One strike. A single strike, nothing more.
And yet the White Piece felt as though he had been torn apart a thousand times beneath that blade.
Resistance? He couldn't even conceive of the thought. To say such a thing out loud would have been impossible. After all, what the White Piece now faced was not only a Chongyue who had surpassed his absolute peak — but also a version of himself that had fallen to his absolute lowest.
His Authority was unusable. His connection to the Year Body had been severed. He couldn't even run — and on top of everything, there was that infuriating bastard quietly stacking debuffs on him from the shadows.
Every soul-related ability he tried to use was immediately disrupted by the Stygian King. The result was like trying to unleash a power only to have your mouth force-fed a fistful of something unspeakable.
The White Piece felt so disgusted he was going numb.
No matter how desperately he struggled, it was all for nothing — in the end, that single strike had robbed him completely of the ability to move.
And then, just as the second strike was about to fall — it stopped.
The White Piece blinked in confusion. Then Chongyue leaned in close, and a wide, delighted grin broke across his face.
"Oh? Still alive?"
He said it the way a neighbor might ask whether you'd had lunch yet — utterly casual, completely at ease.
Chongyue grinned and raised his free hand. And then came the natural follow-up to that cheerful little greeting.
Haven't eaten? Then eat my fist!
In that instant, the White Piece's vision went black without him even meaning for it to.
Having felt the terrifying, crushing pressure radiating from Chongyue, the White Piece's mind had been stripped down to a single thought — one that felt like the purest truth he had ever known.
That son of a bitch didn't stop out of conscience.
He just decided swinging a sword wasn't satisfying enough — so he tossed the damn thing aside, rolled up his sleeves, and decided to do this with his bare hands.
The scene that followed was nothing short of brutal. With every punch, the White Piece felt his soul shudder and rattle, as though consciousness itself were slipping away from him.
And yet just enough remained. Just that last sliver of awareness, dangling there on the edge, refusing to let him pass out — forcing him to experience the full, undiluted fury packed into every single blow.
You thought you could threaten my family?
The onlookers watching from outside could only stare at the scene unfolding before them, a strange feeling stirring in their chests.
Only Wang shifted his gaze — toward Anthony, who was standing nearby whistling cheerfully. Their eyes met for a moment, and Wang's held a faint, undisguised skepticism.
Anthony met Wang's gaze with an easy, pleasant look. Not a trace of guilt. Not even the pretense of it.
"Is the way Big Brother is acting right now," Wang said at last, "really not your fault?"
Anthony let out a small laugh and replied lightly: "How could that possibly be? What kind of person do you take me for?"
He spoke with perfect conviction, his tone entirely righteous:
"At most, I gave Big Brother a little pre-battle motivational talk."
Wang rolled his eyes.
Alright. Nothing left to say. If that line was coming out of his mouth, Wang didn't even need to think about what had actually happened — he already knew.
Honestly, the fact that Anthony hadn't charged into the middle of the fight, pointing at the White Piece and yelling hit him here at Chongyue, was already showing considerable restraint.
"That said, Second Brother," Anthony said suddenly, narrowing his eyes just slightly, something like amusement glinting in them, "are you sure you want to keep watching from here?"
Even Wang paused at that.
He turned to look — and found that in the center of the arena, Chongyue had stopped.
The White Piece lay there with nothing but the barest flicker of consciousness remaining. Chongyue stood to the side, his gaze turning toward Wang — an unspoken question in his eyes.
In that moment, Wang understood what Anthony and Chongyue meant.
He rose to his feet without a moment's hesitation.
"Then let me."
He said it quietly, murmuring almost to himself: "Everything should have a beginning and an end."
And so he lifted the sword in his hand and began walking forward, step by step.
Then, abruptly, his stride faltered. He felt a sudden weight against his chest — looked down, startled — and then understood. He turned back toward Anthony.
Anthony's face still held that same quiet smile. He spoke softly:
"Don't forget anyone this time. Alright, Second Brother — go."
Wang gave a single nod, and this time, he didn't stop walking. He moved directly toward the White Piece.
The White Piece watched Wang approach. With the last shred of his consciousness, he forced his eyes open.
