Re-birth: The Beginning after the End - Chapter 225

Chapter 225: THERE’S A PRICE
Pain, cold, pain was all Mo Xing could feel as he drifted in swirling mass of darkness.

Fool, the darkness whispered. You thought you could consume so much? You’re just a shadow of what you once were. Especially since you didn’t fully accept me. It scoffed. You just accepted my powers without embracing what I truly am.

The voice echoed through the void surrounding him. Memories fragmented and reformed like shards of broken glass, each one cutting deeper than physical wounds ever could. Faces he had known, lives he had taken, worlds he had walked—all swirling in the maelstrom of unprocessed dark matter.

You expected me to trust you? To trust that you wouldn’t hurt her? He shouted back, his voice hoarse, guttural—the sound raw with frustration and desperation echoing through the endless void of his own consciousness. I needed your power, yes, but I couldn’t risk losing myself in that moment.

The voice laughed, sarcastic and deafening—the sound reverberating through the darkness like thunder across an infinite abyss. The mockery in that laughter was unmistakable, a cold judgment of his inadequacy from a version of himself that remembered true power.

I gave you my word. I am you and you are me. Why would I hurt her? Luckily it’s only you suffering now. Had my powers spiraled beyond control and you consumed her with the dark matter, I would have torn your consciousness to shreds and devoured what remained.

And I wouldn’t have fought you, Mo Xing whispered, sighing into the void. He knew that not fully accepting the darkness inside him would have it’s own consequences. But he truly didn’t know what would happen, so he chose to only accept the power. He figured he’d deal with it later, when she wasn’t in any danger.

But then the fox approached with its tempting offer—access to the shrine archives—what little remained of his prudence had crumbled entirely. The need to know had consumed him, the desperate hunger to confirm whether the memory fragments haunting his consciousness were genuine—whether the world he glimpsed in those shattered recollections truly existed beyond the veil of his fractured past. Whether that woman he saw so often in his fragmented memories was truly her.

As if plucking the thought directly from his consciousness, the darkness’s voice softened to an intimate whisper. You truly want to know? All you had to do was ask. I’ll show you everything—her, us, what came before. But there’s a price. A pause, heavy with implication. Be ready to fully accept me. No more partitions, no more pretending we’re separate entities. What you are, what I am—we must become whole again.

The darkness surged closer, its essence intertwining with his consciousness like black ink spreading through clear water.

Fine, Mo Xing responded, his voice resonating with resigned determination.

A sudden searing pain erupted at the core of his being—white-hot and absolute, as if every cell in his body had been simultaneously set aflame and frozen solid. The darkness no longer surrounded him but became him, flooding through mental barriers he had carefully constructed over centuries.

Memories crashed through his consciousness like tidal waves—not fragmented glimpses but complete lifetimes of experience.

He remembered almost everything.

Mo Xing sat upon the obsidian Dragon Throne, gazing down at the assembled court of shadow immortals. The vast Underworld Palace stretched before him, its ceiling lost in perpetual darkness despite the myriad soul-flames that illuminated the polished black spirit stone. Lords and Generals of the Yin Armies knelt before him, their heads bowed in perfect submission—not from mere obligation, but from genuine terror of his Heavenly Authority.

In this memory, Mo Xing wore the Nine-Shadowed Crown that devoured all light that dared touch it. His robes, woven from the essence of primordial chaos itself, shifted between corporeal and incorporeal with each movement, revealing glimpses of the boundless void contained within. At his side stood the Thirteen Grand Marshals of the Underworld Legions, each powerful enough to shatter a Lesser Realm with a single technique, yet they trembled when his spiritual sense swept over them.

He remembered the weight of that crown, the perfect stillness of supreme power—a stillness born not of tranquility but from the absolute dominance over all who existed in the lower realms. None dared oppose the Underworld Emperor. None could stand against his Shadow and Void. In this memory, he was not yet fragmented. He was whole—the Supreme Sovereign of the Underworld, master of yin essence and dark qi, traverser of Realms, and collector of fallen souls.

But even as his cultivation had reached the Void Transcendence Realm, something remained missing.

The memory shifted, and suddenly she stood before him—not his Little Tempest as she existed now, but her original form: the Heavenly Princess with hair like liquid moonlight and eyes that contained the essence of divine light. She alone stood upright in his court, defiant and radiant with celestial qi, an envoy from the Celestial Court who had come to negotiate the fate of souls he had claimed beyond the boundary prescribed by the Heavenly Pact.

“Return the soul essences,” she had demanded, her voice resonating with heavenly authority.

He remembered leaning forward on the throne, his interest piqued by her spiritual courage. “And if this sovereign refuses?” He had asked, more intrigued than affronted.

“Then this humble immortal will take them,” she had replied simply, as if challenging the Underworld Emperor was merely another step on her cultivation path rather than courting soul dissolution.

The court had fallen silent, shock rippling through the assembled immortals. No cultivator spoke to the Emperor this way. The spiritual retribution for such impudence would echo through the Realms.

Yet he had laughed—the sound startling even his closest companions. Something about her fearlessness, her unwavering righteousness in the face of overwhelming power, had awakened a sensation he had not experienced since his breakthrough: genuine admiration.

The memory fragmented, showing flashes of their subsequent encounters—negotiations that became philosophical debates, debates that became exchanges, exchanges that became something neither the Celestial Court nor the Underworld Council could have anticipated. For the first time since attaining his supreme cultivation, he had found someone who perceived beyond the imperial presence, beyond the authority, to the dark soul beneath.

Then came war, betrayal, and destruction. The Celestial Court’s discovery of their forbidden connection. The assassination attempt disguised as heavenly judgment. The all consuming battle that followed as immortals from all realms chose sides in a conflict that threatened existence itself. His anguished cry that shook the foundations of reality as he watched her essence scatter across dimensions—her final sacrifice to end a war she never wanted.

For the first time in his immortal existence, the Underworld Emperor knew grief—a hollowness that consumed his heart and soul more completely than any anything could fill. The pain transformed him, crystallizing his anguish into something terrible and terrifying.

His vengeance came not as blind rage but as worship—each realm burned, each immortal extinguished, mortal realms reduced to dust became offerings to her memory. He crafted destruction into art, meticulously erasing everything that had contributed to her death until nothing remained of the realms that had rejected their love.

Once there was nothing left, he channeled the last fragments of his waning power into a final, desperate act—a forced reincarnation to search for her soul essence across the infinite tapestry of existence. Even as his awareness splintered, one thought remained intact: he would find her again, no matter how many lives, no matter how many worlds.

As his fractured self reintegrated, the pain intensified beyond what should have been endurable, then suddenly vanished completely. In its place, clarity—perfect and terrible knowledge of exactly what he was, what he had been, and what he must become again. The cycle of searching has ended. He had found her at last, and this time, no power in any realm would tear them apart.

**WARNING – Mature Content in the next chapters 226-229**