Chapter 1835: Zi Qing’s Path (2)Editor: Atlas Studios

His mother’s voice also echoed in his ears.

"Qing’er, you’re a little man now. You mustn’t cry every time your brother leaves. Come... let Mother hold you."

"Look over there—the ceremony is about to begin."

As these words reached Zi Qing’s ears, his gaze traveled past his mother’s gentle profile, over his father’s broad shoulders, and beyond his younger brother’s tearful, expectant eyes, finally settling upon the altar—and beyond it, upon the frozen, incomplete face hanging eternally in the nine heavens.

"The time has come," Zi Qing murmured softly.

Clutching the candied hawthorn skewer, he stepped forward like the most silent of observers, moving toward his family in this life—toward the altar he himself had chosen.

Upon the altar, a priest draped in crimson robes suddenly flung his arms wide. With a voice that pierced bone and marrow, cold and shrill as a harbinger of doom, he shattered the clamor of the marketplace:

"In the year Tianqi 135, in Nanhuang, as the moon lingers near the ghostly lodgings at nightfall..."

"We ants, groveling in the land of twin capitals, dare offer this foul sacrifice to the fragmented-face god!"

As the priest’s voice rang out, Zi Qing walked forward calmly, lifting his gaze with equal composure.

His eyes pierced through the fluttering crimson robes, through the terror of the hundred prisoners awaiting slaughter upon the altar, straight toward that indifferent colossal face in the sky.

That face... remained cold. Remained incomplete.

But he knew the chains of the contract were already taut.

When he had once sacrificed himself to that fragmented-face in exchange for the future, he had vowed that upon his return, he would offer all he beheld.

Every word of that oath now resonated with the echoes of causality.

"When your jade disc fell and your turtle’s legs snapped, at the first glimpse of your pupils—the crimson sun melted into molten iron, boiling the five lakes; the stars shattered into arrows, piercing the nine wilds."

The priest’s incantation grew increasingly frenzied amidst these echoes of causality.

Zi Qing’s gaze returned to his parents and younger brother.

He saw his father frown slightly, as if sensing something amiss, instinctively shifting to shield his wife and child.

He saw his mother holding his little brother, her face still bearing traces of tenderness toward the child and unease toward the priest’s chanting.

His baby brother, frightened by the solemn atmosphere, buried his face in the crook of their mother’s neck.

Watching this, Zi Qing’s heart remained a frozen lake—no ripples, no emotion, only the icy clarity of fulfilling a contract.

The warmth of the candied hawthorn in his hand faded strand by strand, growing as cold as his palm.

"Now ruins still spew ghostly flames, the living gnaw on grave soil, yet the blood clotting between your lashes still reflects the gasps of mortal souls!"

The priest’s voice rose to a hoarse scream.

"O god!"

"We beg for the scraps that slip through your teeth—our stolen embers of life!"

"We beg for the shadows cast by your brow—our hovels of refuge!"

The priest’s arms swept down like a guillotine, pointing at the prisoners upon the altar.

"May your eyes stay shut!"

"May you slumber long!"

"Pray that you... do not open your eyes!"

"DO NOT OPEN THEM!!!"

The roar of the crowd rose in unison—and in that moment, amidst the chorus, Zi Qing whispered:

"I’m back."

"With all that I see, I fulfill the vow of my past life."

The instant these words left his lips—

High above, those eternally closed eyelids—like fissures into an abyss—twitched.

Then... slowly began to rise.

A sliver of emptiness peered through—no light, no emotion, only pure, cold, indifferent void leaking from that narrow gap.

The contract... was fulfilled.

BOOM—!!

A soundless tremor of annihilation erupted in the depths of Zi Qing’s soul.

The icy echo of a completed covenant.

The world before him began its predestined end.

It weathered away.

Under that gaze, the bricks, beams, streets of Peerless City—every solid structure—instantly lost their foundation of existence.

Silently, they disintegrated into billions of gray-white particles, swept upward by an invisible storm, madly streaming toward the sky!

The entire city was being erased from the earth, stroke by stroke, by an unseen hand.

"N-no..."

"The god has opened Its eye!"

"Ah—!"

