“So that means we’ve been kicked out,” Zhang Shan asked with a smile.
“No… not ‘kicked out,'” Chu Tianqiu replied. “I don’t want to expel anyone. It’s just that ‘Paradise Port’ no longer exists. There’s no need for you to risk your lives for those three meaningless words. So run while you still can.”
“So you’re no longer our leader?” Little Glasses chimed in.
“And I don’t have to respectfully call you ‘brother’ anymore, right?” Jin Yuanxun added.
“You all…”
“We can do whatever we want now, huh?” Li Xiangling asked with a grin.
Hearing their questions, Chu Tianqiu felt his nose sting, an indescribably complex emotion swirling in his chest.
“So from now on, you can’t order us around,” Zhang Shan said. “If I want to die here, that’s my choice, right?”
“Yeah,” Jin Yuanxun nodded. “Suddenly feel like fighting today. This place is perfect. So what if I die?”
“Tianqiu…” Wen Qiaoyun said softly beside him. “Did you really think these people were only risking their lives for the words ‘Paradise Port’?”
“I…”
The other members of Paradise Port remained unfazed, as if Chu Tianqiu hadn’t spoken at all.
Many of them had been there since the very beginning. Though their memories of Chu Tianqiu might have gaps, their feelings for him had never wavered.
Only when he saw them choosing to die here despite Paradise Port’s dissolution did Chu Tianqiu finally understand the emotion weighing on his heart.
It was a deep, lingering loneliness—one that had persisted for so long and only now began to fade.
Only with so many standing behind him did he realize just how isolated he had been.
It was the loneliness of walking against the crowd, of staring at the ground during gatherings, of wanting to speak but fearing no one would understand.
He felt the urge to cry, though he knew he wasn’t sad—there was no reason for tears.
And yet, when he touched his cheek, they were already falling.
Perhaps tears weren’t just for sorrow. Sometimes, they came from laughter, too.
Once, he had rushed into Paradise Port with a fragile dream.
He had wanted to save all the lost travelers of the Endless Land, only to be saved by Paradise Port in the end.
Yes—its very existence had always pointed toward heaven.
“I get it now…” Chu Tianqiu murmured. “I finally understand… What matters isn’t the ‘will of heaven,’ but *my* will. After all… the word ‘heaven’ was something I added myself.”
Slowly, he raised his right hand, four bloodied eyeballs pinched between his fingers.
“Tianqiu… you…” Wen Qiaoyun sensed danger and reached out to stop him. “You’re already ‘over-resonating’…”
“Just a hundred people,” Chu Tianqiu laughed through tears. “I take back my words. ‘One against a hundred’ *is* possible—it just depends on the price.”
He gently pushed Wen Qiaoyun aside and tossed all four eyeballs into his mouth, crushing them between his teeth.
The next moment, his hair stood slightly on end, his pupils burning crimson as a bizarre magnetic field pulsed around him.
“I’m the one who’s going to glimpse the ‘Dream of the Gods.’ I’m the one who’ll tear open the cracks in Tianlong’s dreams…” His voice was hoarse. “How could I lose here… to something as trivial as ‘heaven’s will’?”
From a distance, Groundhog frowned. The aura around this man was unsettlingly strange.
He resembled Qinglong, but not entirely.
Chu Tianqiu raised a hand toward a withered tree. In an instant, it disintegrated into countless splinters, swept up by a gale that sent them hurtling like locusts toward a dozen opponents.
The fragments, propelled by violent winds and telekinetic force, embedded themselves into the skin of the Participants, rending flesh in an instant.
Chu Tianqiu stepped forward, arms sweeping through the storm like a conductor in a tempest, the swirling debris orbiting him at blinding speed.
The Participants finally realized that Chu Tianqiu, who had never fought before, might be the strongest Resonator among them. But something was off—he teetered on the edge of madness. If they could endure this onslaught, he might collapse on his own.
Thinking fast, they grabbed corpses from the ground, using them as shields against the razor-sharp storm.
Chu Tianqiu had anticipated this. As the bodies became riddled with splinters, he clenched his fist—triggering a chain of tiny explosions that erupted through the corpses, spraying blood and gore in a gruesome detonation that wounded even more Participants.
Meanwhile, he hunched over, gasping for breath.
The combined resonance sent searing pain through his brow, as if his very soul were being torn apart.
“I’m still afraid…” he muttered. “How can I enter *his* dreams like this…?”
He clutched his forehead, his brain screaming warnings through the agony—whatever he was doing, it was dangerous beyond measure.
“You have to let go…” he whispered, as if speaking to his own mind. “Fear is the only thing that hurts… and there’s nothing to fear…”
The Participants, seeing his moment of weakness, surged forward to surround him. The remaining Paradise Port members rushed to shield him with their bodies.
Amid the chaos, one Participant lunged with a sharpened iron pipe, aiming straight for Chu Tianqiu’s heart.
“Why won’t you let us escape?!” the man snarled, pouring all his hatred into the strike.
Wen Qiaoyun threw herself between them at the last second, tackling the attacker to the ground.
Chu Tianqiu’s eyes widened—all his pain vanishing as if suppressed by an unseen force.
“Damn it!” Zhang Shan shoved his way through the fray, dragging Wen Qiaoyun free.
But it was too late. A deep gash ran across her abdomen, the iron pipe lodged inside like a grotesque drainpipe, spilling blood in torrents.
“Qiaoyun…” Chu Tianqiu’s voice was raw, his eyes burning red.
Without hesitation, he clenched his fist—another eyeball materializing in his grasp.
“You won’t die… Qiaoyun… I still have ‘Eternal Life’… I’ll—”
“No…” Wen Qiaoyun weakly raised a hand. “Tianqiu… don’t… I was supposed to die anyway…”
“What kind of nonsense is that?!” he snapped.
“Don’t lose yourself… don’t swallow that thing…” She smiled faintly.
Clutching the eyeball, Chu Tianqiu knew—what he needed to save wasn’t just her.
It was the abyss of loneliness he had carried for so long.
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