In the dark, gloomy land of the Spirit World, fierce winds howled.
A black-feathered man named Gray Crow trailed ink-like afterimages, his psychic feathers constantly drifting and withering.
He walked across the dim, desolate highland plain as a lone wooden cabin gradually came into view ahead. The woman in the black gauze robe, who had been holding the shoulder of a wrist-broken man with her back to Gray Crow, lowered her hand and turned to look.
“To be able to enter my spiritual barrier, may I ask who you are, sir?”
Holding a wooden staff in her right hand, the woman’s weathered face—like that of a seasoned traveler—showed a hint of surprise before settling into a calm acceptance, as if she had long seen this day coming.
Gray Crow halted ten meters away from her, his figure rippling faintly like a reflection in water, as both stared deeply at each other.
{You rats slithering in the cracks actually have things you don’t know about.}
Hearing that form of address, the woman narrowed her eyes slightly.
“The fate here has deviated too much, naturally giving rise to things we don’t know. If I may ask, what is your name, sir?”
The woman gazed at this being who seemed unwilling to reveal his name.
At that moment, Director Huang suddenly woke up as if emerging from water, gasping heavily, as though he had just escaped a nightmare.
Then he felt that he might not have woken up yet—his hard-won dwelling was now shrouded by an ink-wash-like eye of the storm.
The two figures ahead seemed like characters from a strange tale, utterly surreal.
{“One should reveal one’s own name before asking for another’s—it’s a matter of etiquette.”}
“I is Balianna.”
{“Myself be Grey Crow.”}
Grey Crow glanced at Huang Xu, who had collapsed from fear at his appearance, and said to the woman:
{“That hut, which he shouldn’t have possessed, he built with a single hand.”}
Huang Xu looked at the small shack beside him—it was true, he had indeed built it with only one hand!
Thinking back on it, Huang Xu even felt a hint of pride.
{“So, is that why you’ve come early? Because he might stop feeling regret?”}
“No.” The woman’s smile was calm, but her words were icy: “This storm will soon destroy the hut. To us, it’s a minor matter, but to him, it’s a heavy blow. He will deeply regret choosing this location.”
The woman turned to look at him.
“Just as he regrets his several previous choices.”
“Regret prior choices?” Their conversation sent a chill down Huang Xu’s spine.
What was going on? Why were these two strange people talking about a hut and things “before”?
He turned and ran.
Balianna thrust her wooden staff. A glow flared from within the staff, projecting the external cracks onto the ground like a hazy circuit of fissures.
She turned and walked toward Huang Xu, who had run a few steps away, but her body remained in place, moving as if her soul had left her body, swiftly appearing before the man, reaching one hand toward his collar.
{Why take his “remorse” now?}
“You really are here to stop me from collecting materials.”
Scarred Panna looked at the humanoid Black Stork that had appeared beside her.
She had relied on the holy artifact to perform circuit deception, yet it was instantly seen through by the other party.
“Materials?!” Huang Xu scrambled in panic, not stupid enough to miss that he himself was likely the so-called “material.”
{What he bitterly regrets is not far from the present—only a few months. Why extract it now?}
Scarred Panna tilted her wooden staff, gesturing with it; brilliant light erupted from the top, piercing through the darkness of night.
A circle of radiance appeared behind Gray Crow’s head.
A muffled series of explosions rang out, from near to far, from ground to sky; two clashing beams of light split even the pitch-black storm, spreading and bursting apart.
A sharp change came over Scarred Panna’s face; her figure appeared in an instant at the edge of a circuit in the distance.
Gray Crow followed like a shadow, appearing before her.
Scarred Panna knew she had encountered a being of formidable strength.
As soon as the other party revealed their halo, the circuit power she had mobilized was fully suppressed—not because the circuit’s rank was lower than the presence before her, but because her own strength was ultimately too weak.
{I only want to ask, why must it be extracted now?}
A dark golden halo lit up on Scarface Lina’s chest, and a zigzag line refracted out at high speed. Fortunately, the person before her did not stop her.
A hint of confidence quickly blossomed on the slightly flustered face of Scarface Lina.
