Chapter 249

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Protagonist:

Xuan Ge

Black Swan stood in place, her voice probing into the depths of a memory devoid of any person.

"Your Majesty, the Xuan Emperor?"

No one answered.

She waited a while longer, still quiet.

She felt Xuan Ge had most likely found a deserted corner to secretly wipe away tears on his own.

As a son, he held it in before his mother; the moment he stepped out, he surely could not hold it in any longer.

She did not call out to Xuan Ge, continuing to watch quietly downward.

The Comprehensive History of Shen Wu naturally recorded the Xuan Emperor's entire life.

Black words on white paper, chronologically ordered, major events listed one by one, clear and distinct.

But "reading" and "watching" are completely two different matters.

The text tells you his parents died in battle, yet it will not tell you what the sea breeze tasted like that evening, nor will it tell you how long he sat alone on the shore clutching a tree branch.

A dozen years' span, in the rememberer's eyes, is merely the time of a page turned past.

She saw Little Xuan Ge's silence upon hearing the news of his parents' death — not crying, not making a fuss, but silence.

The tree branch in his hand had not yet been put down, his eyes fixed on the ground, staring for a long time.

She also saw Xuan Ge's awkwardness when he first met Jing Liu.

The white-haired, red-eyed cool beauty stood before him, and the youth's hands and feet did not know where to put themselves.

"No wonder the Xuan Emperor is so fixated on the elder one...."

Black Swan watched the scene of Jing Yuan leading Xuan Ge to find Jing Liu, watched Xuan Ge's expression of a glance lasting ten thousand years, and the corner of her mouth twitched slightly.

What a pity.

Xuan Ge was not brave enough, while Jing Liu clearly knew his little thoughts yet did not reach out to grasp him.

Watching this scene from a third-person perspective, she truly felt anxious for these two people.

Xuan Ge encountered Jing Yuan, then encountered Jing Liu; on the surface he was all smiles, but in truth he had never truly walked out from the matter of his parents.

Jing Liu treated Jing Yuan with gentle guidance, but treated Xuan Ge by suppressing him in sparring, suppressing him in training.

Black Swan could tell Xuan Ge misunderstood the relationship between Jing Liu and Jing Yuan, while Jing Liu, from start to finish, never explained a single sentence.

Then Jing Liu became one of the Cloud Top Five Cavaliers.

Xuan Ge became an ambitious schemer.

Seeing this, actually, whether Jing Liu grasped Xuan Ge or not, the ending was the same.

Because the Shuhu Rebellion arrived.

This was the greatest turning point in Xuan Ge's life.

If the future Abundance abominations could clearly know — Divine Might was forced out alive by Shuhu.

They would probably thank Shuhu eight hundred times.

Thank you, dead Shuhu, for creating such a father for the myriad worlds.

War unfolded before Black Swan's eyes, then ended.

The future Xuan Ge stood outside the timeline without intervening; the ending's trajectory was completely consistent with what was recorded in the Comprehensive History of Shen Wu.

The not-yet-Emissary Xuan Ge was nearly worn to death by Shuhu.

On the other side, Polka was already gone.

She had risen and left from the very start of the Shuhu Rebellion, following the causal thread all the way to Luo Fu's Heroic Spirit Blessed Land.

There, she saw Xuan Ge — standing before his parents' tombstone, unknown how many springs and autumns he had stood.

Xuan Ge withdrew his hand from wiping the tombstone, head not turning back, voice calm: "You've come."

"I've come." The corner of Polka's mouth curved slightly.

"Hehe~~ Why not go kill me, the me who fought to the death until exhausted?" Xuan Ge brushed away the last speck of dust on the tombstone, straightened his waist, turned and walked toward the outside of the Blessed Land.

Polka stepped forward to follow, walking shoulder to shoulder with him: "The causal loop is closed; I cannot act."

"Unexpected, you actually achieved this degree." She tilted her head, sized up the white-haired Xuan Ge beside her from top to bottom, her gaze carrying a playful scrutiny like examining an exhibit:

"But before the Erudition's Anchor is cast upon you, I will not cease my assassination of you."

Xuan Ge laughed, then suddenly said a sentence with no head or tail: "The method for you to defeat me, there is only one."

Polka's eyebrow twitched imperceptibly.

