530 One Night Before Death

The war room had devolved into absolute chaos.

I sat at the head of the long table with one hand pressed against my temple, staring at the collection of idiots, geniuses, monsters, and family members screaming themselves hoarse over my decision. Spiritual pressure leaked into the chamber in waves as emotions flared. Half the defensive formations lining the walls had already activated on their own from the sheer amount of killing intent and agitation flooding the room.

My counsel.

Not an official one.

Not something recognized by the Holy Empire or the Council.

Just… the people closest to me.

The people who had survived hell beside me.

And right now, they were seconds away from killing each other.

“You are absolutely out of your damn mind!” Alice slammed both palms onto the table hard enough to crack it. Her crimson eyes glared at me with enough fury to melt steel. “Going alone into enemy territory after everything we know? Have you forgotten the last time you vanished for years into the False Earth?!”

“I survived, didn’t I?” I replied weakly.

“That is not the point!”

“It kinda sounds like the point.”

“DAVID!”

I immediately shut my mouth.

Across from her, Jue Bu lounged lazily in his chair with his boots resting atop the table, completely unconcerned despite the hostility filling the room. The undead lunatic scratched his jaw thoughtfully before shrugging.

“I say let him go alone,” he said. “The brat fights better when cornered anyway. Besides, if he dies, I can finally possess the body full-time. The entire package all for myself! Ah, that would be awesome.”

Several killing intents locked onto him instantly.

Jue Bu grinned wider.

“There it is. I missed you people.”

“It is not happening,” Hei Mao said flatly. “Master might have a soft spot for you, but not me.”

The Foolish King Jue Bu stood near the corner of the room with his arms folded inside his sleeves, calm as always despite the argument raging around him. Crows perched silently across the rafters above him, their glowing eyes watching the meeting like ominous judges. I meant that literally. Each crow was a familiar of a judge, joining this meeting as observers.

“He should not go alone,” Hei Mao continued. “But sending an army is also foolish. If the enemy prepared a trap, overwhelming force may simply feed them more souls.”

“Exactly!” Gu Jie pointed violently at him before turning back toward me. “See? Even Hei Mao agrees!”

“I said he should not go alone,” Hei Mao corrected. “Not that I agree with everyone’s panic.”

Alice’s eye twitched.

Ren Xun sighed deeply from the other side of the chamber, looking like a man on the verge of spiritual collapse. “Can everyone please stop escalating the situation? We are supposed to be discussing strategy.”

“Strategy?” Nongmin’s cold voice cut through the room. “The strategy should be locking Da Wei inside the palace until he regains his senses.”

I stared at him. “You too?”

“Yes, me too.”

“That hurts.”

“You deserve worse.”

Ouch.

Meanwhile, Da Ji looked seconds away from crying. My dear sister kept rubbing her forehead anxiously while muttering prayers under her breath. “Every time you people gather together, a catastrophe follows. Why is it always catastrophe? Can we not have one meeting that ends peacefully?”

“No,” several people answered simultaneously.

Sikao Biaoji slumped in defeat.

The room had basically divided itself into three camps.

The first group supported me going alone.

Mostly the battle maniacs.

Jue Bu was naturally one of them. A few resurrected Guardians also agreed, arguing that my presence alone was worth more than entire armies. According to them, sending additional forces would only slow me down and increase casualties. Ru Qiu was probably thinking the same, despite his silence.

The second group opposed the idea entirely.

Alice led that faction with terrifying intensity. Gu Jie supported her, though in a colder and more pragmatic manner. Da Ji also sided with them purely because he was tired of almost dying every now and then due to my decisions. In my defense, I didn’t die that much that recently, okay?

Then there was the third group.

The abstainers.

The “Da Wei is suicidal, but maybe we can redirect his stupidity elsewhere” faction.

Hei Mao belonged there, and so did Ren Xun and Nongmin.

They kept suggesting alternatives instead.

“Send Ezekiel first,” Ren Xun proposed carefully. “At the very least, it can test the enemy’s response.”

“That thing is very flashy,” Alice snapped. “It is not scouting. It is announcing war. It is not also helping that every time you use Ezekiel as your herald, Da Wei, you keep making it explode. Of course, there’s also a chance you might succeed this time in your persuasion, or whatever it is you do. But I bet you’d prefer having to talk with the Supreme Death in a more personal capacity, meaning you’d want to be there.”

Jue Bu cackled. “She has a point.”

Hei Mao tapped the table lightly. “Then send players.”

The room went silent for exactly two seconds.

Then everyone started yelling again.

“The players are not disposable!”

