Chapter 00094: Liberation
# Liberation
Chapter 94
Novel: Above Destiny
Chapter 94: Liberation
When the unexpected arrival of the Sage engulfed everything in its grasp, the unforeseen changes came crashing down all at once.
Ji Jue felt as if his reason and perception had deceived him, unable to believe his own eyes—was the workshop crafted by the Sage actually launching an attack against Mercury?!
He froze in place, disbelief flooding him as he turned to look at the Seer.
But the Seer had fallen silent.
From the depths of that silence, cracks appeared in the broken skull, and an astonishing light shone forth from the shattered visage, brighter than anything Ji Jue had ever seen.
In that moment, he sensed a monumental rhythm, vast and overwhelming.
It enveloped the heavens and spread across the earth, filling the entire rift, forcibly halting the flow of spiritual essence and blocking the cycle of creation.
At this moment, the very creator of the workshop was being suppressed by it.
Even... imprisoned within a cage! No, it should be said that from the very beginning, it was Mercury who had been shackled and confined by the workshop.
The changes that the outsiders faced upon entering the core were not meant to fend off invaders, but to seal off the countless embers left by Mercury...
Yet, they strangely allowed her soul to remain, preventing her from casting herself into the abyss of nothingness.
Choosing a new tragedy that was neither of the two—a fresh despair borne from the bitter fruits of anguish.
"Everyone is truly pitiful," the Seer whispered softly, gazing at the colossal being imprisoned in the sky—having lost everything in the endless loops and torment, even her pride and determination gradually stripped away over four centuries.
She wandered alone in pain and despair, reducing her to such a state.
Even her own sense of self had been utterly worn away with time.
What remained was only an obsession.
And countless creations, born without autonomy, unable to end even in death.
For all these years, everyone had repeated their cycles in this hell day after day, struggling endlessly as if it would stretch on forever, but there is no such thing as forever in this world.
What seems eternal must eventually perish, as the infinite inevitably runs dry.
"It should come to an end."
She sighed wearily, "Whether it is you or us."
At that moment, from the ruins, the final chime rang out.
It echoed towards the rift, towards the workshop—the earth, the heavens, all living things, calling out to Mercury in one last declaration.
It sounded like a funeral song.
The broken bell tower trembled as the aged, cracked bronze bell let out hoarse cries, again and again, summoning everything.
Following the countless promises made during their cycles, it announced that the final conclusion had arrived.
Thus, all things awakened from their torment.
The first to boil up was the ocean...
From beneath the nine heavens, boundless spiritual essence surged forth.
In the deep sea, countless silent ashes stirred like mountain ranges, rising again and igniting a furious tempest.
Clarity and beauty vanished, replaced by the accumulation of more than four hundred years of madness and crimson.
They surged forth, rising from the boiling depths, countless colors turning in the purest spiritual essence, until ultimately only the crimson accumulated from the cycles of destruction and rebirth remained!
Ravaging, flowing, spreading across the land, drowning everything in this ocean of pain and despair.
In this blood-red sea, countless shattered souls opened their eyes.
"Ah, finally..."
"Thank you."
"Seer... Seer..."
"Where, where exactly...?"
In that moment, through intense dizziness and confusion, Ji Jue once more heard those hoarse voices overlapping, chaotic and frantic, as if they had lost all reason and logic, yet were so persistent.
Filled with despair, yet also... such joy, such pleasure, as if after an eternity of waiting and suffering, they had finally welcomed a result.
【Wake up, wake up, kid!!!】
The blue light of the Ghost Worker Sphere poured down on him frantically, helping to maintain his reason and consciousness, shouting: 【You are too deeply bound to Mercury's workshop; disconnect yourself, disconnect right away, do you hear me?! Otherwise, you will be swept in and melted away too!】
In that moment, Ji Jue still existed in the resonance of the workshop, feeling as if he were a part of it, sensing the endless cries that arose from the crimson sea.
Yet before his reason and soul were entirely severed, everything halted abruptly, the workshop's operations isolating him from all erosion and impact.
Instead, it enveloped him within.
Only blood slowly dripped from Ji Jue's face as he gasped for breath, raising his head to see the gathering shimmer of iron light spreading from the void, intertwining, forming a rough outline of a body.
Then came a solemn figure in white.
Like the rebirth of the former Sage, this form and demeanor left the Ghost Worker Sphere silent.
"Don't worry, you will be fine."
The Seer turned back, her aged face covered in cracks still looked as it always did, "It's just a bit of leftover resentment that doesn’t belong to you; there's no need to be sad."
In that moment, a high-pitched scream echoed from the sea of spiritual essence.
A massive body, writhing like a worm, emerged once more from a submerged city—the monsters that had chased after Ji Jue as he first entered the rift, now bathed in the blood-red waters, wriggling as countless pieces of iron and matter fell from their distended forms, turning to dust.
The distortion began anew, but from those broken bodies emerged an endless chain, stretching up towards the remnants of Mercury in the heavens.
Bound, entwined, endlessly...
Then came the second creature, roaring from the collapsing earth, a monstrous distortion that looked like a giant turtle.
Pain and resentment became chains that rose into the sky.
Thousands of ferocious monster birds devoured each other in the skies above, merging, evolving, like links in chains, they grasped the outstretched hands above.
