Chapter 1255
Batting Wings in the Light
“Finally…”
Awakening from the illusion, Eivass murmured, his eyes flickering.
The memories from Ai Shiping were clearly engraved in his heart.
That was perhaps the part the Ring Heavenly Envoy would be most unwilling to let go of, his fundamental essence engraved at the bottom of his heart.
Eivass finally understood… what the Pillar God “Forbidden,” who only appeared in the “Cicada Molting Incident” as a backdrop but was never recorded, truly was.
—That was the Pillar God formed by the Ascension of Ai Shiping, the Samsara Heavenly Envoy of the first cycle!
Combined with his previous deductions about the Abyss Heavenly Envoy’s identity, Eivass immediately understood the essence of the Amber Heavenly Envoy—
The Amber Heavenly Envoy ascended from a sea monster like a giant snake. His true form was only a human skull the color of amber. His spine remained in the Material Realm, becoming the core of the Spirit Tower.
…A god with a snake’s body and a human head, possessing a special skull, originating from the sea, with an unthinking loyalty to amber, always protecting the slumbering amber, a tomb keeper who wanted to “remember” everything. The Amber Heavenly Envoy even acted as a proxy for some of Pillar God Amber’s responsibilities, yet the other several Pillar Gods had no objections, and even the Hourglass acknowledged this.
Wasn’t this Ai Shiping?
Just like Ai Shiping in the first cycle who abandoned his physical body, leaving only the Golden Apple formed from his head!
From another perspective… the word “amber” itself implies “insects encased in amber.”
If the insects were Pillar God Amber, then why was the Amber Heavenly Envoy called “Amber”?
Wasn’t it Forbidden itself, transformed into a sarcophagus, that encased the “insects” back then?
And similarly…
The “Sea Burial Sutra” proposed that a snake was killed by a flying bird. The flying bird, born from the snake’s belly, broke out and devoured it, while the corpse of the giant snake that sank into the sea transformed into a monster. The Abyss Heavenly Envoy’s form was a mass of huge, ferocious tentacles—couldn’t tentacles be considered boneless snakes?
Having lost the power of Samsara and simultaneously controlling the authority of those with scales… that was a world-ending sea god capable of stirring endless waves and drowning the fire of all civilizations. When the Void descended, perhaps the Abyss Heavenly Envoy’s methods could be considered a “last resort”—destroying the entire world and replaying the creation of heaven and earth from the primeval ocean.
If “Twilight Seed” were a virus, then this would likely be a format.
One was complete destruction, the other ultimate preservation.
Combining the story of the Amber Heavenly Envoy’s birth and the Abyss Heavenly Envoy’s birth, that was precisely the truth of what happened on the “Cicada Molting Day”!
These two Heavenly Envoys of the Forbidden Path together constituted “Forbidden”!
…What was going on? Did the Hourglass perform a division? Or were the Great Abyss and Amber also severed snake tails?
If the latter… considering that the Ring Heavenly Envoy changed hands in a certain cycle, the snake tail devoured the snake head. It was possible that the original Ring Heavenly Envoy later became either the Great Abyss or Amber.
After realizing that the power of Forbidden had been contaminated, he then severed the current Ring Heavenly Envoy who contained absolutely no power of Forbidden… just as the Ring Heavenly Envoy completely severed his power of Devotion to Eivass.
Eivass did not yet understand the details of this part.
But Eivass now knew what had happened in the first cycle—
The Sun fell, signifying the demise of the Xi Heavenly Envoy. Since the Xi Heavenly Envoy and Hengwo were two sides of the same coin, this meant Hengwo was also dead.
The Sin Thorns grew wildly, and civilization was in ruins, meaning Candlemaster, the “Sin Eater Beast,” was also dead.
Gravity was in chaos, there were no stars in the sky, and ruins floated in the sky, meaning the Hourglass, which controlled the laws of physics and order, was also dead.
The Moon turned into a Blood Moon, signifying that the Pillar God controlling the First Origin River had become the Blood Heavenly Envoy. And he had also been corrupted by the Void… just as happened in this timeline.
Without the help of the Ring Heavenly Envoy, the Crown Heavenly Envoy could not have ascended. Therefore, the Pillar God of the Seventh Origin River was still Supreme Heaven of the Path of Power… This was likely why, when he was killed by the Silver Crown Dragon, Supreme Heaven said to him, “I will wait for you in the Twilight of the End.” He might not have died completely then, a portion of his memory remaining.
Perhaps it was from this point that Supreme Heaven completely fell. He dreamed of the end of the world and believed that the power of the end had completely overwhelmed him, so he decided to give up and choose immediate pleasure; just as the Great Philosopher, after witnessing the truth, chose to remain silent and do his best to prevent the spread of the Void.
—Wisdom that is useless even if known, power that can do nothing.
Precisely because of this… in subsequent cycles, the Ring Heavenly Envoy clearly supported the Crown Heavenly Envoy’s ascension, replacing Supreme Heaven, who passively fought.
The Giant Dragon still existed but was corrupted, meaning the Path Adaptation still existed, but the Lord of Scales and Feathers might also have been corrupted by the Twilight; without the snake’s temptation, Lucifer would not have attempted to ascend but would have peacefully remained the master of the Sky-Piercing Tower, the King of Winged Ones, and thus there would be no Fallen Heavenly Envoy.
Add to this the Father Snake, who had most likely completed Transcendence, and the number of Origin Rivers with known problems or dead Pillar Gods was the First, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, Eighth… Considering the remaining discrepancies, the only one that likely survived until the end was the Twin Mirror.
—Without any defenses, the erosion of the Void left no traces.
It was a god-slaying plague that spread through words, emotions, and thoughts… By the time the symptoms were discovered, it was already too late.
And in the end… Amber, through a ritual of killing Pillar Gods, seized all the power of the dying “Forbidden”—Ai Shiping—and used the Ouroboros Ring to complete the first restart, reaching the second cycle.
It was an attempt by Amber and the Ring Heavenly Envoy to cooperate tacitly and alter most of history. It was also at that time that the Silver Crown Dragon began to be born, and the Fallen Heavenly Envoy and the Ring Heavenly Envoy emerged. The Pillar Gods finally lived to the end, obtained clear memories, and then began the third cycle.
“Is this what you want to tell me…”
Eivass gazed at the white larva perched in his hand and murmured, “Amber…”
However, the larva showed no reaction to this name.
It merely bit Eivass’s finger innocently and fluttered its fuzzy wings.
At this moment, Eivass froze, then suddenly realized—
—This was not that “Pillar God Amber.” That Amber born from the future and died in the past.
The Amber who was truly a Pillar God could no longer hold on.
The only clean memories it preserved were the ones it had just transmitted to him. As the vanguard resisting the erosion of the Void, she had resisted for more than nine times the lifespan of Hengwo and the Beast Lord… She was now close to burning out.
This was the original Amber.
It was the young larva that devoured time, the one who first saw the “snake” in the Sky-Piercing Tower. It was the larva from the amber, preserved by the “Amber” of the future, and hatched again today.
It had no memories of Amber, nor had it ever consumed the light of the snake. It was a brand new individual… The first light it consumed after waking up was Eivass’s light.
If Amber belonged to Ai Shiping… then this fluttering larva now was an “Amber” that belonged solely to Eivass.
They were the same person, just as Eivass and Ai Shiping were the same person. Yet they had parallel memories and different lives.
This was not Amber reborn.
It was a resurrected worm.
“…So, I should give you a new name to celebrate.”
Eivass fell silent for a long time, looking at its amber-colored insect eyes, and said in a low voice, “To celebrate your rebirth…
“How about calling you, Inanna…?”
