That exceedingly indistinct voice, its direction impossible to place, echoed slowly through the soundless darkness.
Lin Mu did not answer at once.
Instead, he fell silent.
Had it been an ordinary Gu Master, suddenly trapped in such a bizarre and inexplicable situation and faced with this interrogation from nowhere, they would likely have long since lost their composure.
Yet Lin Mu's thoughts at this moment grew only calmer.
Those scenes belonging to the Black Bone King passed through his mind once more.
From the spirited vigor of his youth, to slaughtering his way forward, to ascending the peak of Rank 5.
Then to white hair in his twilight years, his lifespan nearing its end.
And that final sigh, full of regret and unwillingness—
"In the end… I still never saw it…"
"The path…"
Lin Mu's gaze shifted slightly.
By this point, he had already vaguely understood.
The Black Bone King was not asking him how to leave this darkness at all.
Indeed, this void without direction or end was itself nothing more than an opening.
What he truly wished to ask of those who came after was another path.
The path of cultivation.
Or rather—
why a person walks at all, in this one life.
A question like this, posed to an ordinary Gu Master, might truly have driven them into a dead end.
Because what the vast majority of Gu Masters sought all their lives was nothing more than power, status, wealth, lifespan.
But what if all of those things would ultimately vanish into smoke with death?
Then what meaning was there in continuing to walk?
But Lin Mu was different.
He had seen too many answers.
Though those paths did not belong to him, Fang Yuan, Bai Ning Bing, and even those figures standing at the very summit of the Gu world had long since answered similar questions with their own lives.
Now, he was merely taking out one of those answers.
Thinking of this, the last trace of hesitation in Lin Mu's heart gradually dissolved.
He lifted his head.
Though all before his eyes was still utter darkness, his voice came out unusually clear.
"Because stopping is death too."
The darkness was silent.
Lin Mu paused, then continued:
"Since death comes either way, why not keep going forward?"
"Walk, and see along the way."
"Even if I die on the road in the end…"
"At least this life will have been splendid enough."
This was Bai Ning Bing's answer.
That madwoman who could cast aside even life and death in the pursuit of splendor had walked exactly this path.
Not seeking immortality.
Not fearing death.
Only seeking a life splendid enough.
His words fell.
In the darkness, there was no response for a long while.
That will hidden in the depths of the void seemed to have truly fallen into contemplation for the first time.
Time trickled by.
A full half a cup of tea passed.
Only then did that aged voice sound again.
"Splendor…"
Only two words, yet spoken exceedingly slowly.
As though, to it, this was an answer it had never truly considered.
Another moment passed.
"For the sake of splendor…"
"One can keep walking on?"
Hearing this question in return, Lin Mu only grew more certain in his heart.
He had answered in the right direction.
At the very least, this answer had indeed touched upon what the Black Bone King wanted to ask.
But clearly, it was not enough.
Sure enough.
After a brief silence, that aged voice sounded again.
And this time, it clearly carried several parts of emotion it could not suppress.
"But what if all the splendor withers away?"
"What if everything you did in this life, all that splendor you pursued, is known to no one, remembered by no one!"
The voice grew heavier and heavier.
"Those slaughters, that glory, that struggle…"
"No one saw them!"
"A hundred years later, you are no more than a handful of yellow earth all the same!"
"This so-called splendor will likewise return to nothingness along with your death!"
"Then such splendor…"
"What meaning does it have?!"
The last sentence detonated through the boundless darkness.
Lin Mu stood where he was.
Listening to this near-unhinged interrogation, the look in his eyes grew clearer bit by bit.
He understood now.
How was this still merely a question put to him?
It was plainly a question the Black Bone King was asking of himself.
A lifetime of struggle.
A lifetime of slaughter.
Treading upon the bones of countless people, step by step, all the way to peak Rank 5.
Yet in the end, he had still failed to cross the gulf between immortal and mortal.
The moment his lifespan ran dry, no matter how great the prestige he had once held, no matter how many feared him or looked up to him, all of it would dissipate bit by bit along with his death.
And so he was unwilling.
He could not accept that everything he had chased all his life would, in the end, truly amount to nothing but "after death, all is empty."
