Liu Xing's main mission was to deal with the darkness that Nui had warned him about. If it wasn't stopped, the darkness would grow a thousandfold and consume countless other worlds, including those where his friends now lived. Nui showed him his own fight, Mamat's opponents, and Joni's condition.

Nui explained that the world Liu Xing was in was crucial to stopping this threat. At the time, Nui's description of the darkness had been vague. He hadn't known if it was a creature or a force, but he was determined to defeat or contain it to help his friends, even if they lived in different worlds. Now, he was quite sure that the darkness Nui had described was the dark smoke that kept appearing nearly everywhere he went, and he intended to investigate it further. He never thought the information would be handed to him on a silver platter, and by a saint nonetheless.

"Harness corruption, you say?" Silver Saint's mouth curved downward. "That is, again, a wild thing to say, but it was also the wrong question to ask. You're a saint candidate, are you not? The first thing you should ask upon seeing the corruption is how to vanquish it, or perhaps what would happen if it is ignored, or even a simple question about what it is or where it comes from. Any normal question. But harnessing it? That is a… dangerous question."

An invisible, oppressive aura flared from Silver Saint. The bandages covering her eyes began to glow, as if the eyes beneath shone so brightly the cloth would combust into ash. This aura spread out and pressed down on his shoulders, as if an invisible mountain had settled upon him. If the saint decided to let it fall, he would be instantly crushed into a red splatter on the surface of the glowing river. Liu Xing's heart quickened, his instincts screaming of danger. He looked at the saint, realizing his question had indeed been dangerous.

A saint's duty was to fight the corruption. Asking how to harness it was akin to asking a just and righteous monk how to enjoy alcohol and women.

"Silver Saint, I'm sorry if my question offended you, but I have a legitimate reason for asking," he said, trying to keep his voice from faltering. "You see, I have a mission I need to accomplish in this world, and this mission concerns something I have regarded as 'darkness.' It takes the form of black smoke or a cloud, and nearly every time I have encountered it, it was harnessed by demonic cultivators."

Silver Saint nodded after a moment, but the oppressive aura on his shoulders did not lessen. "Go on."

"This darkness generally has three characteristics. First, it can be used to make a technique stronger. Second, it has the ability to refine impure qi and accelerate cultivation. And third, it can conceal its user from normal perception."

What he described were actually the abilities of his gun, but he had realized that the darkness and the gun shared similar properties. Since his gun absorbed the darkness, he theorized that it might have been made from the darkness itself. Ji Dongyang had also used that darkness—or the "shadow," as he had referred to it—to turn into a cloud-like form and shape it into limbs or arrows to attack him, but for the sake of simplicity, he omitted this detail.

When Silver Saint didn't answer, he explained further. "When I asked if the corruption could be harnessed, I suspected that the darkness I've encountered many times was, in fact, the corruption. The smoke it makes when it spreads across the ground is similar to what I saw. I asked you to verify whether the darkness I intend to defeat or contain is the same thing as corruption."

The oppressive feeling on his shoulders began to lessen. Yet, he didn't dare straighten his back, which had bent under the sheer heaviness of her aura. He stayed in a near-bowing position, afraid to offend her again. Beads of sweat emerged on his face, dripped from his chin, and fell into the river below. Unlike his feet, the sweat instantly sank into the river, creating a small ripple that vanished in a second.

Silver Saint pinched her chin as she lessened the oppressive aura further. It was a good sign, meaning she was beginning to believe his words. Still, he decided to be more cautious with his words and avoid offending her. The saint appeared cheerful and kind, but like Moon Flower, she was capable of crushing him as if he were an ant.

"As far as I know, the corruption cannot be harnessed," she said, snapping her fingers. Instantly, they were both sitting in white chairs. This time, however, there was no table between them, so nothing stood in her way if she decided to attack. "But even today, knowledge about the corruption is scarce. I feel what you said about this 'darkness' is very important. The truth is, after explaining what the corruption is, I wanted to jump straight to how you can become a true saint. But it seems that it needs to be postponed until you explain what you mean by 'darkness' in great detail."

Liu Xing nodded. "Alright."

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Silver Saint began to smile. Instead of looking mysterious or cute, however, this smile looked dangerous. "Liu Xing, make sure you tell me everything about it. The heavens chose you, just as they chose all of us as saints. It was indeed true that the heavens work in mysterious ways. However, I know that the heavens are not without fault and sometimes need... correction."

