"Become the strongest?" The veiled woman shook her head slowly, her movements graceful yet carrying an increasingly thick aura of despair. "Arrogance is but a spice for those heading toward the grave. Look upon that shadow again, Zhi Xuan. Do you think your will can defy the Universal Law? The tree that refuses to shed its leaves when the season arrives will only snap under the weight of the snow. You... you are a tree trying to fight destiny."

  Zhi Xuan snorted and spat to the side; it landed on the dry grass, which instantly turned into black ash. "Destiny? Stop talking as if you are the scribe of heaven. I have heard that word often from people who, in the end, bowed beneath me."

  He tightened his embrace on Mei Hua, feeling the steady thrum of her heartbeat—a rhythm of life far more real than all the manifestations in this Secret Realm combined.

  "You say I will be stopped?" Zhi Xuan leaned in closer, his sapphire eyes flashing wildly. "If Soul Transformation is the limit for those who carry burdens, then I will tear that limit apart. If my meridians crack, I will mend them with willpower. If my Dao Heart has a hole, then that hole will swallow your entire universe!"

  "A pathetic stubbornness," the woman whispered. She waved her hand, and suddenly the aging shadow of Zhi Xuan in the distance shrieked in agony. The shadow of Mei Hua there began to fade, turning into golden dust carried away by the autumn wind. "If you do not let go, it is you who will witness her vanish because of your helplessness. Is that not more painful than letting go now?"

  "Oh, really?" Zhi Xuan hissed with a raspy chuckle, narrowing his eyes. "I carry what is useful to me. Just as you all manifest the four seasons, I have you because you are useful to me. Imagine if I had rejected and forgotten you long ago; wouldn't it be you who are pathetic then?"

  The veiled woman was stunned; a deathly silence suddenly gripped the withered meadow. Zhi Xuan's words were not merely a rebuttal, but an insult to the essence of the Law of Natural Cycles that sustained all life. To Zhi Xuan, the Four Seasons were not sacred cycles to be worshipped, but tools and manifestations that must submit to his will.

  "You... consider the Laws of Heaven and Earth as merely something 'useful'?" the woman's voice trembled, not from anger, but from the horror of seeing a Dao Heart so distorted. "You have no respect for balance. You are something that should be extinguished by the wheel of reincarnation."

  "Respect will not give me a path to the peak," Zhi Xuan countered, his voice now calm yet carrying an authority capable of cracking the gray horizon. "Only strength and steadfastness can carry me beyond the Nine Heavens. If Autumn demands loss, then I demand that loss itself kneels before me."

  "Don't you see?" his voice lowered as he walked until he stood directly in front of the veiled woman. "I have had you all since I obtained the Heavenly Samsara Wheel, when I rose from the destruction of my Wheel for the first time. When I—even with your help rotting my enemies—survived until now."

  "You are the embodiment of Natural Law," Zhi Xuan continued calmly. "However, you were born of the Heavens; you exist because of the Heavens. Someday, if those Heavens themselves cower and fall, what will you do?"

  The veiled woman stood frozen as if time itself had stopped flowing. The Autumn wind that had been howling suddenly went silent, leaving only the whisper of dry leaves brushing against the parched earth. The leaf-colored eyes behind the veil shook violently, staring at Zhi Xuan as if looking at the most terrifying thing in the history of creation.

  "The Heavens... cowering?" the woman whispered. "Zhi Xuan, you do not merely doubt Reincarnation; you have nurtured the seeds of rebellion capable of burning the entire order of the world. If the Heavens collapse, there will be no more law, no more seasons—only an endless void!"

  "Then let that void be my canvas," Zhi Xuan replied with a thin, lethal smile. "Throughout my cultivation, I have never seen your exalted Heavens descend to save the oppressed. I have only seen a cold Heaven that allows blood to flow to satisfy its own destiny. So, why should I fear its fall?"

  Zhi Xuan raised his left hand, letting the sapphire and blood-red tattoos on his arm glow dimly, absorbing the hollow essence of Autumn into his meridians.

  "You frighten me with a failed future," Zhi Xuan continued, staring sharply through the woman's veil. "But you forget one thing. I do not walk to arrive; I walk to keep walking even when the universe crumbles."

  The woman laughed, a laugh filled with pure bitterness. "You speak as if you have no fear, Zhi Xuan. But look at your hands. You hold that girl so tightly. Is that not proof that you fear losing the only light left in your darkness?"

  Zhi Xuan glanced at Mei Hua on his chest, then back at the woman. "This is not a fear of loss. This is a promise to remain human. You want me to let go so I can become holy like that white shadow? Or strong like the fire-man? No. I will be the complete Zhi Xuan, who believes that in every darkness, light will emerge."

