'Ahh… ahh… that was… dangerous'
Mumbling to themselves, Shen Hui rested their body, or rather their head, in a cushion made of bugs, using leaves as a makeshift mask to cover their face.
'If it wasn't for Liu Zhenyun seeing my face at the right moment, I would have died amidst these mountains' they thought flatly.
While there was indeed disappointment in their heart, it was outweighed by the thrill.
'I had been too careless, this incident is a good way to remind myself that no scripture, no talent, no artifact is absolute'
Their scripture, the Fate Agencement Writings, allowed for them to use their threads for three different purposes: as tools that could be used for mobility or fighting, as a way of to control spiritual creatures of a lower realm than the user, and, most importantly, as a way to control probability by intertwining their threads to these that composed the tapestry of fate.
From the very moment they had discovered Baotian and Zhenyun, the two transmigrators, they had started their schemes to feast on their fate. They had been the one manipulating Liu Jiaoshi's younger brother to insult Baotian and his parents at their graves, which resulted in the transmigrator killing the junior and being expelled from the clan.
After that, they had made sure to cause such disturbances in Baotian's fate at every step of the way. They had led Zhenyun to Blood Torrent Grandmaster's cave to force Baotian to escape, they had revealed Hanchen's hiding spot to Xiao Fengyu and Wu Leihao to lead him to the transmigrator, creating a connection between them. They had manipulated the events in the forest near the Purple Sky Village to lead Baotian and Zhenyun near them, and then accelerated Hanchen's advancement to help Baotian leave once he had been caught. They had influenced the king Xuanhe Wuxin to organize the Xuanhe-Yaoling contest, and intercepted the Divine Storm Sect grand elder to allow Baotian to enjoy fortuitous encounters with Hanliang and Ye Mu in good conditions. Finally, they had directly intervened to engineer the entire Martial Devouring Mountain incident.
'With this… I finally accumulated enough causality'
The Fate Agencement Writings were undoubtedly one of the most powerful scriptures to ever exist: as a dual path scripture with the power corresponding to one, it took barely longer to cultivate than a normal scripture. More so, it was even more versatile than most of the other dual path scriptures which existed, both in this realm and the ones beyond.
As a result, this scripture had a severe drawback: after reaching grand perfection Qi Building, it became impossible to advance unless one had accumulated sufficient 'causality'. To obtain causality, one must be able to influence the actions of others to go against their initial fate. Because of that, heavens themselves would intervene, weaving a new path to lead the targets back to their fate, making their previous path obsolete.
Finally, the obsolete path would degrade into causality, which the Fate Agencement Writings user would use to be able to advance. The main difficulty came from how hard it was to obtain such a level of causality: just to reach the early stage of Core Formation, one would have to at least manipulate the fate of a grand perfection stage Core Formation cultivator, someone an entire realm above them, for at least a hundred years!
With the amount of causality required increasing for each realm, it wasn't just hard, but truly impossible to reach the Nascent Soul realm through conventional means, no matter the talent or luck of one.
'Ah, the golden iron and the hidden gem. Truly, you two were my saviors'
As being who had received their fate not from heavens, but from [Them], interfering with their fate meant interfering with [Their] fate. When he pushed Baotian toward the demonic path, he had not only obtained enough causality to reach the Core Formation and Golden Core realms at once, but even obtained enough of it to advance to the mid stage, late stage, and finally the grand perfection stage.
When he managed to make both Liu Zhenyun and Baotian interact with the Purple Sky Village and the entity inside, and yet still survive such an encounter, the perturbation in their fates had been so great that Shen Hui had not only gained the causality necessary to reach the Nascent Soul realm, or even just the beginning of the Void Ascension realm, but the very end of the Void Ascension realm itself!
And now, thanks to the last incident where Baotian, on his own, triumphed of a man-made tribulation and defeated a grand perfection stage Core Formation elder, despite being fated with misery, they had finally obtained the necessary causality: once they advanced to Void Ascension and reached the mid stage, they would be able to directly ascend beyond this world, reaching the Vortex Walker realm at once!
'I better lay low for some time' they thought. 'With how fast he grew, Liu Zhenyun is no longer someone I can face, and he now knows about my existence. If I meet him again, it will be my doom'
Avoiding royal families would be wise too, considering Shen Hui had meddled in their affairs as well, and didn't doubt that Zhenyun would spread word of their existence to make sure they would be hunted down to the end of the world.
'Ahh, how tiring will it be, to hide until I have reached mid stage Void Ascension' they sighed internally.
Well at least, they hadn't directly antagonized Zhang Baotian… For all his flaws, including his lack of talent, he was second only to Zhenyun in Shen Hui's list of threats. Even though Shen Hui had been ready to help him in most situations they had put him in, to avoid losing their golden goose, they had never actually needed to intervene, except for the wakeup call in the Purple Sky Village.
Baotian had simply found a solution every time, even when Shen Hui themselves couldn't see any hope for him to do so. And their intuition told them that when he came out of his cave in the Martial Devouring Mountains, he would be a completely different person. So the fact they had avoided making another enemy cheered them up a bit.
'Still, this situation could have been avoided if I did not decide to taunt Zhenyun while holding him, the blame is all on me…'
But that had simply been too tempting!
"This filthy Heavenly Talent, the expression of despair on his face when he realized that being fated with greatness was different from being fated to avoid misery, that was… the greatest thing I ever saw"
As they spoke their thoughts out loud, completely indifferent to the grueling pain of their body regenerating, they couldn't help but laugh out loud:
"Haha, haha, hahahaha, HAHAHAHAHAHAHA, HAhAHAHAahahAhAhhhaHAh!
Ah, I can't wait to ascend beyond this world and to higher ones! So many sons of Heaven are waiting to learn what despair is! So many fates to put in shambles!"
They quickly calmed down, finishing with a calm voices:
"I truly wonder… at which height my tower of corpses will bring me"
In the Purple Sky Village, no particular event was unfolding. A man was sowing, another was carving a wooden figure, a woman was bringing water back to their home, and children were playing together.
Watching them from above, Xue Lan kept [her] gaze on a fixed point in the horizon. Precisely where the Martial Devouring Mountains were situated.
"Hmm, it's a shame. His little band's adventures were the most interesting thing I came to see in a while"
Sighing, [she] closed her eyes, trying to remember.
"How long has it been since I reached the peak of cultivation?"
Thinking for a while, [she] ended up shrugging. The answer to this question was simple: it was as long as [she] wanted it to be.
"How boring… the fate of the son of Heaven is unfolding correctly, the other one's fate has gotten more shaky but it's not really important, since he always did his part and helped the Heavenly Talent to awaken. Now, there is no reason left to stay here, in the Hui Middle Realm Fragment"
Yes, it was time. Time for [her] to return to the Upper Realm.
Thus, without a single person noticing anything, [she] disappeared from this world.