Chapter 83
To his surprise, she had managed to keep Wei Yi engaged in battle for over thirty minutes. "You know," Lin Yi said suddenly, "the repeated twenty-time champion of the Twin Dragon Tournament—the grand competition held every five years throughout the nation—didn't even last sixty seconds against Wei Yi."
Zaimetsu blinked. "Sixty seconds? I thought it was 1 minute and 20 seconds."
Lin Yi shook his head.
" 60 seconds, I was there. He was trapped within Wei Yi's illusion and defeated before he could even understand what had happened.Wei Yi's runs on a far faster ratio, using aisling in a heartbeat, and he casts it as often as his eyes can bear. That also sets up the strain on his eyes."
"Why don't you explain things normally for once?" Zaimetsu groaned. "Just say he trapped him in an illusion."
Lin Yi chuckled. "In formal terms, it is known as Aisling."
Zaimetsu shook his head.
"Regardless," he said, looking toward the battlefield, "Wei Yi truly was the greatest prodigy the Twin Dragon Nation had ever seen."
"Yes," Lin Yi replied softly. "And then he rebelled." The playful expression vanished from Lin Yi's face. "He became one of the most wanted criminals in all of Meyveth."
Meanwhile, Wei Zhi had already closed the distance, her polearm cutting a vicious arc toward Wei Yi with the kind of precision that came from years of cultivation and cold intent. She was fast. Dangerously fast. Anyone else would have simply died at that moment.
But Wei Yi moved differently.
He didn't retreat. He didn't raise a defense. He pivoted — a single fluid rotation that took him just outside the edge of her strike, close enough that the displaced air stirred his hair. And in that same motion, before she could recover her form, his hands found the shaft of her polearm.
She felt the grip vanish from her hands before she fully understood what had happened.
He wrenched it away in one clean motion and sent it spinning into the darkness between the trees, clattering somewhere far beyond reach. The sound of it disappearing into the forest felt almost insulting.
Wei Zhi's eyes snapped to him.
He was already holding the crystal sphere.
She didn't know when he had retrieved it. She didn't know how he had kept it safe through all of it — the fight, the struggle, the chaos she had deliberately engineered to overwhelm him. But there it was, resting in his palm, faintly luminous, completely undamaged. As though it had never been in any danger at all.
For a single breath, neither of them moved.
Then Wei Zhi came at him anyway.
Without the polearm, without a plan, with nothing but fury and the refusal to accept what was already written in the air between them. Her black robes flared as she drove herself forward, hands reaching, body angled to crash into him and bring him down through sheer force if nothing else.
But Wei Yi had already read her. In the fraction of a breath between her charge and contact, he pivoted again — not retreating, but turning into her momentum, his foot anchoring against the root-tangled ground. His hand shot out, the crystal sphere cupped in his palm, and when she crashed into him expecting to overwhelm him bodily, she met it instead.
The sphere connected with her stomach like a stone fist.
The impact folded her. The breath left her in a sharp, broken sound — not a scream, something worse, something involuntary — and her body buckled around his hand. For a suspended moment they were pressed almost close enough to be mistaken for an embrace, his arm extended between them, her own momentum having driven her harder onto it than any strike of his could have managed.
Wei Yi didn't move. Didn't gloat. Just held the position as Wei Zhi's legs gave.
Her black robes pooled around her as she crumpled, and he stepped back, letting her fall, the sphere still faintly glowing in his grip — undamaged, unhurried, as though the whole thing had been a formality he'd simply been waiting to complete.
He looked down at her for a moment. Then looked away.
It was the looking away, that was most devastating. Not cruelty. Not triumph. Just the quiet indifference of someone who had never doubted the outcome. Wei Yi's voice came out cold as ice,"I am not a Monster, but a Masterpiece."
Zaimetsu moved forward.
The polearm hit the ground between his feet before he'd taken a second step — sinking into the earth with a sound like a full stop. He hadn't seen it thrown. He looked down at it, then slowly up.
Wei Yi had his back to him.
"It's time for her answers, Lin Yi." Not a request. Not even addressed to Zaimetsu.
Lin Yi looked at the man on the ground, then at Wei Zhi, then gave a single nod. "Sure."
Zaimetsu's head snapped toward her. "What do you mean?"
"They need time to talk. She indulged him and he was satisfied." Lin Yi's voice was even. "I'm willing to give them that."
"Why?" Zaimetsu's jaw tightened. "The Marquise won't be glad. And I am pretty sure as well as you are, she would ask about the crimson night, the night wei clan was annihilated."
"I'll handle everything."
No one moved to argue further. Lin Yi had a way of closing doors when people spoke like that.
Wei Yi stepped away from Wei Zhi without looking at her. His hand moved to the clasp of his cloak. He pulled it off in one motion and let it fall — and when he turned to look at Lin Yi, something in him had already shifted. His eyes held the quiet of a man who had stopped pretending.
Then the tenebris came.
It didn't erupt. It breathed out of him — slow, deliberate, rising from his skin like heat off stone. Black and formless at first, then finding its shape. Chains. They uncoiled from the dark that poured off him, link by link, soundless and certain, spreading outward through the air, through the forest, curling across the ground, hanging from nothing and anchoring into everything.
And then the eyes opened.
Everywhere. In the dark between trees, in the shadows beneath the roots, in the spaces where light didn't reach — white, wide, unblinking eyes. Dozens. Then more. A shifting wallpaper of silent witnesses, all of them watching, none of them blinking.
The world narrowed to a cage.