It was precisely for this reason that, before dying, he had left behind that near-absurd wish—
If one who came after truly became a Gu Immortal, they were to awaken that last remnant sliver of his will.
To let him take one look as well.
One look at the scenery he had never once seen, though he spent his entire life trying.
In the end, what he wanted was to leave behind a "spectator."
A witness who could prove that he had once come, had once walked this path.
Having seen through this layer, Lin Mu suddenly smiled.
Very faintly.
Yet exceptionally clear in this dead-silent darkness.
For an old demon trapped and dying at peak Rank 5, unable to let go even at the end, this question might truly have been a knot that could never be untied.
But in later generations, someone had long since given another kind of answer.
Lin Mu slowly spoke.
"If so-called splendor exists to be seen by others."
"If so-called meaning requires the remembrance of others to be granted…"
He paused.
"Then is the path you walk still your own at all?"
The darkness abruptly fell quiet.
Lin Mu continued:
"So what if no one watches?"
"So what if no one remembers?"
"If splendor must be acknowledged by others to count as splendor, then such splendor has already fallen to the lower grade."
His voice grew clearer and clearer.
"Even if there is no one to watch."
"I can still dance alone."
"What harm is there in having no audience?"
"Splendor itself—"
"is the path I will walk."
The last sentence fell.
The entire darkness went utterly silent.
This time, it was not the brief pause from before.
It was a long, almost congealed dead stillness.
Lin Mu waited quietly.
He did not press.
Nor did he speak again.
He did not know how much time passed.
In the deepest reaches of the darkness, that aged voice finally came once more.
Only, compared to its earlier intensity, the voice now was so faint that barely a murmur remained.
"No one to watch…"
"Dance alone…"
It repeated those words again and again.
As though realizing for the first time that a person's life might not require anyone else to grant it meaning at all.
Lin Mu said nothing.
He understood perfectly well.
He had merely laid a path already walked by those who came after before this old demon from centuries ago.
The Black Bone King had once stood very high.
Peak Rank 5 was already enough to look down upon the overwhelming majority of mortals.
But Lin Mu had seen mountains higher than him.
And had seen people purer than him as well.
Just as that murmuring faded away—
the change finally came.
In the depths of the boundless darkness, a single exceedingly faint point of white light quietly lit up.
Lin Mu's gaze focused slightly.
Earlier, he had walked through this darkness for who knew how long, run for who knew how long, changed direction who knew how many times.
There had been nothing.
Yet now, he had stopped.
He was not searching.
He was not running.
And that point of light had appeared on its own.
Lin Mu did not approach at once.
He stood in place observing for a moment, and only after confirming there was no other movement around him did he slowly step forward, walking toward that point of white light.
One step.
Two steps.
As the distance closed, the white light grew brighter and brighter.
The darkness, once so viscous it seemed able to devour everything, began to retreat to either side bit by bit.
What appeared first was not an image, but a sound.
A clamor exceedingly distant, and yet incomparably familiar.
Lin Mu's steps abruptly slowed.
That was not the roar of beasts, nor the thunder of Gu Masters in battle.
It was the laughter and chatter of young people, the sound of vehicles driving past in the distance.
And somewhere even farther away, someone seemed to be shouting something through a loudspeaker.
These sounds…
Lin Mu's pupils contracted slightly.
It had been too long.
So long that he had almost forgotten.
That he had once lived in a world like this.
And at that moment—
Smack!
A hand suddenly reached out from behind and clapped down heavily on his shoulder.
"What are you spacing out for?"
"Hurry up and keep up!"
A hearty young man's voice sounded by his ear, without the slightest warning.
Lin Mu's entire body went rigid in an instant.
The next moment.
He whipped his head around.
Blinding sunlight poured down onto his face.
The darkness was gone.
The cold underground stone chamber had vanished without a trace.
In its place were wide roads, roadside trees thick with leaves, and the somewhat scorching sunlight of midsummer.
Several young figures with backpacks slung over their shoulders were running ahead, talking and laughing.
One of the boys ran a few steps, then turned his head back and waved vigorously at him.
"Hurry up!"
Lin Mu stood where he was.
Motionless.
His gaze fixed on those few faces, so familiar they had nearly blurred, and his throat bobbed slowly.
Those people…
He knew them.
That was before he crossed over.
On Earth—
his classmates.