Soon, the God of Destruction left. After his departure, the Serenity Garden fell into a dead silence.
The image of Tang Wulin standing at the edge of the abyssal rift still echoed in Qian Renxue's mind. The silhouette that had so firmly declared "I exist" actually gave her a faint, inexplicable sense of familiarity.
What kind of feeling was that?
Qian Renxue slowly walked deeper into the Serenity Garden. Beneath the parasol tree there was a place she often visited to ponder. The golden leaves flickered in the God Realm's unfading glimmer, each one resembling a frozen flame. She reached out to catch a falling leaf, feeling its faint yet genuine warmth against her palm.
"Existence," she murmured softly.
What did this word mean to her?
Qian Renxue had once been the Crown Prince of the Tian Dou Empire, the Holy Maiden of the Spirit Hall, the inheritor of the Angel God, a comrade who fought alongside Tang San, and also his sworn enemy. She had experienced too many identities, too many roles, and too many definitions. But when the dust finally settled, when she stripped away all the labels and was simply "Qian Renxue," who was she?
She had never truly faced this question before.
The parasol leaf in her palm gradually dimmed, ultimately dissolving into golden specks of light. Everything in the God Realm possessed a certain eternal quality, yet felt so illusory that it didn't seem real. There were no changing seasons here, no birth, aging, illness, or death, nor the coarse but vivid vitality of the mortal realm. Sometimes, Qian Renxue felt as if she were trapped in an exquisite, eternal dream.
"The Incarnation of Existence." She recalled the information Tang Wulin had comprehended from the stone slab.
If the path Tang Wulin chose was to become the incarnation of "Is"—of expansion, of affirmation, of connection—then what was her path?
Qian Renxue closed her eyes, trying to feel her own "existence."
At first, there was only emptiness. It wasn't the Void, but a sense of bewilderment. She felt the weight of her divine position, the flow of her Angelic power, and the indelible memories deep within her soul—her mother's passing, her grandfather's expectations, her entanglement with Tang San, the loneliness and perseverance over the long years. But these all seemed external; they were things attached to "her."
What, then, was the core "her"?
"No," Qian Renxue suddenly opened her eyes, a sharp gleam flashing within them. "Wrong."
She realized she had made a fundamental mistake. She was looking for a "pure self" independent of everything else, but that was precisely the "Void" trap Tang Wulin was fighting against. If the essence of "Is" was expansion and connection, then the "self" was never meant to be an isolated entity, but a network woven from countless relationships, memories, and choices.
Did she not exist precisely because she was Bibi Dong's daughter, Qian Daoliu's granddaughter, the former Crown Prince of Tian Dou, the inheritor of the Angel God, and the person who had a complex entanglement with Tang San? These were not masks concealing her true self, but the warp and weft that constituted her true self.
Qian Renxue stood up and walked to the edge of the Serenity Garden. There was a pool of clear water there, its surface as calm as a mirror, reflecting the God Realm's eternally azure sky. She looked down at her reflection—golden long hair, deep eyes, a face still young but bearing thousands of years of memories.
"I exist," she said to the reflection, "because my mother brought me into this world, because she looked at me with such complex emotions. I exist because my grandfather placed all his hopes in me, because he believed I could fulfill his unfinished cause. I exist because I once fought for the future of the Tian Dou Empire, because I believed in that ideal. I exist because I chose to inherit the Angel God throne, because I was willing to bear that responsibility. I exist because I fought Tang San, because I once hated him, and because I changed because of him. I exist because I experienced defeat and rebirth, because I did not give up in despair."
Every "because" was like a silk thread, weaving the net of her existence.
The reflection in the water rippled slightly, but Qian Renxue's gaze grew ever firmer.
"I am not a 'pure existence,'" she continued talking to herself. "I am the sum of all these relationships, the crystallization of all my choices, the form shaped by the settling of all my experiences. Trying to strip these away to find the 'true me' is the true self-denial."
As soon as the words left her mouth, something deep within her soul was touched.
It was not a "seed of existence" like Tang Wulin's, but an entirely different sensation—a precipitation, a solidification, an essence extracted from complexity and chaos. If Tang Wulin's seed of existence was an outward-expanding radiance, then what Qian Renxue felt was an inward-condensing density.
She suddenly understood.
Tang Wulin's way of fighting the Void was "expansion"—connecting all things and becoming the core of the network of existence. But Qian Renxue's path might be the exact opposite—not expansion, but "condensation"; not connecting to more, but becoming an indivisible "whole."
She remembered hearing philosophers from the eastern continent say back in the Douluo Continent: "The hardest thing is metal; the most enduring thing is stone." Metal is hard because of its density; stone endures because of its integrity. There was more than one way to resist the Void. Tang Wulin chose to become an unignorable "light source," while she perhaps should become an indestructible "metal and stone."
This realization triggered a subtle change deep within Qian Renxue's soul. She felt an unprecedented sense of "solidity"—not radiating outward, but settling inward. Every inch of her skin, every wisp of her soul power, every fragment of her memory became more "solid," more "heavy," more "real."
"But this isn't enough," Qian Renxue frowned. "If it's merely self-condensation, I am still isolated. An isolated existence, no matter how unyielding, could still be erased when facing the absolute negation of the Eye of Annihilation."
She needed to find her own way to connect to this network of existence, but not through Tang Wulin's method of expansion.
Qian Renxue left the Garden of Serenity and headed toward the God Realm's Library. She needed to understand more—about existence, about the Void, about the most essential truths of this world.
The God Realm Library was an incredible place. Its exterior was just an ordinary white hall, but its interior space stretched infinitely, with bookshelves extending in all directions until they disappeared from sight. The collections here included not only the history of the God Realm and records of various world civilizations, but also many ancient tomes concerning the very essence of the universe.
Qian Renxue navigated through the bookshelves, looking for books that might be related to "existence." But she soon discovered that most of this knowledge was recorded in obscure symbols and metaphors, offering no direct guidance. Just as the God of Destruction had said, the Dao of Existence had to be comprehended on one's own; it could not be simply taught.
However, when she reached an unremarkable corner deep within the library, something strange happened.
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