Against the Gods (Web Novel)

Chapter 1927 – Genesis

“…” Yun Che didn’t reply. He couldn’t.

“You still have one chance. I can wipe away all these painful memories for you,” she continued slowly. “You can choose to forget it all, or to retain just your hatred and indifference toward her.”

“That is what Xia Qingyue wants as well.”

“…” The only answer she got was the tormented twitching of his body, and the sound of his endless tears dripping against his clothes and the ground.

It hurts…

My heart… my soul… my beliefs… it feels like something is cutting them all into tiny pieces…

The pain will not end…

High above the sky, four women were watching him silently with sorrowful, heavy or complicated expressions on their faces. [1]

He was curled up like a prawn, and every part of his body was convulsing in pain. But for whatever reason, he couldn’t even squeeze out a howl to relieve even a little of the pain.

They never imagined that they would see him like this after he became the great emperor of the universe.

Yun Che had been sitting here for over two weeks already, but there wasn’t a single moment where he wasn’t twitching in pain.

They didn’t know what Yun Che was going through. They could only watch him in silence and accompany him this way.

“Xia Qingyue…” Chi Wuyao let out a small sigh before looking at the sky. “Her plans were pretty much perfect. What really exposed it all wasn’t flaws in her plan or a twist of fate, but the deep-seated obsession Yun Che had pretended didn’t exist until he finally found something that could validate it all… He never forgot about Xia Qingyue. He had always hoped that it was all fake. When the opportunity finally came by, he did everything in his power to prove it was true…”

“He pretended to not care about what I told him back then, but the truth… was the complete opposite.”

Shui Meiyin was pressing her face against Mu Xuanyin’s shoulder and sobbing uncontrollably. Yun Che’s painful appearance had hurt her just as much.

The secret could no longer be kept, so she could only confess everything to them.

Qianye Ying’er abruptly moved toward Yun Che. She had been silent and unmoving this whole time, but it looked like she couldn’t keep herself still any longer. A hand immediately caught her wrist, however.

“Do not disturb him.” Mu Xuanyin’s low, cold voice rang behind her ears.

“…” Qianye Ying’er closed her eyes and pushed down her rising aura little by little.

Turning away so she couldn’t see Yun Che’s tortured appearance any longer, she murmured seemingly to herself, “Why am I the one who lived?”

Chi Wuyao glanced at Qianye Ying’er before taking her hand into her own. It felt cold enough to chill her heart.

“The fact that you are thinking this way proves that you are no longer that sinful Brahma Monarch Goddess you were… the past cannot be changed, but the future can.”

Qianye Ying’er: “…”

Chi Wuyao continued while brushing her fingers gently against Qianye Ying’er’s palm. “It may take an unimaginable amount of time and atonement, but as long as you keep living, you will find a way to forgive yourself one day.”

“You were the one who supported him during the darkest moments of his life. Now and in the future, he cannot live without you either… Of this I am certain, and you should believe it as well.”

Qianye Ying’er lightly shook Chi Wuyao’s hand away, and she didn’t turn back around to face her. She said in a slightly hoarse voice, “Who do you think I am… I am not as fragile as you think.”

“I have committed enough sins that even ten thousand deaths wouldn’t be enough to atone for them. You think I will brood just because of one person? Don’t… make me… laugh!”

Chi Wuyao smiled a little at Qianye Ying’er’s reaction before turning her gaze back to her man. Then, she let out a long sigh inside her mind.

Does it hurt? Good.

It is what you deserve…

Everything she did for you, everything she sacrificed to save you…

It may hurt like ten thousand swords skewering your soul, but that is still preferable to never knowing the truth, isn’t it?

…………

Yun Che didn’t know how much time had passed while he was experiencing the Recollection of Nothingness.

It had been a long, real and cruel dream.

He didn’t know how long he had suffered in the whirlpool of pain either. When his mind finally regained a bit of clarity though, he said in a trembling but impossibly determined voice:

“No…”

The voice had asked him if he wished to remove his memories of Xia Qingyue. This was his answer.

“I thought you might say that.” The woman’s voice had been unfeeling this whole time, but now it was tinged with what felt like a small sigh.

Yun Che adjusted his breathing and slowly opened his eyes.

His eyeballs were covered in broken blood vessels. It almost looked like his eyes were drenched in blood.

A bit more clarity entered his mind, and he continued in a horribly raspy voice, “You said you will tell me everything.”

“Her interfered with fate… the reason she chose to end her own life… Tell me… tell me!!”

“As you wish.”

The woman assented. She didn’t try to evade the question or delay the inevitable.

The bright light bearing down on him disappeared once more, and his consciousness reentered the infinite grayish world.

When the woman spoke up again, it felt like her voice was growing increasingly distant and transient:

“A long time ago, the Primal Chaos was just a body of chaos. It took a long time before it gradually split into two different extremes, namely Yin and Yang.”

Yun Che: “??”

“Another immeasurable amount of time passed, and the first ever living being was born at the center of the two bodies.”

“It was the genesis of life in the Primal Chaos. All life that came after her knows her as—the Ancestral God.”

“Wait!” Yun Che chose this moment to interrupt the voice. “I want to know what happened to Qingyue, not the genesis of the Primal Chaos!”