  "Then, what does Autumn mean to you if you refuse to lose?" the woman asked, her body beginning to fade into gray shadows.

  "Autumn to me is not about loss, Auntie," Zhi Xuan said, his voice as heavy as a funeral bell. "Rather, it is like a fallen petal. It will dissolve when summer arrives, becoming the seeds for a new flower."

  "Falling is not always about loss, but the belief in a beginning," Zhi Xuan decided firmly, his voice reflecting a Dao Heart unshaken by the vision of his own seasonal decay.

  The veiled woman was stunned for a long time. Her fingers, which had previously pointed toward Zhi Xuan’s ruined future, now hung limp at her side. Her dark yellow dress began to fade, losing the spiritual essence that sustained her existence.

  "Belief in a beginning..." the woman repeated his words in an alien tone, as if hearing a divine language long extinct. "For countless kalpas, I have only seen cultivators weep over what they release. I have seen them howl in regret upon realizing the path to immortality is the path that kills all feeling. But you... you see decay as a torch."

  Zhi Xuan took another step forward, forcing the woman to look up at his scarred face. "Because I do not live in the past, and I do not kneel to the future. I live here, in every second where my hands can still feel the breath of my life."

  The woman closed her eyes, and a single clear tear fell from behind her veil. Before it touched the ground, the tear froze into a sharp ice crystal. "If that is so, then accept my acknowledgment. I am the deepest part of your silence, Zhi Xuan. If you refuse to let anything fall from you, then prepare to hold the entire burden of the world upon your back."

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  Her body exploded into a swirling vortex of dry leaves, enveloping Zhi Xuan in a storm of gold and brown. The scent of wet earth and rotting wood intensified for a moment before it was all absorbed into his pores. The Heavenly Samsara Wheel within his soul thundered for the third time, signaling that three of the four pillars of law had been quieted within this Dao mirror turmoil.

  Instantly, the yellowing meadow went silent. The wind stopped blowing. The gray sky above them suddenly froze, as if the entire atmosphere of the Secret Realm had just turned into a lifeless, solid crystal—an impenetrable stop.

  "Brother... it's cold," Mei Hua whispered. Her breath now came out in thin white puffs.

  Zhi Xuan did not answer with words. He immediately pulled his robe tighter, wrapping Mei Hua even more securely. This cold did not come from the outside; it crept out from the cracks in space—a hollow cold that possessed no emotion, no intent, only an end.

  "Winter," Zhi Xuan hissed.

  In the distance, atop a white expanse that was beginning to cover everything, sat an old man with a long white beard and a robe as thick as snow, sitting cross-legged on a block of eternal ice. Across his lap lay a bladeless sword.

  "Three seasons you have swallowed," the old man’s voice was very soft, yet it vibrated violently in Zhi Xuan’s eardrums. "Peace, Wrath, and Loss. But are you ready for the last? Are you ready to face... the inevitable End?"

  Zhi Xuan narrowed his eyes as the snow began to cover his ankles. "The End? You want to scare me with the end when I have already obtained the Extreme Ice that turned my hair silver, Old Man?"

  The old man on the ice block opened his eyes slowly. His pupils were colorless, clear like the purest ice crystals, reflecting Zhi Xuan standing in the middle of the mounting blizzard. He did not laugh, nor did he show any hostility. He was simply the freezing silence.

  "The Extreme Ice you possess is but morning dew before the essence of annihilation, Boy," the old man's voice was flat, as if every word was a shard of ice falling into a frozen lake. "You speak of your silver hair, but do you know that Winter is not about the cold? It is about everything that breathes coming to a halt. It is the silence."

  Zhi Xuan stepped forward, his feet breaking the layer of ice thickening over the meadow. "My understanding is that when I step, the entire world must freeze simply by my presence bringing the winter. If even winter will pass after its destined cycle, then why are you a part of the Four Seasons if you believe you are the end?"

  The old man stroked his bladeless sword, a movement so slow that time itself seemed to freeze between his wrinkled fingers. "The cycle is for those who still hope for tomorrow, Zhi Xuan. But for me, I am not merely part of a cycle. I am the closing line at the end of every page of destiny. You ask why I am part of the Four Seasons? Because without the silence I bring, life would have no meaning."

  He lifted his head, staring straight at a sky that was now completely white—no sun, no stars. "You want to walk and make nature freeze? That is the arrogance of a sword cultivator still hungry for recognition. True Winter does not need a presence to freeze. It is the absence itself."

  Zhi Xuan smirked, even as his lips began to turn blue and stiff. "Absence? If you are absence, then why are you still sitting there lecturing me? If you are the end, shouldn't you have disappeared along with all this despair?"

