Poisoned Fate (Part 2)

Harun's unconsciousness didn't stop whatever wrecked his body from carrying on. Laying him on her lap, Jiyan could only watch, helpless as purple veins bulged and pulsed across his body. His heart rate sped up, his breathing turned erratic, and his body temperature rose to the point Jiyan had to rely on her Devil Essence to avoid burns and scars.

Worse, dark clouds formed within the Truth Shaping Chamber, retracting and expanding as if debating whether they should unleash a Cosmic Tribulation on Harun or not. With her eyes darting between the clouds and Harun, Jiyan asked herself, "What should I do?" but found no answer. For a second, Jiyan considered pouring her Devil Essence into him, but feared it'd only worsen the situation.

But as her worries peaked, a voice rang in her mind, "If you care for him, don't try anything, don't interfere. This is a normal process." Jiyan's eyes went left, right, front, back, up and down, but she couldn't find the voice's owner.

"Who...are you?" She asked. A pause followed, but the answer she sought never came.

"That is irrelevant. What matters is his condition. From now on, you must remember two things:

First, no one is allowed to interfere with this situation. Second, the problem's root and solution both lie in his right eye," the voice said, and as Jiyan's eyes locked on Harun's twitching face, it went on.

"In a past incarnation, this boy once suffered Complete Annihilation, and should have been erased from existence. To say nothing of reincarnation, even his name shouldn't remain. But by combining the powers of the right eye with his once immeasurable cultivation base, he evaded Complete Annihilation, and entered the reincarnation cycle. Unfortunately, what saved him also harms him.

Unlike the harmless left eye, the right one is a noxious, time-ticking bomb that grows more virulent with each use. At the same time, the Six Incarnation Bridge hurries the bomb's growth, ensuring that in the Reincarnation Realm, he will have to defeat it or vanish...this time for good." Harun's right eye, the Eye of Sovereign Fate as some called it, represented a direct connection to his Broken Fate, a save file and proof that he shouldn't exist in this world.

"Had he never unlocked the right eye, we wouldn't be having this conversation. But now that he activated it, you must either find a Dao-Emperor-tier expert to seal it, or reduce its use till the Reincarnation Realm." The voice added, but instead of a thankful stance, Jiyan knitted her brows.

"Why now? Since you knew it could come to this, why didn't you warn him before?" Jiyan probed. The voice's appearance was far too convenient, as if it'd been watching Harun's every step, able to intervene at all times. That being the case, why not act before? If not for the pulsing purple veins and Harun's right eye remaining open despite his unconsciousness, Jiyan would doubt the words.

"Don't misunderstand. His life and death have nothing to do with me. He will live if he's skilled enough and perish if he isn't. I owe him nothing," the voice countered in a nonchalant tone. Jiyan found that voice's owner quite contradictory. If he truly didn't care for Harun's life, couldn't he just keep his mouth shut? Why bother to give her all this intel?

"Cultivating Sovereign Essence is okayish, as it's produced spontaneously and you can't do anything about that. But for the rest, tread carefully. I have said all I had to. Farewell." The voice said and cut contact with Jiyan. There was one thing it omitted. Events strikingly similar to critical parts of Harun's Broken Fate carried high risks. However, those words served no purpose besides creating chaos; so it didn't bother.

Aware that she couldn't solve anything unless she reached the Dao-Emperor-tier, Jiyan wrapped Harun tightly against her chest—keeping his ears pressed against the drum of her restless heart, a heart that seemed to say: "Please wake up."

In the past, Jiyan didn't care much for cultivation, thinking of it as a tool to achieve freedom. But realizing that with her father's cultivation base, she could have immediately solved Harun's condition, Jiyan found her previous thoughts naïve. Freedom, safety, joy. In this world, the preservation of so many things relied on a powerful cultivation. Without cultivation, all could collapse in one breath. How could she neglect it? And as she stared into Harun's reddened, purple eye, Jiyan resolved to bring her cultivation to the peak as soon as possible.

Two hours passed in a torturously slow motion before Harun's sclera returned to the initial white. The throbbing purple veins vanished, his fingers twitched, and Harun's left eye opened. Feeling the soft mounds pressing half his face, Harun rubbed his cheeks against the cushy feel, alerting Jiyan that he'd regained consciousness.

Only now did Jiyan remember that all along, she remained in her naked form, giving Harun freebies upon freebies. A shrill cry followed and, shoving Harun aside, Jiyan grabbed her dress and vanished in the woods.

"Wait, wait, this is a critical therapeutic process. I need the medicinal properties to make a full recovery!" Harun stretched his hands toward the pine forest and said in a grave, serious tone. Both Jiyan and the system were speechless. So speechless in fact that Jiyan almost bought it, "Really? Wait, what? Did my brain get stomped by sprinting horses? How could I buy that scoundrel's words?" Jiyan smacked her face.

"For someone who almost died, you look awfully energetic," the system and Jiyan said in tandem and, as if hit by a wave of confusion, baby Harun pursed his lips. Crossing his arms and legs, Baby Harun took a ponderous stance, as if trying to recall the previous events.

"Wait, that's true. Oh shit, I almost died!" Baby Harun slammed his right fist into his left palm, and exclaimed as if he'd just found the solution to an ancient mathematical problem.

"Oh well, happens I guess," he added with a firm nod, prompting the same shocked response from both Jiyan and the system.

"That's not a normal reaction!"

…

Jiyan then went on to explain what she learned from "The Voice," and following a moment of reflection, Harun tilted his head.

"I see. That's relatively problematic. Never mind, I initially came to tell you that I have a sect to mess with, and will go awol in about two days. I will set up a Noxious Road with all you need for the First Step so that you can cultivate in my absence. This place will be the starting point," Harun shrugged off his life and death matter, and said with a straight face.

From the moment he started having those blurry visions, Harun connected the dots with the "Dreamland" he often wandered to. The following events only strengthened his conjectures and, knowing that one of his past incarnations carried tremendous baggage, Harun wasn't that surprised by Jiyan's words.

But again, who cares? This life posed enough problems already. He had neither the time nor the leisure to probe lost events and wasn't the least bit curious in the so-called Broken Fate Standard.

Little did he know that somewhere in the omniverse, this reaction made a certain person knit his brows—subsequently, another mountain-sized asteroid crashed on the Heavenly Dream Land.