Liu Xing managed to keep a blank expression, but inside, he felt like a mortal thrown into a tiger cage. What she said had heavy implications. What did she mean when she said the heavens could be wrong? Still, while that was important, it wasn't more important than her subtle threat. In plain words, she threatened to kill him, and her decision hinged on how he explained the darkness to her.

Liu Xing inhaled deeply. He was hesitant to tell her everything because doing so would reveal that he was from another world and expose the existence of Nui's world and others. However, he knew that if he withheld any information, he would undoubtedly die.

After a while, he came to a conclusion and nodded. "All right, I'll tell you everything about the darkness. It's tied tightly to my entire being, so I'll start from the beginning." He had hidden this fact from everyone for two years. He had intended to hide it forever, but that no longer seemed possible. "My name is Liu Xing, but it's not really my name."

Silver Saint pressed her lips into a thin line.

Before she could say anything, he continued. "Let me tell you who I really am. All of this started around two years ago. At that time, I died, and then I woke up in a foreign body."

He poured his heart into words, and surprisingly, once he began, he couldn't stop. He dumped every emotion he had felt when he first woke up as Liu Xing. His confusion, his anger, his loneliness, his regret, his fear, and his anxiety when he realized that he was truly dead and could not return to his former life. He told her how he had spent a week straight mumbling to himself, trying to come up with a way to get back, and then his sigh of acceptance of his new situation.

"After two years, when I finally regained my footing and was planning to just retreat to the outskirts for a peaceful life, I suddenly received a weapon that belongs to my original world," he paused for a moment, "as well as a visit from an old friend."

He began to tell her the story of the gun and of Nui's fragment, which had shown him visions of his old friends, all of whom fate had decided to send to other worlds. He told her about Nui's warning about the darkness and the consequences if it could not be defeated or contained in this world.

Silver Saint frowned, no doubt with hundreds of questions swirling in her head. After all, what he had just said was absurd. Nui was a being that did not belong to this world. He had wondered many times how Nui could have sent a fragment of himself to him. How strong was he? What method did he use? With the new information that this xianxia world was within a dead god's corpse, he wondered whether Nui was living in the same universe or entirely outside of it.

He continued his tale, describing how he had experimented with the gun, his meeting with Ji Dongyang, and the entire conflict with Wei Yi, including the Twelve Sun Empire and the cursed armor. Yet, as he spoke, he knew Silver Saint wasn't paying close attention to these details. Her focus seemed to be stuck on his story about Nui.

After he finished his tale, he let the silence permeate the air. Silver Saint's expression was carefully neutral, as if she were hiding a deep unease. The silence stretched on, and in this quiet, Liu Xing's ramrod-straight back began to relax a little. The pressure Silver Saint had emitted was entirely gone. There was nothing that could crush him at a moment's notice. And while he knew that didn't mean he had escaped danger, the fact that Silver Saint was silent meant that she, at the very least, had not outright dismissed his tale as a lie.

After more than ten minutes of silence, Silver Saint finally let out a sigh. "Your story is interesting, Liu Xing. If all of that is true, then it complicates the situation immensely. Your friend, Nui—what an odd name—is either a saint himself or something else entirely. The fact that he noticed something in this world that even I didn't notice means his power to unravel the threads of fate is even stronger than mine."

"You believe my story?"

"Not entirely, no, but it is something you could easily prove," she said, caressing her temples. "If you could show me this gun, I could verify your story. It was a mistake to hold this meeting in a dream. I should have come in person instead."

"I could try to summon my gun to this dream," Liu Xing said.

He didn't know the mechanics of this world, but the fact that he could talk and move freely meant this dream was connected to his consciousness, and since his gun was soul-bound, it should be possible to summon it here.

Silver Saint leaned forward slightly. "I'm not sure you can do it. I placed many, many restrictions so we could meet in this dream," she pinched her chin. "But perhaps you can. Alright, do it, Liu Xing. Let's see if you can summon that mysterious gun of yours."

Liu Xing nodded and focused, searching for the connection to his gun. It was faint, like trying to find a single grain of rice on a white floor. Still, it was there.

He found it and tugged at the thread as a guitarist would pull a string. But when he did, the gun did not appear. Instead, the world began to shake. The stars in the void flickered for a moment like dying lamps. The fiery palace shook as if swept by a terrible wind. The gigantic tree swayed, the heads hanging from its roots swinging wildly. Below, the shining river churned violently, throwing him and Silver Saint into the air.

Silver Saint's eyes were still covered by bandages, but as Liu Xing landed on the rolling waves and was swallowed by the water, he saw the surprise on her face.

"Impossible! What--"

Suddenly, the world changed.

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