"Aren't you going to stop him?"
Acheron stood beside Wei Qing in the darkness, looking at him. Her voice was calm, but the meaning wasn't.
"With his current condition, if he goes in… he's almost certainly going to die."
By now, only the two of them remained here.
Not long after Fenghuo disappeared, Granholm had made his choice as well.
He intended to seize this moment and charge IX.
Wei Qing shook his head lightly.
"Stop him?" he echoed. "With what reason?"
Should he tell Granholm that life still held infinite possibilities?
Or that the Astral Express would still need him later?
Wei Qing exhaled, eyes fixed on the old Nameless's retreating back.
"Honestly, I think this ending isn't bad at all. This might be the destination he's wanted for a long time."
Acheron fell silent.
She understood what Wei Qing meant. She understood Granholm, too.
For Self-Annihilators like them, choosing the manner—and timing—of one's end was, in itself, a rare kind of freedom.
Still… watching someone simply abandon their life left Acheron unable to settle.
Because by all measures, Granholm could have lived another half year without much trouble.
While the two spoke, Granholm had already reached the boundary.
One step further and pure Nihility would begin gnawing at his body.
He stopped, turned around, and faced the direction where Wei Qing and Acheron stood.
Across a distance that could not be measured in any meaningful sense, the old Nameless wore a peaceful, relieved smile.
He didn't speak.
He only raised a hand and performed a solemn farewell gesture—one belonging to the Nameless.
Unfortunately, Wei Qing was new to this. He didn't really understand what the gesture meant, so he merely copied it as best he could.
Acheron didn't bother with ceremony. She simply nodded once.
After the salute, Granholm didn't hesitate.
He turned away decisively and took that final step.
He followed the pale-grey breach Fenghuo had carved and walked inside.
In an instant, dense Nihility swallowed his silhouette. The last candle-flame of Trailblaze inside him—so faint it was almost imaginary—flared one final time… and then went out.
Wei Qing could feel it clearly: Granholm's aura, along with his final thread of connection to the Path of Trailblaze, dimmed like embers in wind.
It wouldn't be long before Nihility consumed him completely.
And yet—
Wei Qing still didn't understand.
Sure, the old man had little time left. Wanting one last act of madness made sense.
But what, exactly, was he trying to do?
Fenghuo had come with a purpose: to bring Destruction to IX.
And he had, in a sense, succeeded. He left two pale scars on IX—marks that should not have existed.
If someone wanted to stamp Fenghuo's title into the history books now, they finally had the material.
So what about Granholm?
The domain of Nihility fell into a long silence.
IX hung high, unchanged, indifferent.
Time passed—if "time" still held meaning here.
Eventually, Acheron opened her eyes and looked at Wei Qing.
"We should leave."
In her view, whatever Granholm's intent had been, it had probably failed.
"Wait," Wei Qing said.
Acheron's expression didn't change—yet before she could respond, a distinct presence drifted toward them.
It came from IX.
"…What is that?" Acheron turned her gaze, puzzled.
At the center of that absolute, devouring void—within the Aeon's timeless body—a tiny spark was flickering stubbornly.
It wasn't Fenghuo's Destruction scar.
It wasn't Acheron's own cut.
It was something gentler.
Granholm—something had changed.
Acheron could feel it: the old Nameless's aura had not extinguished as expected.
Instead, in some strange way, it had begun to resonate with IX's Nihility.
Like a seed born of Trailblaze forcing roots into soil that was, by nature, barren.
"What… is he doing?" Acheron asked softly.
Rare confusion surfaced in her voice.
Wei Qing stared at that glimmer, and a near-unthinkable hypothesis rose in his mind.
"…He might be Trailblazing."
Acheron frowned.
"Trailblazing… inside IX?"
Wei Qing's gaze sharpened.
"Yeah. He's trying to make IX stop walking."
Acheron's eyes shifted, a subtle shock passing through them.
Make IX stop.
That was a terrifying statement.
Everyone knew IX's "behavior" was unconscious—more like a passive law than a will.
It had no intent, no initiative, no interest in action.
And yet it still moved.
Always.
No one could explain why. Instinct, a cosmic rule, some unknown mechanism—no one knew.
But people did know this:
IX's passage had devoured worlds.
Acheron's homeland had been one of them.
If IX continued to wander, continued to expand and swallow, then one day its existence might pose a threat to the universe itself.
Perhaps the "Nihility" among the so-called Four Ends would arrive that way.
"Make IX… stop," Acheron repeated, the words sounding foreign in her mouth.
Then she shook her head once, decisively.
"Impossible. Even unconscious, an Aeon's motion cannot be shaken by mortals."
"Maybe," Wei Qing said quietly.
