Alice in the Land of Steam

Chapter 1332 Does the fate of living beings arise from this?
The world froze at that moment.

Because Saint Charlotte is listening.

The girl lowered her head, her blue hair obscuring her face. Only her hand, pressed against her chest, revealed the heart beneath her palm, which had begun to beat again because of Ling's words and had become hot again because of his unwillingness to let her down. Her ring finger trembled uncontrollably. Never before had she been so deeply aware that he was right beside her, never having left.

The prayers of mortals are not far away; they are just occasional and require your patient listening.

"Mmm." Saint Charlotte heard it and agreed. At that moment, this response transformed into a silent thunderclap, echoing in every corner of the empty world, making the dust tremble, the wind and rain submit, and causing the pupils of the goddess of darkness, Carapos, to suddenly contract. An inexplicable sense of unfamiliarity surged into her heart, just as she awoke from her slumber to find the world before her turned upside down, long forgotten and lonely.

Without hesitation, He raised the giant scythe, wielding its blade. Blazing black flames traced deadly trajectories in the void, yet not a single blade of light aimed at Saint Charlotte, for the birth of a god was unstoppable, and the return of royalty was irreversible. Just as Saint Charlotte, with her overwhelming advantage, was powerless to prevent Calabos from becoming the oldest, most primordial darkness, Calabos could only watch helplessly as Saint Charlotte once again heeded the call of destiny.

The only thing He could do, and was doing, was to relentlessly unleash the power of the Dark King, severing the invisible threads of fate that stretched ever beyond His own reach. Each time the scythe cleaved an invisible thread, a thin yet glaring pale crack would appear on Caraboss's divine body, formed entirely of primordial darkness, like the pattern of porcelain being struck, from which tiny specks of starlight would emanate. Even though He was now a complete king, forcibly severing His own destiny still came at a great cost. Caraboss knew this was unavoidable; without it, the battle to come would only become more difficult.

How can someone whose fate is entirely controlled fight against their destiny? Carapos could not imagine such a thing, and no one in history has ever been able to do so.

Saint Charlotte remained unmoved by Carapos's reaction; she simply released her hand from her heart and slowly opened her arms toward the void.

In an instant, the entire frozen battlefield seemed to be plucked by an invisible force.

"Om-!"

A deep, resonant sound emerged from the void, like a tremor from the very source of time. The white dress on Saint Sharia, once torn by a scythe and repaired by the power of the world, fluttered without wind. Starting from her fingertips, countless delicate yet resilient, radiant yet dim, ancient and mysterious yet as new as if born for the first time, threads of destiny began to appear one by one.

Not one, not ten, certainly not a hundred, a thousand, or ten thousand. Rather, it should be said that all intangible matter and mindless beings possess their own destiny. Even a speck of dust, a breath, a storm, or even a planet—their fate is predictable and observable. Therefore, for every substance and being in the universe, at this very moment, countless threads of destiny converge upon this battlefield. Billions of these threads, like living spirits, gather into rivers, converge into seas, and finally surge into a mighty tide, flowing unstoppably from the origin of time and the end of space, instantly engulfing that tiny figure.

They are the fibers of creation, the warp of time, the dimensions of existence, the strings and stances that constitute the most fundamental logic of the universe. Guided by a great will, they once meekly wove the destiny of all things. Later, that will vanished, and they lost their direction, drifting aimlessly like reeds on a river, without support. They never possessed their own consciousness, and therefore could not actively seek their way, only to wait a long time—a time so long that even time itself sighed, a memory so long that even space itself forgot—before that familiar soul finally returned. Although she seemed no longer powerful, even her soul now appearing mortal, it didn't matter; everything would return to normal.

What fate excels at most is bringing things back on track after they have gone astray.

And so, they intertwined, coiled, layered, rose, and sank… at a speed exceeding the limits of mortal perception. Each thread shimmered with a unique luster, some as fiery as a newborn star, some as deep and mysterious as an ancient black hole, some flowing with the verdant green of life's birth, some solidified with the ashes of civilization's demise. The final product was a cocoon immeasurable by volume, weightless by soul. A completely different power was being conceived and sublimated within it—no longer the immature, hesitant force of destiny, tinged with the emotions of a mortal girl, but a pure, cold power, yet containing infinite possibilities—the return of the divinity of destiny itself.

For the first time, a barely perceptible pause appeared in the dark figure of Carabosse, which stood as tall as a mountain. His eyes, like the core of a burnt-out star, stared intently at the cocoon of light. In that single glance, he seemed to see endless ages: the ancient times when humanity still ate raw meat and drank blood, and other creatures commanded the winds and rains in the skies and seas, pursuing the glory of continental dominance; the Age of Awakening, when saints brought precious knowledge, and countless city-states stood tall, prosperous and great; the Age of Darkness, when war and natural disasters were frequent, people took up arms, abandoned themselves, and pursued blind slaughter; the Age of Destruction, when maidens who wielded great royal power came from beyond the heavens, but triggered a catastrophe not of their own making, so that the land shattered, the islands sank, and Middle-earth ceased to exist between heaven and earth… Destiny kept tracing back, and those were all things He had personally experienced, gradually forgotten because they were too heavy, but there was a force in the world that would always remember them.

Ultimately, it even traces back to the moment the universe was created.

The great goddess created the world, sowing the seeds of life and matter. No one witnessed this moment, but when the goddess made the decision to create the world, all the necessary laws were naturally born, including time, space, destiny, and life and death—the four most fundamental laws of the universe. They saw the moment, but only destiny was fully recorded, for time is forgotten, space is destroyed, and even life and death are often not revered by humankind; only the ethereal and intangible destiny remains constant throughout.

