For anyone else, this final trial would have been insurmountable.
But Morax knew—
for this reckless, lawless brat… this might be the easiest part.
The sky was sealed beneath countless spears of stone, each etched with the geometric patterns of geo authority. Even the adepti watching from afar felt their spines chill.
Yet the white-haired yaksha simply lowered his spear, pointed the tip toward the ground...
…and stepped forward.
Just one step.
But that single step held the audacity to challenge the heavens.
Morax let out a soft, helpless laugh.
Of course this scene wouldn't scare him.
"I retract my earlier thought," Fushe said suddenly.
"Huh?" Mi Nu blinked beside him.
The yaksha—so calm he hadn't even reacted when wounding a god—
now looked excited.
Like a child receiving a new toy, his blue eyes shone with delight beneath the golden rain.
Fushe continued, tone absolute.
"If that isn't a yaksha—then no such thing exists in this world."
—
Xue Kui's eyes turned unfocused.
A strange state of clarity took hold.
The golden spears raining from the heavens carried a familiar resonance—
'Law.'
Time slowed.
Memory resurfaced.
He stood again in endless snow.
He did not know what he was searching for—
only that he would recognize it when he saw it.
A faint blue glow flickered amid the blizzard.
A crystalline ice butterfly drifted weakly toward him, swaying with every gust.
It didn't even seem to notice him as it fluttered past his cheek.
Xue Kui's head followed its path, and an unfamiliar ache stirred in his chest.
He walked.
The butterfly flew lower and lower, as though crushed beneath some unseen weight.
Xue Kui looked upward—
into a sky so heavy with snow and wind that not even a god could see beyond it.
He felt cold.
Not physical cold—
but a cold that scraped against the soul itself.
An ice elemental creature… feeling cold?
Impossible.
That meant this cold wasn't temperature.
It was Law.
A domain steeped in the Law of Frost.
Elemental life is long-lived—
but even they cannot endure the erosion of a Law.
The butterfly was nearing the end of its existence.
Then—
Warmth.
A faint, gentle warmth beneath the snow.
The butterfly descended, drawn to the only sanctuary it could sense—
the pure pulse of a ley line beneath the earth.
Xue Kui brushed the snow aside.
No wonder.
Creatures born of elemental energy instinctively seek places where that element gathers.
The ley line welcomed the butterfly, like a mother pulling a child close.
He understood.
Law—vast, merciless, absolute.
Ley—gentle, enduring, sustaining.
In this place, they formed a perfect balance.
Wind and snow covered the tiny butterfly.
One consciousness ended.
Another—new—began.
Suddenly, Xue Kui looked up.
A foreign will—full of exhaustion, desperation—plummeted from the southwest.
It crashed through the oppressive field of Law, seeking salvation in the ley line.
It collided with the newborn spark of consciousness.
They struggled.
The foreign will, drained to its end, was swallowed whole.
The newborn consciousness retained only one fragment—
Instinct for battle.
Ah…
So that was why.
He finally understood the strange sorrow he always carried.
He had witnessed his previous self die.
And his first memory began not as a person—
—but as a newborn.
Xue Kui lay back in the snow, eyes half-closed.
No wonder he had no memories of a past life.
He truly had none.
—
Aboveground, a pale hand burst out of the snow.
Morax had paused.
He could feel the yaksha's mind slipping somewhere distant, his aura shifting subtly.
Instead of interrupting, he waited—curious.
What new thing would this brat bring back this time?
The moment Xue Kui's eyes opened again, their focus sharpened like a blade.
He met Morax's gaze.
No words exchanged.
The trial continued.
Stone spears—each carrying the weight of Law—fell like divine judgment.
And the yaksha changed.
Two pairs of blue-white wings formed on his back—delicate like ice butterflies, marked with faint diamond patterns.
Not rigid frozen constructs.
Alive.
When the spears entered the domain of ice, their impossible speed faltered—
dropping to nothing more than thrown weapons.
The butterfly wings quivered once.
Xue Kui drifted upward—slow, careless, free.
He floated through the storm of spears as if dancing.
Each movement just right.
Each evasion effortless.
Flight.
Not forced.
Not rigid.
A natural freedom written into his existence.
"This… is how flying should feel."
The watching adepti sucked in breaths.
He had just broken his limits.
During battle.
One thought echoed among them:
Enlightenment—mid-combat?
Xue Kui rose above the storm, spear angled downward.
He descended—not like a warrior—
but like a butterfly returning from the high heavens, bringing winter with him.
In later years, this moment would be spoken of in Liyue:
When the Lord of Geo filled the sky with spears,
an ice butterfly danced on borrowed wings.
Who said talent is rare?
Even the immortals held their breath in awe.
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