He didn't argue. He simply watched.
The spark was changing.
It was spreading.
"Is he… constructing a Trailblaze route?" Wei Qing murmured, uncertain.
He was an Emanator of Trailblaze now, but he'd walked this Path for too short a time. Many technical concepts still felt unfamiliar.
Yet the basics—he understood those.
A route.
A track.
The most direct expression of Trailblaze: the rails the Astral Express rode upon, the line the Nameless carved into the unknown.
And Granholm was doing it inside IX's body—staking everything he had left to build a route that had never existed before.
A route meant to make the Aeon of Nihility halt.
Absurd.
Like trying to stop a tsunami with dew.
And yet Granholm was doing it.
The light began to sketch complex patterns, weaving an invisible net inside IX's "body."
A net meant to anchor IX.
"Using Trailblaze… to establish coordinates and direction inside Nihility…" Wei Qing whispered.
"He's trying to assign IX a new route. Not a wandering path of endless consumption, but a route of… stillness."
Acheron said nothing.
She could feel Granholm's presence burning away rapidly.
This kind of Trailblazing—performed by an old Nameless already at the end of his lifespan—was too heavy a burden.
His life.
His soul.
His everything.
All becoming the foundation stones for that route.
And even then…
It was still pitifully small.
"He won't last long," Acheron said, and there was a faint regret in her tone.
Wei Qing nodded. He could feel the limit approaching.
And then—
Just as that light began to flicker, on the verge of going out—
A deep hum surged.
A force far vaster than before erupted from within IX.
It was no longer Granholm's remaining strength.
It was something… older.
Something that felt like a sleeping ocean stirring.
A brilliant golden pillar punched through IX's body and speared across the domain of Nihility.
Within the beam, countless phantom rail-lines crisscrossed and extended into infinity.
Wei Qing's pupils contracted.
"That's… Trailblaze?"
Inside the golden pillar, Granholm's figure reformed—
No longer the frail, exhausted elder.
His posture was straight as a pine. Wrinkles smoothed. His grey hair brightened into a lustrous silver-white.
He might have succeeded.
At the final instant—by offering everything he had to Trailblaze in the purest act of its creed—he didn't vanish.
He shattered his own limits and received the deepest response the Path could grant.
Another Emanator of Trailblaze had been born.
Trailblaze was a masterless Path, much like Nihility.
To draw more authority from it, one did not necessarily require a living Aeon's "generosity."
And as Trailblaze surged—
IX, the Aeon who had wandered by unconscious necessity for eons, truly stopped.
It still existed. Its essence did not change.
But the endless roaming—the slow, unstoppable drift—halted.
Acheron stared, frozen.
She had walked Nihility for too long, understood IX's nature too intimately.
What she was seeing overturned her understanding of reality.
Granholm turned to face Wei Qing and Acheron.
His expression was serene, satisfied—an almost gentle relief.
His gaze settled on Wei Qing.
"Yi Qing… the Astral Express… I'm leaving it to you."
As he spoke, his body began to age again, as though everything that had just happened was only a flash of afterglow.
"An Emanator's station does not extend a life," Granholm explained with a faint smile. "It only gave me the strength to complete this."
His aging accelerated—faster than before.
Maintaining this route that bound IX consumed not only power, but the root of his existence.
"Two minutes…" Granholm lifted his eyes to the black sun, now briefly pinned by golden rails. His gaze was complicated.
"Shorter than I expected."
Two minutes.
That was the limit of his route.
And that was only possible because IX, in its "indifference," did not resist in any active way.
From an academic perspective, it was still a miracle.
A historical event.
But in practical terms…
Two minutes was nothing.
Granholm looked regretful.
Yet he had reached his limit.
Even breaking through at the last moment, even becoming an Emanator—he was still mortal.
"Do you see?" he whispered, voice thinning. "This is… Trailblaze."
Then he closed his eyes.
And this time—he did not open them again.
The former Navigator of the Astral Express reached the end of his life and died a true, natural death.
The last of his Path's aura dissolved into the route itself.
Like countless Nameless pioneers before him, he engraved his will and life into the Path.
The two minutes stretched—just a little—by a final gift.
Half a minute more.
But it was still short.
The golden pillar began to shake violently. The phantom rail-lines restraining IX screeched under unbearable strain and started snapping one by one.
Two minutes and thirty seconds passed in a blink.
With the source gone, the route collapsed.
IX hung there, as if nothing had happened.
Its Nihility reclaimed the domain and resumed its slow, inexorable wandering.
Yet Wei Qing and Acheron both knew—
Something had changed.
Granholm had used his life to carve a wound of Trailblaze into ultimate Nihility.
He had proven a path that should have been impossible.
A long silence followed.
