Record of the Final Dharma Cycle

He gave a bitter smile, its sound echoing across the Three Realms, filled with endless mockery and pity.

“So... this is what it means to be an immortal?”

(He understood. To become an immortal was to become a ripe “fruit,” waiting to be harvested.)

“How tragic... how tragic!”

(Those words were for all living beings, for his comrades, and for himself, whose schemes spanning ten thousand years had come to nothing.)