Wei Zhi lay on the ground, facing the sky she could no longer see — only chains above her, crossing and recrossing, heavy and patient. Wei Yi stood at the edge of it, watching her.
"Your questions," he said.
A long moment. Then, "Why did you leave me?"
"Because I don't love you." No hesitation. No cruelty in the delivery — which made it worse. "I never wanted you to become like me. Powerful. Mighty. Strong enough to stand for yourself. To be this." He let the word carry the weight of everything around them. "This was never the gift I meant to give you."
Wei Zhi stared at the chains above her. "You know, I'll come for you again."
"Every single time," he said. Something almost like warmth in it. "Because the little angel can't keep herself away from the devil."
"You're the worst human I've ever seen." Her voice didn't break. "I hope you rot."
"Then make sure I do, Wei Zhi." He crouched slightly, looking at her properly for the first time. "Because if you don't, I'll keep doing exactly what I want — regardless of morals, regardless of ethics. And I doubt —" his eyes moved over her — "with these pathetic powers, you'll be able to do nothing about it."
Silence.
"There are five more years before you turn twelve. At twelve, I was already graduating as a Tian Zhi." He straightened. "We'll see what you become."
Wei Zhi tried to move. Nothing.
"Why can't I get up?"
"You've been struck by my Ombrielle," Wei Yi said simply. "You won't get up for the next thirty hours."
He turned away.
The eyes kept watching.
The chains remained.
They stretched endlessly across the crimson-tinted sky, swaying soundlessly as though the entire forest had been swallowed by Wei Yi's Tenebris. The countless pale eyes hidden among the shadows continued watching.
Wei Zhi lay where she had fallen, her chest rising and falling unevenly.
Thirty hours.
She couldn't move.
She couldn't even lift a finger.
Only her eyes remained free.
Wei Yi stood with his back turned toward her.
For a long moment, neither sibling spoke.
Then— "Why?"
Wei Zhi's voice was barely above a whisper.
Wei Yi stopped.
"You said you never loved me. You never wanted me, regretted having a sister."
Silence.
"You said you never wanted me?" Her voice trembled despite her efforts. "Then why did you teach me how to hold a polearm? Why did you carry me whenever I fell asleep? Why did you stay awake beside me whenever I had nightmares?"
Her green eyes glistened. The chains overhead stilled. Wei Yi remained motionless. Then he spoke. "People lie." Wei Zhi stared at him. "Sometimes," he continued quietly, "they lie to others." His fingers tightened at his side. "Sometimes they lie to themselves." Wei Zhi felt her heart clench. "Wei Yi—"
"You should stop asking questions, whose answers won't change anything."
His voice had regained its usual coldness.
"I left. I killed. I destroyed. Those facts won't change."
Wei Yi's gaze remained fixed on her. There wasn't a hint of regret within those emerald eyes. They were calm... frighteningly calm, as though every life he had taken was merely another page of a book he had already finished reading.
"I murdered thousands. I killed my own allies. I slaughtered the innocents of our clan. I massacred, not only ours but entire other clans. I wiped sects from existence. I betrayed them. I deceived them. "And many more crimes bear my name, Wei Zhi."
His expression remained unchanged.
"So don't expect me to tell you, I spared you for my sake...or yours."
A faint smile appeared beneath the cloak covering half his face.
"You're a girl. What could you even do, Wei Zhi?"
The crimson atmosphere surrounding them never dispersed. The hemisphere continued sealing them away from the outside world, isolating the siblings within its blood-red domain. Gigantic demonic eyes floated above and around them, slowly rotating through the darkness, silently observing every word they spoke. The chains stretched endlessly across the heavens, clinking softly despite there being no wind.
Wei Zhi remained silent for several breaths.
Her body was becoming heavier.
She could already feel Ombrielle slowly turning every muscle into stone.
Still...Her emerald eyes never left him.
"...Why did you do that, Wei Yi?"
Her voice echoed quietly beneath the chains.
"You destroyed everything...Despite being the Angel of Souls. You were one of the angels everyone admired. The most profound among them."
Wei Yi looked directly into her eyes. "I still am." His answer came without hesitation. "The Soul." Silence swallowed the crimson world once again. Wei Zhi stared at him before speaking. "...I struck you with my Aponia."
"Yes." Wei Yi slowly lifted his left arm. His fingers grasped the sleeve. With one pull—The cloth tore apart from his elbow down to his wrist. Fresh blood slowly flowed down his pale arm. A deep wound stretched across his forearm, crimson dripping steadily onto the frozen earth beneath him.
He looked at it only once.
"...Impressive."
"You channeled every strand of your Qi into the very tip of your polearm. Solely concentrating it...into a reverse blood ritual." He lowered his arm. "Your control has improved." Wei Zhi looked at the wound. "...Still not enough to kill you." Wei Yi didn't answer. "My next question." Her breathing became uneven. "Why did you imprison the entire Wei Clan inside Aisling?" Wei Yi frowned ever so slightly. "...Really?"
"That's your question? The Aisling wasn't a big thing.
Wei Zhi's pupils contracted.
A big thing...?
He imprisoned the entire Wei Clan inside Aisling...For barely 0.001 seconds...And he says it wasn't a big thing? Her voice turned colder. "What did you do to them?" Wei Yi answered without the slightest pause. "Nothing."
"I simply gave them.....what they deserved." He looked toward the crimson sky. "Five hundred years of solitude." Wei Zhi froze. Five hundred years...? Her breathing stopped. Five hundred years of solitude...Isn't that...the same amount of time I lived inside. Her eyes widened. The same time Mother imprisoned me…
End of 83