Nu found himself in an inescapable situation.


    The intense distortion of space-time unfolded before him as a breathtaking spectacle. Faint traces of heat peeled away from the cosmic background radiation and coalesced into swirling clouds. These clouds shimmered with every color of the spectrum, forming a spiraling tunnel of rainbow light shaped by the Galactic Tyrant’s immense gravitational pull.


    The scattered glow of distant white dwarfs added to the scene’s exotic grandeur, their luminous lines punctuating the kaleidoscopic expanse with intricate, swirling patterns.


    Yet, for Nu, the grandeur offered no comfort.


    His mind was consumed with despair.


    He had read about this phenomenon in the passages of his ancestral legacy. Anyone who witnessed its rainbow glow would never return alive. Its existence was tied to the event horizon of a supermassive being’s gaze. Once the rainbow tunnel ended, reaching the being’s surface could take millions of years to complete.


    In the rainbow tunnel, Nu’s body warped grotesquely, stretched toward the tunnel’s depths like chewing gum and flushed a horrifying shade of red. The only parts of him left intact were his mind and soul. Trapped in this distorted limbo, he was left with nothing but reflections on his unfulfilled existence.


    The weight of his failure to retrieve the star legacy pressed heavily on him, and he struggled to come to terms with a life that seemed to approach an inevitable end.


    With nothing else to cling to, Nu sought refuge in the one constant he had left: the millions of pages of his ancestors’ life stories. These passages had sustained him through his most isolating and harrowing moments, offering solace from hunger and loneliness as he journeyed through the cold expanse of the universe. To him, they had been a priceless treasure and a source of unending joy.


    But this time, when he finished reading and turned to the blank section meant for his own legacy, he gazed at it with discomfort and pain.


    To this day, Nu had neglected to record any details of his life. Believing his existence would one day become a great and storied spectacle, he continually postponed the task, waiting for a distant future when his life felt complete. Now, as he stared at the blank section, its emptiness compared to the millions of pages before it felt like a thousand needles stabbing at his throat.


    He longed to fill those pages with words of his own, but nothing seemed worth writing. His only notable achievement was a fleeting triumph in the pocket space at the beginning of his life. Beyond that, his existence was a blur of failure and regret.


    The hundred-year promise to the yellow planet loomed over him like a dark cloud<i>.</i> He had vowed to end his life by this point, yet he still remained weak and powerless.


    Unable to face the emptiness, he read his ancestral stories over and over. The comfort they once provided had long since faded. Now reading about their successes now only filled him with bitterness, as if the stories existed solely to mock him, deepening his frustration and despair.


    Even after reaching the space reserved for his legacy for the twentieth time, Nu still could not bring himself to write a single word about his unremarkable life to fill the void.


    It bothered him greatly, for him to have lived all this time, and yet even now he had nothing to write for his legacy.


    “What is this terrible life I’ve lived, I truly can''t bear to write anything?” he lamented aloud, his eyes heavy with sadness.


    “Is there truly nothing worth writing?” he wondered. “Is all I have left my unfulfilled desires...”


    Anger and dissatisfaction welled up within him as he gazed out at the universe in defiance. Yet, he couldn’t bring himself to swear or curse its unfairness. He could only shake his head and sigh.


    “It is not the universe that has failed me, but I who have failed,” he murmured. “Or perhaps I was never meant to succeed in the first place.”


    <i>Drip.</i>


    Nu replayed the statuesque man''s demonstration in his mind: the blue drop of water striking the surface of the tea. The sound echoed around him like a shimmering hallucination, subduing a portion of his awareness and shielding him from any further regretful thoughts.


    The sound of weeping cries reverberated from his ancestral legacy as they felt the tearing destruction of demortality.


    “I am sorry. I am unfilial. I can’t bear leaving this behind completely empty. Fathers, Mothers, please forgive what I am about to do.”Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.


    The tyrannical roar of a dying great legacy rang out, as if pleading with Nu to stop, urging him to reconsider.


    “No, I cannot stop,” Nu declared defiantly.


    “I will not allow myself to die with this blank legacy. You would never understand this pain!”


    “I must find something to fill my life... anything will do!”


    <i>Drip... Drip... Drip...</i>


    Several more droplets echoed as Nu prepared to relinquish everything and follow the pathway of demortality.


    The Primordial Gray, which had shielded his Aetherroot body from the streams of time, began to loosen. His legacy dissolved, washing away like loose mud. Its agonized cries faded as each page vanished with every falling droplet.


    His tiny, root-like body glowed faintly blue as water surrounded it. All his senses dulled and the only thing that remained in his mind was the steady rhythm of the dripping water as demortality slowly stripped away the entirety of his mortal body and soul leaving behind nothing but his root-like body.


    The downpour intensified, transforming into a cascading water beacon that engulfed his plant-like form. The torrent formed a passageway, blurring his multicolored surroundings as Nu ascended through it. Leaving behind his mortal shell within the universe, he entered the demortal realm in his original, bare root-like form.