“This fate line… at least the fate line of this Loss Frequency Land has deviated too much. The fluctuations in the destinies of those connected to it are growing stronger and have become extremely unstable.”
Scarface Lina glanced at the man in the distance, who was trying to flee but was being hindered by the newly erupted mental storm.
“Under the ripples of this change, even his consciousness, which is nurturing high-quality material, might be transformed. Are you satisfied with this answer, Mr. Gray Crow?”
Gray Crow walked up to her, his face nearly touching hers as he stared at the woman’s countenance.
{No, you’re lying.}
“You?”
{You simply want to extract that shred of regret right now, to forge a coordinate that creates a rift and extinguish the spark of change at its source.}
A flicker of strangeness passed through Scarface Lina’s eyes.
Gray Crow raised his palm towards Scarface Lina.
The halo on the woman’s chest had never gone out since it first shone. At this moment, her complexion shifted several times, and she abruptly stepped back two paces before raising her long wooden staff to block his open hand.
“Stop it!” the woman shouted tensely:
“We have read everything about you in the old world. Everything about you is already known to us!”
{So what.}
“If you make a move against me here, no matter the cost, we will alter the origin of your Fate Track—both the old and the new!”
The woman laughed brilliantly and wildly, looking at the gray crow whose claws had come to a halt.
“You don’t want to have your fate extinguished at its source in all possibilities, do you?”
Huang Xu glanced at the woman, then at the half-human, half-demon being beside her. He had no idea what they were talking about, or rather, he dared not imagine it.
{If you truly can accomplish this, it might as well be a grand gamble for me.}
“How dare you!” The woman never expected this Saint, who knew of her organization’s existence, to be so utterly unimpressed by her threat!
In her chest, a dozen or so sequences rapidly chanted—passages recounting the life journey of the figure known as “Grey Crow.”
Suddenly, Scarlet Lotus raised her head, staring in shock at the man before her, standing like a Black Stork.
“You’re not Grey Crow! You actually used that loser’s name—do you have any idea what that means?! Are you truly looking for death?”
{You cannot negate a person’s greatness just because of their death.}
The hand that Grey Crow had halted raised once more, pointing straight at the woman’s face.
The tip of the wooden staff once again blazed with resplendent light, yet it could not withstand the shroud of the five-colored rays emanating from the five outstretched fingers.
Scarred Lotuses hoarsely and painfully cried out:
“Ridiculous—one who sought a path to save his homeland… yet failed to return before its destruction… a misguided fool who died on the journey, what greatness is there to speak of?”
Grey Crow’s metallic face, a mix of rock and metal, gazed at the woman.
{Statistically speaking, their sacrifices were highly meaningful.}
“Even if I die… we will… make you disappear from the past… completely…”
{As long as you can’t find the coordinates, this kind of thing won’t happen.}
As if hearing the world’s greatest joke.
Her face, illuminated by flickering light, began to wither and age by decades, yet Scar Liliana, still struggling against the forces with her wooden staff, said in a gradually aging voice:
“It’s impossible in this world… to have no one without regrets… Everyone wonders what their lives would have been like if they had made a different choice earlier… There must be someone connected to you… who regrets something from the past…”
{If such a person were born, their story would inspire many, and the holes you’ve torn in replicating fate’s trajectory would be reduced.}
Huang Xu, knowing himself to be mere fuel, lay stunned on the ground, propping himself up slightly to watch this scene.
“There is no one in this world… who won’t regret their circumstances… what you speak of… will never come to pass…”
The woman’s face became incredibly old, and she muttered in a near-crazed, low voice.
“In different epochs, we will always find… those who crossed paths with you in your moments of weakness… You will absolutely… disappear…”
{This is exactly what I was hoping for.}
Her knees weakened, and she collapsed to the ground, leaning on her staff, the light fading from her eyes as she stared at the dimming circuit on the ground.
{Provided that you can still find the [Regret Coordinates] of that era to alter and reproduce fate, replacing the historical truth.}
Grey Crow aimed his hand at the wooden staff inserted into the ground, propped up by a withered palm. The five-colored light at his fingertips enveloped the staff, forming a dim, multicolored film that melted into it.
