Chapter 367: 142. Knowing One’s Fate
With Erwind chasing behind him into the Parasol Tree, Fisher no longer hesitated. He looked down at the deep space below, thought for a second or two, and took out the Fluid Sword from his arms. Seeing this, Emhart immediately shrank back into his embrace, falling down with him.
With every drop, Fisher used the Fluid Sword to either grasp or stab into the wall to slow down. As he descended towards the roots of the Parasol Tree, he asked the Moon Princess behind him,
“How high is the life tier of that incomplete base now?”
“A bit higher than my mother’s, also a mythical being. Although it has no intelligence and basically only uses brute force, it’s not something you can handle right now. The guy approaching us feels slightly stronger than you. Is he your friend? If you two join forces, you might have a chance.”
“No, we are enemies who want to destroy each other. Just like you from a thousand years ago, he also wants to use the Spirit Realm to reach the Mythical Rank.”
“Oh, a story repeating itself isn’t entertaining. Why not negotiate with him to see if you can temporarily reach a truce? What do you think?”
“…”
Fisher did not speak any further, quietly descending, lost in thought.
This vast and incredibly spacious realm led down into an unknown abyss. Although it was silent and dark around him now, it wasn’t hard to imagine that this place must have been bustling when the Phoenixes were still around.
They once spread their wings and traversed the spaces here, visiting different locations of the Parasol Tree. The sounds of conversations and fluttering wings must have continuous echoes.
The further Fisher fell, the brighter his surroundings became, as the originally exquisite buildings were gradually covered by layers of thin, growing pristine ice.
The pristine ice below shimmered with a hazy glow, resembling a kaleidoscope, spiraling down to a five-pointed snowflake-shaped platform. The platform seemed to have many instruments flickering with soft light, while below it were vast areas of extremely thick pristine ice.
With his excellent eyesight, Fisher looked through the pristine ice beneath the platform and seemed to see a blurry yet extremely massive shadow. At that moment, the Moon Princess spoke up,
“That’s the root of the giant tree. Its energy is nearly endless. Using the instruments we built up there, we can control the mechanisms inside the Parasol Tree and the surrounding space.”
Fisher slowly brought Valentina down onto the snowflake platform, and the fluorescent glow of the pristine ice gradually spread across the ground, illuminating the platform’s scene.
At this moment, a point of faint light, like a firefly, floated from Valentina’s eyes and flew towards the corner of the instrument.
Fisher and Valentina followed that firefly with their gazes, only to see an unusually tall, crystalline skeleton sitting at the edge of the platform.
The skeleton was over two meters tall, wearing beautiful satin that was almost completely weathered. No matter the style or craftsmanship, Fisher had never seen anything like it. It tilted its head slightly, revealing a pair of wing structures that had long since turned into a framework.
These obvious features all indicated that the person who had long ago disappeared from the world before him was a noble bloodline, a Phoenix.
The skeleton sat quietly at the edge of the instruments, its once-beautiful hands gracefully holding a softly glowing orb.
That orb was a relic made by angels, and the luminous essence that flew out from Valentina swayed and fell into the center of that orb. Whether it was an illusion or not, after the firefly returned, the light on the orb dimmed considerably.
“This is… the corpse of the Moon Princess, the skeleton of a Phoenix?”
Emhart wanted to approach to speculate about the true appearance of the Phoenix through this remaining skeleton, but just as he prepared to fly over, a gentle unfamiliar female voice suddenly came from the orb,
“Mr. Fisher, my time is running out. Please unlock the locking switch of the instrument. The valve on the left is the locking device, and the right one is the spatial gauge. The light in the middle represents the Parasol Tree, and the circles around it are the spatial turbulence you can control. Turn the button to the left to lock it; if the circles completely cover the Parasol Tree, it will be successful.”
Fisher placed Valentina beside him, and since no one was competing for the microphone, she felt somewhat unaccustomed. Fisher squatted down, examining the instruments above, but he did not immediately start turning the dials. Instead, he asked,
“Must the Phoenix bloodline not be involved to operate this?”
“Of course, it’s better to make it as simple as possible with the things at home.”
“…”
Fisher fell silent for a moment and then suddenly turned to look at the corpse of the Moon Princess beside the instrument, asking,
“Moon Princess, I have a little confusion I’d like you to clarify.”
