Chapter 499: 116. Indigenous
As previously mentioned, the so-called “control” of the loom by Margaret essentially involves clearing the power of the World Tree that remains on the loom, but this is actually just the part that Tang Zeming Asuka is responsible for.
At the same time, Margaret herself also needs to seize control of the loom.
In comparison, during this process, Tang Zeming Asuka and Margaret are upstream and downstream respectively, both in the same river, interacting with the loom. Of course, the main force in breaking the loom is Tang Zeming Asuka.
No matter how many times it happens, every time Margaret sees the chaos flowing from Tang Zeming Asuka’s body, she is astonished. When she uses chaos to cleanse the power imprint of the World Tree on the loom, it soon becomes exhausting, but Tang Zeming Asuka is different; if she doesn’t stop her, she can continue doing this indefinitely.
Every Trans has a different “voice” in their minds, which expands over time, yet Asuka should only have recently come to this world, but she already possesses such a massive amount of chaos. Why is that?
Moreover, she has never heard the “voice” calling out to her, and overall, she truly appears to be an ordinary young girl… even less than an ordinary young girl. Why is that?
So far, Margaret has only studied the voice within her own body, and recently she needs to focus on the matters of the loom, leaving her with no time to explore the nature of the voice within Tang Zeming Asuka. She only feels that this is a characteristic of the voice within Tang Zeming Asuka.
Although the quantity seems enormous, it is completely harmless, and besides its large volume, it serves no other purpose.
However, she is just an ordinary child and should be growing up slowly beside her loved ones; she will be fine once she returns to her world… After today, continuing to study these voices will hold no significance.
So Margaret thought.
At this moment, in Tang Zeming Asuka’s eyes, the traces on the loom are continuously fading, just as Margaret estimated earlier; as long as Tang Zeming Asuka helps, the progress will be particularly swift.
“Buzz buzz buzz!”
As Tang Zeming Asuka’s power deepens, the orderly power on the loom’s surface becomes increasingly weak, and the entire form of the loom begins to change slowly. The entity writhing in the water pool, entangled with countless black silk threads, moves in a chaotic manner without a specific form, becoming more and more intense, and the connections with the surrounding order are gradually weakening, slowly stepping toward another direction.
That direction is chaos.
At the moment when the fate loom’s power of the World Tree is about to fade, it begins to transform its form, and its intrinsic chaotic colors become heavier while its golden light grows brighter.
“Margaret… this is…”
Tang Zeming Asuka closes her eyes but senses the state of the loom at this moment. Ahead, Margaret’s calm voice quickly arrives.
“Rest assured, this is normal. The nature of the loom is quite strange; it can adapt to both chaos and order. When the World Tree was in control, its power belonged entirely to order. After we gain control of it, its power will turn into chaos. Only when it becomes chaos can I use it. Once we transform it into chaos, we will succeed.”
As the words reach their end, Margaret’s usually calm voice finally reveals a slight ripple.
Tang Zeming Asuka nods and begins using her own power to change the traces on the loom. As the power of the World Tree dims little by little, just when success is imminent, a series of shimmering, rainbow-like shadows suddenly pop up in Asuka’s mind…
“Boom!”
In that instant, Tang Zeming Asuka seems to find herself in an extraordinarily mystical space, her tiny figure floating in the darkness of the universe, surrounded by what seems like emptiness or perhaps something filling the void…
But the next second, as her gaze refocuses and the light beside her rekindles, she suddenly discovers the segments of seemingly illusory objects slowly taking shape around her.
At this moment, what appears before her is a tree larger than a planet.
At this moment, what appears before her is an entity no longer illusory, but filled with immense and terrifying pressure.
On each branch of the tree, it seems there are tall skyscrapers, each branch appears to hold deep abysses and ravines, every branch contains the past and the future…
Layer upon layer of dimensions simultaneously manifest before Tang Zeming Asuka in a way she cannot imagine. In the vast golden light, a single eye resembling the sun gazes down from above, staring directly at Tang Zeming Asuka below…
That is the World Tree’s true form.
Faced with Tang Zeming Asuka before her, its voice, like a grand bell, erupts like ocean waves, instantly engulfing the small, grass-like Tang Zeming Asuka.
It says,
“Seeking death.”
“Ugh!!”
In reality, Tang Zeming Asuka’s face suddenly turns extremely pale, and she covers her mouth, instantly collapsing to the ground. The process of completely transforming the loom into chaos, just one step away from success, comes to an abrupt halt, and the pool of water remains suspended.
“Ugh… ugh…”
“Asuka! Are you okay?!”
Margaret rushes over with a worried expression, looking at Tang Zeming Asuka kneeling on the ground and gagging. She pats her trembling body and asks,
“What did you see? What’s wrong?”
