Chapter 827: Holding One's Own Fate (1)

Even after seeing the spider threads woven from fate, Black Robe and the Traitors still couldn't believe Chen Mo was Destiny's puppet. Time flowed differently in the Deep Dream Layer compared to reality, and they had spent far more time with him than I had.

Subjectively, they couldn't stomach the fact that Chen Mo was Destiny's puppet; objectively, they refused to admit it. After all, no one would willingly accept that a plan they had spent years preparing had died before it even began.

"Splitting the sky is a foregone conclusion! Nothing you say can stop it—not unless I die!" Black Robe said with absolute finality. He had staked everything on this, his eyes bloodshot.

"Chen Mo is just a rookie Streamer like you. Killing him won't change anything." The Man in the Colorful Robe stepped forward to back Black Robe. "The Butcher is heavily injured and has practically lost his ability to fight. Are you sure you want to make enemies of all three of us at once?"

"Even now, you still think I'm just a rookie Streamer?" I stroked the edge of the Good and Evil Asura Mask and walked up to the Butcher. "It's time you gave me back what's mine."

The Butcher initially intended to play dumb, but after assessing the current situation, he coldly pulled out a Mirror Fragment and handed it to me.

The Reincarnation Mirror was now just one fragment away from completion. My gaze swept past Black Robe and the Butcher to the outermost edge of the group, locking onto that queen-like figure.

The corresponding memory fragments surfaced in my mind, and my aura slowly shifted. Adopting the exact tone from those memories, I spoke to Xiao A with slow, unquestionable authority. "I have returned."

Hearing that familiar voice, Xiao A—usually as cold as an iceberg—trembled slightly. She lowered her head and handed the final Reincarnation Mirror Fragment over to me.

"A! What are you doing?!" The Man in the Colorful Robe's expression turned incredibly ugly, as if a certain legend had just sprung to mind. "Impossible! That person already died in reincarnation!"

As the broken mirror shards fused together in my hands, I looked back at Black Robe and the Man in the Colorful Robe. "It's three against two now. Are you still confident you can fight back?"

Black Robe fell silent, gazing at me with a complicated expression.

He wasn't a bad person. On the contrary, he possessed strong convictions and was one of the key forces standing against Destiny. This was exactly why I hadn't made a move, choosing instead to quietly wait for him to make his decision. We shouldn't be enemies; we should be allies supporting each other.

Everyone fought Destiny in their own way, but a single person's strength was ultimately limited. Having gone through 2.6 billion cycles of reincarnation, I wanted to make a change in this life.

Before Black Robe could give me an answer, Chen Mo's corpse in the center of the block suddenly mutated. When no one was paying attention, his massive body instantly dissolved into countless spiders the size of rice grains, scurrying away in every direction. Every single spider carried a trace of Destiny's aura!

Chen Mo's actions were essentially him laying his cards on the table. He really was Destiny's puppet. It seemed he had been pushed to the absolute brink, forcing him to use this final gambit.

I noticed that most of the spiders were immediately infected by the aura of reincarnation. They didn't make it far before crumbling into ash, but a small portion luckily managed to dodge the spreading power of reincarnation and were fleeing at top speed.

"Those are the seeds Destiny scattered across the Deep Dream Layer. We can't let them escape!" I yelled, whipping my head back to Black Robe. "I drove your Dream Dao Talisman into Chen Mo's sea of consciousness. If his will hasn't completely dissipated, you can use the Compass to track him down, find his source, and thoroughly kill this slave of Destiny."

As the spiders were exterminated one by one, an unprecedented sense of oppression descended from the sky above the Deep Dream Layer. It felt as though the heavens themselves had grown furious.

Faint rumbles of thunder echoed from the rift in the pitch-black sky. Activating my Judging Eye, I peered into that other world. "I already killed the sleeper agent Destiny planted. Is it flying into a rage and preparing to force its descent?"

In my previous life, Black Robe and the Traitors had paid a staggering price to link reality with the Deep Dream Layer. In this life, however, the situation was completely reversed.

Destiny had been scheming over the Deep Dream Layer for a long time. It absolutely would not sit idly by and watch me ruin its grand design, which was why it seemed to be actively linking reality and the dreamscape on its own initiative.

The sky was shaking!

Black Robe and the Man in the Colorful Robe also sensed that something was wrong. Everyone looked up at the sky.

A voice seemed to roar from within the pitch-black rift. Receiving its command, countless grayish-white spider threads abruptly shot out from every corner of the Deep Dream Layer.

"It's trying to drag that city into the dreamscape!"

I shouted. Looking back, I realized that Black Robe and the Man in the Colorful Robe had gone deathly pale. As they stared at the countless spider threads erupting from every corner of the dreamscape, they felt a bone-deep chill. "So Destiny began laying out its schemes in the Deep Dream Layer long ago."

"It doesn't matter," I said. "Everything has two sides. Destiny's actions just now have exposed all of its hidden plots within the Deep Dream Layer. As long as we stop Destiny from succeeding this time, we can drive it out of the Deep Dream Layer in one fell swoop and use this place as a stronghold for our rebellion." As I spoke, a new transformation occurred within the rift in the sky. Spider threads woven from fate plunged deep into the hole, dragging a massive city down amid deafening tremors.

The city became perfectly wedged within the rift, preventing it from healing.

With the will of the people no longer there to block it this time, red clouds churned violently in the sky of reality, and a deluge of Karmic Fire poured down!

The halos of light shattered. The night sky of the Deep Dream Layer was being incinerated, and endless Karmic Fire traveled down the spider threads to scorch the earth of the Deep Dream Layer. This place was about to be reduced to a sea of fire.

I hadn't expected things to escalate to this point, much less that Destiny had already infiltrated the Deep Dream Layer to such a terrifying degree. Every single spider thread that shot out must have gone through countless layers of camouflage.

"Chen Mo was probably just one of Destiny's many chess pieces. This Deep Dream Layer is far more complex than I imagined." I had changed the process, but the outcome seemed to remain the same.

I rested my fingers on the edge of the Reincarnation Mirror. If I entered reincarnation again, lacking the energy of the giant beast from the Animal Realm meant it would drain my own energy and life instead. If that happened, let alone choosing what point in time I returned to, there was no guarantee I would even retain my memories.

'I can't take that risk.'

I had just made my decision and was about to speak when I suddenly noticed Black Robe staring intently at me. He took out his Compass and placed it on the ground, his tone terrifyingly calm. "You already saw this scene play out a long time ago, didn't you?"

I didn't understand what he meant, but I nodded anyway.

"I knew it." A sliver of relief actually leaked into Black Robe's voice. Driven by an emotion I couldn't comprehend at the moment, he said, "There are some things that you must do, even if you know they will end in failure. You were the one who gave those words to me back then. Now, I'm returning them to you."

After saying that, he walked alone toward the tallest building. He stabbed the Severed Flood Dragon Bone into the ground and activated the altar.

The only difference from last time was that he didn't use the Butcher as a sacrifice for the array. Instead, he drew a blade and plunged it straight into his own heart.