Deviant: No Longer Human-Chapter 805: Mantis stalks the cicada, the sparrow behind it… and a hunter behind them all? (1)
"Was that all?"
After Yin Yue finished her fragmented explanation, Wang Xiao exhaled slowly.
Not annoyed, just faintly disappointed.
"So I pulled my own eyes out, started acting deranged... hung myself for a hundred years... and a bunch of soul-eaters came swarming like flies? Using my body as some kind of aether purifier until it broke down past its limits?"
He wasn’t surprised by the last part.
That he expected.
But the first part, him mutilating himself?
Even he couldn’t piece that together yet.
Yin Yue’s eyes narrowed, crimson depths studying him with unsettling interest, as if she were trying to see how he managed to get those eyes back.
Wang Xiao immediately shut his own.
"Don’t stare for too long."
"Why?" Yin Yue asked instantly.
She had caught a glimpse earlier, those swirling galaxies under the red haze.
They fascinated her, pulled at her curiosity.
Just when she was about to look deeper, he shut them.
Wang Xiao glared at her lightly.
"You want to faint on the road?"
Ordinary beings would lose their mind and kill themselves. Someone of her level would merely lose consciousness... but even that wasn’t "harmless."
Those eyes weren’t eyes.
He had condensed two universes into orbs and set them in place.
Anyone who stared long enough would see real galaxies spinning beyond the surface.
Wang Xiao had consumed and collapsed countless universes before.
It strengthened his divinity.
Just like the soul-bombs he created by triggering chain reactions in the Netherworld.
He had been refining himself constantly, gathering artifacts, techniques, fragments of reality.
But Yin Yue simply blinked, confused.
"It still makes no sense. Why would someone go insane just by looking at you?"
Wang Xiao shook his head slowly, as though explaining to a child.
"Why do you think I keep a human shape? At this point, I don’t even have a form. So why maintain one?"
"??"
Yin Yue tilted her head.
Wang Xiao smiled faintly.
"Reality, ’the one you know’, exists with ’time’. Me and you... we don’t. Outside time we’re formless. Pure existence, but that also means we can’t interact with anything. To touch this world, we need a shape."
He tapped his chest lightly.
"To enter a world with time, we stretch. We don’t move like a point in a river, we become the entire current. Our existence drags across timelines because the universe can’t assimilate us, so we overlap."
His tone stayed casual, but the words carried a quiet fragment of his vast knowledge.
"Our presence carries too much energy. A sentence from us can bend the universe’s will. What do you think happens if someone stares at even a spark of our real essence?"
For humans, even one universe-worth of knowledge could shatter sanity.
If Yin Yue accidentally glimpsed his soul, it would burn her down from the inside.
But Yin Yue wasn’t thinking about the danger, she was thinking about something else entirely.
She suddenly stopped walking, toes curling against the pavement as she turned to him with a faint blink.
"Wang Xiao... can I ask something?"
Her voice softened. "...Could it be that you looked at something like that? When you were in that trance?"
"!!" Wang Xiao paused.
His eyes narrowed.
That... made sense.
Far too much sense.
He hadn’t thought of it.
Not even once.
The two of them turned to each other at the same time.
Silent.
Solemn.
A rare moment of complete synchronicity.
"It’s... possible," Wang Xiao murmured.
The words didn’t sound confident, they sounded like a man trying to swallow a truth he didn’t yet understand.
Yin Yue’s lashes flickered. "Oh?"
Her tone was too curious, like she wanted him to confirm something terrifying.
"Possible... how?" she pressed.
Wang Xiao rubbed his forehead."I need clues. Just, tell me everything. What exactly do you remember seeing other than that?"
Yin Yue looked straight at him, crimson pupils tightening.
And for once...
Wang Xiao knew he already had the answers.
He was scared of that memory?
"What did I see...?" he whispered to himself.
He started searching.
Dug deep into his memories, reaching for that single moment his eyes witnessed something that should never be seen.
But the moment he touched that memory...
his breath turned stiff.
His fingers trembled.
Yin Yue stepped closer. "...Wang Xiao?"
He tried breathing... Failed.
He clutched his throat.
"Wang Xiao!" Yin Yue’s voice echoed louder, panicked, reaching for him.
He raised a shaking hand, stopping her.