    Crawling out of the Past-Present River and onto the riverbank, Nu found himself in a world of pure white. Beneath his feet stretched a desert of white sand, its hill-like dunes rising to meet an endless, pristine skyline. Beside the desert wound a river channel, its gentle flow echoing softly in the stillness. Behind him stood a gray, fleshy dam, its imposing structure rippling and throbbing like a gigantic, pulsating muscle.


    As he emerged, the last remnants of Nu’s thoughts fell silent, replaced by primal instincts. His innate need to seek water guided him along the riverbank. His root-like body glided soundlessly across the sand’s surface.


    The river’s gentle flow slowed further as its banks widened, finally surrendering its waters to the Future Ocean. The ocean appeared as a vast, nearly motionless expanse of deep blue, stretching endlessly beyond sight, with no discernible horizon.


    At the shoreline, countless tiny blue hands clawed at the sand before retreating into the water. Their restless movements broke the stillness, producing rhythmic lapping sounds that made Nu pause.


    His gaze followed the shoreline to the far distance, where above the water and within the stark white skyline stood a grotesque flesh effigy.


    Its body was a chaotic amalgamation of life in perpetual motion, with new pieces of flesh sprouting endlessly. Limbs, torsos, and faces of countless beings unfurled like seedlings, only to decay or be consumed by mouths that formed and vanished across its surface. The figure appeared paradoxically both blurry and clear, as though its very essence defied comprehension. From its unfathomable distance, only a faint, vague human outline could be discerned.


    Time passed like silk as Nu observed the unfolding scene.


    From one of the effigy’s many eyes, a black droplet emerged like a teardrop. Breaking free, it appeared as an enormous orb, moving like an expanding black dot through the strange environment. It caused no ripples in the air or water, yet its presence was overwhelming.


    When it reached Nu, it consumed the entire sky, filling his vision until nothing else remained. On its surface, faint outlines of stationary stars and frozen galaxies shimmered into view. The droplet seemed to encapsulate the suspended time-state of the entire universe.


    The droplet spun in place, its watery surface warping and distorting, until it transformed into the familiar image of the rainbow tunnel from which he had emerged, bringing Nu face-to-face with his previous time-frozen mortal body.


    At the same time, the ocean began to stir, bubbles breaking its surface. From the depths emerged a human-shaped figure of deep, abyssal black. Its body, untouched by the water, remained completely dry as it stepped onto the shore, carrying a white porcelain teacup and saucer adorned with intricate patterns. The figure moved with effortless grace, placing the cup before Nu and pausing, as though waiting for something.


    A spout of water erupted from the black droplet, pouring Nu’s discarded body like liquid into the porcelain cup. As the water touched the cup, it shimmered and boiled, releasing grayish-purple smoke that spiraled into the air, carrying the faint aroma of fine tea. The smoke swirled and danced before briefly coalescing into an apparition of Nu’s former body.


    The root-like Nu gazed into the teacup, his past life unfolding before him like a fleeting dream. Yet, it stirred no emotion within him.


    The mere sight of the tea began to alter his root body, as faint traces of intelligence started to emerge.


    A mouth formed within his being, and when it spoke, the sound resembled rocks grinding together in his throat.


    “Nice tea,” he said.


    Without looking back, he followed the black figure ahead of him, all the way to the ocean’s edge.


    Using his fleeting intelligence, he gazed out at the infinite still waters of the Future Ocean. Along its vast, motionless surface, zero and infinity seemed to intertwine, merging into an eternal paradox.


    His blank legacy ballooned into infinite pages, for in the realm of demortality, he had not merely found something...


    He had found everything.


    Moving forward, he allowed the grasping hands of the ocean’s waves to pull him in, dragging him beneath the surface. Nu vanished from sight entirely.


    No one knew what lay beneath the waters of the vast Future Ocean. Some speculated about an unfathomable creature dwelling in its depths, a being whose form was said to hold the entirety of existence itself.


    Above the waters, the teacup that held Nu''s former body continued to steam.


    The steady flow of steam rose into the air, gathering into ominous purple clouds above the cup.


    Over time, the clouds grew, evolving into a massive storm.


    The storm spread, stretching across the entire surface of the black droplet that encased the time-frozen universe.


    ***


    Within the present universe, an unparalleled phenomenon unfolded. Nu’s thunderous purple clouds stretched across the entire cosmos, their presence both ominous and auspicious. Suspended impossibly in the air, they blanketed every corner of existence.


    From the hidden folds of space-time, an obsidian spaceship emerged, its sleek form peering into the recesses of reality.


    Through an open hatch, a statuesque figure stepped forward, his gaze fixed on the roiling purple clouds swirling around him. Silent thunderclaps echoed across the void, their vibrations felt more than heard.


    “Congratulations on building your universal body,” he whispered softly.