Chapter 56
"I don't want your existence to be detected, Zhao Wei," Ling Xu said at one point, in the middle of their seventy-first teleportation, his voice panting yet his eyes—or rather, his third eye—still burning with an unextinguishable resolve, "especially if it can be sensed by The Singer or The Silent One. You know what it means if they find out that you're still alive, that you've transformed again, that you—"
"I know, Liu Xin," Huan Zheng cut him off, and for the first time in this long journey, his voice was no longer lazy—it was heavy, deep, like a rumble restrained behind a mountain ready to erupt at any moment.
"I know better than anyone what will happen if they find me. But you must also understand, Liu Xin—"
He looked at Ling Xu with eyes that no longer hid anything—honest eyes, bare eyes, eyes that revealed that behind the lazy mask he had worn for years, there was a man who still regretted, who still lamented, who still cursed the depravity of humanity after they triumphed over the gods in the Harmony Conflict.
"The Singer and I—both of us—once lamented the depravity of humanity, Liu Xin. After they won, after the gods surrendered, they beheaded those very gods who had already given up, violated the goddesses in groups before beheading them as well. I saw everything, Liu Xin. I saw your mother—not directly, but I could feel it, from the way you harbor hatred, from the way you despise, from the way you can never truly sleep peacefully because the nightmares are always the same."
He exhaled—a breath that felt like releasing a burden he had carried alone for thousands of years—then added in a voice barely audible.
"So don't worry about the Singer, Liu Xin."
But circumstances are never kind to those who dare to go against the current.
In the ninety-second universe they entered—after teleporting endlessly for days, after Ling Xu absorbed talent and radiation from dozens of universes until his head felt like it would explode from the millions of pieces of information crowding his third eye—something horrifying happened.
He could barely absorb anything.
Not because the universe was empty, but because the talents and potential within it had been locked by a Dao authority far greater than anything he had ever encountered, like a gate that could not be opened no matter how many times he reforged the key.
"Zhao Wei," Ling Xu whispered, his voice hoarse from constant teleportation, "I can't—this universe won't—"
He did not finish his sentence, because in the distance, from every direction across the boundless horizon, shadows began to appear.
Not dozens, not hundreds, not thousands—but billions. Billions of cultivators whose aura made the surrounding air tremble like drums struck by the hands of giants, and among that immeasurable crowd, Ling Xu could feel a different pulse—deeper, older, more absolute.
Those standing at the very front were Supreme Dao Dew cultivators, beings who had reached the peak of this realm, beings almost regarded as the Absolute, beings who, as Huan Zheng once said, could be declared to exist and not exist at the same time.
"There is no escape, Liu Xin," Huan Zheng said, his voice calm—calm in a strange way, like the surface of a lake before a storm, a calm far more terrifying than anger or fear, because it was born from a decision already made, from a choice that could no longer be undone.
"They have surrounded us from every direction. Not just in this universe, but in all the universes connected to it. I can feel their traces all the way to the edges of the boundless multiverse."
He turned toward Ling Xu.
Not with his usual lazy gaze, nor with a serious, burdened look, but with the gaze of a man asking for permission—asking whether he could become who he once was, whether he could cast aside the mask he had worn for years, whether he could remind the world why he was called one of the three Wheels of Cultivation.
Ling Xu did not answer with words.
He simply nodded—a single nod that felt like releasing the chains that had bound Huan Zheng's wrists all this time, a nod that said:
"Whatever you are about to do, do it. I am here. I am not going anywhere."
And so, Huan Zheng released it.
Not half-heartedly, not with hesitation, but with his entire being—his cultivation foundation that had reached the Head Humanity, the peak of all peaks, the boundary of all boundaries that never truly end, began to radiate from his body like a sun born in the void of darkness.
The Qi radiation that erupted from him cared not for distance, cared not for how vast the boundless universe was—because everything was within reach, everything was touched, everything submitted.
That radiation did not care whether its target was layered nothingness, a void emptier than the concept of emptiness itself, a void beyond even the notion of nothingness—an emptiness that encompassed mathematical systems such as the foundation of Berkeley cardinal, a concept that even the Supreme Gods of the present dared not utter without trembling.
And Huan Zheng, instead of restraining the emission of his cultivation foundation—which alone could annihilate every cultivator below the Leg of Humanity realm in any universe—multiplied it.
Infinite to the power of Infinite, endlessly, without limit, without end, like numbers splitting themselves in the dark without ever reaching a point where they could stop and say:
"Enough."
And within the ocean of Qi radiation that flooded every universe without exception, without distance to hinder it, without walls of reality to contain it, Huan Zheng spoke.
His voice echoed everywhere—to every corner, every gap between space and time, every heart still beating across the boundless multiverse.
"Listen, all of you who surround me, who chase me, who seek to kill me because I dared to seize your universes without compensation," he said, his voice no longer lazy, no longer flat, but heavy, absolute—like a law that none could defy, "I am Huan Zheng. The Lazy One. Known as The Lazy One. A prince from a land called drowsiness, who spends his days as the son of a king of slumber. But within the drool that constantly drips—"
He smiled, a smile neither warm nor cold, but empty, like a void at the bottom of the ocean.
"... Lies a cultivation power whose smallest fraction, a subatomic part, can collapse the very foundation of each of you. Now, stand before me if you dare. Or run, if you still wish to live."
But before the echo of Huan Zheng's voice truly faded from the ears of the cultivators frozen in place—because they could feel that this man was not lying, that even a subatomic fraction of his cultivation foundation was enough to destroy everything they had built over thousands of years—Ling Xu stepped forward.
A single step that felt as if it shook reality itself, a step followed by his third eye opening wide, a step that made the bandages on his head flutter as though an endless wind surrounded him.
To be continued…