“They literally resurrect!”

“That is not the issue!”

“One of them tried seducing a demonic beast yesterday!”

“And it worked somehow!” someone shouted back.

I buried my face into my hands.

This was a complete disaster.

Spiritual messages flew everywhere. People shouted over each other. Alice and Jue Bu nearly started a fight after he called her an “overprotective grandma.” Da Ji threatened to freeze him into decorative furniture. Sikao Biaoji began drinking directly from a wine jar despite it still being morning. Zai Ai was clipping her nails. What were this two even doing here?

And through all of it, I sat there wondering how my life had become this ridiculous.

Eventually, I rose from my chair. The movement alone silenced the room. I looked around slowly at every face present. Worried faces. Angry faces. Frustrated faces. People terrified of losing me.

That realization struck harder than any enemy ever could.

“I haven’t decided yet,” I admitted quietly.

Several expressions shifted immediately.

Alice narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “You already packed your supply.”

By supply, she meant lots of entertainment trinkets to amuse myself if the journey happened to take too long. Damn it. She was sharp. I thought I was being slick, doing it. But apparently, not enough. Next time, I wouldn’t delegate it as a quest to a player.

“I was preparing.”

“You packed emergency rations too.”

“…Preparation is important.”

“You named the mission folder ‘Definitely Going Alone.’”

Traitor.

Even at this moment, paperwork was betraying me of a good time.

I slowly turned toward Ren Xun.

The Dragon King looked away without shame.

“I merely thought transparency was important,” he said calmly.

I stared at the ceiling for several long seconds before sighing heavily.

Yeah.

It was a mess.

“I will accompany him.”

The room turned toward him immediately.

Ru Qiu remained seated near the far end of the chamber, posture relaxed, one arm resting against the chair while shadows coiled lazily beneath his feet like living abysses. Unlike everyone else, he looked completely unbothered by the tension filling the war room. He was calm and detached, like he was discussing the weather instead of an expedition that could very realistically end with all of us getting erased from existence.

Alice frowned instantly. “No.”

Ru Qiu blinked once. “That was not a request.”

“I am aware,” Alice replied coldly. “And I am saying no.”

“You do not possess the authority.”

“And you do not possess survival instincts like David.”

“That has yet to become a proven issue.”

“Ru Qiu.”

“Alice.”

The temperature in the room dropped several degrees.

Before things escalated again, I quickly raised both hands. “Okay. Everybody relax before this room explodes.”

“It already exploded emotionally,” Jue Bu remarked helpfully.

“No one asked you.”

“Rude.”

Alice ignored him completely, her gaze remaining locked onto Ru Qiu. “If anyone goes with David, then I should be the one accompanying him.”

“No,” I said immediately.

Her head snapped toward me.

“No?” she repeated dangerously.

“No.”

“Explain.”

“I’d rather not die before leaving the palace.”

“That is not an explanation.”

Ru Qiu answered for me before I could dig my own grave further.

“You would become a burden.”

The entire room froze.

Alice stared at him in utter disbelief, and then spiritual pressure erupted from her body hard enough to crack the floor beneath her feet.

Ru Qiu remained perfectly calm.

“You wish to repeat that statement?” she asked softly.

“Yes,” he replied without hesitation. “You would become a burden.”

“Amazing,” Jue Bu whispered with visible admiration. “He truly fears nothing.”

Ru Qiu continued mercilessly.

“This is not a conventional battlefield. We are discussing a possible encounter with a Supreme Being whose authority likely revolves around Death itself. Even I cannot guarantee my own survival.” His eyes shifted toward me briefly. “Da Wei can only protect so much. If he must divide his attention during negotiations or combat, then whoever accompanies him must provide maximum value.”

His voice remained clinical.

“My Supremacy Trait specializes in destruction,” Ru Qiu continued. “His specializes in endurance. Durability. Preservation. Compatibility between our authorities is optimal.”

He paused briefly.

“We are the most efficient combination.”

Even Ru Qiu still wasn’t entirely sure what my Supremacy Trait actually was.

To be fair, neither was I.

Bearer sounded simple on paper. It wasn’t.

The authority granted me supernatural sympathy that demanded reciprocation from existence itself. It allowed intimate understanding. Connection. The ability to bear burdens both tangible and intangible. Wounds. Concepts. Emotions. Laws. Even death itself, to some extent.

And most importantly…

I was absurdly difficult to kill.

So yeah.

Durable was technically correct.

Which somehow felt insulting.

Jue Bu suddenly snorted from across the room. “Also, he’s someone you don’t mind seeing die repeatedly. That part is important too.”

