Chapter 180: The Origin of the Cycles

The silver-haired girl moved like a sleepwalker with no defenses, merely swinging the sword aura wings behind her in an instinctive, casual motion.

In the blink of an eye, countless phantom sword auras—hovering between existence and illusion—swept toward the black tidal wave.

It looked so calm, as if it would be swallowed up in an instant without causing any ripple.

But then.

The moment the wave of demon beasts touched the phantom swords, it silently transformed into wisps of black fog, dissipating back into the wind.

—Just a pile of fragile dream bubbles that burst at the slightest touch.

The next moment, the Abyss King had already risen from his throne, drawing that exaggerated pitch-black giant sword. His lifeless eyes locked onto Airwen.

And Airwen, maintaining that same dazed, sleepwalking trance, simply looked back at the man before her—the one once known as Su Jingyan.

The Abyss King raised his sword and silently swung out that black crescent-moon-shaped sword aura. Endless black fog collapsed toward the blade, condensed, and became part of that strike.

That slash, which seemed capable of erasing all existence from the world, reappeared once more.

But…

Facing this strike, the silver-haired girl merely raised her hand in a carefree motion, lifting her phantom sword.

A flicker of phantom sword aura flashed again.

In an instant, the same crescent moon manifested in the world.

At first, it was a silvery dream-bubble sheen.

But the moment it left the sword tip, black fog—far more exaggerated and surging than her opponent’s—answered from the surrounding world, pouring into it.

Thus, that pure, translucent silver phantom also took on the color of despair and darkness.

The two slashes collided, unleashing a terrifying and massive wave of black fog across heaven and earth.

The Abyss King’s sword aura held for only a moment before crumbling and dispersing.

…............

Tea Room.

“Conditions?”

Phoenix paused for a moment, then shook her head: “The Abyss is synonymous with chaos. It has never had a clear consciousness, only instincts—there’s never been any fixed conditions at all.”

“Either the Abyss King finishes his activation and breaks the Sacred Tree’s domain, causing Amber and me, as Permission-Holders, to go pop and die there with everyone else.”

“Or Kazenari Town stays intact, but the entire world inexplicably restarts, just like last time.”

“The previous 3,332 cycles basically came down to these two scenarios.”

“The time before last—where we defeated the Abyss King and retrieved the largest fragment, the Sacred Tree tried to activate, and the Abyss just flipped the table without a care—that’s the rarest. It’s only happened a single-digit number of times.”

However, just as Phoenix finished speaking, Lin Guang’s gaze instantly froze: “!”

Everyone present rarely saw her make such an expression, and they couldn’t help but freeze.

The cherry-haired girl took a few deep breaths, looked at Su Fang, who was still holding her hand, and asked with slight urgency:

“In your last cycle, you went to challenge the Abyss King, right?”

“You didn’t win?”

Su Fang was taken aback, as if she hadn’t understood why she was asking that.

But Tang Keren, standing nearby, immediately grasped her meaning. She sighed: “Yeah, we didn’t win.”

“After all… last time, you weren’t there. I always felt like something was missing, couldn’t muster the energy, always fell short by one breath… so none of us could achieve Full Bloom.”

“…“

Tang Keren’s eyes swept over the almost perfect pretty face of the slightly confused cherry-haired girl, and her own cheeks suddenly flushed red. She clicked her tongue: “What’s so strange about that? Without emotions, how could a magical girl ever Full Bloom!”

Zihan and Su Fang’s pretty faces also revealed indescribable blushes.

“…”

Tang Keren’s gaze passed through her bangs toward the cherry-haired girl, but she noticed that the other’s eyes weren’t focusing on anyone at all—and they were growing brighter and brighter.

“Besides that, what about the end of the last cycle?”

Lin Guang asked seriously.

“…The end?”

Tang Keren replied somewhat grumpily: “We just got chopped in half by one sword strike.”

“Even though we went through hell and high water, breaking through those demon beasts formed from black fog to reach the Abyss King, the moment he swung his sword—before it even seemed to hit me—my consciousness just vanished.”

As she spoke, Tang Keren gave another light snort: “That Airwen, even if this time she charged to the front lines just like you, I’ll never forgive her. Next time I see her, I’m definitely going to…”

Before she could finish, Tang Keren froze, then asked with a hint of worry: “Mengmengxiang, what’s wrong?”

She saw that across the table, within those sakura-red pupils, the crimson flames were burning fiercely.

Charging to the front lines?

Did that mean… dying the fastest?

Ripples of magic power spread from her body, and the temperature in the tea room seemed to rise by several degrees.

Under the gaze of the girls, Lin Guang’s mind was racing at full speed.

She reconstructed images from her memories, stripped information from the dialogue, then reorganized that information into countless clues waiting to be summoned.

—Actually, in the beginning, before she had successfully transformed, Lin Guang truly believed she was the core of the Trial World’s reset.

Rather, at that time, she had vaguely considered herself the sole player, thinking that the entire world would reset with her life and death.

Later, when she discovered that the world kept changing in different ways, that idea naturally got ruled out.

But strictly speaking, Lin Guang had initially held a view similar to Phoenix’s.

The Abyss was already like this—no matter how it went crazy, it was normal. So you just had to go along with it.

Yet at this very moment.

With everything laid out before her eyes, Lin Guang seemed to finally catch hold of that incredible possibility that no one else had noticed.

She suddenly asked urgently: “Amber, I’m going to assume you’re a complete memory holder, right?”

“That is to say, you can perfectly remember time too?”

Amber was taken aback, then nodded.

“When did the 3,330th cycle end? Starting from when we left the barrier.”

Without any pause, Amber answered fluently: “Counting from departure, 5 days, 3 hours, 21 minutes, and 42 seconds.”

And Lin Guang replied just as smoothly: “I died at 5 days, 3 hours, 20 minutes, and 58 seconds.”

“??”

The girls stared at the two of them like they were looking at monsters.

—Seriously, you remember that too?!

Lin Guang didn’t answer anything.

In fact, the [Precision Operation Engine] allowed her to achieve near-perfect memory, and she could also maintain a subjective internal clock with virtually no error—even more accurate than a normal mechanical clock.

For her, this was very easy, nothing worth mentioning.

She continued: “What about the 3,329th?”

Amber replied seriously: “5 days, 17 hours, 48 minutes, and 12 seconds.”

Lin Guang directly abbreviated and answered with a specific number: “5 days, 17 hours, 47 minutes, and 20 seconds.”

“Go further up.”

Amber: “5 days, 10 hours, 27 minutes, and 3 seconds.”

Lin Guang: “5 days, 10 hours, 26 minutes, and 1 second.”

And so the two began rattling off numbers at lightning speed.

No pauses, like two calculators speaking.

Before long, they both stopped.