Fu Hua agreed to Xianyu's plan.
No one else objected.
Because everyone knew this was the only option left.
The image on the screen began to accelerate.
Time surged forward. Those years, those months, those endless days and nights flashed before everyone's eyes like scenes in a lantern reel.
Light and shadow flowed, and the gears of fate turned soundlessly.
In the first year of sealing the ship, the Yuanqiao Xianzhou was completely cut off from the outside world.
The Jade Gate that had once connected them to the galaxy slowly shut under Fu Hua's personal orders.
When the last thread of outside light disappeared into the narrowing crack of the gate, the entire Yuanqiao fell into a silence unlike any it had ever known.
No one spoke.
No one cried.
No one even sighed.
Everyone simply stood there, looking at that gate, looking at the only passage that had once connected them to the galaxy, watching it close little by little.
Children huddled in their parents' arms. They did not fully understand what this meant, but from the silence of the adults, they sensed a weight that words could not express.
The elderly closed their eyes, their lips moving faintly as if reciting some ancient prayer.
At last, the gate shut completely.
Boom—!
The muffled sound of it sealing was like a hammer striking every heart.
Yuanqiao became an island.
A lonely island drifting through the galaxy, cut off from the rest of the world.
The scene shifted.
The fiftieth year of sealing the ship.
Inside the Alchemy Commission, the lights blazed bright.
A group of white-robed physicians sat around a long table piled high with prescriptions, data sheets, and experimental records.
Exhaustion was written across every face. Their eye sockets were hollow, their cheekbones sharp, the result of long nights without sleep and relentless overwork.
But no one stopped.
Because they were racing against time.
Racing against Nihility.
Racing against Yuanqiao's fate.
No one complained.
No one doubted.
They only lowered their heads and continued working.
The hundredth year of sealing the ship.
All those who had been older back then, aside from Fu Hua, had already succumbed to mara and were ultimately handed over to the Ten-Lords Commission.
The three hundred and seventieth year of sealing the ship.
The faces in the room had changed generation after generation.
Yet the brightly lit laboratory within the Alchemy Commission remained the same.
The old physicians of that first era were gone. The young physicians had become the new elders, and newer young people had taken their places.
But the result remained unchanged.
"Still no progress." A middle-aged physician set down the test tube in his hand, his voice full of helplessness.
"We've tried ten thousand formulations, but—"
"Wait."
A young female physician suddenly spoke.
Her eyes were locked on the data sheet in her hand, and her fingers trembled slightly.
"Look at this."
Everyone crowded around at once.
She spread the sheet across the table and pointed to one line of numbers.
"This is the data from the latest neonatal examination."
She drew in a deep breath and looked around at everyone present.
"The level of Nihility infection in newborns… is thirty percent lower than in the previous generation."
The laboratory went utterly still.
"Thirty percent…" the middle-aged physician murmured, his voice shaking.
Everyone stared at that line of data as if looking at something impossible.
"If this trend continues…"
"One day, Nihility will disappear completely," the young woman said, finishing the thought, her voice carrying a kind of hope none of them had felt in a very long time.
"We don't need to find a way to suppress Nihility."
"If enough generations pass, if Nihility is diluted through inheritance again and again until it vanishes…"
"We only need to… wait."
The picture shifted again.
The five hundred and ninetieth year of sealing the ship.
In front of the General's Hall of Yuanqiao Xianzhou.
A lone figure stood atop the high platform, overlooking the city below.
Fu Hua.
Five hundred and ninety years had passed. She was now nearing the great age of nine hundred.
The lives of Xianzhou natives were long, but nine hundred years was still enough to make most of them enter the twilight of their lives.
And yet her appearance had scarcely changed.
Still, everyone could see that she had changed.
Her eyes were deeper than they had been five hundred and ninety years ago.
And the aura of Nihility still clung to her, like a stain embedded in the bone.
Five hundred and ninety years.
For ordinary people, such a number would have been absurdly vast. Generations born, generations aged, generations turned to dust.
But for the long-lived folk of the Xianzhou, five hundred and ninety years ought to have been merely a somewhat longer journey, a stretch of life one could still remember clearly.
Yet for those trapped aboard Yuanqiao, those five hundred and ninety years had been longer than every age that had come before.
Because they had been waiting.
Waiting for Nihility to thin.
Waiting for the plague to fade.
Waiting for the day, whenever it might come, when the gates could finally open again.
Fu Hua stood before the General's Hall for a very long time.
"General."
A voice came from behind her.
Soft, calm, and carrying a steadiness that soothed the heart.
"Xianyu," Fu Hua said.
Footsteps approached, and soon a figure clad in green-blue came to stand beside her.
Xianyu.
Fu Hua's last remaining friend.
Five hundred and ninety years had passed, yet Xianyu's appearance too had barely changed.
"It's late," Fu Hua said. "Why aren't you resting?"
