The Soul Ferry Lantern Burns Out

Mo Que, a menial disciple of Lingxiao Sect, endured eighteen years of humiliation. An old ancestral hall lantern and a trace of primordial bloodline swept him into a vortex of fate spanning the Three Realms.

The lantern spirit awoke. Her name was Su Zhan. She had no body, only a wisp of consciousness sealed inside the wick for ten thousand years. She said, "When you cleaned the lantern, it lit up for a moment. That woke me."

From then on, the menial disciple carried the lantern and set out on a road of no return.

He befriended four primordial beasts: a gluttonous dragon, a chatterbox bird, a silent turtle, and a perceptive fish. He entered the Demon Realm and reforged the Soul-Crossing Lantern with dragon bone. He fought the Tianshu Institute's inspector and broke its seal. He sought the nameless mountain in the human world and claimed the remnants of the Fate-Controlling Divine Lord's power. He helped Luo Qi, a primordial avatar who, for the first time in ten thousand years, said, "Being alive is warm," then smiled as he met his death.

At last, he faced the primordial true form: the "death" the Fate-Controlling Divine Lord had severed from himself ten thousand years ago. After ten thousand years of erosion by the void, it had grown so lonely that it sought to devour the Three Realms simply to fill the emptiness within.

This was not a battle between good and evil. It was a struggle between life and death, between ten thousand years of loneliness and the road home.

The Soul-Crossing Lantern had ten levels of wick. Its bearer and its spirit would synchronize their souls, reshaping the cycle of heaven and earth. Death would return, the void would dissipate, and the primordial being would finally rest.

And then, the lantern spirit would be free.

Su Zhan stepped out of the lantern and stood atop the nameless mountain in a real body for the first time. The wind brushed her face.

"The wind is warm," she said.

The lantern returned to heaven and earth, never to go out again. Everyone returned to their place in the world.