Chapter 16: The Divinity of Good and Evil
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The vast Void Sea once again came into view.
Lily felt her body plummeting rapidly.
At last—
She saw a familiar scene.
She saw the distant jade-green lands of the northern Snow Wastes.
She saw the bustling streets lined with blue-tiled, glazed-roofed buildings.
She saw the towering ranks of soldiers crying, “Long live Sky Jade!”
She saw the boundless silk-moss wilderness of her beloved Liaodong Circuit, where woolly rhinoceroses raced through the open expanse.
The fragrance of her homeland rushed into her nostrils.
Swaying gently in the breeze, she saw her mother and father.
She saw everyone from Shenxi Fort.
They were all still alive and well in this world.
And yet—
“So, Little Key, your soul was here all along~”
“I was planning to use Dream Command on you once you were wounded and bring you over to me~”
“You really made me search high and low for you~”
Alongside the Star God’s sinister voice, a horrifying scene unfolded before Lily’s eyes.
Tens of thousands of wolf warriors, transformed into skeletons and wrapped in black Void Qi, charged toward the beautiful lands of Sky Jade.
She watched as the civilization created by the Jade Folk was destroyed beneath the assault of the dreadful tide of skeletons.
The people’s cries gradually vanished beneath the desolate winds.
All that remained was the terrifying skeleton army—
And the Stardust soldiers standing among the beasts, clad in immaculate armor with iron masks covering their faces.
The Star God, Fenrir, stood at the heart of the monsters.
He wore golden lamellar armor, its sky-blue star patterns shining brilliantly against the deep-blue Void Qi surrounding him.
The tall figure strode forward.
Behind him, the dreadful ranks and monsters advanced in step, like an immovable wall of iron.
“You can’t escape, Little Key~”
“Once we have you, your world can belong to the great Stardust! Hahahahahaha!”
“Yes. The great Stardust needs you!”
The scenes of destruction around her shifted once more.
Lily saw the capital city that had once stood invincible—
Only to collapse with a thunderous roar beneath the assault of a colossal figure forged from steel.
With the bricks and roof tiles whirling through the air came the skeleton soldiers who had trampled across the silk moss.
They brandished their longswords and roared as they slaughtered every Sky Jade soldier and civilian attempting to flee.
“For Stardust! Kill them all! Kill them all!”
The formidable legions flying upon battle shields and the White Lion cavalry, stepping upon Void cushions and advancing without resistance,
followed the enormous white-starred blue banners fluttering across the battlefield, bringing death and despair to this land.
The cries of battle and the wails of the dying rose without end.
Lily watched countless innocent people—old and young alike—slaughtered by that frenzied army and the skeleton soldiers serving beneath it.
“Kill them all! Purify this world!”
“Only the great and pure people of Stardust are worthy of surviving in this world!”
“Kill!”
“Kill!”
“Kill!”
Beneath the blood-red sky, the cries of slaughter shook the heavens.
Then a tremendous boom rang out from above.
A gigantic, terrifying quadrupedal dragon, a hundred meters long, let out a roar that shook the earth and horrified the soul.
The Sky Jade warriors, their eardrums ruptured, screamed in agony.
Lily looked at the soldiers around her as they writhed and wailed in pain.
She forgot the instinct of self-preservation that came from being a tomb raider.
Straining with all her strength, she tried to run over and help them.
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But she discovered that her legs were as heavy as though they had been filled with lead. She could not move.
The dragon’s enormous brass eyes fixed upon her.
Lily felt death hurtling toward her.
At that moment, a gigantic dark-blue phoenix shrieked horribly in the sky.
Lightning crashed down from its body like divine punishment, instantly blasting whole bodies of flesh into minced meat.
When the phoenix plunged downward, Lily seemed to see a face that filled her with both hatred and fear.
Freyla.
It was Freyla again!
The evil dragon and mad phoenix descended from the heavens, bringing death raining down upon the Sky Jade warriors defending their homeland.
Fleeing civilians collapsed into charred corpses amid cities consumed by fire and lightning.
Fenrir swung the greatsword in his hands, elegantly cutting down every Sky Jade person before him.
The greatsword, wreathed in deep-blue Void Qi, moved like a venomous serpent,
biting off the heads of every innocent victim.
Those heads rolled to Lily’s feet and stared up at her helplessly.
The disciplined yet utterly deranged Stardust army
roared,
grinned viciously,
pillaged,
and slaughtered,
drowning the kingdom known as Sky Jade beneath their feet in an unfathomable sea of blood.
Thud!
Lily, frozen in place, was pierced through the abdomen by Fenrir’s greatsword.
Blood gushed forth at once.
Only then was Lily able to see the boundless evil in Fenrir’s sapphire eyes.
“You should all die. You should all be slaughtered. You should all become a handful of yellow earth beneath our new homeland, because—”
Arrogance and conceit appeared together in the eyes of the man who called himself a god.
