Chapter 173: 173- BT [4]

The hum of the mine vanished. The ache in his meridians faded. The cold stone beneath him became soft sheets.

A familiar, forgotten smell filled his nostrils: the sterile scent of hospital air, tinged with antiseptic.

He was lying down. His body felt weak, frail, as if even the act of breathing required borrowed strength.

Behind his eyelids, a pale, sterile glow pressed down, a ceiling lamp’s flat fluorescence.

Then came a voice.

A woman’s voice, trembling, thick with tears. A voice he hadn’t heard in thirty years. His mother’s voice.

"...the doctors say he’s showing signs of waking up—", she suddenly reacted.

"Oh, honey... can you hear me?"

Fang Yuan’lashes fluttered, and through the haze of light he saw them, two figures at his bedside.

A woman and a man. His parents.

"You’ve been asleep for so long... the car accident... we thought we’d lost you..." Her words broke apart as sobs overtook her.

She leaned down, clutching him desperately, tears spilling as if to anchor herself to the sight of her son’s open eyes.

Fang Yuan’s thoughts wavered, a haze tightening around his mind.

Car accident? A coma?

Thirty years... thirty years of clawing his way up through blood and fire, of cultivating in defiance of Heaven, of learning to bear the weight of a clan upon his shoulders... Could it all be nothing more than the fevered dream of a broken brain?

It’s just a dream, a voice whispered in the dark. None of it was real. You never died. You never transmigrated. Just... let go. Wake up. Go home. Is this not what you dreamed of?

The notion sank its claws into him, heavy and sweet. The temptation was not a stream but a vast, inexorable ocean, dragging him under.

To abandon the crushing burden of vigilance, the endless anticipation of ambush from the shadows, the suffocating calculus of power and survival...

And instead, to return to the quiet warmth of a simple life. To his family. To the laughter and embraces that once defined his world.

Yet his heart rebelled.

Every fiber of him ached to move, to lift his arms, to touch his mother’s tear-streaked face, to wipe them away with trembling hands.

But his body lay unresponsive, as though shackled by invisible chains.

Still, his mother seemed to sense his desperate struggle.

A gentle smile softened her face as she reached out, clasping his arm with warmth that cut through the haze.

Leaning close, she whispered, her voice a balm against the storm in his chest:

"It’s alright, son. Your father and I aren’t going anywhere."

For a fleeting moment, Fang Yuan felt at home.

Warmth, family, the comfort of belonging, he almost let himself believe it. Perhaps... perhaps the last thirty years were nothing but a dream. This... this is where I truly belong.

His drifting thoughts were abruptly shattered. A jolt ran through him.

Something was wrong. Terribly wrong.

His father, his real father, had long since died. It was a mining accident. So who was this man wearing his father’s face?

And he himself, the fall... twenty stories straight into the pavement. How could he possibly have survived that, only to enter a coma? What do you mean car accident?

The illusion buckled. The warmth bled away into something sticky and hot, blood. The scene shifted violently. He was sprawled on the ground, dust choking his throat as he coughed.

Confusion cut deep. Survived the fall? No... impossible.

Another jolt, sharper this time. Memory surged. He had died. Truly, utterly died. He remembered the nothingness that came after, the cold, absolute void.

That was no coma, or a manifestation of a dream. It was pure ending beyond endings.

The illusion trembled.

"You never died..." the heart demon whispered, oily and insidious.

"LIES!" The roar did not tear from his throat, but from the depths of his soul.

Fang Yuan knew. He had tasted True Death, felt its cold signature etched into his very being.

He had crossed into its void, only to be flung back into existence by some unfathomable twist of fate.

That was his comprehension. That was the truth the Hollow Spirit Pill was forcing him to confront, to carve into his soul.

The Void was no mere emptiness. It was the other side of existence itself, the silence after the final note, the darkness that granted meaning to light.

And Fang Yuan... he was among the rare few who had been there. Who had returned.

The ground beneath him fractured like brittle glass, shards of illusion scattering into nothingness.

Fang Yuan’s body convulsed in the spirit pond, veins alight with wild, uncontrollable energy.

Yet his eyes snapped open, wide, blazing with a clarity that cut sharper than any blade.

"I HAVE DIED!" His voice thundered into the cave, ragged but unyielding.

"I have faced the true Void, and it did not claim me! You dare show me this pitiful shadow? This illusion? I have seen the real thing!"

The words were not just defiance, they were truth. Carved into his soul.

That truth became the key. He no longer fled from the memory of death, he embraced it.

The emptiness that had once terrified him now became his foundation.

He understood the Void, because he had been Void. He had become nothing... and from that nothingness, he was reborn.

His will surged, colder and sharper than ever before, infused with the certainty of a man who had nothing left to lose.

The chaotic flood of energy no longer whipped him like a storm, it bent, subdued beneath his command.

Fang Yuan’s awareness turned inward, to the radiant Nascent Soul that hovered within his dantian, a miniature version of himself, perfect and brilliant, pulsing with the culmination of decades of cultivation.

A flawless creation. A symbol of mastery.

And now, the final chain.

To step into the Void, he could not remain a solid thing of spirit.

He had to shatter what he was, to dissolve and remake himself anew.

Gathering every drop of the Hollow Spirit Pill’s raging energy, every fiber of his own will, every insight carved into him by death itself, Fang Yuan aimed it all inward.

His soul voice cut through the storm like a blade of finality:

"Break."