Want to read ahead? Join my Patreon for just $7 to get early access to all upcoming chapters!
• Patreon.com/NegativeTranslation
── ⋆⋅❖⋅⋆ ──
Chapter 318: Bidding Farewell to Parents
Fifteen hundred kilometers south of the Holy City.
Yurun City.
In stark contrast to the Holy City's cold steel piercing the clouds and its dazzling neon lights, this auxiliary city was designed purely for comfortable living. It had been modeled after the gentle, water-town aesthetic of Alex's past life. Black-tiled roofs, white walls, and babbling brooks painted the landscape, while ambient chakra temperature arrays kept it in a state of eternal spring.
Inside a sprawling, deeply secluded courtyard estate, the atmosphere was heavy.
The scent of medicinal bitters mingled with burning agarwood in the spacious bedroom.
A crowd surrounded the bed—middle-aged men and women with greying temples, young men with red, puffy eyes, and small children kneeling on the footstools, weeping softly. At a glance, there were at least forty or fifty family members present.
The void rippled. Two silhouettes stepped soundlessly onto the mahogany floor.
Alex wore a sharp black suit. Konan was draped in a plain, elegant dress. Dozens of people hurried back and forth around them; someone even carried a basin of hot water right through their bodies, yet no one sensed the descent of the gods.
Konan's gaze bypassed the dense layers of descendants, landing directly on the bed.
Through the heavy bed curtains, two withered, emaciated elders lay side-by-side. At over a hundred years old, their mortal bodies had reached their absolute limit. Time had carved deep ravines into their faces, their skin resembling dried tree bark. Even their breathing was as thin as gossamer.
Sitting on the innermost side of the bed was a woman.
To the family members in the room, she was Great Aunt "Konan"—a white-haired old woman who had never married, pouring her entire life's blood into caring for her parents and supporting her younger siblings.
But in the eyes of Alex and Konan, she was merely a clone forged of blue hair and chakra. Created when the parents' child was two and a half years old, her true appearance hadn't aged a day in a century.
An ultimate genjutsu had deceived time itself, perfectly completing this grand illusion.
In the clone's memory, her father had bought her her first stick of candied hawthorn. Her mother's pricked fingers had sewn her winter coat. As the Empire was established and life grew prosperous, the family welcomed three more brothers and two more sisters.
The courtyard grew larger. The dining table for the New Year's feast grew longer and longer. Every holiday, a hall full of children and grandchildren would kowtow and offer greetings, while the parents sat in their chairs, grinning from ear to ear.
It was real, noisy, and bustling with life. The absolute zenith of a mortal's happiness.
A few years ago, the clone had held her parents' withered hands and asked softly, "If there were a medicine that could keep you free of illness, let you live forever, or even return your youth... would you want it?"
Konan still remembered her father's answer.
The old man had chuckled, waving his hand and revealing his missing teeth. "Ah, little girl... we only get one lifetime, just like the grass only gets one autumn. Watching you all start families, watching my great-grandchildren run around the yard... I've made enough on this life. Live too long, and even the heavens find you annoying. Your mother and I don't pray for a long life. We only pray that when it's time to go, the whole family is right here in front of us. That's what you call fulfillment."
Her mother had chimed in, gently patting the clone's hand. "My only worry is that you never found a partner. But you've always been independent. As long as you're happy, I'm happy."
Content and at peace. A natural end to a full life.
Konan hadn't forced the issue. Ordinary people had ordinary destinies. Forcibly elevating them to a dimension they didn't belong in—forcing them to face endless centuries and the rise and fall of civilizations—might not be a blessing. It might just be torture.
Suddenly, something shifted on the bed.
The father, who had been in a deep coma, suddenly opened his eyes. A trace of clarity pierced through his clouded pupils, and a soft rattling sound came from his throat.
"Dad!" / "Grandpa!"
The crowd by the bed instantly descended into chaos, cries of sorrow echoing through the room.
The father struggled to turn his head, looking at his wife beside him. Sensing him, the mother slowly opened her eyes as well.
Two hands, looking like dead wood, slowly inched across the silk blanket until they finally clasped together.
An incredibly satisfied smile broke across the father's face. His gaze swept over the room full of children and grandchildren, finally resting on the face of the clone by the bedside.
"Don't cry... little Nan..."
