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If you are still unwilling to bow your head to Yan, then I alone shall bear your thousand years of rage.

The sin of disloyalty... I shall also stamp out alone.

This millennium of grudges and grievances shall end here. From now on, Yan will begin a new chapter in its history...

Why wait for Heaven to bless the nation? There is only... the triumph of man over nature.

The True Lung looks towards the blazing radiance before him, as if he can see a pair of giant, ancient eyes burning within, burning with a great fury.

All he waits for is the signal that Sui has fully awakened before he martyrs himself.

The heart-pounding, golden light has nearly faded away. All that remains is an afterglow that falls into Wang's palm.

Within that very instant, a flood of jumbled, shattered memories flows past his eyes. With all his might, he reaches in to grab hold of a fragment, a splinter, anything with a trace of her.

For a hundred-and-twenty years, she has never appeared in his dreams.

Finally, finally, he grasps onto something that survived—

A record of a game.

Not some legendary game handed down the ages, but rather, a casual game between brother and sister as they chatted.

He flips the record over, wanting to see what was written in that message she left behind that is missing from his memory...

He finally reads it.

<i>You are a pessimistic one, brother, always thinking that the heart of humanity is unknowable, an unending flow of evil. Only through careful calculation and reasoning can it be understood.</i>

<i>I beg to differ. I believe humanity to be fundamentally good, evil deeds merely a covering of the heart. Thus, I believe there is no need to attempt to decipher it. Simply read the history books and learn the ways of the world, and you shall understand through analogy.</i>

<i>You knew I was lazing about, brother, which is why you came to give me a 'bored' written atop your board. Even before you placed your first stone with that blatant scowl on your face, I knew you had come to poke fun at me.</i>

<i>Both interpretation and analogy are fine. These split paths shall meet again, at a summary of the human heart. Of our family, only you and I walk this self-defeating road, always wanting to know the hearts of men.</i>

<i>Perhaps, when we both obtain the same answer...</i>

The letter stops here.

The weiqi player stares at the exquisite handwriting for a long, long time, seemingly forgetting the life-and-death struggle he is currently locked in.

Split paths shall meet again.

Split paths. She is long gone.

But to meet again...?

The game nears its end.

How amusing. She was the first of you to raise the flag of rebellion against me.

I must admit, over these past thousand years, I truly did fear her growing power, even if only for a moment.

But her plan was defeated by her lack of cunning, defeated by the 'unknowable heart of humanity'.

What is even more preposterous is that she chose to give you a chance to live...

...She has never once been defeated.

Through her own force of will, she bought the rest of us the chance to live.

Because she believed that after her death... we would be able to surpass you...

Haha... Hahahaha...!

How pitiful!

Are you actually feeling... regret?

You came to do battle with me, so determined to die, but you could not even triumph over your own weakness.

Do you care for her?

Yes. I care for her.

I once thought I did not... I thought the outcome of our battle should be the only thing I cared for.

Until I learned something later on.

The hearts of men. You, a wild beast... will never understand.

And so... You are doomed to pay the price.

Enough!

So this is to be your final struggle... This is the result of all your careful planning and preparation for a hundred years, this amusement that you now present to me?

Things will not end any different from last time.

The only difference is that now, you are even weaker than before!

Or do you mean to say that, with her choice, killing me will be akin to killing her, which is why you have not the will to make even a single move?

Pitiful! Pathetic! Laughable!

But no matter... None of it matters.

We can wait here. There is time to wait.

Let us see which of your so-called siblings shall come charging in to die in your stead this time.

The haggard weiqi player slowly rises from in front of the board, only a few black stones left within his bowl.

His movements are slow and stiff, so stiff as to seem like he had been sat there, withering away for the last hundred-and-twenty years.

As you lay there, half-asleep, half-awake, you turned the void within your body into a puppet, causing all sorts of trouble these past few centuries.

You decided that puppet should walk in the dark, while we walked in the light. And so at first, he tottered as he learned to walk, then he secluded himself to gather his strength, and finally, he ran amok.

But you forgot...

When all is said and done, there is only one of him.

If I had stormed in alone to that game a hundred-and-twenty years ago, having forgotten how wide the board is, and how suffused it was with your might...

Then this time, it is his turn to have too much to do. He must cover all of Yan... and even lands beyond, dealing with black stone after black stone.

This time... Will you still be able to see through my stratagem?

Hah...

You tore yourself into a hundred-and-eighty-one pieces, nearly driving yourself to madness, and you believed this would be enough to fool me?

What of it?

'What of it'?

A gravely-wounded Feranmut, forced to sleep and recuperate, having to play a game with humanity while Its thoughts are trapped in unending nightmare...

Such depletion will cut away at the root of your life.

All your bluff and bluster cannot hide it from me. You are growing weak.

And what of it?!

All you have done is walk the same road the first to leave me walked, doing all you can to delay my awakening.

But do you truly believe you <i>are</i> awake?

By killing me in every memory, every fantasy, will you be able to throw off the shackles of dream?

How could the clash between he and It be limited to these confrontations?

Countless possibilities, countless imaginings, countless conclusions.

Even more things that have transcended cause and effect gently fall through the Tomb of Sui like snow. The proxy looks through each and every snowflake, seeing a game that leads to his death in all of them.

Enough.

Finally...

You finally wish to put down that ridiculous game and bare steel against me?

Haha, hahahaha.... Yes, good!

...This shall be my last bit of sport before I awake.

...Finally.

The one who chose White. My reflection in the mirror. Its nightmare.

How difficult it is to meet with you.

Urkh—

Pathetic... Just as I expected. The exact same ending, once again.

You were not bad entertainment, by my standards.

But let us end it here... I must also thank you for this grand... gift you have given me.

With your strength, I shall be able to fully awaken, and devour the power of you twelve whole.

The strength you have gathered over the past thousand years shall be my nutrients, and I shall become strong, far, far stronger than I was a thousand years ago.

I shall become a true god! I shall rule over this land, and lead all those weak insects in breaking through the curtain separating us from the stars, stepping over the ultimate darkness!

With your combined strength... I shall see and obtain that future.

And you, as a part of me, may use my eyes to see it.

Foolish... dreamer...

...Why resist? You will be like that consciousness you call a 'younger sister', returning to where you should be, returning to the primal chaos you came from.

The dream you twelve have been stubbornly chasing after shall be realized within that chaos.

No need for hellish preparations. No need for wasteful schemes. No need for fragile freedom.

You will be me. You will be us.

A great, illogical terror intrudes upon the proxy's mind. His heartbeat quickens, as cold sweat drips down his brow. His body dearly wishes to leap away, but he cannot even swivel his eyeballs.

A blessing.

Split consciousnesses returning to the whole would be the cruelest of blessings.

Abandon your desire for hardship, abandon your worthless obsessions, abandon those duties you bear, abandon those clumsy emotions you learned from wretched humanity.