Chapter Fifty: The Final Work

The more Wei Zhuo fought, the more terrified he became, his courage draining with every exchange. The demonic arts of painting he had always prided himself on were nothing but a joke before this youth. The paper puppets he had animated with his own blood and soul, once fierce and unstoppable, crumbled to dust in the boy’s presence, like flimsy parchment on a windowpane—scattering at the slightest touch.

What chilled him even more was that every attack he launched, no matter how cunning or vicious, brought back upon him the same pain and injury, without fail. In contrast, the boy moved with the ease of a stroll in a garden, never offering Wei Zhuo a swift end—he toyed with him, a cat playing with a mouse, an eagle toying with a rabbit.

At this rate, not only was victory impossible, but even the hope of dying together seemed a distant fantasy.

Perhaps it was true that the onlooker sees more than the player; as Wei Zhuo’s despair deepened, Shangguan Chuci observed the fight with increasing clarity. Though Lu Chenyuan had transformed into something monstrous with strange abilities, Wei Zhuo was no mere pushover. His half-human, half-paper body blurred the line between substance and illusion, rendering him immune to ordinary attacks.

On the mutated arm, dozens of crimson demonic eyes opened and closed in unison, staring again and again at Wei Zhuo’s body. Wherever those eyes fell, the inky blackness faded from Wei Zhuo’s paper side, but Lu Chenyuan lacked a truly effective means of attack. He pressed Wei Zhuo throughout the battle, leaving him no room to retaliate, but never managed a decisive blow—he could only bleed him dry, coaxing more of that ink-like blood from his wounds.

Given enough time, Wei Zhuo was sure to lose, but Lu Chenyuan was not without cost himself...

As the evil aura between Lu Chenyuan’s brows deepened, the clarity of humanity in his eyes was gradually eroded. Shangguan Chuci’s heart tightened; she could hesitate no longer.

“Brother Lu!”

With a clear cry, she flashed forward like a streak of light, heading straight for Wei Zhuo, calling out, “Let me help you!”

Lu Chenyuan’s gaze fell on her, a hint of unfamiliar confusion in his eyes, as if he no longer recognized her. Yet, after a brief pause, he nodded slightly—an acknowledgment, however faint.

A pang of sadness struck Shangguan Chuci, but her resolve for a swift and decisive victory only grew stronger.

Her sword flashed into the fray with Wei Zhuo. Her style was light and elusive, unpredictable, while Wei Zhuo’s attacks were sweeping and ferocious, his human bone brush slashing through the air, spewing toxic, sinister ink.

The two figures leapt and spun, crossing blades multiple times in a breath. Shangguan Chuci’s swordplay remained nimble and probing, each move a careful test. Wei Zhuo countered with overwhelming force; his brush’s strokes unleashed a haze of poisonous ink.

It seemed she was barely holding on, her figure weaving perilously among blades and ink, her robes fluttering in the storm, the wicked brush tip grazing her shoulder more than once. Yet her footwork was exquisite, and though she appeared at the brink of disaster, she always managed to dissolve the force at the last second, escaping unscathed despite her apparent distress.

She fought this way not out of inability, but to bait her opponent, experiencing firsthand the reality of his demonic painting arts, testing a bold suspicion in her heart.

After several exchanges, realization dawned within her: “As expected, though he seems crazed, his techniques are bound by the rules of paper and ink.”

“His movement, though strange, is simply a trick of shifting within his own painting—the flaw lies at its source! Blades and swords cannot harm him only because they do not touch his root. To defeat him, one must turn to water and fire!”

Resolved, she changed her tactics.

“No more!”

With a sudden shout, she forced Wei Zhuo back with a sword strike and leapt away, feigning breathlessness as she spoke:

“Brother Lu, this fiend’s sorcery is too strange—we must kill him in a single blow! I need you to create an opening for me!”

“An opening?”

A hint of confusion flickered in the depths of Lu Chenyuan’s blue eyes. He felt his thoughts grow sluggish and sticky, as if he were sinking into the coldest depths of the sea, surrounded by endless darkness and silence. Yet Shangguan Chuci’s urgent call cut through the gloom like a sliver of light, guiding his faltering consciousness back to purpose.