"This... this was the moment... I hung myself..."
His voice barely escaped.
Yin Yue froze.
"...you’re reliving it?"
He nodded weakly, forcing out air.
"It’s... suffocating... but peaceful... damn it..."
The world blurred around him.
The pavement, the lamps, the night, all thinning.
"Wang Xiao, stop!"
"Quiet," he rasped. "I need to see."
His eyes rolled back slightly.
Inside him, something cracked, and a thin, icy-blue flame flickered to life.
Yin Yue stumbled back instantly.
’What is that omnious flame...?!’ She trembled, her body instinctively recoiling.
Yang Yuhuan’s flame... the one she cultivated for millions of years... the flame expanded, and Yin Yue stepped back again, her breath shaking.
"Wang Xiao... your aura is... dangerous."
"It has to be," he said. Because he was going to force himself past that missing memory.
The flame wrapped around him like a ghost of ice and fire.
Yin Yue stared at him, completely at a loss, her fingers trembling at her sides. She couldn’t watch him die again, "Wang Xiao... your body... it’s peeling..." She hated this, hated feeling helpless again
But his eyes snapped open!
And the galaxies inside them were gone.
Only empty, silent darkness stared out.
Yin Yue whispered, horrified, "...your eyes... are gone!"
He didn’t hear her.
Because at that moment...
He saw.
Wang Xiao’s voice trembled for the first time since the existence began.
"...I’m... seeing it."
His pupils dilated.
A vast realm...
Misty white tendrils hanging like the skeleton of heaven. Cocoons the size of worlds cradled inside them.
One cracked.
A golden child crawled out, glowing softly.
Something else moved!
A small mist.
Drifting slowly from cocoon to cocoon—
as if inspecting them, judging them.
Yin Yue felt a chill run up her spine despite not seeing it.
The mist paused.
Wang Xiao breathed out shakily.
"It’s... looking at me..."
Yin Yue muttered, an uneasy chill tracing her palm. "What?"
He whispered:
"It can see me... inside a memory..."
Yin Yue’s expression warped in fear.
"That’s impossible... Wang Xiao, stop! GET OUT OF THERE!"
He didn’t.
He was frozen, the mist shifted, turned around.
And then—
"SHRIEEEEEEEEEEEK!"
The scream tore through everything,
past space, past time, past existence,
and Wang Xiao flinched violently, staggering backwards like he had been hit.
Yin Yue grabbed him before he fell.
He slammed his eyes shut, the flame vanished.
Silence...
His whole body trembled like a man who had seen death itself stare back, sweat slid down his temples in thin, shaking lines.
"Hiss!~"
Yin Yue grabbed his shoulders, but recoiled instantly. The remnant of those blue flames had scorched the outer layer of her palm, leaving them charred and smoking before his aura finally faded.
She ignored the pain, her eyes locked onto him, wide, fearful, a first in her existence.
"...Wang Xiao... what did you see...?"
He didn’t answer.
He simply pushed himself upright.
When his gaze flicked at her hands, he spoke flatly:
"They won’t heal, you’ll have to cut them off."
Yin Yue’s voice tightened. "Don’t change the question."
But Wang Xiao simply shook his head.
"You don’t need to know."
"?!"
A ripple of cold dread ran through her, so sharp she physically flinched.
"Wait-!"
She reached for him again, but he was already dissolving. His form blurred, then vaporized into a drifting black mist that moved faster than sound.
Yin Yue panicked.
He never kept things from her.
He had never kept anything from her.
Not even when she had been a mere hell-spirit, drifting without shape or feeling.
But today, today he shut her out.
And she didn’t understand why her chest hurt because of it.
Fear?
Attraction?
This new strange ache?
Because her soul had grown more complex, she was beginning to feel things she never could have felt in the past.
"Xiao!-"
But he was gone.
She chased, heart pounding for the first time in her life.
Wang Xiao wasn’t running away, he was piecing the truth together, bit by bit, and the more he connected, the more his existence trembled.
He finally understood.
Why he was alive.
Why he wasn’t a statue like the others.
Why he survived something that was meant to erase him.
He should be dead.
No entity, no god, no universe survives a cleansing system designed to unmake creation.
Unless—
There was a glitch.
Or...
Someone put a glitch there on purpose.
