I’m going to die, I’m going to die, I’m going to die!
Fear and cold nearly swallowed all of Ye Cang’s reason.
Only the instinct to survive made him subconsciously grab the only thing nearby that could be called a weapon: a pen, the most common kind in the Interastral Peace Corporation.
The moment he gripped that pen, he felt as if he were holding a sharp blade.
That tiny bit of security awakened his rationality, letting him see at first glance the only path to life in this hopeless situation!
He shoved the raving “March 7th” away, snatched the Death Diary from the unstable zombie “Himeko,” and with the fastest speed of his life, wrote two words at the end of the “April 26th” page:
“Elation”
That was the answer to the first question.
He didn’t write “Aha” because calling an Aeon’s true name easily attracts their gaze.
Perhaps in the vast sea of stars, those great beings symbolizing the highest Paths wouldn’t notice your existence just because of a single word.
But right now, Ye Cang was only a car wall’s distance from “Aha under eldritch contamination.” Even if the other party were deaf, they should have noticed his existence by now.
After writing those two words, Ye Cang’s eyes widened in terror as he looked at his arm.
His skin began to rot, flesh and blood dripping downward like sticky gelatin, reeking with a stench so foul that even the dirtiest sewers of the world’s filthiest cities couldn’t ferment such a revolting odor!
That stench seemed to seep into skin and bone, even the soul would be stained.
Is this the eldritch contamination?
This is…
crimson corruption?
Despite the unbearable pain, if he stopped here, the next loop would definitely repeat the same mistake!
He clenched his teeth, gripped the pen tightly, and wrote the answer to the second question heavily on the page:
“Pray to an Aeon”
If Cang wanted to break the loop of the 25th, he had to kill his mad self.
But killing his mad self would trigger the Death Diary’s time reversal.
This was an infinite loop.
So he had to borrow external power to break it, and the simplest way to borrow power was to pray to an Aeon.
Would praying to an Aeon get a response?
Of course not!
Life in the universe is as numerous as dust.
An ordinary person could pray forever and never get an Aeon’s attention, unless…
in the Aeon’s eyes, you as the pray-er are not ordinary!
Cang, an Aeon’s Emanator, should be high enough in stature to draw an Aeon’s attention.
But stature alone definitely wouldn’t be enough.
If another Aeon’s Emanator prayed to you, as an Aeon, would you definitely respond?
Of course not.
So Cang must have used some method to amplify the “prayer” and some “bargaining chip” to attract an Aeon’s action.
The method might be similar to a “potion” prayer ritual blood array, and the “bargaining chip”…
Destruction, Nihility, Finality, Harmony…
Setting aside these Aeons who would never pay him any attention, from this angle, the Aeon of Elation “Aha” was actually the most likely to respond to him.
As for the Aeon of Remembrance “Fuli,” before figuring out whether his amnesia was affected by Them, Ye Cang believed that the original owner of this body, “Cang,” would absolutely not take the risk of gambling on Their whim.
So…
after summoning Aha with a sacrificial ritual, what happened on the Astral Express?
Where did “Cang” go?
Why did he transmigrate?
Had the eldritch contamination been controlled?
Obviously, there was no time to think about these questions anymore.
All his remaining time should be left for the final question:
After Cang drank the Abundance Potion and completed the ritual, what was the blessing of the Abundance?
What was it?
Ye Cang’s expression was dazed, his face pale.
Unknowingly, the hand holding the pen had been reduced to bare white bone.
The shed flesh and blood turned into sticky scarlet liquid pooling on the table.
Even so, it still failed to leave even a speck of scarlet on the Death Diary.
He opened his mouth.
His teeth fell out.
A rotting tongue covered in maggots slid from his mouth.
But…
fortunately, he could no longer make a sound or feel pain.
What was it?
This question was built on two established facts:
First, “Cang” drank the [Abundance] potion, completed the sacrificial ritual, and received the blessing of the Aeon of Abundance “Yaoshi.”
Second, “Yaoshi’s” blessing was crucial to breaking the loop of the 25th, and even for the current “Aha,” it held great significance!
Even more, the answer to this question was the only “way out” of this dead end!
What was it?
Longevity?
Resurrection?
Powerful healing?
Immortality?
No, no, no.
These abilities were useless for breaking the loop of the 25th.
For the nearly mad Cang, they would even be a greater shackle…
Wait.
Ye Cang suddenly looked up at “March 7th” beside him.
The pink-haired girl was also looking at him, smiling.
Aha seemed to have regained their reason, or perhaps the earlier farce was just Them pretending to be crazy?
“Have you thought of the answer?”
The girl opened her mouth.
Ye Cang subconsciously thought she would ask this question, but what responded to him was the girl’s silver-bell-like laughter: “Hahaha…
I say, do you believe in miracles?”
Of course, how could I not believe?
Who didn’t turn into light as a child?
He wanted to say something stupid, but his jaw had fallen off, his throat and spine exposed to the air, only meaningless breathing sounds coming out.
An ordinary person in this state would have died long ago, yet he could still feel the powerful beating of his heart.
This zombie-like monstrous vitality verified his final conjecture and made all his deductions form a perfect closed loop at this moment.
What else could Yaoshi’s blessing be?
It was the “immortality” of the flesh.
How powerful was this “immortality”?
After Aha slaughtered the mad “Cang” until his bones were ground to dust and his soul scattered, the body could still be completely reconstructed, and after Ye Cang transmigrated, it accommodated his “soul.”
But he no longer had the strength to write the answer to this final question.
After all his muscles and organs dissolved, he had become a skeleton with only a beating heart left.
He was about to die.
He could see nothing, hear nothing.
The world was dark, terrifyingly quiet, as quiet as that pitch-black night in his childhood, when the boy ran and cried alone in the forest.
Though desperate and helpless, compared to now, he couldn’t even cry.
So he couldn’t help but think again:
Some say people go to heaven after death, others say evildoers fall to hell.
But until this moment, until the instant a person truly dies, when human cognition and consciousness are about to dissipate, he clearly recognized the ultimate answer to this question:
At the end of death, there is nothing.
So…
Before death, all beings are equal.
So…
Death is eternal.