“You are unworthy of dwelling under the same roof as our greatness. Unworthy of dwelling under the same roof as me, the greatest Star God!”
“Star God? What a lunatic!”
Lily was not frightened.
Though her body remained unable to move, anger and contempt still appeared in her eyes.
Even though the pain in her abdomen felt so terribly real.
For a moment, Lily could no longer tell whether this was reality or an illusion, because the agony in her abdomen was unmistakably real.
“How dare a stray dog barking madly here after losing its home?!”
That familiar, mysterious voice rang out once more.
“Get out of my girl’s head!”
Lily seemed to see a beam of white light appear before her eyes, growing brighter and brighter.
The Star God’s beautiful yet terrifying features gradually blurred.
“Hahahahahaha! You decrepit old god!”
Though the Star God’s face had become indistinct, his ghastly, demonic voice continued to echo inside her mind.
“You truly think you can save that Jade person? Save those people who should have died long ago?”
“No! No! They must bear the sins you committed against me and against my country! This is retribution! Do you understand? Retribution!”
The Star God’s voice grew furious, though a trace of fear could also be heard within it.
“You are nothing but a pitiful false god, making a fool of yourself out of misplaced sentiment. A man who should have died long ago, pretending to be a god here!”
“Disgusting!”
The Star God continued screaming hysterically.
“And this time, I will take this world for myself. This time, you will never be able to stop me again.”
“I am the Star God—the great Star God!”
“And Stardust shall once again bloom in this world with a light of unparalleled purity and brilliance!”
Though the Star God screamed hysterically, his once-distinct features truly did disappear little by little before Lily’s eyes.
The white light, however, began to dim.
Lily found herself standing upon the battlefield once more, now restored to silence.
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The merciless battlefield was strewn with corpses.
The soldiers and civilians of Sky Jade had long since been reduced to shattered flesh scattered across the blood-soaked, swaying field.
The jade-green silk moss had been dyed scarlet.
The entire tundra had been dyed scarlet.
One corpse after another drifted in upon the sea of blood, their faces long since rendered unrecognizable.
Not far away, a skeleton soldier with a hideously twisted face raised its longsword and cut in half a Sky Jade woman who was clutching her child and begging desperately for mercy.
The monster advanced toward Lily at a slow pace.
“Look.”
The soldier suddenly spoke in a voice both fearful and uncanny.
In the blood-red sky, a dazzling crimson star hovered overhead,
illuminating the Stardust warriors clad in silver-blue armor and drenched in blood.
“How beautiful. This world after its conquest, this land and future that will soon belong to us, taken from filthy creatures like you. How magnificent! Hahahahahahaha!”
The skeleton emitted a terrifying laugh, every bone in its body clicking with an eerie sound.
Lily looked at the madman before her and tried to escape.
But the monster suddenly seized her arm.
“Hmph. You flesh-and-blood key will come to me in the end. And your country, your world—they will all obediently come to my side as my playthings~”
“And Stardust will continue forever, forever remaining a great nation.”
“Watered by your flesh and blood, it will surely be reborn from the ashes!”
At that moment, a ring-pommel saber suddenly flew through the air and pierced the monster soldier’s arm.
The monster let out a howl of agony.
Lily caught sight of a white figure rushing toward them and lifting her into its arms.
“Damn you, you piece of trash! Haven’t you had enough fun yet?”
The True God appeared like a divine warrior descending from heaven and gently took Lily’s hand.
“Come on. Let’s go home.”
Lily looked at the old man’s face, and her tortured heart grew calm once more.
Behind her, however, the monster soldier let out an eerie, sinister laugh.
“Not one of your Sky Jade people will escape! Not one!”
“I am the god—the great Star God!”
…
Lily gasped heavily for breath.
Covered in wounds, she struggled to open her eyes.
She discovered that she had escaped the mad hag and the equally deranged Star God, and was now lying on a slab of blue-gray stone beside a small stream.
The surroundings seemed much quieter. It appeared that the Stardust marauders had not yet reached this place.
Lily touched her right shoulder.
The wound where Solna had struck her had now almost completely healed.
The bone still ached where it had been hit, but it was far better than before.
Looking at the gash in the leather armor over her shoulder, she let out a long breath.
“Feeling better?”
The True God’s familiar voice sounded in her ear once again.
“Thank you… You were the one who saved me just now, weren’t you? From that… illusion?”
“It was nothing. No trouble at all. That fellow merely took advantage of your unconsciousness to use a little Dream Command.”
“He made you see all sorts of nonsensical things.”
“And made you believe he could destroy Sky Jade and all that…”
Lily listened to the True God’s explanation and could only offer a faint smile.
She would set aside the question of what Dream Command meant for now.
What were those indistinct “gods” and that wondrous world?
What were those bizarre, fantastical scenes—and what was that blue homeland of hers?
Lily shook her head and cast the questions aside.
She could worry about the dreams of her past later. There were more important things to do now.
“Head north, girl. I’ll go with you.”
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