  "I exist because you still think you can win," the old man replied calmly, almost like a whisper of falling snow. "Zhi Xuan, you have swallowed the three previous seasons. You feel strong. But do you know that by swallowing them, you only accelerate the burden on your soul toward the freezing point? The more you carry, the easier it is for me to stop your steps."

  "Hmph, so this is your new tactic? Trying to weaken my mental state after fire and dry leaves failed?" Zhi Xuan spat, but his saliva froze into a bead of ice before hitting the ground. "Winter... so cruel, freezing the entire universe. And yet, even in the midst of that frost, a glimmer of life appears."

  "Yin and Yang always revolve; life and death always complement each other," Zhi Xuan continued. He sat down cross-legged in front of the old man. "Heaven and Earth are separate; even Natural Law is but a fraction of the unreachable Heavenly Law. How could one Winter stop me?"

  "If you truly are the end of all things, then I will embrace you and create a Reincarnation," Zhi Xuan hissed, looking up to stare sharply at the old man. "Reincarnation is not just about life and death, but about every turn of the divine wheel that is the foundation of every being. Summer purifies, Autumn fells, Winter ends, Spring gives birth."

  "Reincarnation from an end?" The old man asked, his voice now sounding like the cracking of ice in the deepest abyss. "You want to embrace annihilation to create life? That is a thought that defies Heaven, Zhi Xuan. You are trying to unite what must naturally be separate."

  Zhi Xuan smirked, though frost began to cover his eyelashes. "Who decided they must be separate? Heaven? Destiny? Or is it your own fear that if this cycle unites, you will no longer have power as The End?"

  "I have no desire for power," the old man replied flatly. "I merely fulfill a function. Like water flowing downward, Winter only flows toward nothingness. If you embrace me, you will not become the creator of Reincarnation. You will only become eternal ice, frozen in time, never able to move again."

  "Reincarnation would mean nothing if I stood outside of it," Zhi Xuan said calmly, his eyes flashing with a sapphire glow that pierced through the blizzard. "If even life and death can be reversed, then true Eternity belongs to those who do not live within that cycle."

  "Standing outside the cycle?" the old man whispered, his voice no longer bringing a storm, but a questioning emptiness. "You speak as if you are the Creator standing upon the Throne of Chaos. Do you not realize, Zhi Xuan? Even the Gods of the primordial era did not dare claim they stood outside the turning of the Samsara Wheel."

  Zhi Xuan chuckled, a dry and brittle sound, yet carrying a courage capable of tearing the veil of ice enveloping them. "If those Gods have not reached it, then I am the one who will."

  "You are merely the Dao mirror trial I possess," Zhi Xuan continued calmly, raising his hand to show a shard of extreme ice. "Out there, Elders at a level unimaginable to me right now are waiting to see if I will fall or not."

  "But here I am; I came only to bring the dignity of Xing Luo," he crushed the shard of extreme ice in his hand. "And this Dao mirror trial will not stop me. You see for yourself, don't you, that the Heavenly Law in these Yao Gu plains is so dense? This is what made you manifest to test me, to test how far I will go."

  "Mu Chen, Yan Fenghuang, Ye Ming, Liu Feng, Ling Huo, and the other geniuses," Zhi Xuan said, naming the competition participants. "They might also be experiencing pressure from their Dao that is no less than mine. Yet, here I am, speaking to the manifestation of the Law that regulates the cycle of the universe."

  "If you truly were the end, then all this time I would have ceased from all life," Zhi Xuan decided coldly and calmly. "But I am still breathing; even my heart can still feel. You are merely the Dao mirror of uncertainty."

  The old man on the ice block went silent, his frozen white beard trembling. The silence he brought—the silence that usually swallowed all sound and existence—now felt cracked by the impact of Zhi Xuan's words, filled with human arrogance. He looked at the bladeless sword on his lap, then turned to stare at the sapphire eyes of the youth before him who refused to freeze.

  "Uncertainty?" the old man said, his voice now as heavy as shifting polar ice. "You call this essence uncertainty? Zhi Xuan, you compare yourself to the geniuses out there, but you know yourself that the burden you carry is not comparable to theirs. They chase a straight Dao, while you... you are trying to swallow that entire path yourself."

  Zhi Xuan smirked, wiping the ice beads from his eyebrows with a trembling hand. "A straight Dao? That is only a path for those afraid of getting lost. I prefer to create my own path, even if it means I must trample over the seasonal laws you guard."

  "You are very arrogant for a mortal not even two hundred years old," the old man replied, slowly beginning to lift his bladeless sword. "You mention the names of those geniuses, but do you know? In the face of true Winter, even their brilliance will fade."

  "Fade? That is what I need," Zhi Xuan replied with a slight, thin smile. "However, I will not make them fade easily. Rather, I will make them realize that as for my Dao, no one can understand it."