Chapter 132: I Am the Messenger

"Huh? Why, why aren't you dead yet?"

"Should I be dead?" Wen Jinge sneered inwardly, wondering who it was that had been wailing and crying for help just moments ago. She crouched down, bringing her line of sight level with the man. "Are you that eager for me to die?"

The man seemed startled by her, frozen for a moment like a rusted marionette before slowly raising his face. It was caked in grime, no longer the fair, clean countenance it had once been.

The sight made Wen Jinge want to use her magic zither to shave it off, just to see if he could grow a new head.

Ultimately, she refrained. "You said only I could kill you. What did you mean by that? Does that statement still hold true?"

"It does, it does." The man nodded frantically, the fanaticism in his eyes intensifying. "Grant me release! I don't want to live anymore."

"Are there many gods in the heavens?" Wen Jinge sat to one side, sharpening her blade against the tree roots, hacking away at them continuously.

Lu Wei had told her this tree was not a tree. She hadn't believed him at first, but now, seeing the blood spray from the roots as she cut, she had no choice but to believe.

"Many, so many, so very many."

"Didn't you say you didn't remember anything about the heavens?" Lu Wei looked at him with dissatisfaction. "Or have you remembered something? Because of this tree?"

"Yes!" The man turned his head in panic; seeing the tree beside him only deepened the fear in his eyes. "You—that's impossible. You cannot be near this tree, you mustn't! You will die..."

"But I haven't died," Wen Jinge said, as she plunged her magic zither into the trunk.

A dull pain suddenly struck her heart, and the man on the ground began to writhe in agony. "Don't, don't stop!"

"Heh heh heh." Wen Jinge began to laugh, her expression one of sudden clarity. She leaned against Lu Wei. "Hey! You've struck gold."

"What is it now?" Lu Wei glared at her in annoyance and brushed her hand off his arm. "If you have something to say, say it, but keep your hands to yourself. Men and women should maintain their distance."

"I am a god! You should be buttering me up!"

Lu Wei stared at her as if she were an idiot for a moment, then took the magic zither from her hands to continue chopping. The man began to suffer again, and Wen Jinge clutched her chest, her complexion turning pale. He realized something. "If you truly are a god, you must have a way to shove me inside, right?"

Lu Wei looked at the man. "If you can't even manage that, why should we believe you are this so-called god?"

"You people..."

The man could not comprehend what was wrong with this world. Before he had met Wen Jinge's group, he had possessed many followers. He could forgive Wen Jinge, but why did even the low-level humans around her look at him with such contempt?

"I... will not die."

"Whether you die or not!" Wen Jinge snatched the zither-sword back. "It’s not for you to decide."

"Then..."

"Do me a favor." Wen Jinge handed the zither to the Chicken Spirit. "Kill your master."

"I, I can't kill him, I've tried so many times," the Chicken Spirit stomped its feet in terror. "I'll do anything you ask, just, just don't make me..."

"She just thinks her master's face is too dirty. There's no water here, so she wants to get her master a new head."

"Oh!" The Chicken Spirit sighed, the weight lifting from its heart. "Master, it will be quick. It won't hurt."

*Slash!*

A clean strike to the throat, and the head rolled across the ground. A faint shadow emerged from his head again.

Wen Jinge picked up Wen Xueshan’s head and tossed it to Lu Wei. "Think about it. Does this face, Wen Xueshan’s face, seem familiar to you?"

"Mas, Master..."

Wen Jinge turned around and saw the man was unharmed, which piqued her curiosity about the young girl's panic. "Isn't your master growing a new head? This is standard procedure for him, don't be afraid."

"No, it's not that..." She pointed to the head in Wen Jinge's hand. "This one looks like, like the master I met the first time."

Lu Wei’s expression tightened. He stared at Wen Jinge with vacant eyes and gave a mocking laugh. "Since those two lumps in your brain disappeared, I've found you're incredibly lucky. Everything you guess is spot on. Why don't you try thinking about how we're going to get out of here?"

"I can't think of it."

"You really can't?"

"I'm afraid that if I keep thinking, another old monster will show up, and we'll both end up dead here."

"I..." The Chicken Spirit looked at the two of them, finally finding a chance to interject. "Master had this face at the beginning. Later, the features on his face slowly dissipated. The more he died, the, the less he looked like his original self."

"You can even guess that?" Lu Wei shook his head helplessly, defining Wen Jinge's nature directly. "If you were a god ten thousand years ago, you must have been a very troublesome one. Even in a state of amnesia, you've guessed everything about events ten thousand years later. A prodigy!"

"Thanks for the compliment."

Lu Wei’s face turned green.

Wen Jinge brought Wen Xueshan’s head before the man for a confrontation. The confusion in the man’s eyes grew deeper. "I recognize him. He, he..."

"You don't happen to have seen him in a mirror, do you?"

"Yes! Many, many mirrors. I can't remember clearly. Many mirrors, many of me..."

"A recursive space?"

"What is that?" Whenever he was with Wen Jinge, he always encountered gaps in his knowledge.

Fortunately, since both people here seemed thick-headed, he didn't feel embarrassed asking Wen Jinge directly.

"A place you'd best not know about," Wen Jinge said coldly.

Since her resurrection from the tree seed, she realized she had been assuming the "Chuuni Sovereign" persona more often. She would unintentionally switch into another personality, and her heart had grown colder along with that persona, her capacity for human compassion being stripped away.

"God, a new god..." the man muttered to himself. "I escaped. Legend has it that the one from before left. It said this world needs a new god to rule, but the path is gone. The one who left destroyed the path...

"So, so we came down. I, I escaped. The former god left a letter: in this lifetime, she would be called Wen Jinge, would appear in the Xuan Yun Sect, and because of failure... it would be Wanzhang Peak."

"A new god? Then what are you?"

"I, I..." At this moment, the man was lost.

"I... am not a god..."

"I... I am... heh heh heh, I..." The man began to laugh, then started to cry. "I am a messenger. Messengers cannot die; they can only be killed by a god. You... yes... you are the descendant of a god..."

"It’s over, it’s only getting more complicated." Wen Jinge felt a headache coming on. She patted Wen Xueshan’s head and asked, "Are there many who look like this man?"

"Yes, very, very many of me, many of us..."

"You aren't a clone, are you?" Wen Jinge sighed, and following her intuition, shoved the man into the tree trunk. "Do you really want to die, you defector?"

"Yes, release. I only want release."

"I hope you don't regret it!" The magic zither in her hand pierced forward, and the man smiled in relief.

On the ground, a rustling sound began to echo once more.