Deviant: No Longer Human

Divinity.

That hidden nectar, the glue.

Divinity is what holds a soul frgament together, the way it is.

Extracting it is like bleeding a star dry.

Painful... Precise... Slow.

A single drop could sustain Wang Xiao in his transcendental form for billions of years.

But it might take an eon to extract one cleanly.

This is why battles between true Transcendents could last for eternity.

They were fueled by wells deeper than time.

Stopping time didn't help.

Transcendents could do it, but what use is freezing a structure you're trying to understand?

Comprehension requires motion.

Divinity requires change.

Even now, Wang Xiao had no idea how much divinity it would take to surpass his current form.

He didn't know what lay beyond.

He had never seen a Great Lord.

He didn't know what their souls were made of.

But he did know one thing.

The same divinity that lets one ascend…

Can also be used to make a soul collapse.

He couldn't uplift someone to Transcendence.

He lacked the information.

Their soul's structure, their inner nature.

And the transformation target, he would have to master that too, else risk collapse the subject.

But then a thought came to him.

A dangerous thought.

What if that was the point?

What if… he took a powerful soul,

a Quasi-Transcendent, or an Immortal Lord,

someone dense, ripe, and complex, and injected just enough divinity into it…

Not to uplift it.

But to ruin it.

Force a failed transformation.

The result?

BOOM.

The soul would unravel.

The divine bindings would snap.

The collapse would not be magical.

It would be nuclear, on a scale magic couldn't predict.

He once believed souls were indestructible.

And perhaps they are.

But if he disassembles what binds them…

If he unscrews their divine glue just right, He can turn them into an explosion so chaotic,

no one could ever put the soul back together again.

Not even him.

And that was enough.

When he first arrived in Xianthera, still young and quiet in his uniform, Amelia used to say

"Your mind is like fire trapped in glass. No matter what I pour in, it always comes out burning."

She wasn't wrong.

The more she taught him, the more destructive the outcomes became.

Knowledge itself is neither righteous nor wicked.

The same science that builds bridges, also levels cities.

The same theory behind nuclear energy, births bombs.

The application is the sin... Not the formula.

And today… the Netherworld learned what a chaotic mind could do when left unshackled.

What was written today would not be recorded in ink, but in scars across the land.

Even Maliketh had said it once, before Wang Xiao turned his fractured soul into a fusion bomb, "You'll die."

He wasn't wrong either.

To escape this plane…

Wang Xiao had to first shed every piece of his physical being.

Only a soul can pierce the veil between universes.

And even then…he had to keep leaping blindly, again and again, across collapsing realities, until he found the thread that led home.

As for where a soul disperses after death...

Even Wang Xiao didn't fully understand.

He only knew this: once fragmented, a soul begins drifting.

Across stars... Across realities.

And finally that dark passage... It was like the gap between universes.

That's why resurrection was nearly impossible, you'd need to gather every lost shard.

And some might be light-years away,

buried in the seams of forgotten universes.

A needle in a haystack that spans the multiverse.

Why didn't his soul scatter?

Because even at the Immortal level,

a being begins to split, not just in power,

but in will.

Every fragment of his soul becomes conscious.

Each piece capable of binding itself, of remembering where it belongs.

And that… was enough to survive the dark river between worlds.

Enough to pass through that place,

Where time forgets to flow,

and light has no dominion.

Where souls scream, unheard.

Some called it Samsara.

Others, simply the Void Beyond Return.

Wang Xiao simply walked it.

Ashes traced his steps.

His body... long gone.

His soul... dimming at the edges,

dragged thin from too many leaps.

He sighed.

"How tiring…"

And vanished once more,

into the dark river between realities.

A shadow chasing echoes,

where even gods dare not look.

______

Earth. 1:00 AM.

2nd January, 2032.

By the time Wang Xiao returned to Earth, an hour had already slipped into the new day. He had spent far too long in the Netherworld… indulging.

A full-scale retaliation was possible, perhaps even warranted.

But he tossed the idea aside without much thought.