"I couldn't sleep," Xianyu answered calmly. "So I came out to walk."
"And your walk brought you to the General's Hall?"
"Without realizing it, I ended up here."
She turned her head, her blue-green eyes studying Fu Hua's profile.
"Aren't you the same? Standing out here in the wind so late."
Fu Hua did not answer.
After a long silence, Xianyu spoke again.
This time, she did not call her General.
She called her by name.
"Fu Hua."
"The people from back then… only the two of us are left now."
Fu Hua was quiet for a moment, then slowly nodded.
"Yes. Only the two of us are left."
How many people had there been on Yuanqiao five hundred and ninety years ago?
Fu Hua no longer remembered.
She only knew that when the ship had been sealed, Yuanqiao had been full of people. In the streets, in the squares, before the Jade Gate—crowds so dense they looked like an endless sea.
And now those faces were gone.
Xianzhou lives were long, but even those lives had limits. Worse still, the erosion of Nihility had accelerated everyone's aging and shortened every lifespan.
"That can't be helped," Fu Hua said at last.
"Yuanqiao now has only the two of us left as Emanator-level combatants."
It was simply the truth.
Yuanqiao was not without strong people, but compared to Fu Hua and Xianyu, their strength was hardly worth mentioning.
Arbiter-General Fu Hua.
Dragon Sovereign Xianyu.
These two were Yuanqiao's final pillars—and the last hope of the Xianzhou Alliance.
"Yes. Only the two of us are left." Xianyu repeated Fu Hua's words, the corners of her lips lifting slightly.
"So, there's something I need to tell you."
Fu Hua's heart trembled.
"What is it?"
"My time is almost up as well."
At the moment Xianyu said her end was near, the image seemed to freeze, almost as if it had returned to the earlier moments of Herta's narration.
But this time, the voice that rose was not Herta's.
A gaunt figure appeared within the General's Hall.
It was Fu Hua herself, the same Fu Hua who had just been speaking quietly with Xianyu.
Now it was her voice, in the form of a monologue, that echoed through the scene.
"I had long been prepared for the fact that Xianyu's time was running out."
"The lives of the Vidyadhara have always had limits. Molting and rebirth are the fate written into their kind. The fact that Xianyu was able to stay beside me until now had already exceeded my expectations."
"But… I still underestimated Nihility."
…
Three days later.
Yuanqiao Xianzhou, the Hall of Molting Rebirth.
This ancient structure, located within the Vidyadhara quarter, was said to have existed since the era of the Six Dragon migration.
At the center of the great hall lay a vast pool.
Its waters were crystal clear, tinged with a faint turquoise glow. The surface was perfectly still, reflecting the patterns upon the ceiling, as if an entire world had been folded into that small pool.
This was the Molting Pool.
The sacred place of the Xianyu line, and where they shed themselves to be reborn.
At this moment, the area around the pool was crowded.
They were all Vidyadhara of Yuanqiao, Xianyu's own people.
And every gaze was fixed on the figure at the heart of the hall.
Xianyu stood at the edge of the Molting Pool, her green-blue hair loose behind her, her crystal dragon horns glowing faintly in the pearl-light.
Today, she was not dressed in her familiar green-blue gown. Instead, she wore a plain white robe—simple, solemn, ceremonial.
Fu Hua stood beside her, the expression on her face unusually complicated.
Xianyu turned around slowly and smiled.
"Ah Hua, don't make that face."
"For the Vidyadhara, molting is not death. It is rebirth. In a few years—or perhaps a few decades—I'll hatch again from the egg. By then…"
"By then, will you still remember me?" Fu Hua interrupted her.
Xianyu was silent for a moment.
"No," she answered honestly.
"After molting, all past memories are forgotten. I won't remember you. I won't remember anything."
"So what you're saying is farewell," Fu Hua said, her voice even softer than before.
Xianyu did not deny it.
She raised a hand and gently touched Fu Hua's cheek. Her fingertips were cool.
"Fu Hua, these five hundred and ninety years… you've suffered."
Fu Hua said nothing.
Xianyu continued.
"From the day we sealed the ship, you've been holding everything up."
"You've been holding back your own mara, holding the ship together, holding onto everyone's hope. You didn't dare fall, because the moment you fell, Yuanqiao would be finished."
"I'm sorry. I'm leaving too. I have to leave all of this to you alone."
"You don't need to apologize," Fu Hua said.
"For five hundred and ninety years, you stayed by my side. From the very first day we sealed the ship, you never once left."
"You do not need to apologize for leaving, Xianyu. You've already done more than enough."
At that, a faint smile touched Xianyu's lips, and there was even a trace of teasing in her tone.
"Fu Hua, since when did you become this sentimental?"
"Five hundred and ninety years ago, you were the kind of person who could order the ship sealed without even blinking."