“I… I saw the World Tree, her power… ugh…”
Tang Zeming Asuka spews forward, beads of fine sweat covering her body, then shakes her head. In this split second, her mind is not blank because she has grasped an extremely important message that she must immediately share with Margaret.
After catching her breath for a moment, she anxiously lifts her head to Margaret and says,
“Margaret… no, even if we completely control the loom, we absolutely cannot stop the World Tree… she… she is too powerful…”
Upon hearing this, Margaret pauses slightly, and then her worried expression gradually calms down. She doesn’t take any extra actions, just continues to watch Tang Zeming Asuka in front of her, saying nothing.
Breathing heavily, Tang Zeming Asuka keenly notices her expression, feeling puzzled but quickly, a dreadful suspicion rushes into her mind. She asks in disbelief,
“Margaret… you already knew… that the loom cannot stop the World Tree, right?”
“……”
Margaret keeps the same expression she had before. After a moment of silence, she slowly stands up and turns to glance through the hollow space at the outside of the Ideal Nation.
At the same time, she softly speaks to Tang Zeming Asuka,
“Asuka, I have good news to share with you.”
“Good news?”
Margaret squints her eyes and continues,
“In fact, I have found a way to send us back home, and with a hundred percent certainty.”
Tang Zeming Asuka opens her mouth, her mind temporarily shutting down, unable to process the current situation.
“What… does that mean?”
“Asuka, you cannot hear or see the voice in my mind. Originally, I wanted to share this knowledge with you last night, but… you didn’t know because the creatures of this world are special, so the death processes in this world also have a strict sequence. Any creature, mythical being, or demigod is pursued by a set of rigorous and inescapable logic of death. The one in charge of this power is an unconscious deity, Heya…”
The mist far from the Ideal Nation is swayed by the sea breeze from afar. As the gale blows, Margaret’s long golden hair flows like waves.
“Only the gods can allow Trans to reach the Ultimate to leave this world, and for some reason, the gods themselves are absolutely unable to interfere with the world. This is a paradox, an unsolvable problem. But now it’s different. With the loom connected to death, with such suitable sacrifices, this is the closest we’ve ever been to the authority of the gods, and its power is beyond our imagination…”
Margaret smiles and turns around, kneeling down in front of Tang Zeming Asuka, holding her hands.
“Asuka, let’s fully master the loom; we will soon be able to leave this world.”
It turns out that Margaret also wants to leave this world.
Tang Zeming Asuka shakes her head in confusion. She really does not understand what Margaret means.
“I… I don’t understand… what does sacrifice… mean?”
Margaret reaches out to touch Tang Zeming Asuka’s face, then speaks,
“Although we are close to authority and have such a powerful loom, the things we can do are still limited; we can only make certain modifications to the process of death. Chaos cannot be bound by rules. The only way to handle it must wait until its vessel is dead. Only then will the program targeting chaos start, sending it and the vessel of death to the Ultimate.”
“And through the loom, we can alter this process, replacing ourselves with a more powerful form of strength and conceptual death, thus allowing us to be transported alive to the Ultimate. Once we reach that point, we can go home…”
Tang Zeming Asuka gasps, questioning,
“What do you mean by greater strength and conceptual death? What does that mean?”
“It means someone must conceptually die in our place, and it must be an existence of mythical rank. Only then can we cooperate with the loom to alter the program… Moreover, the more sacrificial beings, the better. You should understand how difficult it is for us to reach the Ultimate.”
“That is to say…”
“Chuan, and that Fisher. Chuan has a higher rank, capable of allowing two people to reach the Ultimate. Coincidentally, that Fisher has also reached mythical rank. With them as sacrifices, I, you, and Mikhail can return home.”
Upon hearing that Fisher needs to be sacrificed, Tang Zeming Asuka’s pupils contract sharply, her mind flooding with blood. She struggles to stand up, holding Margaret’s hand tightly and exclaims excitedly,
“No! Margaret, we cannot do this… I… Teacher Fisher is very important to me. He has been taking care of me since I came here for so long. I… I like him; I cannot do this. And Chuan… Chuan has also been good to you. Why… why must we do this?”
Margaret closes her eyes, her eyes reddening. She seems to struggle as well, but a second later, she firmly states,
“Asuka, don’t be naive. This isn’t about whether it’s good for us. Fisher doesn’t like you at all, at least not in a romantic sense. Moreover, he is already being pursued by death. The Angel is deceiving him. How could Pandora possibly request the Heavenly Lock to expel death for a human? He is doomed to die!
“Chuan has betrayed his race. He stands no chance against the World Tree. I have tried to resist, but in the end, it was futile.
“Their fate is already sealed, but ours is not yet determined. Would you rather wait for Fisher to die and remain in this world, without seizing the opportunity to use him to return home? Don’t you want to go back?”
