Time passed.
Not years. Not centuries. Aeons.
Stars were born, lived their violent lives, and died into black holes. Civilizations rose from the
mud, built spaceships, conquered galaxies, and then forgot how to read, crumbling back into
dust.
The Frozen Heaven Empire became a legend. Then a myth. Then a forgotten whisper in the
wind.
But the Throne remained.
Deep in the entropy of the dying universe, where the stars had burned out and the cold vacuum
reigned supreme, Su Mei sat.
She was a statue of absolute beauty. Dust from dead galaxies coated her shoulders. Her white
robes had fossilized into a substance harder than diamond.
She hadn't moved in a billion years.
The universe was ending. The Big Freeze was setting in—the final state of entropy where all
energy dissipates.
It was the perfect environment for the Ice Empress.
She opened her eyes.
They were the only things in the universe that still held light.
"It is time," she whispered. Her voice cracked the silence that had lasted for epochs.
She stood up. The dust of eons fell from her robes.
She looked at the dying universe. It was dark. Cold. Empty.
"I have won," she said. "I have outlasted everything. The Dragon King. The Sects. The Stars.
Even the Dao."
She was the final variable in the equation. The only thing left.
She reached into her pocket—or the pocket of space she maintained.
She pulled out two items.
One was a small, charred piece of wood. The remains of the Golden Phoenix sign. The other
was a jagged, crude wooden duck.
She held them in her hands. They were eroding, even under her protection. Time was an acid
that ate everything eventually.
"We are at the end, Li Wei," she spoke to the wooden duck. "There is no one left to judge us. No
one to call you a stain. No one to call me a monster."
She sat down on the floor of space, crossing her legs.
She placed the duck in front of her.
"I have a choice," she said. "I have gathered enough energy to ignite a new Big Bang. I can
restart the cycle. I can be the Creator God of the next universe."
She looked at the potential energy swirling in her palms.
"I could create a world where cultivation doesn't exist," she mused. "A world of just
shopkeepers. I could find your soul in the fresh mix of chaos and knit you back together."
She smiled. It was a sad, ancient smile.
"But that would be a lie. You gave your life for this universe. If I reset it, I erase your sacrifice." "I will just stay here. With you."
She activated the final technique of the Heartless Sword Sutra. But she reversed it. Instead of
severing emotions to gain power, she burned her power to recover her emotions.
It was suicide. A god cannot exist without a Dao.
But she didn't care.
She burned her immortality. She burned her omnipotence. She burned the billions of years of
cultivation.
And as the power faded, the ice around her heart melted.
The pain rushed in.
The grief of a billion years, held back by a dam of ice, crashed over her.
Su Mei gasped. Tears—hot, human tears—flooded her eyes. She began to sob. She curled
around the wooden duck, screaming into the void.
"I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'm sorry!"
She cried for the husband she murdered. She cried for the life she threw away. She cried for the
eggs she dropped in the rain a lifetime ago.
As she cried, her jade skin softened. Her diamond bones turned brittle. She aged.
In the span of minutes, the Eternal Empress became an old woman. Her hair turned white. Her
skin wrinkled.
She was mortal again.
She lay down in the dark, holding the wooden duck to her chest. She was cold. But it was a
good cold. It was a natural cold.
"Li Wei," she whispered, her voice frail. "I'm coming home."
She closed her eyes.
The universe went dark.
And in the final, absolute silence, two ghosts walked hand in hand through the rain of a city that
no longer existed, arguing about the price of mirrors, happy, ordinary, and dead.
[System Offline.]
[End of File.]