The chain wrapped around his body began to soar upwards slowly, giving Han Xuhan enough time and opportunity to extract himself out of its binding. But as he listened on to the rambling master of the Stardust Sect, he felt oddly enlightened. There was a strange charm to his crazed whispers. He didn’t see any point in opposing what was going on here. The chain was obviously meant to carry him up. What for... He'd know very soon.
So his body went up, higher and higher, until the ground began to look menacing. If the chain slipped, his body wouldn't be able to withstand it. Han Xuhan looked around for support in case that possibility came true. The other chains hanging around him were within arm's reach, but for some reason, they flickered in and out of his vision like bugged images.
"Thousand chains of fictitious reality cannot encompass the myriad variations in one single sandgrain's fate. How can I rely on it to predict the fate of heaven and earth? To predict, is to be marked by heaven's wrath. To predict, is to be a threat to earth's prosperity. To predict, is to bring chaos into order, inevitably destabilizing outer extension, inner formation, and core seed of integrated harmony."
The voice stopped as Han Xuhan's tied-up body reached close enough to the flaming red silhouette to feel its scorching aura. He began to struggle slightly against the chains, hoping to attract the man's attention.
"Then again, to predict is a choice, like every other path open to the seekers of heaven's will. Why shall heaven be opposed to a seeker on this path unless the seeker has been walking in the wrong direction? But if my direction is wrong, which direction is right?"
"Hot! Hot! Owww! Down is the right direction! Take me down, dammit!" Han Xuhan's screech overpowered whatever else the speaker wanted to say. He was almost face to face with the humanoid sun right now, and even his enhanced body was reacting painfully to the heat coming off the silhouette.
The chain carrying him up stopped. Han Xuhan breathed in relief seeing that the sect master had not lost his sanity yet. He could still communicate with the man.
"I might have chosen the longest chain that you think represents the most elaborate choice," he said, unsure how much of it was reaching the sect master. "But it doesn't mean we have to have such an elaborate and long-winded mode of communication. Haven’t you been injured, sect master? Why are you wasting your energy and my time performing these tricks on me when you could focus on healing?"
A strange silence encapsulated the chamber this time. Han Xuhan was almost beginning to think that he was being ignored, but he suddenly noticed faint traces of humanoid features forming on the silhouette of red flames, especially prominent on its head.
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A single eye on the right side of the face opened up like a veil being ripped into two. The flames made way for a rolling eyeball that had fixed its focus on him. Gazing back at the golden pupil, Han Xuhan felt an sensation he hadn’t felt in a long, long time—the feeling that he was being seen through, body, soul, and spirit ransacked casually by a cold, superior being. The first time he had ever felt like that was when he had met the old grandpa being escorted to the Crimson Snow Sect by Shen Hai and his team of soldiers. The second time he had felt it was when he met Xuan Zi in the sect with the identity of a reincarnator.
Struggling a little under the confinement of the chain holding him, he put one hand over his chest and the other over his crotch.
"...You certainly have a character that would tolerate no constrained exchange, a sharp contrast to your choice of fate," came a voice from the silhouette.
"Choice of fate?" Han Xuhan was flummoxed. "Fate can be chosen?"
The silhouette did not reply. The eye that had opened on its face disappeared underneath a layer of golden light again. But before it did so, he noticed a rather prominent emotion surfacing in the silhouette's gaze—surprise.
What was so surprising?
Seconds accumulated into a minute. Minutes streamed away one by one. Aside from his own uneasy shuffling under the chains, not a sound could be heard in the vast chamber.
Faintly, very faintly, the sound of thunder seeped past the walls. Han Xuhan was about to ignore it, deeming a rainstorm at this climate nothing but an annoyance. But he recalled what world he was living in.
Thunder did not come only when nature demanded it. Thunder could come even when man demanded it.
The cackles grew stronger, louder, not even the thick concrete walls capable of muting them anymore. Eventually, it got so loud that he felt like he was a hair's breadth away from being struck by some. It was as if the entire building had been surrounded by a ceaseless thunderstorm, the walls barely able to hold up against the waves of sound and forceful collisions.
The fiery silhouette above him began to revolve like a drill, radiating even more heat. The chains wrapped around the silhouette spun like a skirt of steel, forming a reversed vortex inside the chamber. Han Xuhan was caught right under the eye of the vortex. His shackle was the only one that did not move, not even by the fierce wind raging around him due to the spinning vortex.
Finally, the voice sounded again, this time much clearer, overwhelming the sound of the steel tornado inside the chamber and the thunderstorm outside.
"If fate can be chosen, what significance lies in choosing a path? Paths are infinite; fates are less so. Paths are flexible; fates are a constant flux. Paths can be shifted, but fate cannot be thwarted. All paths must lead to one fate, every other fate existing in non-existence. So fate must not be the result of a choice. This was my last error, thus leading me in the wrong direction. To predict, then, is to use the myriad paths as a tool to advance towards a fate. Heaven's wrath against the seeker, then, is a tool to use while choosing a path. Bigger the fire, bigger the wrath, bigger the fate, smaller the path."
As soon as the voice concluded its speech, every beat of noise stopped at once. The vortex of chains suddenly disappeared alongside the thunderous sounds outside the chamber. The spinning silhouette of fire broke apart into thousands of tiny specks of flames, spreading all around the chamber like fallen leaves. Han Xuhan would have screamed upon realizing that the chain holding him airborne no longer existed, but a tumbling sense of balance inside his skull told him that he wasn’t hovering fifty meters above the ground. In fact, his footing was solid, as evenly balanced as it could be.
Looking down, he saw a smooth concrete floor under his feet. The castle of glass and steel was nowhere to be seen. And an unfamiliar, fat man garbed in a dirty, dusty robe was seated in the lotus position right in front of him.
The man met his dumbfounded eyes with a placid smile, gesturing at him to sit on the floor as well.
"Heavenly emissary, please make yourself comfortable. You've come to Li Mingyu with some demands, I suppose. Do voice them so that I can repay you for helping me regain my freedom."