She barely paused, directly picking up a teasing tone: "Want me to devote myself to you, bear a child, maintain our relationship?"

"The future you is exactly this idea." Xuan Ge smiled and directly exposed it, "Stop pretending. We both play with causality; the future you already gave you the answer long ago."

He raised his hand, index finger lightly lifting Polka's chin.

This action made Polka's eyes narrow slightly.

Xuan Ge's tone was unhurried, stating a fact: "From the moment I was born, when I was still an infant, why did you not act?"

He did not wait for her to answer, continuing with the answer himself: "Kill me, and Nanuk would fish me out from the ashes."

"Whether I ultimately become the Hunt's Divine Might General, or become Destruction's Divine Might General — you can still tell the difference clearly."

"Put your claws away, no touching."

Polka slapped his hand away with a *pa* sound, the disdain in her eyes not concealed in the slightest, especially that husband-material aura on him, which made her whole body uncomfortable.

"You don't want to become Destruction's puppet either, do you? Why are you here? Don't you know the answer in your own heart?"

"We both know it's a closed causal loop." Xuan Ge spread his hands, calm to the point of shamelessness. "I'm here to stop you. And——I did it."

Polka fell silent.

Does she want to kill Xuan Ge?

Yes.

But it stops at just "wanting."

The act of "killing" itself is simply impossible.

At most she can only watch from afar, observe from afar, like watching a bomb pulled by countless strings that never goes off.

She withdrew her gaze, her tone turning cool: "You should go."

The Yin Yue Rebellion after the Shu Hu Chaos has already ended. She should go back too.

Xuan Ge raised an eyebrow: "Not even a goodbye?"

The corners of Polka's lips curled up, carrying a trace of mockery: "If you don't leave now, that Memosprite will really get erased by the Hunt."

"Shit! Forgot about that!" The expression on Xuan Ge's face instantly reset to zero.

He didn't even have time to say "goodbye" — his whole person simply vanished on the spot.

Polka stood in place and laughed helplessly.

She truly admires her future self——to have actually lost to such an idiot.

Black Swan's side.

The embers of the Shu Hu Chaos and the Yin Yue Rebellion have already fallen completely; the Xuan Ge before her is right in that stretch of silent time.

Quiet to the point of fear.

She watched the private army guards Xuan Ge raised with his own hands reduced to not one in ten.

She watched him walk into the guards' homes one household at a time, facing those faces waiting for sons, wives, fathers who would never return.

She watched General Teng Xiao die in battle, watched Bai Hang die in battle;

Watched Xuan Ge wake from his coma and learn that Dan Feng recklessly used the Dragon Transformation technique to create the Ying Long, that Jing Liu fell into the Mo Yin body, that Ying Xing inadvertently contaminated herself with Shu Hu blood flesh and became undying.

Black Swan stood beside the past Xuan Ge, very close.

Close enough to hear the heart in his chest still beating, yet not a single superfluous sound leaked from his throat.

The current Xuan Ge was still to the point of raising goosebumps.

"Heh.... hehehehe...."

On that dead-silent face, a smile suddenly bloomed.

The laughter was not loud, squeezed out bit by bit from deep in his throat, like a broken clockwork forced to turn.

Black Swan subconsciously took a step back.

Even separated by an entire causal timeline, this laughter still made a layer of chill brush up her spine.

"Crazy...." She watched that face continuously distort and recover, recover and distort amid the laughter, and murmured.

This demeanor admits no second explanation.

The laughter stopped abruptly.

Xuan Ge closed his eyes, his lips moving, as if talking to himself.

"This world is too chaotic. Countless people grieve and wander displaced, tragedies play on endlessly. Preservation doesn't preserve, Abundance isn't abundant...."

Black Swan listened to him recite sentence by sentence, her spine growing colder and colder.

Xuan Ge's current state——every sentence, every word, is nourishment for the Destruction Path——the purest, most irrefutable kind.

While she rapidly deduced in her mind just how Xuan Ge managed to turn off this dead end and walk the Hunt General's path, the answer slammed right into her face.

Black Swan's pupils shrank violently.

She wasn't having an audience with an Aeon.

She was in something worse than an audience with an Aeon——she was standing in the Ming Tu Xia Jian, and the Hunt Aeon's light arrow was descending right at her face.

"No! Wait!"