He let out a laugh — something between self-mockery and wild abandon.
"You've come to kill me?"
He directed the question at Wang. Wang nodded. "Obviously."
"Come for revenge? That's a lot of trouble to go through. Though I'll admit — I always figured it would come to this eventually."
The White Piece said it with a cold smile, but Wang gave a slight shake of his head.
"No. You're still wrong, even now."
The bluntness of it gave even the White Piece pause.
Then, in a voice as cold and still as ice, Wang spoke:
"I am not here to kill you out of revenge. I am here because you threatened my family."
He lowered his gaze and looked into the White Piece's eyes, each word deliberate:
"That, and that alone, is something I will never permit."
The White Piece went blank — and then he saw Wang draw something from within his robes. A doll. And upon his face appeared a rare, almost unfamiliar smile.
"And one more thing I want to say," Wang continued. "All those words you kept throwing at me — those taunts you wore out from overuse — I stopped caring about them a long time ago."
"Because the things that are truly mine…"
"I already took them back. With the help of my family."
In that instant, the White Piece's eyes flew wide as the soul of Wang's proxy leapt free from within the doll.
How?!
She was dead. He had personally seen to that — had pushed the whole thing along with his own hands!
And yet that familiar resonance of a soul — it was utterly, completely real. Nothing could fake it.
In that moment, a torrent of emotion crashed over him. And finally, the White Piece fell backward, his eyes sliding slowly shut.
"I see."
He murmured it faintly, as though something that had long eluded him had finally clicked into place.
He couldn't help it — he began to laugh. Loud and unrestrained, as though mocking himself.
How absurd. How laughable. How utterly, contemptibly pathetic.
Wang watched him. He waited until the laughter had exhausted itself, until the White Piece, weary to the bone, spoke at last:
"All that effort, and nothing to show for it."
"Who's going to argue with that? Watching you spin your wheels for all this time — honestly, I'm quite pleased about it."
Wang answered without missing a beat. And so the White Piece closed his eyes. No plea. No final words. Nothing left he wanted to say.
At last, he felt it — the exhaustion of a thousand years.
Looking back now, in this final moment, the White Piece saw it clearly for the first time: everything he had done had ended in absolute, total failure.
Why he had failed, because of whom, from what point — he had no will left to contemplate it. And soon, he would have no capacity to contemplate anything at all.
It was only when the blade pressed against his throat that the White Piece's eyes snapped open — wide and wild, as if he refused to accept it — and from somewhere deep in his chest, the last of his consciousness hurled out a final, dying scream.
But it was already too late.
"I refuse to accept this!!!"
The deafening cry brought no conclusion. There was only a sword, calm and quiet, that separated his head from his shoulders.
The head flew. The pupils remained open, frozen.
He died without peace.
Wang gave that severed head a final glance of contempt, then looked away and did not look again.
Because he was no longer worth even that.
A dead man who had failed. A dead man who had failed in every conceivable way. He had not earned even a second look.
Then Anthony stepped forward — appearing at Wang's side at some point no one had quite registered — as the Origin Furnace roared to life behind him.
Like something being chewed and consumed, it erased every last trace of the White Piece's existence.
What remained was cast into the Furnace's roaring Soul Flame — and from that moment on, stripped of everything, the White Piece was rendered down into a single, pure crystal shard. Anthony glanced at it briefly, then dropped it into the Stygian Vessel to be set aside for later use.
That was the end reserved for this failure.
Wang casually let the sword fall from his grip, then turned to glance at Anthony, giving a small nod. "Thank you."
"You've earned it. You've been at this a long time — it was only right that you got to settle this one personally, wasn't it?" Anthony shrugged and said evenly. "Consider it your due reward."
"What do we do next?"
Wang directed the question at Anthony — and then he saw Anthony break into a wide, delighted grin.
"What's next?"
He laughed, bright and easy. "Next — it's time for me to collect my payment."
Before long, Carmen returned to her original world. Chongyue, with some visible reluctance, withdrew from his earlier state of power.
But almost immediately, he was swept back up into the excitement buzzing through everyone around him.
Because the greatest enemy had finally been dealt with.