Acheron finally looked away.
"We should return."
Wei Qing didn't move.
He turned his head toward the direction where the Astral Express waited at the edge of the domain.
"Acheron," he said, voice steady, "I'll need you to escort the Express for a while."
Acheron's gaze sharpened.
"…You want to try too?"
Wei Qing nodded.
"If I leave now, I'll regret it."
"So when you get back, please help Pom-Pom steer the Express out of this region and find a safe starfield to enter hibernation."
Acheron watched him for several seconds, as if searching his eyes for hidden intent.
Then she spoke, flat and exact.
"You saw Granholm's end."
"As a Trailblaze Emanator, your end won't be better than his."
"All you'll do is deepen your Nihility."
Wei Qing smiled faintly.
"I know."
Granholm had burned his remaining life to make IX stop for two and a half minutes.
Even if Wei Qing was also a Trailblaze Emanator, achieving more against ultimate Nihility was still slim hope.
The likelier outcome was simply accelerating his self-annihilation.
"But I still want to try," he said. "We're already here."
"And I don't walk the same road he did."
Acheron was quiet for a moment.
"…Understood."
She didn't try to persuade him further.
"I'll take the Astral Express away."
"Thank you," Wei Qing said sincerely.
Acheron gave a soft "Mm," then turned and left without another word.
She glanced back once.
Her eyes were still calm, but something faint—something almost human—flickered in them.
Then she was gone.
Now only Wei Qing remained.
Alone in the domain of IX.
Alone before that black sun that could swallow meaning itself.
"Alright," Wei Qing exhaled. "Now it's just us."
He raised his right hand and clenched it as if gripping the limb of an invisible bow.
A sharp silver gleam spilled from his palm—Hunt, made manifest.
Then a second force condensed into the arrow itself—
Destruction.
Among the Paths of the universe, in sheer offense, none surpassed Destruction and Hunt.
And Wei Qing's attainment in both was far from shallow.
He intended to follow Fenghuo's example.
To punch a hole into IX.
Because as a fellow Lord Ravager, he wasn't about to crawl through Fenghuo's "back door."
"Come on," he murmured.
He released the string.
A piercing whistle sliced the void.
The golden arrow shot forward, a streak that tore through Nihility itself, striking IX with perfect accuracy.
There was no explosion.
No sound.
But in Wei Qing's perception, the collision of Paths was deafening.
A golden cavity—far more brilliant and far larger than Fenghuo's pale scars—opened on the surface of the black sun.
"…It worked," Wei Qing whispered, eyes hardening.
He didn't hesitate.
The moment the arrow pierced, his body turned into a stream of light and plunged into the opening he had carved—straight into IX.
Inside was nothing like sensing it from outside.
From without, it was absolute emptiness.
From within, it was something words could barely touch.
"More thorough than I imagined…" Wei Qing steadied his mind, resisting the pervasive erosion.
No wonder Fenghuo came out looking like he'd been scraped raw.
The Nihility in here wasn't merely passive—it carried a faint, horrifying aggression.
Wei Qing spread his perception and searched for Granholm's final trace.
He found it quickly.
Granholm's body floated there, motionless.
He was truly dead.
Eyes closed, seated as if in meditation, his face peaceful like sleep.
No life. No soul ripple. Only stillness.
Wei Qing reached out and touched Granholm's shoulder.
In that instant, the old Nameless's body broke into golden motes, scattering gently—then merging into the remaining Trailblaze residue nearby.
"Old man," Wei Qing murmured, "I hope you're satisfied."
In the future Wei Qing knew, Granholm died peacefully aboard the Express.
This was different.
But it was still… his choice.
Wei Qing lifted his head, staring deeper into the inside of Nihility.
"IX…"
"Now it's just the two of us."
His purpose differed from Fenghuo's and Granholm's.
He was here to take.
"Xipe… Harmony…" Wei Qing silently invoked the Aeon's name, recalling the creed of harmony and symphony.
If private desire is part of the whole… then can ultimate Nihility be written into my score?
The thought was bold. Insane.
Wei Qing closed his eyes.
He stopped trying to resist with Destruction.
He loosened his grip on the other Paths and sank his focus into that newest, gentle force within him—
Harmony.
At first, Harmony felt fundamentally incompatible here.
IX was the ultimate silence, the ultimate severing of connection—Harmony's worst possible environment.
But Wei Qing didn't stop.
He wasn't without leverage.
His own connection to Nihility—shallow though it was—became the bridge.
A thin bridge, almost laughable.
Compared to Acheron, Fenghuo, even Granholm, Wei Qing's steps on Nihility were barely steps at all.
But he still opened himself.
He opened his Nihility.
Slowly.
Painfully.
His sense of self began to blur.