“You know that the incomplete base desires your last bloodline. If you saw the future before your death, you should know that your last bloodline will be inherited by a frail human. Allowing Valentina to enter the Parasol Tree poses great risks in perfecting the base and bringing forth the terrifying existence from the Spirit Realm, yet you still left a will for her to return. What in your prophecy could make you so confident that letting her come back would not be an issue?”
“And you said that the Phoenix only sees the future when stimulated by chance. So I have two questions to ask you: One, did you not see the prophecy when you gave birth to the stillborn in your womb? Even if it’s been thousands of years, your thoughts about that child endure, and surely the stimulus you received back then was significant enough to birth a prophecy; yet you said nothing about it.”
“Two, the unconscious curse spoke during the pursuit of the other six races, shouting ‘traitor.’ At first, I thought it was the six races who betrayed the Phoenix; now I know it was hunting you, so can I deduce that the ‘traitor’ it referred to is actually you?”
Fisher turned his head away, the Moon Princess’s corpse was already lifeless, only the small orb she held in her hands shimmered with faint light. After a few seconds, her gentle voice came again,
“Smart child, your reasoning is quick. Only now do I find a slight resemblance between you and that eccentric fellow. However, there’s no need to suspect my intentions with such conspiracy theories. The prophecies of the Phoenixes, as seen by the weaker ones, manifest as images, like scenes from the past stored in your memories that cannot change the past or the outcome.”
“But for those of us who are stronger, this is different. We don’t see images; we perceive feelings. That is the direction of ‘fate,’ a chance for the delicate threads entangled with someone or something to tremble and change under the gentle breeze of destiny. All difficulties, in our eyes, are a tangled knot of threads, the harder the knot is to untangle, the more it leads to confusion.”
“My brother saw the mythical war as an extremely complex fate knot, almost impossible to untangle, which is why our entire race sought help from the Spirit Realm, not expecting that this would lead to our annihilation, being part of the knot. And indeed, I saw another, much more distant prophecy when giving birth to my offspring. What lay before me was a ‘deadlock’ beyond any living being’s imagination, and the knot that caused the annihilation of our entire race was only a tiny part of this deadlock.”
“If we resolve the knot of our race, the subsequent deadlock will be utterly impassable; but even if we sacrificed the lives of the entire Phoenix race, whether the deadlock can be untangled afterward is uncertain. If it were you, how would you decide?”
Fisher’s eyes flickered slightly, and suddenly an image popped up in his mind, recalling the ‘Apocalypse Prophecy’ jokingly written at the beginning of the Supplement Handbook for Sub-Humans. He seemed to read between the lines of the Moon Princess’s words and said,
“You are indecisive. You secretly told your mother, the Phoenix King, this prophecy, and she made the choice for you. She chose the latter, didn’t she? You and your mother abandoned your race, choosing to provide hope for unraveling the deadlock later on. This is why, while a divine-like corruption crashed upon your entire race, you and your mother appeared calm, able to seal the base with ice and close off the Parasol Tree. It turns out you were prepared beforehand.”
“But perhaps my perspective as a human is too narrow; I cannot see the link between these two events. And maybe if you all abandoned communication with the Spirit Realm at that time, preventing the Sky God from descending and forming a base with the flesh of your entire race, it would be more beneficial for the deadlock afterward?”
The orb in the Moon Princess’s hands gradually dimmed, and her gentle voice became fainter,
“Child, a race that can see fate perceives the world through a completely different lens. Any real connection is merely a manifestation of fate; we are too lowly to investigate its true connections, and knowing the result is sufficient. You must have arrived here long after my death, so I want to ask you: In your historical life, aside from the wars of the original mythical races, was there an invasion of the Chaos Race? Do you still feel the threat of the Spirit Realm’s existence against the world?”
“…”
Fisher pondered for a moment but did not answer. To be honest, he came to know only after arriving in the Northern Region that there had been terrifying threats in the Spirit Realm; before that, including the invasion of the Chaos Race, it only existed in myths and legends.
In this light, the sacrifices of the Phoenixes had indeed alleviated the oppressive existence against the Spirit Realm and reality for some reason. At least since his birth, he had not felt the dire straits faced by the Phoenixes.
“If one can trust the gods, then they should have appeared long before countless beings were oppressed by tyrants. The direct intervention of gods in the world has severe consequences, not to mention the Spirit Realm they cannot reach. The mythical races can sense the fluctuations of the threads of fate to some extent but would not make the same choices as us. One can only blame fate for granting this ability to the Phoenixes, who once tasted the suffering of all beings.”
