achieved was this Disaster Prevention Book with his own body as its vessel, barely written past the opening lines.

Perhaps one day it would be completed. Perhaps it would transform his domain, cause a qualitative change in his time wedge, and even lay the foundation for a source. But compared to its true, completed form, its current state couldn’t even be called a draft. Still, to deal with two clowns, it was more than enough!

The instant the title page of the Disaster Prevention Book fully emerged across his skin, its pages flipped, and countless records raced past in a blur. Starting from the Burning Star page, they traced backward, past Falling Star and Desolate Night, before stopping on the third page of the Celestial Phenomena chapter.

Then, Tong Shan invoked the Annihilation Calamity!

After the Burning Star Manifestation dispersed, a crack quietly opened in the empty night sky. Then came a second, a third, and a fourth until the sky was covered in them. The thin paper had been torn apart, revealing the abyssal darkness of the universe beyond.

“Everyone, hold your ground!”

Ji Xue widened her eyes. She rushed forward at full speed, slowing down everyone’s perception of time to the limit without regard for the consequences. Racing through the slowed flow of time like a lightning bolt, she gathered everyone in a flash, yanked out the safety rope, and lashed them tightly.

Jiang Xuan slammed both hands onto the ground. Walls of iron surged upward, sealing everyone inside as dense steel roots spread beneath the earth, branching and growing.

Only then did they feel the delayed sensation of weightlessness.

Infinite mass converged into a single point, giving birth to the very catastrophe that had once descended upon the mortal world two hundred and ten years ago, during the upheaval of the Eternal Gate. It was no more than a black dot the size of a thumb, yet the moment Ling Zhi, who had just appeared from the shadows, saw it, he went deathly pale and let out a terrified scream.

Unfortunately, it was too late. He was too close, close enough to take Tong Shan’s life. And in doing so, he had also delivered himself straight into the black hole’s deadly gravitational pull.

“Goodbye.”

Ling Zhi saw Tong Shan’s lips move, but he couldn’t hear a single sound. Then the world seemed to twist and spiral amid furious screams that could no longer escape his throat. He wanted to grab Tong Shan, but the man seemed like a phantom, impossible to grasp.

No sound escaped the gravitational collapse, and even the sight of its destruction was distorted. Even if Ling Zhi used Shadow Transformation to shuttle away, he couldn’t escape this vortex of despair.

What truly sealed his fate was the hand that came from behind him. Although no one could hear his last words, he roared with fury, “Yan Chong!!!”

The moment Yan Chong sensed something was wrong, despite his severe injuries, he snapped off the broken sword to weaken the pull. He shoved Ling Zhi into the fatal vortex while pushing himself backward to escape its gravitational reach, even at the cost of losing half of his body in the process.

By sacrificing his teammate, he bought himself a single chance at survival. Once he broke free, he turned into a streak of red light and sped away without looking back, vanishing from sight. Even the tremendous shockwave unleashed when the vortex finally collapsed couldn’t catch up to him.

Like that, he booked it!

Two Rebirth Realm experts had fallen in no time. One had been annihilated without leaving so much as a corpse, while the other escaped with grievous injuries. The battle was over.

As countless chunks of ruined buildings and debris, swept high into the sky, now rained back down upon the earth, Ji Jue finally stepped out from behind the slowly opening iron walls and took in the devastation before him.

A few scattered figures fled in every direction through the storm. After avoiding the deadly gravitational vortex in the sky and luckily surviving the aftermath, the remaining two or three members of the Heretic Cult wasted no time following their superior’s example and ran for their lives.

Lou Feng snapped back to his senses and tried to chase after them. “No, we can’t let them get away! My aunt, my aunt is still...”

Without a second thought, Ji Jue swept Lou Feng’s legs, pinning him to the ground. Since Lou Feng still tried to struggle, Ji Jue immediately slapped him twice across the face to knock some sense into him. “Calm down. Your aunt is still alive! If you want her back, shut up and stop causing trouble!”

He wasn’t making empty promises. He had seen with his own eyes that the crystallized spirit matter she had created still remained, as though it would never dissipate.

According to Professor Ye, those who reached the Rebirth Realm through Spirit Morph usually underwent only minimal physical changes. Their evolution focused primarily on the soul and the mind. The clearest sign of that path was that even after the user lost control, the spirit matter they had shaped retained both its form and properties, as though it had been created from nothing, and would continue to exist until its creator died.

At this critical moment, the most important thing was no longer taking prisoners alive. After all, if they wanted to capture someone alive, no one was better positioned to do it than Tong Shan, who was looking down from above. Since Tong Shan had not acted, they shouldn’t create unnecessary complications.

“There’s no time. Get over here and help!”

Ji Jue hurried through the ruins, searching for anything that had survived. He gathered whatever supplies they had unloaded from the truck earlier, like food, medicine, and drinking water. Fortunately, thanks to the sturdy crates and secure packaging, quite a bit had survived despite everything. Even many of the damaged packages could still be used after a quick wipe. Once hunger set in, no one would care about a little dirt, anyway.

There was no time to be picky now. Seventeen or eighteen mercury tentacles split off from Ji Jue’s back, sweeping across the ruins in search of every usable supply within sight, then tossing them to the stunned Lou Feng and his other teammates.

After Tong Shan nodded, the rest joined in without a word. In less than two minutes, they had crammed the truck bed with a chaotic mountain of salvaged supplies.

After everyone had climbed aboard, Ji Jue pulled out a large bundle from Horsey's cargo compartment. Carrying it with him, he circled the ruins, scattering its contents over a wide area before getting back into the truck.

The vehicle sped away. After they had put some distance between themselves and the ruins, Ji Jue finally pressed the remote detonator. A muffled rumble echoed from the darkness behind them. He had set off the explosives!

1. Here the RAW writes "raw stone", however I believe it refers to Raw Stone Stage mentioned in C492. In C492, it's explained that 原石阶段 (Raw Stone Stage) is the collective name for the entire four-realm, twelve-rank progression of the Chosen Ones. I don't want to spoil too much for now, so I'll leave it at that. ☜