Slowly, Lu Chenyuan raised his now-demonic right arm, the dozens of crimson eyes swiveling in unison to pin Wei Zhuo’s half-paper body. He opened his mouth and said softly:

“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”

As the words faded, an invisible law seemed to stir within the world. Wei Zhuo’s body went rigid, and the already bizarre paper half of his form visibly thinned, the ink fading, its substance turning from tough to brittle—like an ancient painting exposed to the wind for centuries, ready to crumble at any moment.

“Using the same trick again!” Wei Zhuo cried out, forcing a harsh laugh even as alarm seized him. “You think such paltry magic can touch my true form? I am no mere phantom puppet!”

At that moment, Shangguan Chuci’s eyes flashed with brilliance.

“Now!”

Without hesitation, she pressed her left forefinger to the sword wound on her right shoulder, gathering a drop of bright blood. She poured her remaining vital energy into her sea of consciousness, where the fire of logic—composed of countless zeroes and ones—roared to life.

“Command!”

At her clear cry, the blood ignited in a transparent flame woven of shimmering symbols, with the binary code of zeroes and ones cascading within its heart. Her face paled as the flame burned, and a glance at her sword arm revealed fissures in her flesh, like the static of a malfunctioning television.

She knew she was burning the last of her strength. Without this strange fire, any ordinary practitioner would already have perished from such exertion.

This was a move of all or nothing.

“What kind of fire is that?!”

Wei Zhuo recoiled in primal terror at the sight of the flame, but his body was still immobilized by Lu Chenyuan’s sorcery—he could not move at all.

“Go!”

With a flick of her wrist, Shangguan Chuci sent the blood-bound flame hurtling through the air, not at Wei Zhuo’s vital organs, but straight at his paper-thin, brittle face.

A scream, inhuman and agonized, tore from Wei Zhuo as the flame touched his paper flesh. It blazed up with a roar, neon lights flickering in unnatural patterns, and no matter how he summoned his ink, it could not extinguish the fire. Instead, it spread rapidly along the cracked lines of his face, and in the blink of an eye, his entire paper side was engulfed.

Relief welled in Shangguan Chuci’s heart—at last, she could breathe again.

She thought to herself, “All those games of suffering souls I played in that other world were not in vain after all! They used to joke that hairless things burn best—turns out, today, that was the key to victory.”

“His body is not hairy, but it is made of wood and plant, and thus fears fire by nature. Ordinary flames are useless, but my heart-fire is the bane of such evil things!”

“With Lu Chenyuan’s strange sorcery to weaken his core, only then could we strike true. This was a risky gambit indeed.”

She watched Wei Zhuo writhe and scream in the flames, until thick smoke finally swallowed him. Only then did her tense body sag, her strength nearly spent, and she almost collapsed where she stood.

Forcing herself to remain upright, she stared nervously at the swirl of smoke. Only after a long, silent moment with no further movement did she finally let out a long sigh of relief.

She turned toward Lu Chenyuan, about to greet him with a “Brother Lu”—but then she saw, in his previously clouded blue eyes, a flash of returning clarity.

He seemed to sense something, and without hesitation, stepped forward, dissolving into a swirl of ink and shadow—blocking her path without warning.

A heartbeat later, blood burst forth.

Shangguan Chuci’s pupils shrank to pinpoints. Dazed, she reached out, touching the hot, viscous liquid that had splattered across her cheek.

It was blood.

She slowly raised her head, looking past the boy’s shoulder.

A massive bone brush, nearly ten feet long, had pierced straight through Lu Chenyuan’s body, protruding from his chest and dripping fresh blood.

The swirling smoke finally dissipated in the night wind.

But what remained was not the expected expanse of starry sky, but a darkness that blotted out the heavens.

Gazing upward at the monster in the sky, Shangguan Chuci felt a coldness seep into her very bones.

At that moment, she understood the true meaning of despair.

A colossal canvas, composed of twisted flesh and the shattered remnants of paper puppets, hung in the sky—a wound torn between reality and illusion, blotting out the light over the entire courtyard.

Rivers of living ink crawled across its surface like maggots, each pulse contorting the trapped faces within, each resembling Wei Zhuo, twisted in agony.

Ink and blood mingled upon the canvas.

Suddenly, the face on the canvas began to shudder violently, unleashing wave after wave of eerie, inhuman wails. After a time, it fell silent.

At last, the face opened a pair of jet-black eyes from within the painting, staring down at them with cold detachment.

Wei Zhuo was dead.

And this painting was the final legacy he left to the world.