However, Tang Zeming Asuka doesn’t want to give up yet. She steps forward and questions and persuades,
“Margaret, didn’t you say the powers of the gods cannot interfere with this world? Using the power of the loom to interfere with death this time is definitely far more serious than the last time in the Tree Continent, right? What about here? That god named Heya… won’t he notice our actions? Other gods can’t interfere with the world, but he can, won’t there be consequences to using his power to achieve our goals?”
Margaret looks straight at Tang Zeming Asuka and bluntly says,
“The goddess is very likely to awaken, and her rules governing death may change as a result. I don’t know what will happen afterward…”
“But, just the demigod World Tree has already been… Didn’t you say that the gods absolutely cannot interfere with the world? If she awakens…”
“That has nothing to do with us anymore…”
“This act of using one life to exchange for another, to achieve our goals, is it any different from when the Elf King took your blood? Margaret, it was Chuan who saved you from there…”
“That has nothing to do with us anymore…”
“But Chuan clearly came here wanting to create this nation with you. If the rules here change, then what about here…”
“Enough, Asuka!”
Margaret suddenly grips Tang Zeming Asuka’s shoulders and interrupts her, pushing her back slightly while leaning her face closer.
Margaret’s expression is fierce, her eyes firmly locked onto Tang Zeming Asuka’s, shouting at her,
“They are just a bunch of oblivious natives of this world; what does it have to do with us?! Once we leave, this world will have nothing to do with you! One day, you will have to leave Fisher and this world. These natives understand nothing, yet you still wish to play house with them. Even without today, sometime in the future, they will run out of play!”
Tang Zeming Asuka stares at Margaret in disbelief, and only after several seconds does she take a breath.
Her mind is a chaotic mess, but unwavering, she is not persuaded by Margaret.
She likes Fisher; if it means his death, she would rather never go back.
“No… no… Margaret, I cannot treat future events that have not happened as a premise like you. I cannot do this.”
Having said that, her connection slowly breaks from the loom of fate.
At the moment Tang Zeming Asuka’s power leaves, the light on the fate loom slowly dims, and the traces of the World Tree deepen once again.
“Buzz buzz buzz…”
Margaret’s eyes redden slightly. She steps back and looks sadly at Tang Zeming Asuka in front of her, yet remains silent.
After a long time, she finally lets out a breath and sighs,
“Perhaps you’re right; I do have feelings for Chuan and the Ideal Nation… Since you’re willing to gamble that Pandora hasn’t deceived you, then let’s give it a try. Go fetch the tears beneath the loom, and I will hold off with the loom for a while, then I will open the door to the Ideal Nation to let its citizens escape as soon as possible. After that, Chuan and I will hide and wait for your news, hopefully good news.”
“Margaret…”
Looking at the somewhat dejected but finally convinced Margaret, Tang Zeming Asuka, amidst her joy, is breathing heavily and wants to step forward to comfort her.
But Margaret shakes her head, then raises her hand to manipulate the loom entwined with black silk threads, making it continuously rise in the water.
“Clap clap clap…”
One by one, the winding silk threads break. The tears beneath them become increasingly visible.
“Boom!”
Just then, a sudden and deafening explosion echoed from underneath the stone tower, causing it to shake violently. The magnitude of this force suggests that it could only be a clash between mythical ranks.
Tang Zeming Asuka and Margaret both look toward the outside. However, unlike the bewildered Tang Zeming Asuka, Margaret likely guesses that her earlier arrangements have taken effect.
Fisher has arrived, and Chuan, who was stationed there, blocked him.
Chuan has a higher rank than him and should be able to stop him.
But just to be safe, she also needs to hurry.
“Margaret, what about…”
“Puff!”
Just as Tang Zeming Asuka gulps down a breath and is about to turn to ask Margaret, a sudden numbness shoots through her lower abdomen, and her entire body freezes in place.
She hasn’t even realized what has happened when a sharp pain surges from her abdomen, causing her to feel as if her bones have been lost, rendering her weak.
Tang Zeming Asuka trembles and looks down, only to see a long dagger having pierced through her back, thrusting straight through her abdomen, the blood-stained tip protruding out.
“Ha… ha…”
Tang Zeming Asuka, in disbelief, attempts to turn around, but her whole body is uncontrollably collapsing to the ground. Just then, the assailant behind her, Margaret, leans forward to gently hold her, preventing her from falling immediately.
Though Tang Zeming Asuka cannot see Margaret’s expression at this moment, she can feel her cold breath and voice intertwined with the violent ringing in her ears and dizziness, as if Margaret has become a wall entrenched in shadows, completely blocking everything.
Tang Zeming Asuka feebly struggles, but Margaret firmly locks her in place, allowing the sharp and cold blade to delve deeper within her, letting her hot blood and life flow away.
