CHAPTER 123: TRUE DEATH

The Devouring Demon wandered through the bizarre cityscape, each encounter more ridiculous than the last. His worldview forged in blood, battle, and centuries of cultivation was slowly shattering.

Eventually, he grew mentally exhausted.

He looked up at the sky for a moment of solace.

Only to find the moon staring back at him.

It had eyes. Cartoonishly large ones. When it noticed him watching, it smiled — a soft, innocent smile. Almost childlike.

The Devouring Demon felt a chill run down his spine.

"Nope."

He bolted into the nearest building, a library.

Inside, the air was still. Peaceful. Stacks of books stretched into the ceiling like towers. He let out a sigh of relief.

But of course, the peace didn’t last.

To his right, a teenage boy in a red cap with a strange sphere in his hand was pacing near the exit. On his shoulder sat a small yellow creature that occasionally sparked with visible yellow electricity.

"Pikachu, I can’t find the book I need. Let’s go somewhere else."

"Pika Pi," the yellow creature chirped in agreement, its red cheeks flickering with lightning.

To his left, he saw a bald man in cape, struggling to catch a mosquito.

The Devouring Demon decided to ignore them.

He sat down quietly at a nearby table.

There he saw a person writing names on a book with cover "Life Notebook", the person talked about reaping lives and changing the rotten society, and bescide him, in a wierd posture on the chair was another person monitoring him.

But across from him, another spectacle unfolded.

A young man wearing a red and blue skin-tight suit and a mask — the kind that only left his white eye-lenses visible was manning the front desk.

Every time a customer requested a book, he’d shoot webs from his wrists, crawling and swinging along the shelves like a deranged librarian turned acrobat.

"Daoist Pangu, Here’s your copy of Cultivation for Dummies, Volume IV," he cheerfully told an old cultivator with a long beard.

Beside him stood his coworker — in a black and red suit, twin katanas on his back, clearly more interested in annoying the red and blue clerk, his bestfriend, rather than doing any actual work.

"Why don’t we ever shelve books normally? You know, like using ladders?" the red-black one asked dramatically, doing finger guns at the air.

Then, mid rant, he froze. His eyes narrowed behind his mask.

He slowly looked upward.

"Whoa, peeping is rude, you know! Hello, there! Yeah, you! You thought I wouldn’t notice you’re watching, no rea—"

Thwip!

A well-placed web silenced him instantly.

"Who are you talking to again?" the red-and-blue one muttered without looking.

The Devouring Demon massaged his temples.

This wasn’t a sea of consciousness.

This was madness.

Unable to bear it, he slept.

***

The Devouring Demon opened his eyes — and found only darkness.

Not shadows. Not night. A total, all-consuming absence.

No shape. No sound. No end. No beginning.

As if the universe itself had been erased.

Then, a voice emerged from the void.

It did not echo from above, below, behind, or beside. It came from everywhere, through the stillness, through the dark, through him.

"Did you like it?"

The words weren’t spoken. They reverberated. Sank into his soul.

His soul recoiled.

For the first time in a long time, he, the Devouring Demon felt fear.

Something was watching him. Something vast. And it was amused.

He gritted his teeth, steadied his voice. "Who are you?" he asked. "No... what are you?"

The darkness shivered.

And then, it shattered.

Suddenly, he was no longer floating in nothingness. The void gave way to motion, to light, to vision.

He hovered above a quiet blue planet, drifting silently over swirling oceans and slow-turning clouds. The air shimmered with life. The world below pulsed with energy — gentle, unaware, untouched.

Then, he moved.

He surged past a blazing sun, its surface seething with fury. Solar flares burst outward in arcs of golden flame. A gas giant followed, massive and ringed with ice and rock, its gravity bending light into strange illusions.

He flew faster. Through asteroid belts spinning in chaotic grace. Past a green-blue planet glowing softly from within.

Then the stars themselves began to shift.

He saw them born in clouds of violet and gold, nestled in nebulae like divine cradles.

He watched them age, some bloating into red giants, others collapsing into spinning neutron cores. Some simply vanished, torn into singularities that devoured even light.

Supernovas erupted. Quasars blazed. Galaxies turned in spirals, danced, merged.

And beyond it all, the universe revealed itself, an endless lattice of stars and voids, stretching into forever.

He floated in silence, a mere witness to the great machine of existence.

And he felt awe.

Though his memories were blurry, he somehow knew he hadn’t truly experienced space travel in his life, only travelling from one immortal star to another using teleportation formations.

Then, the voice returned.

"My first love," it said, resonant and calm, "was the Universe."

The stars vanished.

In an instant, the Devouring Demon stood within a vast throne room. Darkness filled every corner, yet at the center stood a single, radiant throne, glowing white, ethereal, untouched by shadow.

Upon it sat a figure.

And when the Devouring Demon saw who it was, his breath caught. Instinct gripped him — raw, primal fear.

He staggered back, his voice breaking into fragments. "How...? How? How...?"

What he saw shattered his mind.

It was not some eldritch horror or forbidden god. No, seated upon the throne was a grown version of Yu Xuan. His hair flowed in waves of black and white. One of his eyes burned with infinite radiance, the other devoured all light like a singularity.

He was divine and monstrous, impossibly so.

And he was bound.

Golden chains, dozens of them — wrapped around his limbs and chest, anchoring him to the throne like a prisoner king.

But the adult Yu Xuan did not look at him. He spoke as if to the wind, detached, disinterested.

"I was bored," he said casually, "so I thought I’d show you something fun and beautiful before you died. But you still haven’t answered my question, did you like it?"

His gaze drifted lazily to the one who had once tried to kill him.

"It seems even your so-called immortal soul couldn’t bear the burden."

He sighed.

Then, without emotion, Yu Xuan’s eyes shimmered gold.

He activated a familiar skill: [Immortal’s Gaze].

Golden light surged, and in an instant, the soul or rather the immortal soul before him disintegrated into nothing.

Gone. Without a scream. Without a trace.

Yu Xuan leaned back against the throne, unbothered. "I’m smart but still young and weak," he said with a faint smile. "Only at the Qi Condensation Realm."

Just like that, the Devouring Demon died a true death.

Yu Xuan’s mind wandered about when he can freely explore the starry skies.