Let Me Explain, Fairy
Chapter 1090 - 685: The Boundary Between Life and Death

Chapter 1090: Chapter 685: The Boundary Between Life and Death

Regarding death, Xu Yuan probably isn’t the person who has pondered it the most, but he’s likely one of the few in this world who truly understands it. After all, resurrection is just like reincarnation—an uncompromisingly technical endeavor.

Since that day he came back to life, every time the night grew still and he was alone, Xu Yuan would unwittingly find himself pondering what exactly this godforsaken thing called "life" is all about.

The Prime Minister’s Mansion, as one of the absolute ruling entities of this world, had given Xu Yuan access to countless classified studies on life.

In his previous life, such research was restrained by modern moral boundaries, but here in the feudal Imperial era, human rights or animal rights were hardly a concern.

A thousand generations ago, while the Ghouls brought catastrophic devastation, emptying nine out of ten homes, they also introduced a maddening technology that enabled researchers to edit flesh and blood, allowing them to replicate a living person on a one-to-one scale.

To wield the authority of the divine, Cultivators have never stopped striving for it.

But the results were always destined to fail.

They failed to create new humans, only managing to craft a horde of thoughtless flesh puppets.

Even when molding an identical copy of a person—their entire being down to the minutest detail, from bones to flesh, meridians to brain—what came forth was merely a mindless puppet.

Having seen much of this, Xu Yuan found himself feeling strangely relieved.

These failed experiments inadvertently proved that he was still himself and not some copied existence built of his mental template after death.

Thus, Xu Yuan believed that somewhere between life and death, there must exist an anchor, what people often call the soul.

In his previous life, he’d dismissed the urban legend about the weight of a soul because science had proven that human thought was simply produced by the collisions of neurons in the brain, and humans were essentially hive consciousnesses formed by countless cells.

Even now, Xu Yuan remained unclear.

The Will-spirit, while similar to the concept of the soul, was fundamentally different—it was merely a vessel, a body no different from flesh.

The only thing in this world that could truly be considered a "soul" was likely the Soul Mark, and yet even the Soul Mark was shrouded in a mist of the unknown.

Therefore,

as he watched the swirling gray mist around him converge into an eye-like vortex centered on himself, Xu Yuan had no idea what would happen next....

Anyone who has experienced death knows: there are no mythical figures like Ox-Head and Horse-Face waiting for you before death, nor any montage of flashing memories summarizing your life. There’s only the endless torrent of negative emotions that envelop your soul, making life feel worse than death.

But fortunately,

this state only lasts for an instant, and once you’re fully dead, there’s no sensation whatsoever.

Yet unfortunately,

ever since the gray mist vortex formed, Xu Yuan had been trapped in this worse-than-death state.

If he had to use one term to describe this condition,

Xu Yuan would call it,

the boundary between life and death.

One side of the boundary symbolizes life, the other symbolizes death.

No one in this world is supposed to remain in this state for too long. The process of dying is irreversible; once you’re on this boundary, life cannot retreat but only plunge into the darkness that is death.

Chaotic layers of overlapping sounds surged around him, heavy and relentless. Whenever Xu Yuan tried to discern the voice within them, it would suddenly fade away, like grains of sand slipping through his fingers.

Xu Yuan felt as if his head were about to explode.

He was undergoing rapid metamorphosis, adapting quickly to this state.

And amidst this transformation,

standing on the boundary between life and death, Xu Yuan’s painful emotions churned, slowly granting him new insights.

He began to understand Mu Nuo’s existence, to understand why it was so desperate to devour him, why it had no concept of death.

Beings of this world transition from life to death, while it moves in reverse—from death to life.

From the moment Mu Nuo descended into the world, it had been stuck on the same boundary, struggling to cross it, attempting to move from death to rebirth.

But this process was destined to fail.

No matter how many living creatures Mu Nuo consumed in its efforts to do so, it could never traverse this chasm.

This is the insurmountable gulf of the life-death boundary.

Xu Yuan once felt a kinship that he thought came from his integration with the Ghost Willow Yin Source, but in truth, it stemmed from something deeper.

His very existence.

An existence that moves cyclically from life to death, and from death to life.

If Mu Nuo devoured him, it would be able to cross that boundary.

