Chapter 135: Let Life Bear Witness 

The wind came sweeping in; the rain lashed down.

Ming Han’s robes fluttered like banners in a storm as he stood with his back to the sky, listening, it seemed, to the wailing of the mountains. His expression was solemn—nearly divine in its compassion, as if grieving for the fate of the world. “The waves rise, drowning all. Life perishes in fire and flood. O Heavens—since you made mortals so frail, why grant them minds that reach for wisdom, spirits that yearn for the divine? If only mankind lived like beasts, like grass and trees—unaware of joy, untouched by sorrow. How merciful that would be.”

Above him, the clouds pressed like iron. The sea roared in answer. The gray-black sky, ever aloof, let him ask—and did not answer.

“It was the Jiao Mother who slew the Da’a, who sealed the Heavenly Rift, and so became the progenitor of all spirits. Every god that walks the earth now is no more than a shred of Her flesh, Her bones. If I would question the heavens, I must break the laws that bind the world. Morality, human decency, conscience and shame—what are these but madmen’s babble?”

A coil of black mist rose around Ming Han, thick and writhing. He shouted into the storm:

“If all things that live must die—then to kill one man, or a thousand, is simply to walk the way of Heaven! Who dares call themselves divine? Not the Jiao Mother, not Ming Yao—not those who kneel to law and order! It is I and I alone!”

He spun, face now turned to the sky. Thunder roared like a god in anger. Every drop of rain fell like a dead man. Ming Han stepped forward, and the shadowy mist around him grew denser. The storm tore his outer robe out wide, and he walked across a mountain of corpses and a sea of blood. Wild and defiant, he declared, “I alone refuse to submit to fate!”

Flesh is mortal. To live is to die, and death is death. Since the dawn of chaos, all things are destined to be ephemeral and meaningless. The heavens are the most merciless of all. They watch us gather together and as our souls scatter again. What agony it is! To live and still need purpose. To live and still seek kindness. To live and still long for love—and loss.

If the ant lives beneath the foot of man, then man is no less a smear of blood beneath the palm of the sky.

The Dao, the Way, the Way!

Go and bow to Heaven’s taming leash. Kneel beneath the yoke of men. Tear out your fangs. Break your spine. Become at last a docile beast—meat in a soup, bones in the broth.

“Fellows,” Ming Han gathered the resentment of the living and the dead into his grasp, tightening his fingers as though wringing the breath from the world itself. “Martyr yourselves.”

Threads of puppet-string whirled through the air, sewing together ten thousand screams into a single burial shroud wide enough to veil the heavens and scour the earth. The sea surged as white bones jutted from the waves. Black and gray twisted through one another, folding into layers—like ash upon ash upon ash.

Two chains lashed from the void, streaking through the storm. One coiled around Ming Zhuo’s arm. The other bound Luo Xu’s. With a sharp, metallic hiss, the chains went taut—dragging them both toward the whirlpool’s mouth.

“Now,” Ming Zhuo sneered, voice brittle with irony, “this is what it means to live and die as one. In the end, this is what awaited me.”

“Five fingers, one hear. You’ve made me ache so much,” Luo Xu murmured. He lifted his free hand. In his palm lay the last half of a fire talisman—worn, bloodstained, barely clinging to form. “My blood has been flowing too long that my heart has begun to tremble.”

“You’ve endured so much,” Ming Zhuo said at last, extending the hand with the severed finger. He placed it gently into Luo Xu’s palm. “That thing’s a crumpled scrap—think it’ll still work?”

Luo Xu gave a look that said just watch. The talisman flared. Slowly, delicately, it began to burn. Its trembling flame licked at Ming Zhuo’s wound, the feeble warmth barely perceptible—but it reached them both. A tender balm, against a world already ending.

Ming Zhuo whispered, “I still have some strength left. I could call Ming Xi. Have her undo the vow that binds our souls.”

The rain came down in torrents as the Imperial Lord's silver hair spilled loosely over his shoulders, glinting like moonlight drowned in ink. He caught Ming Zhuo's hand, firm and unyielding, his gaze fierce with possessiveness. “To break the Soul Bond,” he said, voice low, “requires both to consent. That little strength you’ve got left—can you use it to force my head down?” His eyes burned. “I told Heaven to give you to me. So—will you or won’t you?”

Ming Zhuo studied him with something like curiosity, leaning in until half his body nearly touched Luo Xu’s—as though revisiting that first day, the day they met. He asked softly, “Is this a marriage proposal?”

Luo Xu said, “Now, with the Heavens and Earth as witness and life and death as our companions—do you want me?”

Ming Zhuo raised a brow. “You’ve lost the Silver Heaven’s Punishment Order. You’ve been stripped of your title as Imperial Lord. Tell me—what good are you to me now?”

“There’s no benfit,” Luo Xu said mournfully, almost gleefully. “I’m just your most devoted apothecary, your finest bedwarmer, and your most obedient white-haired little dog. Heaven’s punishment left me without soul or station, and even now it makes me beg for something I can’t have.”

Ming Zhuo hummed. “Ng... perhaps that’s not entirely true.”

Luo Xu said, “How is it not?”

