Chapter 3079: Gambit (2)
The message came into Yun Lintian’s mind. It was not in words, but in concepts, in understanding that blossomed fully formed in his mind. It was about balance, about the true nature of the power he now wielded.
And with that understanding came a memory, long buried under more immediate concerns. A prize he had won in the depths of the God of Darkness’s domain, from Hei Yue’s father. A small, enigmatic object whose purpose had always eluded him: the Creator’s Gambit.
At the time, it had felt insignificant, a cryptic token without apparent function. Now, bathed in the World Tree’s light and with his comprehension of the supreme laws at its peak, its meaning became devastatingly clear.
He looked up at the World Tree, his eyes wide with dawning horror and realization.
"The Creator’s Gambit..." he whispered, the words tasting like ash. "It... it meant this moment all along, didn’t it? This... this was the gamble. That I would lose everything, be pushed to the absolute brink, and in that utter despair, finally achieve the perfect fusion of Creation and Uncreation?"
The World Tree’s leaves shimmered in affirmation. A wave of ancient knowledge flowed into him, explaining the gambit’s cruel necessity.
To truly master both Creation and Uncreation, to hold the power of absolute life and absolute death in perfect equilibrium, one could not be swayed by emotion. Empathy, love, grief, desire—these were forces that pulled the soul toward one extreme or the other. To create out of love was to introduce a bias. To refrain from unmaking out of mercy was another bias.
True, perfect balance required a state of absolute detachment. It required the cold, impartial perspective of a fundamental law, not the passionate heart of a living being. The original Creator, in her love for her creations, could never achieve it; her nature was inherently skewed towards creation.
The path to this ultimate power, therefore, demanded the ultimate price: the loss of all emotion. The erasure of everything that made one human.
One had to lose everyone and everything they loved, not just physically, but in their heart. They had to become numb to the loss, to see it as a necessary data point in the equation of cosmic balance.
That was the true meaning of the "gambit." It was a wager that the vessel could endure the process of becoming a perfect, emotionless instrument of balance.
Yun Lintian understood now. This was the fate that had awaited him. Nian Shi’s takeover, the deaths of all he loved—it was all part of the brutal, mechanistic process to sand away his humanity and forge him into the perfect god.
A cold dread washed over him. He had attained the power, but at what cost? To become a cold, unfeeling entity like Nian Shi? To look upon the faces of his resurrected wives and feel nothing? That was not victory; that was a different kind of damnation.
But then, the World Tree’s communication shifted. A new wave of understanding, gentler this time, filled with a profound and sorrowful love, flowed into him.
The Creator herself knew this fate was too cruel. She, who embodied creation and love, could not bear to design a path that would utterly destroy the heart of her chosen heir.
She knew that a god without a heart, even a perfectly balanced one, was not a successor she could accept. Such a being might maintain balance, but it would never care for the universe it was meant to shepherd.
And so, she had added a variable to her gambit. A wild card. A final, desperate act of compassion.
Ning Yue.
Ning Yue was not just a guide or a key. She was the Creator’s gift of mercy.
The World Tree showed him. The fragment of the Creator’s soul within Ning Yue, now merged with him, was not just a source of power. It was an anchor. A preserver.
The process was supposed to burn away his emotions, but the pure, foundational essence of the Creator’s own soul—the very source of love and compassion in the universe—had acted as a buffer.
It had absorbed the brunt of the emotional sterilization that should have occurred. It had shielded the core of his humanity even as it unlocked the ultimate power.
Ning Yue’s sacrifice had been twofold. She had given him the clarity of power, and she had given him the gift of remaining himself. Her soul had paid the price his heart was meant to pay.
He could now wield the perfect balance of Creation and Uncreation not as a cold, detached god, but as Yun Lintian. A man who loved, who grieved, who desired, who felt rage and compassion.
The emotions that should have been a weakness became, through her sacrifice, the stabilizing force that allowed him to hold the impossible power without losing his mind or his soul.
He wasn’t meant to be an emotionless ruler of balance. He was meant to be a compassionate god who understood both joy and sorrow, life and death, and could wield both without being consumed by either.
Tears, now of overwhelming gratitude and a grief that was somehow purer, streamed down Yun Lintian’s face. He looked at the World Tree, then at the space where Ning Yue had vanished, and finally at Long Yi.
"The Gambit..." he said, his voice thick with emotion. "She knew... The Creator knew the cost would be too high. So she gave me Ning Yue. She used her own soul... to save my heart."
Long Yi nodded slowly, a deep respect in his ancient eyes. "The young miss was the embodiment of that compassion. Her existence, her bond with you, was the variable that changed an inevitable, cruel fate into a path with hope. You have not lost your humane side, Yun Lintian. You have had it protected and fortified by the greatest love of all."
The weight on Yun Lintian’s soul lifted, replaced by a resolve so fierce and pure it felt like a new kind of power. He was not a broken tool. He was a whole person, armed with the power of a god and the heart of a man.
He had a duty now, not just to balance, but to healing. To reclamation. And he would do it not as a cold executor of cosmic law, but as Yun Lintian, who loved his family and would move heaven and earth, life and death, to bring them home.
The Creator’s Gambit had been played. And through an act of unexpected love, Yun Lintian had won not just the power, but the right to remain himself...