Amid the cacophony of whispers, Xu Yuan inexplicably recalled the prophecy about Tian Yuan’s calamity and almost wanted to laugh.

If it hadn’t been for that assassination attempt, he wouldn’t have gained the chance to move from death to life, and Mu Nuo wouldn’t have found the conditions it needed to complete itself.

Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.

Still, Xu Yuan wondered—if Mu Nuo truly consumed him and breached the boundary of life and death, what kind of transformation would its existence undergo?

Xu Yuan figured it’d probably reveal its health bar.

You’d have to wonder what Mu Nuo was thinking—why would anyone in this world intentionally weaken themselves?

Moving from death to life is difficult, while moving from life to death is easy.

It only takes a little external help.

If Mu Nuo showed its health bar and didn’t die outright from the outside bosses, even if its health bar was thicker, they’d still manage to pierce through it.

But when Xu Yuan lowered his gaze to see the golden glow radiating faintly from his body, he suddenly understood the little ghost’s motivation.

The boundary between life and death signifies despair for all beings.

The only reason he was able to maintain coherence amid the maddening whispers was because the Celestial Fates Divine Soul was protecting his core.

Though as time passed in the gray mist, the protective abilities of the Celestial Fates Divine Soul were visibly weakening, it still persisted.

Apparently, Xu Yuan was not the first being in this world to cross the line between life and death.

At the very least,

the creator of the Yantian Art must have entered this boundary as well.

At this thought, Xu Yuan froze.

His prior train of thought had allowed him to grasp something—the fragmented pieces of knowledge in his mind were beginning to connect.

Wait a second...

Jiatiange...

Calamity...

Mu Nuo’s instinctive drive to breach the life-death boundary by devouring all existence...

If he had died on that rainy autumn night, Mu Nuo would have perfectly fit the mold of calamity.

Tian Ye would never have emerged from the Qionghua Secret Realm, there would’ve been no Ghost Willow Yin Source to fuel Mu Nuo’s birth, causing Wan’s delivery of Mu Nuo to be delayed by several years or even decades.

By the time it was finally born, incomplete and driven by instinct, it would have begun consuming all living creatures to create the Life Spirit Dead Zone, right as the Human Race became extraordinarily weak due to civil war...

But if Mu Nuo really was the calamity itself,

doesn’t the process of its birth seem overly orchestrated?

The woman who granted Wan the consciousness of the Human Race.

The circumstances of Mu Xingyi being born as the son of the Bug Saint.

The love-at-first-sight romance between Wan and Mu Xingyi.

And,

The sudden, inexplicable flicker that appeared in the memory of the night they conceived Mu Nuo.

Calamity should arise naturally, yet Mu Nuo’s birth appears riddled with deliberate interventions...

As these thoughts spiraled,

Xu Yuan felt as though he was catching the tail-end of something, but at that very moment, the golden radiance around him dissipated. The Celestial Fates Divine Soul was shattered by the whispers of death, and the murmurs around his ears grew louder, the surging negative emotions crashing against him violently.

In an instant,

The malice of the boundary between life and death engulfed Xu Yuan like a tidal wave.

He began sinking toward death, plunging into Purgatory.

During this descent,

There was a fleeting moment where Xu Yuan entertained the idea of talking to Mu Nuo.

To share his discoveries, to discuss the potential web of causality.

But that thought vanished the moment Xu Yuan caught sight of the venomous hatred in Mu Nuo’s eyes.

This little ghost had shed all attachments—it wasn’t someone he could reason with.

What a pity.

Xu Yuan really detested this sense of predestination.

As the unseen hand behind the deaths of its parents,

No matter the circumstances,

there was nothing between him and Mu Nuo now except a fight to the death.

The two of them stood on the boundary between life and death, and Xu Yuan had no intention of stepping toward the other side just yet—he still wanted to solve the puzzle pieces he had just pieced together. Which meant this little ghost would have to die first.

But before that,

he’d have to first grant it life, to then take it away.

Feeling the chaotic mania of the life-death boundary and recalling the eternal peace on the other side, Xu Yuan, in the skeletal form formed by his Soul Mark, began to ravenously absorb the cursed gray mist that came with Mu Nuo’s birth.