“And yet we must speak of it if I am to explain her existence and fate properly.”

“…” The reply stunned Yun Che and threw his barely organized thoughts into disarray once more.

Qingyue’s fate is…

Tied to the genesis of the Primal Chaos!?

He had heard every word as clear as day, but they made zero sense whatsoever when strung together into a sentence.

So he gathered his focus and silently waited for the voice to speak some more.

“As time passed, she who was later known as the Ancestral God grew more and more self-aware and intelligent. She was the one who created language, profound energies, profound arts and more… however, the more complete her consciousness became, the more she became filled with infinite loneliness.”

“She was nurtured from the Primal Chaos. Both her power and her life were tied to the two extreme bodies of the Primal Chaos. As long as she continued to exist, the lifeforce of Primal Chaos would all be concentrated on her person, and it would never be able to give birth to a second life.”

“Finally, the Ancestral God decided to eliminate her own existence and transform the Primal Chaos from a universe of one life, into a universe of infinite lives. Therefore, she changed its structure and created functioning laws.”

“When everything was ready, she eliminated herself and scattered her lifeforce and power across all of the Primal Chaos… before she was eliminated completely, she engraved part of her memories and power into eight special life fragments.”

“And so the Primal Chaos welcomed a whole new era, and countless lives were born all over the universe. The first of them had come from the eight life fragments themselves. Four life fragments landed at the north of the Primal Chaos and birthed the four Devil Emperors, and the other four landed at the south of the Primal Chaos and birthed the four Creation Gods. That was how the Gods and Devils first came to be.”

“It marked the beginning of the Era of the Gods.”

These so-called ancient secrets weren’t very secretive, to be honest. The God Realm had detailed records of them, and Yun Che had heard them from the Golden Crow’s Soul when he was still in the lower realms.

However, the voice’s next words turned everything on its head.

“Although the Ancestral God’s life and power were gone, her consciousness hasn’t faded with them. In fact, it was perfectly spread throughout the entire universe.”

Yun Che: “!!?”

“It was because she wanted to witness the fruits of her labor with her own senses. She wanted to know what kind of world the place she had bestowed her life, her power and her laws upon, would ultimately become.”

“More time passed… a hundred years, a thousand years, ten thousand years, a hundred million years…”

“Some races thrived in their environment and became stronger. Some did not and were wiped out. Some planets were created and turned into star regions, and some were destroyed for one reason or another…”

“Guided by the laws she created, the universe itself spawned or refined many more laws and rules to better maintain and balance itself.”

“Above the mortal realm, the higher lives who ruled over the two extreme bodies of Yin and Yang gradually came to reject one another. One of them was the god race, and the other was the devil race.”

“The Ancestral God was spread throughout the universe. She had witnessed every progress that was made during the Era of the Gods; every minor and major change that happened during this time.”

“Before she knew it, an impossibly long time had passed since she had created this world. Even so, she didn’t eliminate her own consciousness because she had become attached to the world she created.”

“She wanted to continue watching and enjoying the myriad expressions of life. She wanted to bear witness to all of the unpredictable changes of time.”

“One day, the fuse that would end the Era of Gods was ignited.”

“Upon discovering the taboo union between the Creation God of Elements Ni Xuan and the Heaven Smiting Devil Emperor Jie Yuan, the Heaven Punishing Divine Emperor Mo E decided to exile the Heaven Smiting Devil Emperor from the Primal Chaos with the Heaven Punishing Ancestral Sword… as a result, the relation between the god race and the devil race became utterly irreconcilable.”

“Mo E passed away much earlier than his expected lifespan due to excessive usage of the Heaven Punishing Ancestral Sword. Not long after he passed away, the seeds of hatred that were buried since time immemorial finally bloomed in full force.”

“Unlike all of the major or minor conflicts of the past, this war was an uncontrollable conflagration like nothing the Primal Chaos had ever seen…”

“Godly powers erupted all across the Primal Chaos. Countless innocents were killed, and countless spaces were destroyed. More importantly, the aura and laws of the Primal Chaos were twisted or destroyed little by little.”

“To the Ancestral God, this great war was nothing more than an interesting experience. Whatever happened to this era—change, destruction, rebirth—it was all just the consequences of the choices made by the lives who lived it… Not only did she not lament the end, she even looked forward to the new era that would be born from this great war.”

“However, at a certain point of time during the end of the war, she suddenly noticed an unnatural disturbance.”

“The energy of the primordial universe, the spirit energy of the divine way, and the devilish aura of the dark… amidst this turbulent space, they were all flooding in a certain direction.”

“The Abyss.”

“It was only then she noticed that flaws and cracks had appeared on the laws she had bestowed upon the Abyss.”

“The… abyss?” Yun Che whispered unconsciously.

“The basis of existence is balance,” the woman’s voice explained. “Where there is existence, there is extinction.”

“The Primal Chaos you know is but one half of the original Primal Chaos.”

“The half you exist in is called the World of Existence. The other half you know not is called the World of Extinction.

“The Ancestral God named it—the Abyss.”

1. (T/N: THERE ARE FOUR VOYEURS NOW AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA) ☜