Paragon of Sin

Chapter 1643 Chapter 1636: Magi (2)

"It's finally time for you to learn of your heritage." Words spoken with such benevolence and wisdom, laced with a hint of pride and relief. The usage of the word 'finally' strongly indicated the anxiety that preceded that sentence. Wei Wuyin had always known that this mysterious character had been observing him from afar.

When he dared glimpse upon the opening of the Heavenly Daos and bravely or foolishly sought out its secrets, Fuxi had interfered promptly and prevented his potential demise.

When he offended the River of Time by bypassing the paradox of temporal knowledge within its domain, Fuxi interfered yet again.

Time and time again, Fuxi had intervened against existences far surpassing a mere mortal's ability to handle, securing his safety repeatedly without asking for a single thing in return. Additionally, he kept watch to ensure that he hadn't gained something far beyond his level. For example, the inheritance of the Magi that his other, more suave self had acquired.

"..." Indescribable emotions swelled within him alongside anticipation. The very first time Wei Wuyin was exposed to Fuxi's existence was the Records of Fuxi stated within the Celestial Eyes of Spiritual Divinity that he had discovered coincidentally within the Martial King's Dao Palace of the Myriad Monarch Sect. Back then, he found himself viewing the Yellow River which contained an unforgettable source of light.

The Yellow River was said, in the Scripture of Sin, to surround the Eighteen Levels of Hell. Despite his continuous exposure to grand information and greater levels of profound secrets, he had never found a connection between the Magi and Hell. So hearing this voice, his heart was filled with numerous questions.

Wei Wuyin fixed his posture as he stood upright, spine straight, and silver eyes focused. He didn't know what came next, but he was ready.

A hearty chuckle filled with age and amusement resounded in his ears, no-his soul.

"Little One, normally, you would be given your heritage within a single breath, bestowing you with knowledge of your lineage's history from your latent soul's source. There is no great flourish or phenomenon. But considering all you've been through, will you allow me the honor of personally introducing you to your heritage?" The voice was genuine, not a single ounce of falsehood or condescension within any syllable.

"..." Wei Wuyin's expression briefly went blank. Was Fuxi asking to be his guide? Moreover, his words suggested that Fuxi wasn't a Magi! Given the situation, including the unrivaled curiosity within his heart, Wei Wuyin regained his facial expression and spoke from his soul:

"You're mistaken."

"Oh?" A hint of surprise in that voice's tone.

Wei Wuyin continued, "It would be my greatest honor to have you as a guide through one of my life's experiences."

"..." The voice was silent for a short while, and then laughter resounded that could calm the mind and relax the soul.

"Then, allow me."

Wei Wuyin felt the entire world twist and constrict. The twisting wasn't disorienting at all and the constriction didn't feel suffocating, both of which only lasted for a single second before returning to normal. Appearing before Wei Wuyin was a male figure garbed in full black with a grand white beard and a head full of graying hair. His arms and legs weren't too slender or too thick, his body wasn't too muscular or too skinny, and his height was rather imposing, faintly exceeding Wei Wuyin, but his face was a haze and unclear to every sense of perception. The only exception was his smile and eyes.

A smile that was as benevolent and warm as a father's prideful, loving, and protective gaze. A pair of spiritual eyes that were as gray and light as radiant ash of celestial stars long since burnt out yet forever glorious.

"I enjoy wearing black too," Fuxi said.

Wei Wuyin found himself inexplicably calm. There was no sensation of pressure or anxiety within him, almost as if he was meeting someone that he was incomparably familiar with. He replied, "Black is the absence of all things. What mortals see when color is devoid, so this allows it to be filled and include and accept everything, and always have room for more."

The smile on Fuxi's hazy facial features deepened.

"What an amazing way to think! Little One, what do you think of this: Gold is the pinnacle objective of the world. What mortals wish to have and eternally desire to possess, wealth above all else, value exceeding anything else, and power that reigns over the hearts of anyone and can claim everything."

Wei Wuyin frowned slightly as he instinctively replied, "Sounds pompous."

"Haha. Then, what about this: White is the inclusion of all things. Embodies the grand picture of grand cosmos without detracting from or refusing anything, so this allows one to tread a path without doubt or wanting, and always accepting of others no matter the differences."

"..." Wei Wuyin couldn't resist the urge to grin, "That's a beautiful thought, but if one is filled with everything and anything, how can one forge their own path forward? A path born from nothing but their individuality? What's left if everything is included? What differentiates you from anything else? There's no potential for originality."

"..." Fuxi's smile remained the same, yet those eyes of his rife with spirituality and wise, benevolent, and unequaled radiance faintly glowed in response.