Everyone was charged with energy — so much so that they were practically itching to throw a party on the spot, to seize the moment and celebrate at last.
After so long without being able to see each other, they could finally sweep away that stifling, pent-up gloom. The mountain pressing down on all their hearts had finally, finally disappeared.
What remained now was only a bright, open future.
Though that future still lay one final step away. And so everyone held themselves back, keeping a lid on that emotion that was so desperate to burst out.
Waiting for the last wanderer to come home.
Jie.
Everyone was waiting for her to return.
Anthony included.
Or rather — Anthony was currently in the middle of figuring out how to pull Jie back.
He had called it collecting his payment, but the payment was already right there.
That massive Year Body, which Anthony had been craving ever since he'd managed to get it into containment — he'd been eyeing it for a long time.
So over the next stretch of time, he sent everyone ahead to wait at the old temple, while he himself got to work on the preliminary steps.
At a minimum, he needed to sort out the conditions required to resurrect Jie and the others.
Once the White Piece had been erased, Jie's soul was naturally and fully liberated. But there was still one more thing that had to be ensured: Nian had to be able to rest in permanent slumber.
The Year Body had to sleep. Permanently. Otherwise none of this could truly be called finished.
Fortunately, Anthony already had a solution for that as well.
He went directly to Carmen and borrowed some engineering schematics, then drew fully on the Artificer's breathtaking ingenuity to construct an energy extraction device.
Then he simply attached it directly to the Year Body.
You need energy to wake up, don't you?
Well — every last drop of it is getting squeezed out of you now. If that doesn't finish you off, then we'll just keep squeezing until it does. Every bit of it converts into points.
After hooking it into the Stygian Vessel's power system, Anthony watched the points balance on his ledger climbing at a dizzying rate, and felt genuinely moved enough to shed a tear.
Outstanding contribution, Year Body. Employee of the Year, no question.
Once the connection was established, Anthony folded the whole setup into the Cerebral Vessel Division of the Stygian Vessel's operational system. Through Muzan and Adam Smasher's maintenance work and routine daily energy extraction, converted into enkephalins, it was generating an additional income of nearly thirty thousand points every single day.
Anthony was genuinely no longer short on points.
You could say that while materials still occasionally left him stretched thin, points were no longer a resource he had to agonize over.
His very first order of business was a thoroughly satisfying spending spree: he went through every single Soul of Spirit ability costing one or two thousand points and activated the whole lot of them, one by one. Only then did he get back to the real work.
Although all the energy the Year Body might generate toward waking itself should be getting funneled straight into generating power, there was still the nagging possibility that something might slip through.
So Anthony deployed his breathtaking ingenuity once again.
The consciousness currently suppressing Nian and keeping her from waking was, in truth, a dream woven by Ling Zao.
What Anthony did was simple: he siphoned off just a trickle of the Year Body's wake-directed energy and fed it into the dream, letting the dream sustain itself on autopilot.
On top of that, it was continuously powering the external Artificer's Cage, keeping the Year Body locked in containment.
Three layers of failsafe. All energy sourced entirely from Nian herself. Even Muzan, watching from next door, would probably start feeling his own workload wasn't nearly saturated enough by comparison.
One could only say that a certain capitalist dog had always been thoroughly, impressively inhumane in all the ways that counted.
With all of that sorted, Anthony had finally completed the recovery of his payment and the processing of the Year Body.
Now it was time to take care of the last remaining requirement for Jie's resurrection.
He had Carmen source a Conceptual Incineration Furnace from Wenjin, then gave it a modest enhancement using Artificer technology and Stygian King divine power. Anthony figured it only needed to work — so he left it roughly as-is and moved on.
Then he hurried back to the old temple at a near-sprint, checking the faith supply feeding into the temple network the whole way there.
Once everything had been resolved in one fell swoop, he stood at the entrance to the old temple, opened the chat group, and spent a moment scrolling.
[Lord of the Ivory Throne: @Grand Flame Wordsmith — alright, everything's just about ready]
[Lord of the Ivory Throne: How's the faith supply coming?]
[Grand Flame Wordsmith: Just about there. Should be enough.]