They didn't know who he truly was.

They had no clue about the actual strength of beings inhabiting this universe.

And if they estimated him to be one of the top…

Then good.

Let them think there were others.

Let them tremble at shadows that didn't exist.

Because if a Great Lord ever did descend?

It would be problematic.

But, as Xue Hanqin once claimed, this world lacked the capacity to host such entities.

If they came, their very presence would turn them into execution targets, just by virtue of breaking balance.

Suicide by arrogance.

Besides, Wang Xiao had already exhausted his stockpile of harvested souls, the spoils of immortals he'd slain across countless dead universes.

He had work to do.

So, naturally, he decided…

…to do nothing.

Zhang Sisi had left with Lin Xue, the latter now staying at her place.

Wang Xiao had other matters in mind.

He wanted to visit Zhenxi.

And, more curiously, Fu Yuxin and Chen Meili.

The two women were somehow together now.

Which made no damn sense.

Even Lin Xue haven't have planned that.

"Empty…?" he muttered.

The house stood still beneath the cold kiss of midnight.

Quiet...Unnaturally so.

The street was bathed in a pale orange hue from flickering lamps, but not a soul in sight.

He stepped forward, boots crunching on frost-laced concrete.

"Did the night swallow them?"

His brow twitched.

He hated chasing people.

Wang Xiao didn't stay.

He left.

Not home.

But to the only place that could give him answers.

Unfortunately, that place had a lunatic living in it.

Bang!

A pillow hit the wall.

"It's two in the morning, bastard!"

Luna, bleary-eyed and in nothing but her blue nightgown, lunged like a pissed-off cat denied milk. Her fangs gleamed, genuine murder in her eyes.

She didn't even brother to check who it was.

Wang Xiao casually slapped her on the rear mid-air.

Smack!

She froze mid-leap, blinked.

... It's him?

Then landed on her feet, eyes half-lidded with a different kind of gleam now.

"…You're bleeding," she said, sniffing him like a wolf scenting prey. Her voice turned sultry. "You reek of blood."

Before he could say anything, she had already crouched near his legs, fingers tugging at his waistband.

"Did you kill many?" she asked, excited like a child about to unwrap a birthday gift. "Why didn't you take me along?!"

Wang Xiao chuckled faintly.

Her insanity hadn't dulled even a bit.

He gave her a short round, not out of lust, but necessity. It was the easiest way to make her cooperative.

Afterward, her limbs tangled in silk sheets and still panting, she gave him what he came for:

"Fu Yuxin… Tianjin."

Tianjin... A major port city southeast of Beijing.

He hadn't expected them to be there. Why would they be?

But Sakura, more-efficient, gave the answer in less than a minute.

"Her brother runs a shipping business in Tianjin," Sakura reported."The family moved there a few years ago. She never visited them. This… is the first time in seven years."

Wang Xiao rubbed his chin.

"That's not supposed to happen," he muttered. "She hated them."

Was he missing something?

Sakura stood nearby, silently watching him.

Wang Xiao already knew who she was Isabella's daughter.

She knew he knew... But they never talked about it.

He hadn't summoned her. Didn't need to.

She preferred being alone anyway.

But the real problem?

Her mother was sleeping with him.

And had told her, point blank, to obey him in all things, even prepare herself to "serve" him together, if he ever asked.

She was dying from awkwardness.

Fortunately, Wang Xiao made no demands… and simply walked away.

On the way to Tianjin, he sent a message to Anran, asking for Wang Jiarong's location.

His eldest sister should've been back for New year celebrations, but wasn't.

He'd have to look into that too.

And Zhenxi?

He'd promised to bring her back so his mother could show her off like a prized jade.

He.Didn't.Want.To.

He also remembered that Aunt Meifang was there, which only made things worse.

Maybe he should just sleep with Yue and let the world burn...

A tempting thought.

But alas.

Despite everything, despite his desire to just lie down and say "fuck it," he arrived in Tianjin, the port city glittering beneath the cold and lonely moonlight like a polished dagger.