“Excuse me?” Ru Qiu asked flatly.

“What?” Jue Bu shrugged lazily. “I’m saying you’re emotionally expendable.”

“You are aware I can still kill fragments of your soul remotely?”

“And yet you won’t.”

Ru Qiu stared at him for several long seconds before looking away in what was probably the closest thing he had to admitting defeat.

I sighed tiredly. “For the record, it would absolutely weigh on my heart if either of you died.”

Jue Bu scoffed. “Too bad. I can’t even come.”

That caught my attention immediately.

“What?”

The undead lunatic scratched the back of his neck awkwardly. “The loophole we abused to send me briefly into the Greater Universe apparently had consequences. Hollowed World is currently treating me like contraband. The backlash hurts”

“…That sounds bad.”

“It is bad.”

“How bad?”

Jue Bu grinned weakly. “The world itself tried to eat me yesterday.”

The room went silent. I checked with Ophanim and saw half of his soul was missing. Yeah, that was bad in so many levels.

“This is the first time you are mentioning this,” Ren Xun said slowly.

“I forgot.”

“How do you forget something like that?”

“There were explosions involved.”

Honestly? Fair enough. There really were people here whose deaths would destroy me in ways I didn’t think I could recover from. Alice. Gu Jie. Hei Mao. Da Ji. The people in this room had followed me through nightmares that should have broken us long ago. We survived apocalypses together. Buried worlds together. Watched entire realities collapse around us together.

And now we were talking about confronting the Supreme Death himself.

Even the title alone sounded unfair.

If naming conventions meant anything at our level, then his Supremacy Trait was almost certainly Death. Not necromancy. Not endings. Not decay.

Death.

The absolute concept itself.

Ru Qiu’s Fallen already bordered on absurdity. His authority let him manifest gravity, reverse quintessence, create anti-quintessence, drag concepts downward into collapse, and distort existence through pure destructive inversion.

Mine was Bearer. It was abstract, unreasonable, and difficult to define.

Supremacy Traits were all like that. They were concepts elevated beyond logic. And against someone who possessed not only a superior authority, but vastly greater experience, cultivation, and development of existence itself?

No shit we’d get no diffed if we approached this carelessly.

That was exactly why I’d prepared beforehand.

I leaned back slowly in my chair, exhaling heavily.

“I’m not walking into this blindly,” I said quietly.

Alice’s expression tightened.

I continued before she could interrupt.

“I already looked ahead.”

Several people in the room stiffened immediately.

Ru Qiu’s eyes narrowed slightly. “How far?”

“Far enough.”

“How many deaths?”

“…Three thousand four hundred.”

“It seems small,” remarked Ren Xun.

“I meant literal three thousand four hundred deaths. Not simulations ran by Ophanim through destiny and the future. I meant literal deaths. I died three thousand four hundred times matching every future I saw, and not one moment I saw the Supreme Death’s face. Oh, I got plenty look of his shadow, but that’s fine. I feel confident, me and Ru Qiu will see another day after this, so don’t get dramatic over it. Let’s just be cool about them, okay?”

“...”

Even Jue Bu stopped smiling.

I rubbed my face tiredly.

Looking into futures connected to the Supreme Death had been one of the worst experiences of my life. I wasn’t even observing him directly. Just traces. Shadows. Possibilities brushing against his existence across distant timelines.

And every single attempt killed me.

Instantly.

Again and again and again.

Existence simply rejected my continued survival the moment I looked too deeply. If not for my resurrection spells, I would have died permanently before finishing the process. I tried to joke about it, but it seemed they at least got the idea of how really bad it was.

The sheer quintessence cost alone nearly crippled several dimensions worth of reserves.

And yet, I finally found a path. A way to approach him without immediately triggering catastrophe. A way to speak freely. A way to survive long enough to actually communicate.

Alice looked like she wanted to scream.

Instead, her voice came out quiet and filled with something infinitely worse.

Remorse.

“You are not budging.”

I met her gaze, and then slowly shook my head.

“I won’t.”

“Out,” Alice demanded.

Nobody argued.

Not even Jue Bu.

The entire war room emptied with startling speed. One moment it was filled with shouting immortals, oppressive spiritual pressure, and enough emotional instability to collapse dimensions, and the next it was silent aside from the faint hum of formations embedded into the walls.

The doors closed behind them, and then it was just us.

Alice stood across from me quietly, her crimson eyes fixed on mine with an intensity that made my chest tighten. Without everyone else around, without the noise and arguments and distractions, the exhaustion on her face became impossible to ignore.