"Are you ready?"

Seeing that Fuxi didn't delve into further explaining the different phrases or their purpose, Wei Wuyin didn't pry. He responded, "I am."

"One of these days, you might find that whether it's black, white, or gold, there's not much of a difference between them," Fuxi said just before Wei Wuyin felt his surroundings warp and his body lighten. Within a bright, silvery flash, he felt his soul sublimate on a fascinating level, indescribably brilliant, and wonderfully immersive in an entirely different world.

The latent Magi lineage information within him was activated. He could subtly feel a hand guiding this information, transforming it from a rushing river into a tickling rain.

When Wei Si underwent his lineage bestowal of history, knowledge, and understanding for Spartans, at least the initial information upon completing his rite, he wasn't accompanied by any grand figure such as Fuxi. Instead, he received it all at once and had to sort through everything slowly. This was similar to how Wei Xiaotian had a lot of information yet was unable to properly grasp all of its finer details at a glance despite the information being present within her.

This sequence had been changed by Fuxi's guiding hand, and he could feel his soul jet across the vast cosmos of space and time, seemingly transported elsewhere entirely. Countless stars and celestial phenomena soared past his vision in a gorgeously unrivaled scene. They spun and soared, shrunk and enlarged, and it felt as if they were undergoing a reversal of temporal fate.

He suddenly felt an urge to inhale. "HAAAAAAA!!" He sucked in a wad of air, feeling his soul filled with what felt like oxygen yet was noticeably heavier, thicker, and sweeter. After inhaling to his limits, he heard a soft voice in his ears.

"Exhale."

"HUUUUUUU!!" A heavy breath escaped from his soul, and the surroundings immediately stabilized as the stars no longer changed. Instead, there were no stars at all. The entire world was a blank void where only the Dark Void existed without any starry sky or spectacular celestial objects. There was only an emptiness of a cold, indifferent expanse.

Wei Wuyin observed the area around him as he noticed Fuxi's figure by his side. With his Celestial Gaze and radiantly shining silvery eyes, his senses caught faint clues here and there.

"Actualized Past?" Wei Wuyin softly concluded.

Fuxi's smile never faded as he gestured with his right hand, flourishing it upon the emptiness before them, "Your sensitivity towards temporal events is nothing short of extraordinary."

Wei Wuyin calmly smiled, unbothered by this. "I've once inadvertently experienced my actualized past before. Recently, I've even experienced a substantial past in the White Abyssal Galaxy." These were two profound concepts of time, the former related to one's experienced past that was personally lived while the latter was a potential past yet to occur. Inversely, the future is run by similar logic during unnatural paradoxical events.

"Haha," Fuxi laughed with a tinge of amusement, rubbing his beard as he gazed at the vast emptiness. A flash of nostalgia emerged in his endlessly wise and kind eyes.

"Where is this place?" Wei Wuyin asked, rife with curiosity. He was unbothered by time travel, long since becoming familiar with too many profound concepts from a Temporal Reincarnator, two sets of memories of his childhood, killing an alternative version of himself, and obtaining those memories for a third set. Additionally, he had seen, experienced, dispersed, and created temporal paradoxes. As a True Void Dragon hybrid, his body could sustain such temporal inconsistencies, so his breadth of understanding was extremely high, further proven by his peak Minor Time Law.

"Little One, this is where your lineage began," Fuxi answered.

"Began? Here?" There was nothing here. There was nothing anywhere.

"Indeed. Here," just as that final word was spoken, a flash of brilliant lights surged chaotically. An incalculable number of colors and shades clashed so intensely that it felt as if a war was occurring within the vast, boundlessly empty world.

Wei Wuyin wasn't at a safe distance either. The colors were like misty radiance composed of gas, matter, and liquid, and they swept across his body like a colorful splash of celestial beauty. He reached out as the colors swept across his fingers, hands, arms, torso, head, and hair. He was untouched as it phased through him as if he was a ghost not of this world.

"Woah!" Wei Wuyin looked around at the heavenly clash of colors and existences beyond his perception. It was as far as he could see, unending and epic. Waves upon waves of misty colors swept across him, the only colors he didn't notice were black and white.

As the clash continued, Fuxi began:

"In the beginning, there was nothing. Everything within this universe was blank and absent of life, matter, and substance. Only the Dark Void, even time and space was a haze of indistinct, incalculable processes that the universe barely adhered to to maintain its form and dictate age.

"But from nothing, from the vast empty darkness, came an originality of concept and belief, of want and thought, of power and life." When Fuxi said this, the increasingly intense war of misty colors began to brighten and slow down in their violent confrontation against each other.

