Paragon of Sin

Two days left…

A full day and night passed as Wei Wuyin's tall, upright, and lonely figure stood directly outside the entrance of his former residence. There was no gloominess within his aura or feelings of depression, merely a soft silence of remembrance.

"Will you go in?" Wang Yutian asked. There was a time limit, and if one looked to the sky at the right moment or orbital alignment, a faint white dot in the vast Dark Void was becoming more and more enlarged. The end of this starfield was coming.

"No." Wei Wuyin calmly answered, closing his eyes and taking a deep, unfathomably greedy breath of air. The scent of the pine trees that grew beside the residence and the familiar smell of Red Dove Sage in the air was invigorating, bringing him back to a life long passed.

"Why? If you don't enter, you might not get another chance." Since meeting Wei Wuyin, Wang Yutian had always been curious about his upbringing, and how someone like him had been born in this world. Whether in terms of being fearless or outright cunning, there were few youths he'd met in his entire lifetime that rivaled him in either, yet he had both..

The willingness to risk one's life to save an entire continent, the ability to destroy a World Realm's Core at the Light Reflection Phase, or the flawless execution of numerous plots. Be it the Holy Clans downfall or his masqueraded surrender to Lin Ming. There was a level of foresight, willpower, and intelligence that was hard to nurture in juniors his age.

Wei Wuyin didn't refute Wang Yutian's words. The grave of his unborn child, Dai Lyn, and his older brother were all located here. With the upcoming destruction of the starfield, if this inevitably was truly inevitable, then this might be the last chance he'd get to see them.

"I can't." Wei Wuyin softly stated, his eyes opening to view the entrance before him.

"..." Wang Yutian didn't respond. He waited.

Wei Wuyin eventually continued, "I swore to myself that while they'll be in my heart, they won't dictate my future. I can't allow my past, no matter how terrifying, to affect my next steps."

"What does that mean?"

Wei Wuyin clasped his hands together, "It means that if I were to see them, I'll do something irrational, illogical, and if I were to meet them again one day in the boundless world of reincarnation, or through some other miraculous phenomenon that I've yet to understand, I will not be able to face them.

"I have to live my life. The life I had with them, it ended the day I got vengeance. I can't get it back. I'll never have it again." Wei Wuyin answered as he turned around, slowly floating into the sky.

"...Then why did you come back? These memories must be painful to you." Wang Yutian tried to delve deeper, feeling as if he was on the cusp of understanding Wei Wuyin's unique psyche and outlook on life.

"To remember where I come from, and what made me me. I can't allow it to affect my future, but I can allow it to strengthen my established beliefs, principles, and sense of self. To serve as lessons; to remind me why I cultivate; to remind me how I wish to live. But they must be just that, memories of the past to remind me. Not the existence of my present to influence me." Wei Wuyin's floating figure grew further and further away from Red Dove City.

Wang Yutian understood a little. The corpses of his loved ones might instigate a sense of emotion that will force him to protect them, their already deceased corpses, their long departed homes. To add, he was unwilling to carry their corpses with him. The very act was like dragging along your past with you.

"Chains of my past life;

shackles of unknown future;

Present is unchanged."

Wei Wuyin halted abruptly mid-air.

"Where did you learn that from?" Wei Wuyin questioned, a faint rare quiver in his voice.

Wang Yutian was briefly taken aback. He had just said that poem out of understanding Wei Wuyin's mindset. The unwillingness to allow the past to be dragged along with you, forever keeping yourself on a bind of unchanging decisions. You, as a person, will find it difficult to move on with your best life, pursue your best, unrestricted future, if the past remains in chains tethered to you.

"It was a poem said by a friend of mine on a day when we were discussing casually. Do you know it?" He didn't expect something he heard over ten thousand year ago would be known by an underdeveloped cultivation society.

"..." Wei Wuyin took several deep breaths before calming down. "It was something my brother would tell me often. He...once said that mother recited this poem to him when he found it difficult to progress in his cultivation. So whenever I would grow frustrated by my past failures, seeing no results, he would recite it to me."

"..." Wang Yutian couldn't believe it. Was it a coincidence? After a brief moment of mutual silence, he asked: "Do you know the second part of it?"

"Second part?" Wei Wuyin frowned. There was a second part?

"Yes," Wang Yutian responded, "My friend said the second part is most crucial, yet often forgotten. It goes like this:

"Past ties bind present;

Will resets, mind resets, free;

Future in my eye."

Wei Wuyin faintly smiled. After hearing that, he resumed leaving the airspace of Red Dove City.

"What do you think?" Wang Yutian asked. He wasn't quite sure the exact meaning behind this series of poems, but he understood enough to attach them to specific situations. However, the second part eluded him greatly in intent. It even seems contradictory. After all, resetting one's mind was a little too radical and meant losing yourself, losing your future.

"I don't have any thoughts towards it. It sounds beautiful though," Wei Wuyin didn't delve into his own thoughts of the second part, feeling that it was unnecessary.

Unable to satiate his curiosity by picking Wei Wuyin's brain, Wang Yutian didn't mention it again. It would be far too much for a junior to understand the truth behind such profound literature.

'Wait...am I bringing in my own bias?' Wang Yutian realized his casual disregard for Wei Wuyin was based on age, but could he be defined by age? Wisdom and intelligence can't be determined by age, but by experiences and open-mindedness. 'It's probably something you either understand or you don't, like the aspects of cultivation. A second part that is often forgotten, yet most crucial. An underlying meaning that brings realization. It truly is reflective of cultivation.'

After this series of thoughts, the two found themselves at the Sky Layer of the Myriad Yore Continent. They lingered at this area that required just a little bit of a higher elevation to enter the Dark Void.

"This Star-Devourer, this Tiangou, do you know anything else about it?" Wei Wuyin asked, looking at the white dot in the far off distance enlarging with every passing minute. It was getting closer and closer.

"The Star-Devourers are strange existences. They often exist in flourishing stellar regions, not desolate ones like this." Wang Yutian commented, finding it quite strange.

"Stellar Regions? You've said this many times. I don't understand what that means." Wei Wuyin hadn't fathomed the scope of Wang Yutian's knowledge, and he didn't want to risk overreaching and losing focus prior to the Calamity of Hell, but it seems this knowledge will be extremely important going forward.

"Oh? Right. Right! Well, how vast do you think our world is?" Wang Yutian was a little excited as he asked, realizing that Wei Wuyin was like an unwatered flower awaiting the waters of knowledge.

"Very," Wei Wuyin answered.

"I can tell you that the scope of your understanding of the word 'vast' isn't even close to reality!"  Wang Yutian was clearly excited, even his voice was quivering slightly. "A Stellar Region consists of numerous starfields, and each starfield has a centralized Solar Stars orbited by a varied number of planets, flat continental earths, lunar satellites, and other celestial objects. Do you know the average number of starfields in a single Stellar Region?"

Wei Wuyin pouted. Obviously, he didn't.

"Roughly ten thousand! And that's average! It only counts legitimate starfields, not the typically millions of Solar Stars lingering in the Dark Void by themselves. However, this Stellar Region is smaller, incredibly so. It has, well, had around one hundred and eight starfields."

"..." Wei Wuyin's eyes widened.

Wang Yutian continued, "This Stellar Region, at least in my time, was referred to as 'Desolate', occupied by beasts of a specific Dragon Lineage. The term 'Desolate' is meant to refer to a smaller, almost negligible region of starfields that lacks a certain concentration of Mystic Essence, lack of astronomical resources, and civilization development.

"We called this Stellar Region: the Desolate Dragnet Region."