Chapter Eighty-Four: The Aftermath of Promotion

The girl’s figure began to lose its shape, her limbs twisting into a grotesque, swollen distortion. She lowered her hands and hid the bulging forearms behind her back.

"That old man. He is some kind of divine being, isn’t he?"

"Yes..."

"You told me that before." She gave a soft laugh. "You said those divine beings are the hardest to deal with. Their rules are impossible to predict."

She tilted her head and began to step backward. "But I also remember you saying that you never do anything unless you are certain of it. Since He has appeared here, I imagine this must have been part of your plan all along."

"From now until the ritual ends, you probably have about three hours. I don’t know what you intend to do, but whatever you want to do, hurry and do it."

Chen Qing’s brow furrowed tightly as he watched the girl retreat step by step, and his heart could not help but tighten. "Why are you helping me?"

She looked at Chen Qing and bared her teeth in a smile that could hardly be called beautiful. "There was a foolish girl. Her will in life was far too strong."

"Are you leaving? Where are you going?"

She shook her head. "I can’t go anywhere."

Looking at Chen Qing, her voice softened a little. "Don’t keep staring at me."

Chen Qing took a breath before asking again, "Why do you have memories? Who exactly are you?"

The girl smiled as she explained, "I am myself. I am her, but I am not entirely her. I came from her, and I inherited some memories that are impossible to forget.

That is all."

"You... then the knowledge you have about advancement also comes from her?"

She shook her head. "No. Those memories are something I was born with.

Just as humans know they must eat to grow, non-relics also know they must raise their rank. That is reasonable."

Chen Qing nodded, understanding dawning in his eyes. "Bearing memories... and gaining recognition, what is the difference?

Why did you tell me that?

And... admitting something is itself a highly subjective judgment. How can that be quantified?

Also..."

He fell silent for a moment before continuing, "If the advancement of non-relics does not depend on carrying memories, then why did I lose this part of the memory as soon as I came in?"

Cen Nianyan listened to him and lightly rubbed between her brows. That expression of hers was strikingly similar to a certain boy’s.

Chen Qing froze for a few seconds, seeing a trace of himself in her.

"I’ll answer you one by one. Carrying memories is certainly possible, but it is by no means the only standard.

Gaining recognition is indeed subjective, but to put it bluntly..."

Before she finished, the words seemed to catch in her throat. "In truth, it is still a rule."

She looked at Chen Qing and pointed at his mouth before continuing, "Rules are always objective. As for the deeper reason... I’ll tell you when we have a chance to meet again.

As for the memory you lost... that really has nothing to do with me. You need to see what that offspring did to you.

It must have tampered with something.

It hoped this advancement ritual would fail. It hoped you would leave unharmed.

It hoped you would lose part of the tools required for the advancement ritual.

But what it clearly did not expect was..."

The girl tilted her head and stuck out her tongue. "It didn’t expect that I’m on your side."

"Is that... really all right?"

Listening to the girl, Chen Qing’s expression grew almost shameful. He clenched his teeth, shook his head, and said, "After all... this is because of me..."

"But I am not her!" Cen Nianyan cut him off. "I am not her! The memories she left me were not the hatred of her final moments.

Believe it or not, it is her memories that are preventing me from making things difficult for you.

It is she who is making me stand on your side.

I can only say... even in the end, the largest and most stubborn thought in her memories was still you."

He drew in a deep breath and shook his head slightly. "Was the time I can move within this space set by you?"

"Not exactly." She touched her lips, as though calculating something. "This time you probably have about six hours. Right now, more than half the time should have already passed.

That’s why I told you to hurry."

"Three hours?!" He stared in surprise, then turned to look at the clock on the side. The passing time there seemed to match the count she had given.

"All right... in that case... I have no more questions."

At his words, Cen Nianyan nodded. The smile on her face seemed to deepen a little as she step by step retreated, and the wall behind Chen Qing began to contract and transform as well.

He turned around. The desk that had once leaned against the wall was now gone.

In its place stood a pitch-black corridor leading to another room.

"Go. You have one hour to be alone with Him."

Just as Chen Qing was about to step into the corridor, Cen Nianyan’s voice drifted from behind him.

It sounded far away, yet somehow reached him perfectly.

He was visibly stunned for a moment, and his expression grew more grave.

Frowning, he felt that something was not right.

He walked forward until he reached the corner where light spilled in, and there, in the center of the room, he saw the old man.

The man was hunched over, his eyes fixed on the corridor like a serpent’s. He chuckled softly in his throat, though there was not the slightest trace of warmth or kindness in that laugh.

"You came?" he said eagerly, looking at Chen Qing. "You want to kill me? You want to kill me! You think you can kill me?! Ah!"

Chen Qing’s face tightened, his brow creasing deeply.

He listened to the mockery in his ears, but it only made the unease in his heart worse.

The two were separated by only a few meters, yet curiosity began to rise within him.