The spiritual storm gradually destroyed the wooden hut.
Within the storm, Huang Xu watched as the shadowy figure walked away step by step, vanishing into the increasingly chaotic edge of the world. Everything was being destroyed in the storm, save for the small area near the wooden staff, which trembled but fought to maintain itself.
His left hand reached for the wooden staff.
[I have obtained the [Staff of Passage Through Cracks].]
[The Probe Staff took pity on my lack of knowledge and kindly shared some bloodline alchemy formulas with me.]
[I, the Mysterious Triangle, have obtained the recipe of [Regret Branch Point: Century New Branch]: “Sustained Regret” x1, Ten Years of Moonlight x10,00 strands, Radiance x5, a bundle of weeds imbued with withered forest aura, arcane runes…]
[I, the Mysterious Triangle, have obtained the recipe of [Regret Branch Point: Millennium New Branch]: “Regret Sustained for a Millennium” x1 or “Imprint Containing a Clear Historical Node… Imprint” x1, Two to Five Leaves of Moonlight at 10,00 strands each, Glimpse of Heroic Splendor x1, Mist Sea Rime Ice x10 kg, White Bone Coral x1, arcane runes…]
“Why can’t I see clearly.”
Those images that appeared in his mind, as if radiating golden light…
[I have obtained the [Branch of Regret: Ten-Millennia New Branch] formula: One portion of “Regret lasting ten millennia” or one portion of “The divine will containing clear historical nodes,” several strands of six-to-ten-petal moonlight, three to ten portions of multitudes’ radiant flashes, a single bone-white coral, one throne in tilting splendor, magic patterns…]
The words “divine will” could not be seen at all, and countless echoes of chants like crashing waves and roaring seas filled his ears, as if the multitudes of ministers were shouting “Long live the emperor.”
Yet this light naturally made one read those four words.
An intense spiritual impact assaulted Director Huang’s head, and the surface of the wooden staff glowed with five-colored light, enveloping him.
The man’s facial skin twitched, his eyes rolling back as he fell to the ground, but this hand did not detach from the wooden staff.
After a full day of lethargic sleep, Huang Xu gradually awoke from his slumber. He felt as if he had dreamt a vague dream, in which his newly built wooden cabin was destroyed by two devils who said something he couldn’t understand.
“It really was just a dream,” Huang Xu said as he lay in bed, watching the slow-moving overcast clouds outside the roof.
Some chilly nighttime breezes brushed against him.
Huang Xu scrambled to his feet, several wooden planks sliding off him. He looked around at the messy ground with disbelief and aching heart—only uneven short boards of the house remained on the grass, while the roof and most of the cabin’s body were lying scattered around him in a similar mess.
“Why, why do you do this to me!”
He roared angrily, but he couldn’t even find the target of his rage.
“Uh-ah!” Huang Xu hurled a piece of wood onto the wild grass, then kicked around frantically, only to hit a stone with one kick, hurting himself and tumbling to the ground in pain.
He stretched out his hand to prop himself up with a wooden stick, but the circular wooden stick, full of markings, slid outward under his push, causing him, who had just gotten halfway up, to fall flat on his face with a heavy thud.
“Ah…”
Director Huang suddenly ended up lying on the ground, crying.
The painstakingly collected timber… If only he hadn’t built the cabin here at that time.
Several voices came, and Director Huang immediately stopped sobbing. How could there be people so far away? His crying just now mustn’t have been too loud.
He first wiped his face, then turned to look at two men carrying torches and backpacks.
“Brother, why are you crying? Want something to eat?”
“I…” Huang Xu was so embarrassed he didn’t want to cry anymore.
“It’s okay, we’re all from the same place, so we should support each other. Are you alone? Would you like to live in our village?”
Huang Xu bowed his head.
He recalled the image of himself desperately holding onto the car door, as if the pleas and curses of those inside were truly ringing in his ears.
“No, I’d better not. I’m afraid I am one cursed by the undead—wherever I go, misfortune follows.”
He grabbed the wooden staff in his hand, propping himself up to stand, then fled hastily, leaning on it as he went.
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