Countless shrieks of horror instantly replaced the silence, rising throughout Peerless City.

All around Zi Qing, lives began to twist and distort amidst the screams.

A woman’s skin split open, bones cracking!

A child bloated into a mountain of festering flesh studded with claws!

An old man’s skull cracked apart, revealing compound eyes!

A man’s muscles bulged, sprouting scales and fangs!

The once-peaceful Peerless City had become a grinder of flesh and blood in the moment Zi Qing fulfilled his contract.

Those not transformed suffered worse—their bodies ruptured directly into crimson mist, rising to join the bloody rain!

Life withered en masse, in the manner stipulated by the covenant.

Zi Qing’s gaze, piercing through the swirling gray dust and scarlet rain, fixed coldly upon where his parents and brother had stood.

He saw his father whirl around, trying to shield his wife and child—but that broad back had barely begun to lean forward when the horror and determination on his face froze mid-expression...

His body crumbled like sand scattered by wind, disintegrating finger by finger into ash, instantly swallowed by the ascending streams of dust—gone without a trace.

He saw his mother, still clutching his brother—her gentle expression twisting into blank terror before she could even turn toward where her husband vanished.

Her entire body stiffened abruptly...

Then melted like a candle tossed into a furnace.

From the crown of her head downward—her raven hair, pale skin, tender eyes—every part of her that was "mother" dissolved under Zi Qing’s fulfilling gaze into a thick, dark-red fluid that dripped onto the tiny body in her arms.

"Wuwu...!"

His brother let out a short, terrified whimper as he tumbled from the pool of their mother’s still-warm blood, landing hard on the ground now equally slick with gore.

The small figure curled up in that crimson puddle, trembling, drenched in their mother’s lifeblood.

The gray-white dust swirling in the air became like funeral paper money, mingling with the thickening bloody rain as it pattered down.

Death had come completely—even those who mutated often collapsed mid-transformation.

And the rain of blood fell heavier.

Through it, Zi Qing walked step by step across the warm, sticky blood, toward that small figure huddled in the carnage.

Finally, he stopped before him.

Looked down at his younger brother.

The child’s shoulders shook violently, his thin clothes soaked through with blood, like an abandoned cub in an ocean of gore—nothing left but silent, overwhelming fear and confusion.

Slowly, agonizingly slowly, the boy lifted his head.

A face smeared with blood, tears, and grime came into view.

Those once-clear eyes were now hollow pits of despair, wells filled only with bottomless terror.

Broken syllables, choked with bloody whimpers, forced their way out:

"Big brother... Father and mother..."

Zi Qing’s lips parted slightly.

The bamboo skewer of the candied hawthorn had long since pierced deep into his palm.

Warm blood dripped down the stick, joining the pools on the ground—merging with their mother’s blood, with the blood of the entire city.

But he felt no pain. Only the cold reverberations of a fulfilled contract echoing in his chest.

So he offered no explanation.

Any words would be hollow blasphemy before the destruction he had wrought.

He had kept his promise. That was all.

In the end, he simply reached out—his bloodied hand descending toward his brother’s equally cold, filthy head with a gesture almost ritualistic in its gravity.

At the same time, he extended the other hand, offering that dirtied, bloodstained candied hawthorn skewer to his brother.

His chapped lips parted, the words spoken with dispassionate clarity, cutting through the wails and bloody rain like the final lines of a funeral ode:

"Little brother."

Gazing into those eyes drowning in terror, he whispered:

"...Don’t cry."

His hand fell—

But the instant before it could touch his brother’s head, a sound like the cleaving of heaven and earth exploded across the sky!

In that unparalleled roar, light—pure, searing light—tore through time and space to blaze across the firmament!

Illuminating the sky, the earth, the bloody rain!

It was the morning glow.

It drowned everything, boundless as an ocean, replacing the entire world—

And enveloping Zi Qing within it.

From within that vast, dazzling radiance, a hand reached out—

And seized Zi Qing’s descending wrist in an iron grip!

Then flung him violently away!

Zi Qing’s body shuddered as the tremendous force hurled him backward. He landed heavily in the distance, his eyes flashing with intense surprise as he stared at the figure now emerging from the light.

"So you’re finally here."

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