He saw the beginning of the universe, the birth of all things, and the loving and great goddess standing at the center of the starry sea, personally defining the size, position, rotation period and orbit of each star. Stardust surrounded her like gauze, and the nascent nebula flowed with magnificent colors at her fingertips. The light of ten thousand stars being born at the same time could not compare to the smile on the face of the Goddess of Creation when she witnessed the first tiny life sprouting from the sea.

But suddenly, as if sensing something, He turned back, His gaze seemingly traversing endless time and infinite space, landing on a tiny battlefield billions of years later. He witnessed firsthand a tragedy of sisters killing each other, fratricide, and remained stunned for a long time. Carapos feared seeing disappointment and regret in His eyes, but there was none. In those eyes, more vast than the starry sky yet clearer than starlight, there was only a faint sorrow. Perhaps even Mother felt helpless against so-called fate? Otherwise, after the two young queens of fantasy and reality both strayed from their original paths, how could He have created Saint Sharia, a symbol of destiny, first?

At this moment, Calabos stood before the torrent of fate, feeling the same helplessness and despair as his mother.

……

Inside the cocoon of light, time lost its meaning, and space lost its scale. Saint Charlotte floated at the center of the universe, formed by the threads of her own destiny. Her consciousness broke free from the constraints of her mortal body, roaming in the endless river of fate. She witnessed the birth and death of the universe, the rise and fall of civilizations, and countless beings struggling, choosing, and sinking in the torrent of destiny. The spacetime she witnessed, the things she saw, were far more than what Calabos could only watch helplessly as the torrent of fate swept past from the outside of his cocoon: the heat death of nebulae, the creation of matter, how the fundamental particles that constitute energy and life, following the instructions of the creator god, began to combine and separate; ancient stars collapsing in the long struggle between gravity and repulsion, scattering seeds symbolizing life to stars countless light-years away; in the most primordial ocean, the first life to develop self-awareness began to ponder how to define its relationship with the world; humanity's ancestors looked up at the stars and learned the secrets of civilization from the sparks of starlight; she even saw countless "Saint Charlottes" and "Calapos" on similar stages, enacting completely different confrontations and reconciliations on countless timelines and countless diverging paths of fate...

Her consciousness expanded infinitely, flowing upstream along every thread. Countless worlds and fragments of life washed over her senses like a torrent—cold data, burning emotions, grand epics, and minute joys and sorrows intertwined into a vast, all-encompassing net. These seemingly paradoxical destinies forcefully cleansed the girl's soul, attempting to wash away inappropriate emotions and desires, molding her into a true deity. As Carabosse said, divinity is the qualification to determine destiny, while humanity can only be determined by others. As a deity of destiny, the girl clearly has more to decide; therefore, she should naturally possess supreme and ruthless divinity. Only in this way can the power of destiny be ensured not to be abused—a balance in the laws of the universe.

However, Sainte-Charlie rejected this change.

Because she knew that this was definitely not the ending he wanted to see.

Lin Ge's figure, his smile, and the love and pain he generously bestowed upon her like a devout believer became the only constant lighthouse in this vast and boundless torrent of fate, a warm and solid coordinate. He was a signpost, an anchor point, the only bridge connecting her divinity and humanity, and the reason she was willing to preserve a trace of warmth in this cold universe.

"Ah..." A sigh emanated from the cocoon, filled with immense warmth and a touch of tender longing. This sigh seemed to possess a tangible weight, causing the surrounding, ceaselessly flowing threads of light to ripple gently. It was her attempt, not to be a supreme and ruthless god, but as a mortal, to transform her cold, indifferent fate into a profound love for this world, for all life, and for that young man: "Please accept it..."

Such love and fate.

As the words fell, the cocoon peeled away layer by layer, like the softest snowflakes unfolding in the morning light.

Saint Charlotte slowly opened her eyes. Her long, cyan hair moved without wind, its ends shimmering with starlight, its radiance seemingly inherited from the first star to perish at the dawn of creation, still burning with an inextinguishable flame. Her clear golden eyes were no longer those of a young girl; they had become deep and ethereal, as if reflecting all possibilities of the past and future. Her face remained beautiful, yet shrouded in a warm divine radiance, like something sculpted from the purest crystal, both gentle and solemn. Her body did not become as grand and imposing as that of the dark goddess Calabrese, for destiny was something deeply revered, not something that needed to constantly devour light and heat to assert its presence like primordial darkness. Thus, her small figure simply stood there, becoming the "origin" of the entire universe, even making one feel that the great events concerning the fate of the past and future—the birth of the universe, the extinction of stars, the gestation of life, and even the emergence of civilization—were all stories created starting with her birth.

In other words, before her, there was no destiny in the world, and all things were in chaos, living in a daze, not knowing why they were born or why they died.

Countless threads of fate wove into the shape of a serpent, a mortal serpent that once undulated in the clouds for countless miles, now reduced to an existence as insignificant as its creator, yet seemingly containing a condensation of greater laws and power. Its head and tail intertwined, it turned docilely behind the girl, like a wheel slowly turning over an ancient road. One eye represented the beginning, revealing the vastness of the universe's birth; the other, the end, reflecting the nothingness of its demise. With each turn, its scales rubbed against the void, producing a spinning sound; its body left deep tracks as it rolled. In the legends of some ancient peoples, especially the Moria, the giant serpent with its head and tail intertwined has always been considered a mystical symbol, representing humanity's oldest and most essential pursuit: infinity.

The beginning of all things, the end of all things, infinite light, infinite darkness, infinite life, infinite matter...

"Oh, living beings—"

The young woman, Wang Quan, who refused to be a god, slightly opened her mouth, her voice ethereal and far-reaching, each syllable seemingly stirring ripples in the river of time, carrying endless echoes: "You are in this ring..."

"It is called destiny."

Give me some cats