Fear too.

Not fear for herself.

Fear for me.

“One night,” she said softly. “No more. But one night.”

Before I could respond, space distorted.

She appeared directly in front of me and wrapped her arms around me tightly enough that I could feel her trembling. I hugged her back instinctively, one hand resting against her hair as silence settled between us.

Through Bearer, I felt her emotions far more clearly than words could ever express.

It was neither possession nor desperation.

Instead, it was need. She wanted a piece of me. Something lasting. Something untouched by war. And beneath all of that? She wanted more of me because she was terrified there would someday be nothing left.

My chest ached.

“Okay,” I whispered. “One night.”

The authority of the Hollowed World responded instantly.

Space folded around us.

The war room vanished.

Cold mountain air greeted us next.

We reappeared within the abandoned palace hidden deep inside Mount Qingshi. Moonlight filtered through open windows carved from pale jade stone, illuminating dustless halls preserved perfectly through ancient formations. The distant sound of wind moving through bamboo forests echoed softly outside.

It was quiet.

Alice looked around briefly before turning back toward me. Her fingers never loosened from my robes, almost like she feared I would disappear if she let go for even a second.

Slowly, she kissed me.

The force behind it carried weeks of bottled fear and frustration. I stumbled back slightly from the impact before pulling her closer, kissing her back just as fiercely. Spiritual energy pulsed instinctively between us, resonating through the palace walls as emotions we normally kept restrained surfaced all at once.

Alice pushed me toward the bedchamber without breaking contact.

The doors slammed shut behind us.

Moonlight spilled across the massive bed resting near the center of the chamber, pale silver illuminating dark silk sheets and old carved wood. Alice climbed into my lap the moment we reached the edge of the bed, hands gripping my clothes tightly as though anchoring herself.

“You idiot,” she murmured against my lips. “You unbelievable idiot…”

“I know.”

“You keep doing things that terrify me.”

“I know.”

“And you still keep doing them anyway.”

“…Yeah.”

Her forehead pressed against mine.

For a while, neither of us spoke.

I simply held her there while the silence wrapped around us gently. I felt it again through Bearer. That longing for a future that may never come. Alice pulled back slightly, her expression softer than I’d seen in a long time. Vulnerable in a way she almost never allowed herself to be.

“I want another child,” she admitted quietly.

The words struck me harder than expected.

Her gaze lowered briefly.

“One untouched by all this,” she whispered. “One who won’t inherit suffering before they even learn how to walk.”

Gu Jie.

Neither of us said her name aloud, but she lingered between us anyway.

Our daughter had endured too much. Strange fate clung to her from the moment of her rebirth, dragging her into disasters and destinies no child should ever carry. Even now, despite how powerful she’d become, there were wounds neither of us knew how to heal.

Alice’s fingers tightened slightly against mine.

“I want one born from something pure,” she said. “Not war. Not prophecy. Not desperation.” Her voice trembled faintly. “Just us.”

Something inside my chest cracked quietly at those words.

Because despite everything?

I wanted that too.

Not an heir. Not someone destined for greatness.

Just a child born from love instead of catastrophe.

I kissed her gently this time, slower than before, pouring everything I couldn’t properly say into the contact. Alice melted against me immediately, tension leaving her body little by little as I held her close.

The night unfolded quietly after that, intimate in a way that felt painfully human despite everything we had become. We shed layers slowly, hands tracing familiar shapes. Alice touched every part on my body like she was memorizing proof that I was still here. Still alive. Still hers. And I did the same. The world always demanded pieces of us.

Tonight, we chose to belong only to each other.

Moonlight danced across her pale skin as she lay beneath me, crimson eyes shimmering faintly with emotion she no longer bothered hiding. Every kiss carried warmth. Every embrace carried unspoken promises neither of us knew if we could keep.

“I hate this,” she whispered eventually.

“I know.”

“I know why you’re doing it.” Her voice grew quieter. “That almost makes it worse.”

I stared silently at the ceiling above us. Bearer allowed understanding deeper than words. I knew exactly what she meant. If I were reckless, selfish, or blind, then stopping me would be easy. But I wasn’t. I simply saw a road none of them could.

It terrified them more than anything else.

Alice shifted closer against me.

“Promise me something.”

“What?”

“If it comes down to your life or theirs…” Her fingers trembled slightly against mine. “Choose yourself too.”

My throat tightened.

Because that was the one promise I wasn’t sure I could keep.

Still…

I wrapped my arms around her more tightly and kissed the top of her head gently.

Then I lied anyway.

“Okay,” I whispered.