“But there’s not entirely no compensation, is there? For us and for all beings in the Northern Region, too.”
“In the mythical war, the mythical races knew our sacrifices, preventing the flames of war from spreading to the Northern Region. Many Northern races have thrived to this day, having lived safely through the mythical war; even once, a robust spirit entity of the base escaped the unsealed Parasol Tree and fled toward the ocean, trying to steal back my last bloodline. A powerful existence from the ocean even intervened and drove it back to the Parasol Tree.”
“For us, although our entire clan perished, our figures and stories still live on in the Northern Region, celebrated by the subjects we once sheltered, and our partners, with whom we’ve partied for millennia, still adhere to a command that I only ever issued once. Perhaps this outcome is the best for us Phoenixes.”
“Although our entire race has exhausted all without crossing the mythic barrier like a gap like the heavens, we unexpectedly became the deities of faith for the people of the Northern Region, something that even countless much stronger mythical races and True Gods find difficult to achieve.”
Fisher turned to Valentina beside him. His earlier intense questioning of the Moon Princess was not out of suspicion towards her intentions, as this matter had long passed, and pursuing it further held no meaning from a deceased person’s standpoint.
He was only concerned about how to save the dying Valentina. Her human body could not bear the Phoenix bloodline indefinitely; even if they did not come to the Parasol Tree, she would die outside. But despite the Moon Princess explaining a multitude of things, she hadn’t provided a solution, which made Fisher quite troubled. However, seeming to understand the implication of the Moon Princess’s words, he asked again,
“Then, does calling Valentina back relate to the fate knot you saw? Can it help her resolve the bloodline issue?”
“I don’t know, what do you think?”
“…”
Without getting an answer, Fisher sighed, closed his eyes, and pressed one hand on the control panel, manipulating the spatial turbulence to completely lock the Parasol Tree while opening all the mechanisms inside. At this moment, the completely sealed Parasol Tree became the final battlefield for him, Erwind, and the base.
“Space! Space! Space!”
Accompanied by the mechanical sounds coming from inside the Parasol Tree, Fisher stared at the flickering light of the pristine ice below and quietly asked, unsure whether he was questioning the Moon Princess or himself,
“You’ve done your best to provide everything you could, but after all, that deadlock yet to come isn’t something you can unlock yourselves. You’ve sacrificed so much and waited for thousands of years, yet if from now on, even one descendant goes wrong or makes a mistake, you will all lose everything.”
The Moon Princess chuckled softly, but it was evident that the energy retained in her relic had diminished considerably, rendering her voice increasingly vague. She merely stated,
“My mother and I both understand this principle, but fate is difficult to predict. A gentleman should be discerning, a skilled person should know their fate. Since a choice has been made, there should be no room for regret. The matters that follow are up to you.”
The Moon Princess’s gentle voice suddenly stopped, and the small orb held in her skeletal hands shattered along with her last words, turning into a pile of cold remnants.
Meanwhile, Valentina, upon hearing the Moon Princess’s final words, subtly clenched her palms, looking at Fisher who was deep in thought, smiling as she tugged at his sleeve and said,
“Don’t worry, Fisher. Let’s not think about these things for now. You still need to solve the base left by the Phoenix and deal with that enemy chasing you, right?”
Seeing that Fisher did not move, seemingly still pondering, she gently took his large hand to her cheek, feeling its touch and warmth. Fisher couldn’t help but turn to look at her, and Valentina, sitting on the ground, looked up and smiled at him, raising the magic ring she wore on her hand.
“It’s okay, the ring you gave me will always protect me, Fisher.”
“You will be fine, Valentina.”
Looking at the optimistic Valentina before him, Fisher let out a sigh of relief and picked her up on his back again. He raised his head to look toward the top of the Parasol Tree and saw that the glass that was originally clear enough to see the moonlight seemed completely distorted, even the aurora was no longer visible. At the same time, the tightly closed doors inside the Parasol Tree began to loosen one by one, allowing Fisher to feel a terrible wave of soul energy behind a door in the middle of the Parasol Tree.
And at the entrance, from where they had just come, Erwind, the one chasing him, also entered.
Just as Fisher had previously guessed, Erwind went straight for the base.
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(End of Chapter)
