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Wang pauses and presses his bloody right side with his left hand, then resolutely points the writing knife back at the word that covers everything.

The ink is so black it seems to shine, reflecting half of Wang's silhouette.

...The last cut.

The writing knife glows bright. The proxy pours his entire spirit into it, waiting for it to strike his own name...

Haah—!

The ink on the page dissipates completely, revealing the beautiful calligraphy beneath.

But the proxy can see it no more.

He falls to the ground, covered in blood, so thin and gaunt he hardly seems human.

He has stopped breathing.

I wanted to kill myself. I have gotten my wish.

After more than a century of plotting since your last failed attempt, this is how it ends, I the strategist, I the schemer?

You're delusional.

The proxy stands beside his bloody corpse on the floor, perfectly unharmed as he was when he entered the Tomb of Sui.

The body on the ground dissipates like the morning dew, until only three shining black stones are left—

Until they, too, disintegrate.

Turning yourself into weiqi stones. This was your idea.

Three black stones in exchange for killing you once. A fair trade.

Pathetic. You are fooling yourself.

Fooling myself?

I've visited many of your kind. I know how incomprehensible you are... how incomprehensible we are.

I know about the faint consciousnesses that were born from the primordial void, and I know how they have transformed themselves into colossal entities in the course of an infinity.

Time, space, quantity, structure... the things that mortals take for granted, the things that seem to be everlasting, unchangeable, are merely a temporary roost for you.

I have seen one of your kind continue to disrupt what should have been the calm flow of time, even though it had died long ago and been turned into a machine at the hands of others.

And you still dream of killing me?

Perhaps you have no need to die. But you will fall into eternal slumber, Sui, the dreamer of evolution.

Mankind has no use for your arrogant design, and I have no use for your endless dream.

Every death in your memory is real, a genuine death of a small part of your enormous consciousness.

Don't believe me? Think back to the day I encountered that 'madman', back when your methods were so primitive they were downright laughable. What did I do?

Did I give the book back to the Sui Regulator? Did I destroy it? What was written in it? Was it really a book?

See? You've forgotten.

You dare...!

Your memory has died, the price you paid in exchange for three black stones.

To be precise, you died by the writing knife imbued with a proxy's entire life force.

He scraped clean every instance of the 'Sui' character across all Great Yan, and with it any trace that a creature called 'Sui' ever existed.

The recklessness... the blasphemy!

I would do it again, had I the writing knife in my hand right now.

I would be happy to create for you a nightmare, from which you would never wake. Even at the cost of my own life.

...You cannot.

The more parts of me you kill, the more you think you have weakened me, and the sooner I will wake.

I know.

Death hurts. Each and every one of your memories is real. They are happening somewhere. The pain of your death cuts straight to the heart.

What about you? What can you do?

I will continue the game.

Until neither of us can ever rise again.