“Ma… ma…”
Tang Zeming Asuka’s lips tremble, a tear drops from her eye; the simple sound of her opening her mouth is probably the phonetic start of Margaret’s name, right?
“.Why are you always so naive, Asuka? You do not know how long I have stayed here—one hundred and twenty years, a whole one hundred and twenty years. You are only seventeen, and you have no concept of time—how foolish of you to think that if you miss today, you will not know what tortures await you here. One day you will change; I am the best example. I, a French farmer, initially so submissive and merely surviving. Do you know how many times I wished to simply die in this world?
“But I cannot end it like this. I lost my child, everything in this world and that world. I will take my child back; I will take revenge on them. The natives here, beasts of the original world, they all deserve to be punished!!
“A sacrifice of thousands in an instant will grant me enough power to form the body of my pitiful child, while the tears of the World Tree can provide her consciousness… Only by sacrificing Chuan will my daughter and I be able to leave here, and then I will take my reborn daughter, the powerful force of the loom, back to my world. I will make those who took everything from me, those beasts, feel the excruciating pain that I felt a hundredfold!”
Margaret’s speech quickens, her usually calm voice finally revealing a bloody excitement as if after one hundred and twenty years, her true thoughts finally have someone to express them to rather than repeating them day after day to the whispers in her ears.
It is a pity that the one listening to her heartfelt words now refuses her, and will soon die. But in front of this poor and naive child, Margaret doesn’t mind telling her a bit more. This way, perhaps she can be a little smarter in her next life?
“I originally could not master the loom of fate and needed someone else to help me. The loom told me an answer: your Teacher Fisher has something that can assist me. So I previously sent Chuan to kill him, to seize the item that could help me control the loom. Because the loom cannot see Trans, I only realized he had you to help me after Chuan’s assassination failed…
“You should have known, the blood of Trans… can actually help me control chaos too, just as I helped the Elf King resist death then. At that time, I had Chuan kill you to bring you back, but he refused me. Later, you came to the Ideal Nation by yourself, only because I felt pity for you, did I want to leave this world with you. But you are too young, too indecisive; you do not know how rare this opportunity is…
“The loom of the True God, the overlooked goddess of death, the knowledge in my mind and the mythical beings willing to serve me… these conditions for success are immensely rare. Once missed, there will be no next time. You have not had regrets, of course, you can have your remorse, your romance, and ideals, but I cannot…”
Tang Zeming Asuka does not reach to pull Margaret behind her, perhaps because she has no strength left, or perhaps because all her strength is used to turn her head.
“Ma…”
But having heard everything, Tang Zeming Asuka still only repeats that simple syllable.
She glances at Margaret behind her with utmost confusion, but facing her is only Margaret’s face that is approaching madness, the visible chaos and her murmurs seem to resonate at this moment, making Tang Zeming Asuka hear them in their entirety.
Those voices…
Tang Zeming Asuka attempts to grasp Margaret behind her, but her powerless fingers leave a trail of blood on the now completely insane and indifferent face of the other.
Ma…
Mom…
In the next moment, Tang Zeming Asuka’s pupils instantly lose their light, as if her vision before her has turned dim from the blade’s piercing and loss of life.
“Sorry, Asuka, since you disagree, I can only use the powers within you, which are simply wasteful. Goodbye, fool.”
In the next second, Margaret abruptly retracts the dagger piercing Tang Zeming Asuka’s body and no longer supports her with her hands, allowing her to fall into the water like a corpse.
“Splash!”
As Tang Zeming Asuka weakly plunges into the black abyss, a crimson bloodstain begins to spread in the pool, its source unsure whether it is Tang Zeming Asuka’s blood or her life.
Margaret casually throws aside the blood-stained dagger in her hand, then watches in astonishment as the golden light within the bloodied pool grows brighter, even as that same golden hue also intensifies in her own eyes.
“Buzz buzz buzz!”
“Matilda, my child…”
“It’s time to go home, Matilda…”
“Come with me, let them feel your and my pain.”
“As those voices told me.”
“Come back, my child.”
At this moment, the madness on Margaret’s face finally blooms without reservation. She gazes longingly at the tears of the World Tree floating up from the pool, seemingly infected by its name, almost brought to tears at the thought of meeting her child immediately.
From the pool, the loom, now turned chaotic in color, writhes and erupts forth, a substance akin to organic life instantly enveloping and igniting the long-hidden fire of revenge, merging with Margaret, who is opening her arms.
“Buzz buzz buzz!”
Under the stone tower, the deathly threads being pulled apart snap one by one, but the aura of death does not dissipate; instead, it becomes even denser, spreading from the earth veins, in an instant encompassing all the beings marked within the Ideal Nation, most of whom are still dreaming.
“Boom!”
With the transmission of a peculiar power, an aura that would terrify even mythical beings covers the entire realm of the Ideal Nation.
Death has arrived.
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(The End)