His voice was as weak as a mosquito, yet it rang crystal clear in the true Konan's ears.
As the words fell, the clasped hands abruptly went slack.
Two incredibly soft, drawn-out sighs rippled through the room. The two elders on the bed, wearing peaceful smiles, stopped breathing in unison.
"Dad!" / "Grandpa!"
The suppressed sobs instantly shattered into agonizing, heart-rending wails. The sound of their grief fractured the quiet night, making even the wind howling outside the window sound mournful.
Konan stood perfectly still, her eyelashes lowered.
A century of mortal ties had just come to a close. There was no hysterical breakdown, only a faint, drifting melancholy—like autumn leaves settling on a pond—slowly filling her chest.
She stepped through the weeping crowd and approached the bed. Raising her right hand, she pressed her palm down over the bodies.
Without alerting a single soul, two immaculate, glowing orbs of soul-light drifted out of the elders' husks. There was no resentment. No fear. There was only the warmth and peace nurtured by a century of familial love.
Konan carefully stored her parents' souls away.
"Sleep," she murmured softly. "If the day ever comes when you wish to wake, I will always be here."
She then turned her gaze to the clone beside the bed. The clone was still holding the old man's hand. Konan stepped forward and pressed her index finger against the clone's forehead.
Soundlessly, the blue-haired maiden dissolved into a blizzard of pure white paper confetti. The paper burned in midair, turning to ash, before finally condensing into a wisp of pure chakra that seamlessly merged back into Konan's body.
With the clone's disappearance, an invisible ripple of universal law washed over the entire estate like a stone dropped in a pond.
Tampering with memories was easier than breathing for Konan now.
In the minds of the grief-stricken descendants, the memories of "Great Aunt Konan" quietly shifted. In their new reality, the unwed, tireless Great Aunt who had cared for the family her whole life had passed away peacefully on a quiet afternoon a few days prior.
Konan stood there for a while, looking quietly at her parents on the bed.
A hundred years of joy, sorrow, sweetness, and pain settled into the bottom of her heart. That missing void of a father and mother's love had been completely, perfectly filled.
A warm hand rested on her shoulder.
Alex stood beside her, offering no superfluous words of comfort. For beings who had transcended the dimensions of life and death, parting was not an eternal farewell. It was merely taking a beautiful memory and filing it away into the archives.
"Is it finished?" Alex asked.
"Yes." Konan turned around, looking out the window at the deep starry sky. The melancholy in her eyes rapidly retreated, replaced once more by the cold, vast majesty unique to the Angel God.
"The mortal dream is over. Let's go, Alex."
Alex smiled slightly, grabbing her hand and intertwining their fingers.
The void tore open once more.
The weeping bedroom, the rustic courtyard, and that entire century of tender warmth were instantly left behind.
The two reappeared on the observation deck of the Imperial Palace in the Holy City. The stellar winds were freezing, fluttering the hem of Konan's pale purple dress.
"How is Kameda's progress?" Konan asked, reigning in her emotions and cutting straight to the point.
"Going smoothly." Alex tapped the holographic star map before them. "The Pegasus Galaxy has been entirely secured. The old boy is a proper zealot now. The faith of the Angel God has taken deep root in that sector."
On the star map, the once-dim edge of the spiral arm was now radiating dense, golden pinpricks of light. That was the pure power of faith generated by tens of billions of aliens bowing in prayer before her statues.
"But it's still not enough." Alex dragged his finger across the map, zooming out.
The massive Milky Way shrank into an insignificant speck of light against the macroscopic scale of the entire universe. And beyond that speck of light lay the endless dark forest.
"This universe is far more complex than the Otsutsuki clan ever understood," Alex said, the birth and death of billions of stars reflecting in his dark eyes. "As we expand, those ancient civilizations lurking in the depths of time and karma are undoubtedly watching us, too."
Konan walked up to the star map. She reached out and gently tapped a flashing red sector of unknown space.
"Then we continue to flatten them," she said, her voice perfectly calm, yet bleeding with the iron and arrogance of a god. "Wherever the light cannot reach, we will cleave it open with a sword."
── ⋆⋅❖⋅⋆ ──
Support this fanfic with Power Stone!
For Advance Chapters, visit:
• Patreon.com/NegativeTranslations