[City Ghost of the Triple-A Metropolis: My resentment is OFF THE CHARTS. Everyone else gets to leave and I'm still being kept on overtime by a certain dog.]
[Lord of the Ivory Throne: Why are you so hard to listen to. Can't I at least name you MVP for this run?]
[Founder of the Golden Spirit: Regardless of all else — first, let us congratulate Miss Jie.]
[Let Night City Burn: Just finished watching Adam Smasher's meltdown. Congrats, Jie-jie!]
[Warrior of the Xin-Shi Era, Frieren: Congratulations! Though every time I see a moment like this, I do find myself looking forward to my own turn.]
[Lord of the Ivory Throne: No need to rush — it'll happen for everyone, eventually.]
With that last message sent, Anthony closed the chat group, drew in a slow, deep breath — and finally pushed the door open and stepped inside the old temple.
The first thing he saw was a sea of faces, all of them already looking toward him.
And in all those eyes — nothing but anticipation.
"So?" Chongyue spoke first. Anthony tilted his head back and answered without a moment's hesitation:
"Everything is ready."
The Conceptual Incineration Furnace was brought out. Soul Flame ignited. The spectral form of the Origin Furnace descended to envelop it.
At that moment, Wang — who had been in the rear courtyard keeping an eye on the dragon bubble — suddenly stilled.
He felt it then: the departure of the soul within the dragon bubble.
But there was no dread in him. If anything, it was like a dawning realization — like something finally clicking — and he rose to his feet, left the room, and pushed the door open.
What Wang saw when he stepped outside left him momentarily unsteady.
"Jie?"
He asked it softly — and it was Anthony who answered him:
"Patience, Second Brother."
He said, "Look outside for now."
Anthony said: look outside.
Because outside, something world-shaking was truly happening.
Inside a temple, a young man who looked like a scholar accepted two sticks of incense with slightly trembling hands, stepped up before the statue, and offered them at the altar.
Then he drew a deep breath, bowed with all his strength, and began murmuring urgently:
"Blessed deity, please watch over me — please let me pass the imperial examinations today, please let me pass…"
He was wound tight with nerves. For a scholar like him, passing this examination was the chance that could change the entire trajectory of his life.
Having traveled all the way from the Great Yan City to Bai Zhao to sit the examinations, he had been wound to an absolute breaking point. Even though his teachers had praised his abilities time and again, the anxiety refused to leave him.
He had come to this temple because he had heard from many people that prayers made here were remarkably responsive — and so he had come, hoping for some peace of mind.
Deep down he knew it might mean nothing. But he wanted to try. He wanted to find some calm.
And then, all at once, the scholar froze — as though he'd glimpsed some subtle change in the statue before him.
Just now — had the statue's eyes blinked?
The thought flashed through his mind in confusion. He lifted his head to look at the statue more carefully — and went completely still.
Because what he saw in that moment would stay with him for the rest of his life.
Upon the statue, a luminous apparition materialized — flickering with tiny points of golden light — and with one hand, reached down and gently tapped the scholar on the head.
Then said: "Do your best."
In that instant, the scholar stood frozen in stunned disbelief, staring up at the spirit — and found that the spirit was the exact likeness of the statue.
It had actually manifested?!
He watched the apparition, still rooted to the spot, as it drifted toward the window and floated outward — then walked along the earth, as if melting back into the streets and alleys of Bai Zhao.
Moving in one direction. Toward something.
As if at the end of that direction, something was waiting for this apparition.
And for reasons he couldn't quite explain, the scholar found that the anxious chaos that had been tearing through his chest had, in this moment, mostly ebbed away.
He suddenly had a feeling — a quiet, inexplicable certainty. That he didn't need to be so frightened.
If he had the ability, then he would pass. Simple as that.
With a burst of bright laughter that rang up toward the sky, the scholar strode out of the temple and set off down the road toward the examination halls.
And scenes like this one were unfolding at that very moment in temples throughout all of Great Yan.
In every temple that Wang had traveled to establish in those earlier days — atop each and every one of Jie's statues, tiny points of golden light were appearing.
And then, as the worshippers gasped and cried out and pressed their palms together in reverence, the apparitions departed from the statues.