"And now, five hundred and ninety years later, you've learned how to be reluctant to let go?"
Fu Hua did not answer.
Xianyu took a deep breath and continued.
"After I go, Yuanqiao will only have you left as an Emanator-level combatant."
"You have to endure."
"Endure until the day Nihility disappears."
"Endure until the day the ship can open again."
"Endure until the day the Xianzhou Alliance rises once more."
"Can you do that?"
Fu Hua looked into those eyes, at that familiar face, at those translucent dragon horns.
Then she nodded.
"I can."
"That's enough."
Xianyu turned and faced the Molting Pool.
Fu Hua watched her last friend.
Then Xianyu stepped forward.
The water covered her ankles.
Her knees.
Her waist.
The white robe spread out in the water like a blossoming white lotus.
She stood in the center of the pool, the water reaching just to her chest. Her green-blue hair floated over the surface, gleaming among the turquoise light.
She closed her eyes.
Ripples spread across the pool.
Beginning at Xianyu's feet, rings of blue-green radiance expanded outward, bathing the entire pool in dreamlike light.
Her body began to change.
Her crystal dragon horns emitted a dazzling brilliance. Layer after layer of horn-shell peeled away, revealing newer, even more luminous horn beneath.
But this was not growth.
It was shedding.
The end of one life.
The beginning of another.
Her skin began to glow faintly blue-green—the sign every Vidyadhara recognized before molting.
By all accounts, in half an hour or so, Xianyu should have returned to the form of an egg.
That was how it should have been.
Crash!
The pool surged violently.
Not with the blue-green light of normal molting.
But with a darkness so deep it seemed bottomless.
Xianyu's body froze.
The blue-green light upon her skin shattered, replaced by streaks of black that spread across her body like veins.
"Xianyu!" Fu Hua's voice shot upward in alarm.
She took a step forward—and found she could not move.
No one was restraining her.
It was her own body.
That body, eroded by Nihility for five hundred and ninety years, was issuing the strongest warning it ever had.
Do not approach.
This was not Vidyadhara molting.
This was the descent of Nihility.
At the center of the Molting Pool, Xianyu opened her eyes.
The blue-green pupils that had once been hers had become a depthless abyss.
Only then did they understand.
They had never truly resisted Nihility at all.
The image vanished.
Everything dissolved into darkness.
And Fu Hua's voice sounded once more in monologue.
"I once thought that though this plague of Nihility was terrifying, if Yuanqiao endured long enough, we would eventually make it through."
"But today, Xianyu's molting made me realize a horrifying truth."
"We never escaped Nihility."
"Nihility has already taken root in Yuanqiao."
"We never had any hope to begin with."
The screen went dark.
Inside the Divination Commission, the generals' expressions were heavy after hearing the Red Kite General's narration.
Of them all, Jing Yuan felt it most keenly.
Because after the Imbibitor Lunae disaster, he too had once lived through such a period.
Suddenly, something occurred to him, and he turned to look at Mobius standing nearby.
That Lady Xianyu called Mobius… was most likely this child's former self.
And then Jing Yuan remembered something Mobius had said to him before.
She had said that Yuanqiao seemed to be guarding something on behalf of the whole galaxy, but that her master had refused to tell her what it was.
A bold guess began to form in his mind.
…
The image shifted once more.
Herta's figure reappeared on the screen.
She sat in a wide chair, a brush in her right hand as she wrote something down.
"Nihility never truly disappeared. It merely hid itself—and very well."
"Kallen Kaslana… she really was a terrifying person."
"The Red Kite General thought she had driven the witch away. She thought Yuanqiao needed only to weather the plague, and one day light would return."
"But Nihility never vanished."
"Fortunately, Yuanqiao's Dragon Sovereign—the woman known in that era as Lady Xianyu, Miss Mobius—though by some principle I do not yet understand, exposed that cruel truth through her own molting and rebirth."
"Only then did it become clear that everyone aboard Yuanqiao had already been completely marked by Nihility."
"Especially the Red Kite General herself."
"For reasons still unknown, the Witch of Nihility had used some method to turn the Red Kite General into something akin to herself, driving her into absolute despair."
"At that point, Yuanqiao no longer held even the slightest hope."
"Sooner or later, Nihility would erupt there."
"And even if the Red Kite General chose to kill herself, she would only become a blood-wraith under the Witch of Nihility's control."
"So she needed to find something—someone—capable of killing her, and killing the Nihility inside her."
The scene reversed again.
A small figure appeared on the screen.
It was the reincarnated self of Lady Xianyu Mobius—the new Dragon Sovereign who would only come to the world after Enigmata rewrote history.
Mobius.
"But if that was the case, the Red Kite General could no longer hold out until Nihility faded, could no longer endure until the day Yuanqiao reopened."
"Because Yuanqiao… no longer had any hope or future at all."
Join here to read ahead.
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