CHAPTER 184— THE WEIGHT OF TIME
The mountain path narrowed as they climbed.
What had once looked distant from the valley now felt immense, its dark slopes cutting through the crimson mist like the spine of some ancient creature sleeping beneath the realm. The higher they rose, the stranger the atmosphere became. Leylin could feel it without understanding it fully. The realm itself seemed denser here, as though the mountain occupied a different position within the world's structure than the grasslands below.
For a while neither of them spoke.
The conversation about age lingered between them, not because of the numbers themselves, but because Leylin kept turning them over in his mind.
Twenty years.Fifty years.Hundreds.
The figures felt wrong.
Seven hundred years of his own existence should have made them familiar, yet whenever he tried to look backward, the years refused to separate into anything meaningful. They collapsed into fragments. Cold metal. Hunger. Pain. Endless observation. A life measured not by seasons or memories but by endurance.
Beside him, Seraphine adjusted her footing as the trail steepened.
What are you thinking again, leylin.
Leylin's gaze remained on the path ahead.
"You said cultivators fail because they die first.
"I did."
Why are you making it sound inevitable."
A faint smile touched her lips.
Because It usually is,in a way.
The answer came without bitterness.
Only certainty.
Then she stepped over a fractured section of stone before continuing.
"Most people don't reach the limits of their talent, Leylin. They reach the limits of their lifespan.
The wind shifted around them.
Far below, the crimson tree had become little more than a dark silhouette against the valley floor.
"That's why resources matter.
Leylin looked toward her.
Seraphine continued walking.
"A genius with nothing is still limited by time. A fool with enough resources can sometimes force his way further than he deserves.
She laughed quietly.
"The world isn't particularly fair about it.
Leylin considered that.
His own stars had been born from resources.
The first constellation. Then the second.
The countless spirit stones consumed during their creation.
Without them, the sky above his realm would still be empty.
For the first time, he found himself wondering how many more stars remained beyond the eighty-two already hanging overhead.
The thought lingered only briefly.
Then another question surfaced.
"If resources are the problem...
Seraphine already knew where he was going.
..then why haven't you advanced?"
She sighed.
"You're really attached to that question.
Leylin said nothing and simply stared at her with his deadpan expression that seemed partially covered behind his grey robes
That look actually made her laugh.
The sound echoed faintly against the mountainside.
Fine,fine.
Then leylin spoke, ..you explained how."His gaze shifted toward her...You never explained why."
Silence settled between them briefly. And for several moments she said nothing.
The mountain continued rising before them while crimson mist drifted lazily between the rocks.
When she finally spoke, her voice was quieter.
"Because advancing and surviving aren't always the same thing."
That was the first answer she had given that genuinely surprised him.
And for the first time since they had begun climbing, Seraphine's hand drifted unconsciously toward her chest, as if feeling something hidden beneath skin and bone that only she could sense.
"At my age..."
She hesitated.
"...I shouldn't be this close."
The wind carried the words away almost as soon as they left her mouth.
But Leylin heard them anyway.
---
The path leveled unexpectedly.
One more turn carried them around a wall of black stone, and then the mountain simply ended.
Both of them slowed.
The summit was not what either had expected.
There was no throne, No ancient ruin.
No hidden inheritance waiting beneath layers of dust.
Only silence.
A vast circular plateau stretched across the peak, its surface formed from smooth dark stone veined with crimson crystal. Time and weather had never touched it. The rock looked less like something that had been carved and more like something that had grown.
Beyond it, the realm unfolded completely.
For the first time, Leylin could see all of it.
The crimson tree stood near the center of the valley below, its roots spreading across the island like dark veins. Rivers of silver water wound through the grasslands before disappearing into the distant fog that marked the realm's boundaries. Above everything hung the chained sun and the eighty-two stars revolving slowly across the crimson sky.
From below, the realm had felt large.
From here, it felt unfinished.
Leylin's eyes narrowed slightly.
The fog.He could see it clearly now...A boundary.
The edge of something still growing.
Beside him, Seraphine had gone quiet.
Not because of the view.Because she was watching him.
The moment they stepped onto the summit, something had changed.
Very slightly.Yet enough for her to feel it.
Leylin walked forward until he reached the center of the plateau.Then stopped.
The stone beneath his feet responded.
A faint crimson line illuminated within the crystal.
Then another.And another.
The entire summit began waking up around him.