Memory, insight, emotion—flattening, fading, thinning toward nothing.
It was more terrifying than any attack.
Not pain, but erasure.
Then, after what could only be called a stretch of time—
Harmony found a balance point inside the void.
Through that delicate alignment, an immeasurable essence of Nihility began flowing into Wei Qing…
filtered, diluted, stabilized through Harmony.
The instant it entered him, Wei Qing felt weak.
The other Paths inside him—so loud, so active—nearly fractured under the weight of IX's Nihility.
This wasn't ordinary Nihility.
This was the Aeon itself.
No matter how far Wei Qing had walked other Paths, he could never match a true god.
But then Harmony flared to its limit.
Wei Qing opened his eyes.
He had done it.
Using Harmony as the medium, he had truly drawn a portion of Nihility's authority from IX.
And at that moment—by some mechanism he couldn't yet explain—
IX stopped walking again.
Wei Qing's thoughts snapped into clarity.
Then the next step was obvious.
Keep absorbing.
A cold system prompt chimed in his mind—beginning to assign something new again.
But Wei Qing had no attention to spare.
Every shred of focus was devoted to maintaining Harmony's fragile equilibrium and guiding the flood of Nihility.
If he really completed this—
Then on the road of Nihility…
even Fenghuo and Acheron might never catch up.
As for the consequences of absorbing this much Nihility?
Wei Qing's mouth curved.
"…Fine. I'll absorb first. We'll talk about consequences later."
Join here to read ahead.
In Star Rail, Ultra-Beast Armored — Have I Caught "Equilibrium"? l (Chapter 80)
Uma Musume, But I Only Have Five Years Left to Live (Chapter 178)
Zenless Zone Zero: I'm a Doctor, Not a Bangboo (Chapter 165)
Ben Tennyson Wants to Join the Justice League ( 126 )
TYPE-MOON: Redemption Beginning with the Holy Grail War (Chapter110)
Yu-Gi-Oh! — Transmigrated into the White Dragon Girl (Chapter220)
"Is this chat group even serious?" (Chapter125)
I, Lord Ravager, Utterly Loyal! (Chapter250)
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Crossover Anime Multiverse: The Demon Hunter of an Unnatural World 77
From Junkman to Wasteland 66
Weekly Refresh of Overpowered 31
I'm Grinding Proficiency Like 46
From Kiana, Lord Ravager, Onwa 220
Honkai: Is This Still the Prev 42
Elf: My Starter Pokémon Is Inc 65
Warhammer: My Primarch Is Remi 185
From Demon Slayer to Grand Ass Volume2/20
The Way the Umamusume Look at 68
Uma Musume, but My Cheat Power 248
Naruto: Weaving the Future, Be 65
Zenless Zone Zero, but Kamen R 76
Multiverse Crossover: The Perf 66
My Cyberpsycho Girlfriend 65
Uma Musume: The Dark Trainer 230
Uma Musume: A Calamity Born fr 154
I, a Reincarnation-Loop Player Volume4/40
The Violent Girl Group Is Beat 125
Uma Musume: The Horse Girl Who 67
Uma Musume: From Beginner 145
Becoming a Horse Girl, I Will 85
Uma Musume: I Want All 120
I Can Copy Unique Skills 115
Summoning an Evil God, but the 75
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My Harem Is Indescribable 100
Jujutsu Kaisen: Heroic Spirit 105
"I'm just a Valkyrie passing through." 67
Uma Musume: Today Is Another Romantic Battlefield 105
Still playing traditional Honk 80
The Most Filial Son Under Heav 85
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Reincarnated as a Demon, Skill 78
Hell-Difficulty Dungeon? 55
Transmigrated as Sukuna 80
Checking In in Demon Slayer 85
The Reincarnating Trainer of Tracen Academy 100
I Refuse to Become a Heroic 85
My Best Friend Into a Slime? 80
A Saiyan Stands Above Marvel 90
What Do You Mean by Using a Lab Mod to Be the Hero? 75
Tanya Starts from Re:Zero 80
Why did they assign me to Uma 75
MYGO Beauties 70
DanMachi: Emiya the Giant Hero 70
The Gacha Merchant Who Started 80
Honkai's Otherworld? Wait—Who Are You People?! 80
Emiya Shirou, Determined to Slay Every Curse and Evil Spirit 57
The Uma Musume Who Became 55
I'm Definitely Not the King of 60
After Maxing Out Every Class 45
Naruto: I'm Konoha's Local Men 35
Honkai: World Modulation Mode 34
I, the Elden Sword Saint 27
Dio Brando Is Challenging FGO 24
No One Knows Pokémon Better 18
I, Sakazuki, Won't Go Down Tha 20
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