“Now we’re both ruined—crippled in body, drained of spirit. Just a pair of shattered mortals, with nowhere left to run. If that’s not fate… what is?” Cursed script marks laced Ming Zhuo’s skin from throat to brow, and his amber eyes lifted to meet Luo Xu’s, barely a breath between them. “You know I’ve never cared for saving the world. The ones dying out there—I don’t grieve a single one.”

“Such a sharp tongue,” Luo Xu murmured, bending lower until their foreheads nearly touched. “Yet why does your heart still ache so much?”

“The world owes me nothing,” Ming Zhuo said haughtily. “And I owe it nothing too.”

“I already knew that,” Luo Xu said.

Ming Zhuo spoke, “Luo Xu, on this day, I bind my soul to yours—”

Luo Xu interrupted, smiling, “In this life, our souls are bound.”

Ming Zhuo laughed then—wild, radiant, utterly unrestrained. He raised his hand, still chained, and declared, “With the Heavens and Earth as witness, and life and death as our companion—so be it! He would ask the heavens for the sake of the world? Then we will show him—”

Luo Xu raised his own bound hand, finishing: “What it means to be a ruler. What it means to walk the Dao.”

They smiled at each other—fierce and brilliant, defiant in the face of storm and fate. Their bodies tensed. Then, with a shout, they both seized their chains and pulled.

“The Lord has spoken!” Ming Zhuo cried.

The chains groaned, metal screaming against power. At the other end, Ming Han was caught—dragged back by force not his own.

Luo Xu’s eyes blazed. He set fire to his own life-thread, burning away what little he had left to reforge the shattered Silver Order of Heaven’s Punishment. Against thunder and tempest, he rose. “The wrath of Heaven falls on me alone,” he roared. “If you would defy the sky—first ask the Tianhai Imperial Lord if he permits it!”

Pa!

Ming Zhuo crushed the crimson-gold spirit mouse in his palm, and in a blaze of golden fire, threw himself into karmic flame.

Then let it burn—burn through their bodies, their power, their souls. Burn the ocean. Burn the sky. Burn every creature, every god, every law of this world into a single inferno! Their voices rang as one, heaven-piercing: “Backtrack!

Honglong!

The ocean trembled—a thousand leagues of waves shuddering from their core. From beneath the earth, at the point where Ming Zhuo and Luo Xu stood locked in fate, a dragon of soil surged forth. It tore from the seabed, golden and silver veins crisscrossing its massive spine. Instantly it grew, and grew, and grew!

Ming Han, caught in the gale, turned back, his face twisted in fury. “Even now,” he bellowed, “you still dream of rebuilding the Heavenly Pillar? You fools—will you weep only when your coffins are sealed?”

Ming Zhuo raised his broken hand, lips curled in contempt, eyes lit with scorn. “Who wants to rebuild it?” he sneered. “This is only so you can see the highest pillar between a ruler and subject before you die.”

The earth-dragon surged on, splitting stone, shaking sky. It roared into the storm clouds, burst through the veil of thunder, and struck the slanting sky itself. And still it rose.

Beneath its shadow, the gatekeeper took a cautious step, then another—then lifted his gaze with wonder. He turned toward the rising pillar that held the sky aloft. “Shan Hu,” he whispered, “the Lords are invoking their divine power!”

Ming Han’s grand ritual—the final step in his ascension—was meant to sacrifice all life, to use the pain of ten thousand to pierce through Heaven’s laws. The more the world died, the stronger his spell. But now, the Heavenly Pillar had returned. Ming Zhuo and Luo Xu had borne the weight of sea and sky—and all that power he had gathered began to slip through his fingers—all in vain.

In the chaos of storm and fire, Ming Han roared with hatred: “Just one more step—!”

He spun around, staggering. Curse marks bloomed across his face—his own spell now devouring him from within. His puppet-strings snapped, one by one, scorched in karmic flame. Before the fire consumed him, he flung a sleeve into the air, snarling, desperate: “No—no! I cannot die! I haven’t unraveled the final law—!”

He was gone. The chains slackened. Luo Xu felt the world tilt. As his strength drained, something heavy fell against his chest—Ming Zhuo, breath faint, body cold.

“Imperial Lord,” came a whisper against his ear, lips soft and rain-wet. “I knew you’d never let me lose.”

Two hands pressed lightly against Luo Xu’s chest. Ming Zhuo’s face sank to his shoulder, cheek to bone, head too weary to lift again.

Luo Xu cradled him from behind, vision blurring as rain and fire streaked across the sky. His voice cracked, pleading. “Call for me..”

But Ming Zhuo lay still, curled against him like a sleeping cat, silent now—forever. The world outside burned. The rain did not cease.

Luo Xu held him tighter, buring his face into his shoulder. In a whisper that no one heard, he begged: “You owe the world nothing anymore. From now on—just stay with me…”

The wind came sweeping in; the rain lashed down.

The waves of the Heavenly Sea surged one final time and swallowed them both. From that moment on, the world knew neither the Yongze Tyrant nor the Tianhai Imperial Lord.

Those two lords who shared a life and death entwined, who vanished together, facing the greatest calamity of Heaven and Earth.

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