There were even more—the dying, the distorted, or those who still bore remnants of humanity, bathing in the blood-like sea, embracing the once-feared iron sickness, shedding their forms, turning to chains that wrapped around the Sage.
Binding her within this rebellious cage...
And amidst the collapsing buildings and surging blood, Ji Jue saw a familiar figure once more…
"97?"
He muttered softly.
The middle-aged man with the deformed arm was climbing up fiercely, striving for higher ground, followed by a line of camp members behind him.
When he raised his head, he sensed a gaze from the central area above him, as if he had seen Ji Jue, and he waved his hand vigorously.
It was as if bidding farewell, shouting something loudly, but Ji Jue could not hear clearly, only catching a glimpse of his smile.
Relieved and liberated.
With joy in his heart, 97 spread his arms, allowing the crimson spiritual essence that flowed against him to consume him.
His body swelled violently amidst the blood, distorting, shattering, until finally, he merged into the rising chains...
Countless fibers, akin to an uprising net rising from the earth.
Entwined around the body of the Sage.
But Ji Jue finally realized.
"What about the camp? What about the people in the camp?"
He stumbled forward, grabbing the collar of the Seer, unable to contain his anger any longer, roaring in question: "What on earth are you doing?! Does this grand plan really require their deaths?!"
"Death?"
The Seer glanced back with confusion, her gaze meeting Ji Jue's furious face, and gradually began to understand: "I see now... Thank you, Ji Jue, for still seeing us as beings like you. Thank you for your compassion and sympathy… But the precondition for death is having lived once, right? Do you think we are as we should be alive?"
The Seer asked: "Do you really think we have truly lived?"
Since the moment of creation, everything had already been destined.
Day after day, we moved in preset tracks, in lives predetermined until worn down, broken, and then reshaped into a new form, thrown back into the endless cycle that is unseen.
As tools, everything is only natural.
But why grant us souls?
Why open our eyes to what constitutes ‘I’?
"We were shaped into the likeness of humans, yet we never aspired to become human… Life and death hold no distinction for us. But for tools, living like humans is simply unbearable."
"Living is akin to hell."
The Seer turned her gaze to the broken rift, "We were born part of hell, yet even hell should freely choose existence or destruction… Not just me, this is a collective decision made by all tools. —If our world should never have existed from the start, then returning to nothingness is the correct resolution."
"…"
In silence, Ji Jue wearily released his grip, but gazing into those determined and calm eyes, he could not help but ask: "Seer, who exactly are you?"
The Seer fell silent.
Then, unable to help herself, she gave a self-deprecating laugh.
"A deceiver who was entrusted with hope by all companions yet fails to fulfill that hope; a traitor who was given a mission by her master but defied it. Just a tool gone out of control, nothing more."
So answered the Seer.
Another lie.
Ji Jue shook his head.
Yet upon careful reflection, since they had met, he truly did not know whether the Seer had spoken more truths or lies.
Indeed, he should not have believed this enigmatic oracle from the start.
The answer had been in front of him all along.
The only missing figure in the countless broken moments, the key character absent from the cycles in the small town, the one being who deviated from the original track and premise, then chose their own life and future.
Was she the puppet named 'Mercury'?
Or was she the core of the workshop entrusted with great responsibility after inheriting Mercury's memories and obsessions?
Perhaps she was also the amalgamation of all shattered souls and obsessions within the rift…
She was all of it.
This was the divine forging executed by Mercury in her last unconscious moments...
After gathering all the causes, born anew from this endless grand alchemy as another result.
The heavenly work known as the Seer.
And now, the authority and power that decided everything had manifested from the Seer's hands.
That which could control the workshop, master the rift, and sever pain and cycles.
Flowing mercury slowly rose from the ground, transforming into a long and concise staff.
With great care, it was presented before Ji Jue.
"Do you remember our previous agreement, Mr. Ji Jue?"
The Seer asked gently: "Now, within the foundational command judgments of the workshop, you, who have inherited fluid alchemy and non-aggression, possess the same authority as Mercury, sufficient to make the decisions that a tool like me could never enact. Will you still grant us, the non-human beings, mercy?"
For four hundred years, the agony and waiting, the endless repetition and cycles, began the moment this being known as the 'Seer' was born, filled with hope and expectation.
Again and again, outsiders came—dying, or departing.
They had never cast a glance at these puppet creations, nor shown any concern for the impoverished and shattered rift...
Until she felt the gates of the present world open once more.
A soul, never before seen, emitted a faint glow from the darkness, yet shone so brightly.
The only being capable of genuine compassion, in the face of suffering and temptation, would still deliver mercy, a true outsider.
Not just for the furnace that generously gave all when awakened; any creation, once realizing the true nature of the mechanical descent, would sincerely offer gratitude and reward.
If not truly regarding the ignorant machines and creations as companions, how could they be moved by the cries of mere puppet creations?
In that moment, she had seen it all through her tears.
The long-desired light of conclusion.
"What we desire is not so-called freedom, nor a painful existence like humans; it is simply to return to silence, to exist as tools, and to meet our rightful end."
The Seer bowed her head, humbly pleading, offering all to the master capable of overseeing the workshop: "Please, grant them liberation."
"Please, grant her liberation…"
(End of Chapter)