Chapter 39
It was not like sensing temperature, pressure, or vibration.
Rather, it was like a mother who feels her child's cry from across the room, like a lover who senses their partner's longing despite being separated by oceans, mountains, and time, like something that had waited for so long and finally found what it had been searching for.
"At last," whispered the Cancer plague in a language that could not be translated by human words, in a frequency that could only be heard by the boundless universe, "there exists an individual who has birthed hatred beyond the limits of the cosmos."
A hatred that could not be measured, could not be restrained, could not be extinguished by anything, for it was not born from disappointment or sorrow or ordinary injustice—but from a wound that never healed, from memories that never faded, from the love of a mother who was taken in the most vile, most brutal, most inhuman way ever committed by beings who called themselves human.
And for the first time since the Cancer plague existed—since it was born from nameless darkness, since it spread, killed, and made the entire universe tremble—it felt joy.
Not joy like a human finding treasure or winning a battle, but joy like fire finding wood, like a river finding the sea, like darkness finding a night that never ends.
Joy, because it had found the perfect vessel—a vessel that would never stop hating, a vessel that would never stop burning, a vessel that would not stop until the entire human civilization that had allowed its mother to die in such disgrace vanished from the face of the universe, without remainder, without mercy, without forgiveness.
Slowly, like the tide receding after a storm subsides, the sensations flooding Ling Xu's consciousness began to diminish.
The roaring in his chest was no longer as intense, the grayish-green mist enveloping his body began to thin, and the aura of terror that had frozen Huan Zheng moments ago now remained only as faint pulses in the corners of the room, like echoes of a battle long finished.
Ling Xu, who a second ago had been screaming in his mind about tearing flesh apart and grinding the insides of his mother's assaulters, suddenly fell silent.
Not because he was finished, not because he was satisfied, but because his consciousness detected something he had never expected to appear in such a way.
Something that made his unseen mouth gape wide in genuine astonishment.
"This… this is the Heavenly Longitude?" he whispered inwardly, his once furious voice now soft, almost inaudible, like a child seeing a shooting star for the first time and unable to believe it was real.
"9,999 traces… all of them… impossible…"
Because what he found was not one, or two, or even a hundred traces that he had to chase painstakingly—but all of them, all 9,999 root traces along with the foundation of the Celestial Meridian that should have been hidden behind the Three Outer Star and One Core Star.
They revealed themselves before him all at once, simultaneously, like stars that chose to no longer hide behind clouds and instead flooded the night sky with their countless light.
"It wasn't me who found them," Ling Xu murmured inwardly, and for the first time in this exhausting meditation, he felt something strange in his chest.
Not relief, not pride, but bewilderment mixed with disbelief.
Because he knew—he knew with certainty—that he had done nothing to gather those 9,999 traces, not a single one.
"They… they revealed themselves. They chose to be found. All at once. Without me having to crawl through the dark, narrow gaps of the Star triangles."
He recalled his 49th attempt, when his anger exploded and his vow escaped uncontrollably.
When the Cancer plague awakened and enveloped his body, when an ultimatum spread across the boundless universe—and he realized that at that very moment, at the peak of his hatred, when he no longer cared whether he would live or die, succeed or fail, become a goddess or a monster or ashes scattered in the wind—something within him had changed.
Something that made the Heavenly Longitude no longer need to hide.
Because they knew the host they had been searching for had been found, that there was no longer any reason to remain concealed behind fractured star triangles.
That now was the time to emerge, to shine, to become part of his new self—one that would either burn the universe or save it, depending on how one chose to see it.
"These traces… they came to me. Not the other way around."
Some time later—perhaps minutes, perhaps hours, Ling Xu could not measure it because within meditation, time flowed differently, sometimes too fast, sometimes too slow, sometimes stopping entirely like a frozen river in winter—he felt something warm in his chest.
Not the cold, dark warmth of the Cancer Plague, but the warmth of light.
The warmth of stars born in the night sky, the warmth of 9,999 Celestial Meridians now residing within the axis of his cultivation, pulsing in rhythm with his heartbeat like a choir that never grew tired of singing about a new beginning, about an unwritten chapter, about a world that would either burn, be saved, or be left as it was—depending on the choice he would make when he opened his eyes.
And when he finally opened them—not with a sudden motion, but slowly, like someone awakening from a long dream filled with strange visions—he saw Huan Zheng sitting before him, only three steps away.
His eyes were no longer frozen, no longer filled with doubt, but warm and calm, like a lover who had waited for their beloved to finish an exam and never doubted they would pass.
"Congratulations, Liu Xin," Huan Zheng said, his voice as lazy as ever, yet beneath that laziness lay a pride he could not conceal—a pride that made Ling Xu smile even though he did not fully understand what had just happened to him.
"You are now officially a Heavenly Longitude cultivator—more precisely, First-Level Bright Sky."
When Ling Xu fully opened his eyes—still carrying traces of astonishment as the 9,999 roots and foundations within his chest pulsed with an oddly cheerful rhythm—Huan Zheng, still seated three steps before him, let out a long sigh.
Then, in that same lazy tone that made Ling Xu want to throw a stone at his head yet strangely made him feel safe—
"Oh, one more thing, Liu Xin. I forgot to mention."
Ling Xu blinked, his brows lifting, because "I forgot to mention" coming from Huan Zheng usually meant something important—something he deliberately withheld out of laziness to explain, something that would annoy Ling Xu to no end yet also amaze him, because this man always had a way of surprising him.
To be continued…