"You seem very anxious. Anxious to die?" he asked the old man, suddenly smiling.

"What?"

"I said, are you in such a hurry to die?" Chen Qing crouched down, as though something had finally become clear to him.

In response, concern flickered across the old man’s face.

"What nonsense are you talking about... what do you mean I’m in a hurry to..."

"Enough. Let’s catch up." He waved a hand, cutting off the old man’s rambling. "You had your eye on me in the earthen fortress, didn’t you?"

It fell silent for a moment before nodding. "Yes."

"When Jiang Wan threw you into the yellow sands, you didn’t die?"

"I died. But I can be reborn in the main world." The expression on its face seemed a little anxious. It tried to speak first, yet realized it could ask nothing of him.

"So you stayed on me all this time?"

"Yes... but also no."

He suddenly laughed. "Do you know why you came in here?"

"To stop you."

"Stop me from what?"

"From advancing."

He could not help but sigh. "What a good little thing, always answering every question."

Its expression turned faintly angry, but just as its hand reached out, it withdrew again.

"But that’s wrong."

This time, before it could answer, Chen Qing continued on his own.

"In truth, your appearance here was not even what you desired, was it?"

He looked at the old man before him and suddenly grinned. "I don’t know what the advancement ritual will bring, and I don’t know what it will cause. Even I don’t know why you came here to stop me.

Because the non-relic after advancement will become an obstacle to you?"

He shook his head. Listening to Chen Qing, the old man’s face had already become terribly ugly.

"Impossible. It’s only an E-rank advancement ritual. She has no way to stop you at all. So if it isn’t the result, then it can only be the act itself."

He looked at the old man and continued calmly, "She once said that this is a world where lies are built from truth.

So I think most of what Cen Nianyan said is true. For example, you want my ritual to fail.

If the ritual fails, then the tools used for advancement disappearing is only natural. Yet you told her separately that you hoped for some specific thing to disappear. May I take that to mean that this thing threatened you, and that you do not want me to realize it?

The advancement of the ritual will be the complete erasure of its past existence. You are afraid... of the secret hidden within my ritual."

As soon as he finished speaking, Cen Nianyan’s voice came from behind him.

"Why don’t you go in and kill Him? This is your only chance to kill a divine being.

His true body is very weak."

"Still thinking about killing me, are you." Chen Qing did not turn around, but his tone had turned almost playful.

"But this is your only chance to kill Him."

Of course, Chen Qing knew she was not lying.

He merely turned back and gave her a faint smile.

"So that’s it. I can’t hide anything from you." Seeing the smile on Chen Qing’s face, Cen Nianyan looked a little dejected, though a trace of relief also appeared in her expression.

"You said that once the advancement is over, I can enter the room where He exists. That is not a lie. Once the advancement is over, the rules will no longer bind us. But what if it has not ended?"

Chen Qing reached out. For some reason, his hand moved as if guided by fate and rested on her shoulder. "You still want to kill me."

"You told me that I would have one hour to be alone with Him, but which hour exactly? You never said."

He paused, watching as flakes of skin began to peel away from the girl’s face, falling off in paper-thin strips.

"You said the ending of the advancement depends mainly on your recognition. But what if there is a non-relic that refuses to recognize it? That makes no sense.

Unless there is another condition: when the rules are satisfied, that itself means your will has granted permission.

So what you said was still the truth. You simply chose to tell only part of it.

You told me that you were on my side, and that is true enough. But no one ever said that people on the same side cannot stab each other in the back."

He smiled as he withdrew his hand. The girl was smiling too. She tilted her head and pulled open the collar of her pale blue dress.

Beneath the fabric, her skin was covered with vivid crimson cracks.

"As expected of you..." she murmured. "And what about Him? Aren’t you worried anymore?"

Chen Qing shook his head. "No need. Why worry about a dead man? Since waiting is enough, then there’s no need to do anything unnecessary."

"So that is your way..." she laughed softly, as though she wanted to say more. But when she opened her mouth, no words came out. She could only listen as Chen Qing went on.

"Though I still don’t know what the secret I used in the ritual actually is, and I don’t know why that secret could determine His life or death, if the ritual can kill Him, then so be it."

"Mm."

As she listened to Chen Qing, countless crimson threads spread over her body from beneath the blue dress, rising upward from bottom to top. Blood began to drip from her fingertips, and those living lines stained her clothes as they crawled across her body.

She looked at Chen Qing, her eyes too exhausted to open fully, her voice already drifting into a murmur.

"You... are almost done?" Seeing the girl before him slowly rise into the air, he heard hurried footsteps behind him. He barely turned his head in time to see the second finger of her left hand extend forward by several meters, piercing straight through the old man’s brow.

Listening to Chen Qing’s question, the smile on her face only deepened.

"Mm."

He turned back and saw the faint smile on the girl’s face.

"Next time, I won’t let you get through so easily."

As he listened to the girl’s soft words by his ear, everything before his eyes vanished.