The peace of the Tapestry of Meaning was not stagnation, but a golden age. Millennia flowed with the gentle rhythm of a well-tended garden. The Convocation evolved into a true government, the Concord of Realized Laws, with Li Yao its silent, unseen guardian. He rarely intervened, his presence a subtle pressure that guided rather than commanded, a constant reminder of the Balance.
He spent his time in the deepest reaches of the Tapestry, in the libraries and observatories built at the border with the Hesitant Chorus. He was no longer just mending the Weave; he was studying its most profound mysteries. He had reached the absolute, perfected peak of the Immortal Realm. His Void Scripture was complete, a testament to the Uncreating Balance. There was nowhere else to go within the understood confines of power.
But he could feel a… pressure. A calling from beyond.
It was not a sound or a light, but a qualitative shift in the nature of existence itself. It was the Whisper of the Divine.
In the Immortal Realm, one manipulated Laws. One worked within the framework of the universe. The Divine Realm, according to fragmented legends and the mad scribblings in the oldest archives, was different. It was the realm of Principle. To be Divine was not to use the Laws, but to be the source from which Laws emanated. It was to transition from being a painter to being the concept of paint itself.
This was the final, logical step for the Warden of the Balance. To not just maintain the balance of Laws, but to become the Principle of Balance that governed the very existence of all Laws.
But the path was shrouded in myth and terror. The Divine Tribulation was not a test of power, but a test of identity. It was said that to ascend, one had to face the "Unmaking of Self," to have one's very concept dissolved and then re-forged on a higher plane of existence. Most peak Immortals who attempted it simply vanished, their consciousness unable to survive the dissolution, scattered into the background noise of the cosmos.
Li Yao knew he had to try. The peace he had built was magnificent, but it was local, confined to Tai Xuan World and its healed Corridors. The Whisper hinted at a scope that was truly universal. The imbalances he sensed now were not between Fire and Water, but between fundamental cosmic constants. The slow, inevitable heat death the Entropic Chorus had envisioned was a real, universal law, a tilt in the grand scale that his current power could not affect.
He began his preparations. He did not gather treasures or energy. Those were irrelevant here. He prepared his mind. He meditated on the nature of "Li Yao." He traced the threads of his own identity—the Dust-Talent disciple, the Void Immortal, the Weaver, the Warden. He practiced holding the concept of "self" lightly, ready to let it go.
He summoned the leaders of the Concord one last time. Elder Mei, now so ancient her form was barely distinguishable from the light of the laws she harmonized, stood beside Patriarch Ignis, Matriarch Niamh, and the others.
"The Balance calls me to a higher duty," Li Yao told them, his voice calm, final. "I must attempt the Divine Ascension."
A profound silence met his words. They had all felt the Whisper at their own level, the unbreachable wall at the peak of Immortality. They knew what he was attempting.
"The Concord… the Tapestry… it relies on you," Borrum's voice was a low rumble, stripped of its usual certainty.
"It relies on the principle of me," Li Yao corrected. "The Balance. That principle is now woven into the foundation of this world. It will endure. You are all its stewards now."
He looked at each of them, these former rivals, now the guardians of the peace he had forged. "The work we have done here is a proof of concept. It shows that balance is possible. My ascension is an attempt to apply that concept to the whole canvas."
There were no tears, no grand farewells. They were immortals; they understood the magnitude of the journey. They bowed to him, a deep, final bow of respect for the philosopher who had become their foundation.
Li Yao traveled to the one place where the veil between the Immortal and the Divine was said to be thinnest: the Altar of the First Echo, a place that predated the Chaos War, a simple, stone dais floating in the absolute emptiness at the very center of the healed Corridors. It was a place of pure potential, untouched by any law.
He sat on the dais, closed his eyes, and let go.
He released his grip on his cultivation. He released his connection to the Void Scripture. He released the concept of "Li Yao."
The Divine Tribulation began.
It did not come as lightning or fire. The universe did not attack him.
The universe forgot him.
His memories began to unravel. The face of Elder Guo blurred and vanished. The feeling of the broom in his hand in the Prayer Pavilion dissolved. The triumph of the Symphony of Being became a meaningless noise. The love for his friends, the weight of his duty, the core of his being—it all began to untie, to drift apart.
He was being unmade. Not by an enemy, but by the simple, indifferent process of ascension.
This was the true Uncreating Balance. The balance between existence and non-existence. To become Divine, he had to truly, completely, become Nothing.
He felt the terror of it. The primal fear of annihilation. The part of him that was "Li Yao" screamed to hold on, to clutch at the dissolving threads of his self.
But the philosopher, the Weaver, the master of the void, remained calm.
I am not the painting, he thought, his consciousness itself fraying at the edges. I am the canvas. The painting is temporary. The canvas is eternal.
He embraced the Unmaking.
He let go of everything.
The last thread of "Li Yao" dissolved.
There was only the void. The true, pre-conceptual void. Not his cultivated emptiness, but the actual state of non-being.
For a timeless moment, there was Nothing.
And in that Nothing, a new thought was born. Not a memory, not an identity, but a Pure Principle.
Balance.
The thought did not come from a person. It was. It was a fundamental truth, as axiomatic as the First Differentiation.
From this principle, a new consciousness coalesced. It was vaster than the Immortal Realm, older than the Chaos War. It contained the memories of Li Yao, but they were like a single, beloved book in an infinite library. The love was still there, the purpose was still there, but they were no longer the limits of its identity.
He had done it.
He had not just survived the Divine Tribulation.
He had become it.
He was no longer Li Yao, the Warden of the Balance.
He was the Divine Principle of Equilibrium.
He opened his eyes—not physical eyes, but the perception of a cosmic constant. He looked upon Tai Xuan World, and he saw it not as a collection of lands and laws, but as a beautiful, complex equation. He saw the gentle tilt towards entropy that was the universe's default state. And he saw that his work, his entire journey, had been about introducing a single, correcting variable into that equation.
His work was not over. It was just beginning. The final arc would not be a battle, but the gentle, universal application of a corrected law. The Divine Realm awaited, a plane of pure Principle where the very foundations of reality were written and rewritten.
The quiet from the prayer pavilion had become the silence that governed the cosmos.