Wei Wuyin's eyes widened as he felt as if those words contained a similar meaning to his description of why he preferred black, yet it was also distinctly profound far beyond his original thought.

Fuxi smiled and gently announced, "From nothing came everything."

Then, the clash of colors all halted at once as if by an agreement.

BOOM!!!

An explosion of such depth and magnitude that Wei Wuyin felt his robes flutter without wind and his soul reel without any force. The mere sight of it stimulated his mind to an extreme.

There was a legend in the Myriad Yore Continent, wondrous and unbelievable, that nothing created everything, and everything was them. That everything started from an explosion of unbelievable proportions that spanned across the stars. This explosion caused the stars. This explosion caused life. A single bang.

"Is this the birth of stars?!" Wei Wuyin's eyes widened as if he didn't want to miss a single detail of how everything was created. And then, the colors dispersed. They vanished.

And...nothing changed...

"What?" He asked with a slight panic in his voice, looking at Fuxi for a moment before staring back at the empty expanse with anticipation. The flourish of countless stars, the creation of countless divinities, the birth of a myriad of life, and more...where was it all?

Did he have to wait?

"Little One, did you think the universe in all its glory and magnificence, the world you know, was created by a single explosive whim of a vast nothingness? All the miraculous phenomena? All the wondrous souls, natural order, and extraordinary path of cultivation?" Fuxi words were gently said but they were like thunderous strikes to the soul as expectations were shattered within an instant.

"..." Wei Wuyin was genuinely and completely speechless. He felt lost.

"The beauty of a rose with its prickly thorn. The perfect, even shape of a planet. The brilliance of endless stars and their myriad of arrangements. The sweetness of clean air, the refreshing coolness of water, and the deliciousness of great food. Did you think it was all conceived by happenstance?" Fuxi breathed out with an air of nostalgia.

"While I can't show you the secrets of the beginning of your universe just yet, the very foundation of its story, what I can tell you is the origin of your lineage. After the creation of life in this universe by her, she sought the assistance of others to perfect the imperfect world for them to live in. So those of the highest power, what you might call unseen divinities, created three existences.

"They were Order, Creation, and Security. They had no racial alignment or gender. They were only the purest of souls. Three entities that could complete three objectives-to establish order, to create all things needed, unneeded, wanted, and unwanted, and finally, to protect all of it." With each of the three words spoken, three colors formed of gargantuan spheres. They were gold, silver, and bronze.

"You're familiar with security," Fuxi said.

Wei Wuyin felt his heart pounding fiercely. He asked, "Spartans?"

Fuxi nodded, flourishing his right arm as his sleeves flowed majestically as if conjuring a grand gale. The world twisted and constricted. When it returned to normal, the bronze sphere had disappeared, replaced by 108 million bronze wisps.

"These are Spartans?" Wei Wuyin asked.

"These are the souls of those assigned to bestow Security and tasked to protect Creation and Order. You can call them Spartans," Fuxi confirmed. The two other gargantuan spheres, silver and gold remained.

Then, with his left arm, Fuxi flourished his sleeves and generated another stormy gale, twisting and constricting the world again as if an incalculable amount of time had passed. When the world resumed its normalcy, the 108 million bronze souls remained, but the gold sphere had broken into 33 million golden souls.

"..." Wei Wuyin observed the golden souls. They seemed to be grouped into three.

"Order. The most recent name for them is Arbiters. These souls are tasked with creating balance, equality, order, and the concepts of righteousness and the vile with equity." Fuxi explained, and then he used both arms and grandly flourished both sleeves as if the time that had eclipsed was far greater than the other two.

Wei Wuyin didn't blink once.

When the world returned to normal, there were only three thousand souls as silvery wisps. They paled severely by the numbers.

"Creation," Fuxi uttered only a single word yet it shook Wei Wuyin's soul so intensely that he couldn't look away.

"These souls were tasked with creating...everything else. The stars. The moons. The planets. Grass. Water. Heat. Light. Souls. The wondrous logic behind the orbit of stars. The great phenomenon of supernovas. The Samsara of Stars. The Yellow River. The Eighteen Calamities of Hell..."

Ba-dum! Ba-dum! Ba-dum!!

Even across time and space, Wei Wuyin could feel his heart, and all four of them-Ori, King, Eden, and Kratos-trembled with shock.

Wei Wuyin spoke almost instinctively, "The 3,000 Grand Daos..."

"Your universe now calls them by a different name," Fuxi announced, not confirming or denying Wei Wuyin's suspicions.

Wei Wuyin spoke a single word that had followed him since before he even heard of it, as prevalent as the silver eyes he carried, "Magi."

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Erdiul's Note: Magis are the real deal, holy shit.