Volume 2, Chapter 37: The Song of the Twilight
The white light from Yuhao's five-way connection didn't just push back the shadows; it acted as a beacon.
High above the arena, in the floating VIP spires, the veterans had been watching. They didn't panic when the lights went out. They didn't scream when the shadow-beasts appeared. People who had lived through the Sun-Moon Collision and the early days of the Federation didn't scare easily.
"The resonance is stabilizing," a voice said, calm and resonant as a temple bell.
Mu En, the Dean of the Phoenix Academy, sat in his wheelchair at the edge of the balcony. Even at his age, his skin looked like polished ivory. He didn't need a Crystalline suit. His very presence seemed to anchor the air around him.
Next to him stood a woman who looked like she was made of both sunset and starlight. Ye Xishui, the Twilight Arbiter. Her eyes were fixed on Chen Feng.
"That boy," she murmured, her hand resting on the hilt of a translucent dagger at her waist. "He's the source of the imbalance. He's trying to silence the city's life-force."
"Then let's give him something to listen to," Mu En replied.
Down on the arena floor, Yuhao felt his knees shaking.
The connection he had forged between the Anito and Sun-Moon students was holding, but it was draining him fast. He wasn't tapping into Lakan's Godly Power — he wouldn't even know how to find it — but he was using the memory of that power from the Hall of Five Sovereigns to act as a bridge.
"I can't… keep this up," Ma Xiaotao gasped, her hand gripping Yuhao's shoulder so hard her knuckles were white.
"Just a bit longer," Yuhao whispered.
Suddenly, the grey fade of the stadium was pierced by a bolt of pure, golden light from above. It didn't come from a machine. It came from the sky.
Mu En descended. He didn't fly; he simply walked down an invisible staircase of light. Every step he took sent a ripple through the air, a golden Baybayin "ᜎ" (La) manifesting under his feet. The shadows touched by the light didn't just retreat — they evaporated into steam.
"That's the Dean," Xiao Hongchen whispered, his eyes wide. Like most Sun-Moon students, he had a healthy fear of the man who could stabilize a continent's energy with a hum.
From the other side of the stadium, a blur of dark silver moved. Long Xiaoyao, the Darkness Holy Dragon, appeared like a smudge of ink in the grey mist. He moved with the fluid, circular grace of the Serpent's Path (Silat), his hands moving in a blur as he struck the shadow-beasts.
He didn't use fire or lightning. He used Gunting — the art of the scissors — snapping the beasts' energy flows at the joints.
"Focus on the children, Long!" Mu En called out.
"I'm working on it, old man!" Long barked back.
Chen Feng stood in the center of the carnage, watching the two legends descend. He didn't look afraid. He looked bored.
"The Twin Pillars," Chen Feng said, his voice echoing through the silence. "The Light that blinds and the Dark that hides. You're both just different sides of the same old story."
He raised his hand, and the withered grain in his palm began to glow with a sickly, matte-grey light. The shadows in the stadium began to pull together, forming a massive, shifting wall of dead air between him and the Deans.
"Wait," a new voice said.
Ye Xishui landed in front of the students. She didn't look like a grandmother that her real age suggests. She looked like a storm caught in a glass bottle. Her Radiant Phoenix aura didn't burn, it glowed with a soft, peach-colored light that felt like the last five minutes of a perfect day.
"Chen Feng," she said, her voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. "You are a disturbance. You've been planting your seeds in my city, hurting my students."
"I'm freeing them, Arbiter," Chen Feng replied.
"No," Ye Xishui said, stepping forward. Her martial soul didn't manifest as a giant bird. Instead, her eyes turned into two burning suns. "You're just trying to make the world as empty as you are."
She clapped her hands together.
Soul Skill: The Twilight Reset.
A wave of peach-colored energy rolled out from her. It wasn't a blast; it was a tuning. Everywhere the light touched, the grey rot of the draining force was forcibly converted back into normal movement of energy. The shadow-beasts didn't just die; they were corrected back into harmless ambient energy.
Chen Feng flinched. For the first time, his calm cracked. He realized he couldn't silence someone like Ye Xishui — her resonance was too deep, rooted in the very Laws Lakan had established.
He looked toward Yuhao.
"We'll finish this later, navigator," Chen Feng whispered.
Before Ye Xishui could reach him, Chen Feng slammed the withered grain into his own chest. The space around him folded inward. It wasn't a teleportation tool; it was a collapse of local rules. He vanished into a pin-point of nothingness.
But in that final second of connection, Yuhao felt a sharp, cold sting in the back of his mind.
"Inside the All-Seeing Library, something happened"
Deep in the Biology section, on a shelf dedicated to the evolution of plants, a small, grey pebble appeared. It didn't belong there. It was a dull, lifeless thing that felt like it was made of frozen ash.
It was the Seed of Grey Decay.
The Library's internal defense — the golden runes Lakan had etched into the walls — tried to flare up, but the Seed didn't fight back. It just sat there. It was nothing. And you can't fight nothing with rules.
Yuhao fell to his knees, clutching his head. The headache wasn't a throb anymore; it was a cold, numbing pressure that felt like his brain was being wrapped in plastic.
"Yuhao!" Tang Ya and Ma Xiaotao rushed to him.
"I'm… I'm okay," Yuhao gasped, though his vision was tunneling.
"No, you are not," a voice echoed in his mind.
Electrolux stepped out from the shadows of the Library's inner sanctum. The old necromancer looked at the grey pebble on the shelf with deep, ancient disgust.
"He left a gift," Electrolux muttered. "A piece of his own void. It's not trying to destroy the Library, Yuhao. It's trying to silence it. If it stays here, your Spirit Eyes will eventually stop seeing the world. You'll only see the end of it."
"Can you remove it?" Yuhao asked mentally.
Electrolux sighed. "I am a ghost, child. I can contain it, but I cannot erase it. This is a sickness of the will. Only the Phoenix can truly burn this away, but if we call him now, he might accidentally burn your mind along with the Seed."
Electrolux raised his hand, and a barrier of pale blue light surrounded the grey pebble, sealing it in a jar of spiritual energy. "This will hold it for now. But don't think you're safe. The Seed is part of a larger forest. As long as Chen Feng lives, this thing will keep trying to grow."
The lights in the stadium flickered back to life. The amber glow of the Crystalline lamps returned, and the Phoenix-Rail trains in the distance began to hum again.
The crowd was in a state of shock. The Federation officials were already scrambling to come up with a cover story — a "localized atmospheric disturbance" or a "Soul Tool malfunction."
But the students knew better.
Yuhao stood up, his legs still shaky. He looked at Xiao Hongchen, who was being helped out of his dead armor by Sun-Moon technicians. The arrogant boy looked up and gave Yuhao a single, solemn nod. The rivalry wasn't gone, but the Prince had seen the void, and he knew who had pulled him back.
Mu En and Long Xiaoyao walked over to the students.
"You did well," Mu En said, his hand resting on Yuhao's head. The warmth from the Dean's palm was the only thing keeping the cold in Yuhao's mind at bay. "You held the line when the world went quiet. That is the true meaning of the Eight Directional Flow."
"But the boy escaped," Ye Xishui said, her eyes still scanning the horizon. "And he took the finals with him. There will be no trophy today."
"The trophy doesn't matter," Yuhao said, looking at his friends.
He thought about the sad cracker he'd eaten at the banquet. He thought about the stiff collar of his formal suit. He thought about the grey pebble sitting in the jar in his mind.
The world was loud again. The people were shouting, the machines were humming, and the wind was blowing.
It was a beautiful noise. And he was going to make sure it stayed that way.
End of Volume 2, Chapter 37