As if they had come alive — gathering together all the faith that had been collected across this span of time and flowing toward that old temple.
Coming at last into the roaring blaze of the furnace.
This was the ritual that preceded resurrection.
That which is reborn from fire and from the faith of all people.
Just as many hands make light work — so too would Jie be reborn amid the gathered devotion of those who believed.
And so, across all of Bai Zhao, this miraculous sight unfolded simultaneously.
As for who was the first to be alerted by this spectacle — that hardly needed saying.
Or rather — when this moment arrived, someone had already taken notice.
Inside the Sisuitai, Chun rubbed her hand — sore from processing official documents — and rose to her feet with some weariness.
Ever since that Little Thirteen of the Nian family had shown up, the workload at the Sisuitai had grown heavier with every passing day, and her blood pressure had climbed right along with it.
Truly, she had no idea when days like these would ever come to an end.
With a sigh, Chun idly pushed open the window, intending to take a moment to breathe during a rare break — and then stopped dead.
There in her field of vision, impossible to miss even at a glance: along the roads of Bai Zhao, a luminous apparition was walking.
She moved at a leisurely, unhurried pace, as though everything was new and wondrous to her — gazing at every sight along Bai Zhao's streets, at every vendor, with wide, curious eyes.
Looking at this world with joy and delight, as though everything filled her with a kind of elated wonder.
Like someone for whom every single thing in existence was fresh and astonishing — and so she savored this world she was about to be born into, suffused with happiness.
That feeling of sheer, electric excitement — Chun knew she would never forget it for as long as she lived.
She stared at that familiar figure, and for a long moment she simply stood there, dazed — her gaze following that presence until it disappeared from the edge of her sight.
She remained at the window. Not moving. Not even registering anything around her.
Until one of her subordinates came rushing in and called out to her:
"Just now — just now, what was outside—!"
"Ah. I saw."
Chun finally snapped back — and then, very softly, she murmured to herself as a single tear slid unbidden from the corner of her eye.
Even the staff member who had just walked in went still, seemingly unable to comprehend why their superior would be wearing such an expression at this moment.
It was immeasurably complex — relief tangled with worry, tension wrapped around fear — until, in the end, every last bit of it transformed into something like release.
I saw her.
That wasn't an illusion, was it?
"Jie…"
She breathed the name in a faint murmur, and finally let her eyes close.
And the last apparition of Jie that Chun had glimpsed finally drifted quietly through the entrance of the old temple.
Then leapt into Anthony's furnace.
In that moment, every last fragment of Jie's soul that had been scattered across the outside world had completed the collection of faith, and rejoined as one within the whole.
And so the final Artificer raised the flame high — from within the blaze, the Conceptual Incineration Furnace gradually dissolved away — and then, guided by the currents of the chat group, it began to be refined into essence.
Together with the faith, it built itself into a complete and whole outline.
At that moment, every one of Nian's proxies who had been standing in silence around the room stepped forward at once, and each drew the small ritual blade they had been carrying — and cast them into the fire, one by one.
Anthony turned back in surprise — then looked at Jun with a deep, wordless gratitude. He drew in a long breath, and pushed the flame higher.
And from within the fire, a silhouette slowly, gradually took form — then stumbled free and landed, drawing in the very first breath of her new existence.
No one spoke. In this moment it was as though even the air had frozen solid — everyone so flooded with joy and disbelief that they had forgotten how to use words entirely.
Until Jie stood up.
And turned to face everyone with a smile.
"Ah — everyone, I'm back."
She said it with that radiant, brilliant smile of hers — and in the same moment spotted Wang stepping through the door, and waved at him with uncontained delight:
"Second Brother, look! I'm back!"
This time, Yu came rushing forward once more — and this time, he crashed right into Jie. No longer was there any failure to hold on.
Jie caught him, steady and sure. And amid the burst of cheering all around them, Yu laughed — yet at the corners of his eyes, there still lingered a faint glimmer of tears.
Finally, all the proxies together raised their voices as one:
"Welcome back!"
And amid the laughter and joy, Jie reached out and pulled everyone together.
"Everyone," she called out brightly, "let's have another gathering!"
Because this time — there would not be a single person still present only as a soul.
____
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