Deviant: No Longer Human

Eleanor was young, at least in comparison—just a mere fifteen hundred years under her belt.

Yet, she'd delved into the mysteries of the soul with insight far beyond her years.

She had mastered healing—not just of the body, but of the very essence that sustained it.

Wang Xiao still recalled a conversation with Eleanor where she likened a cracked glass bottle to a fractured body.

The analogy had struck him, revealing deeper truths about the fragility and resilience of existence.

And if Eleanor hadn't grasped that concept within her first hundred years of life, well, she wouldn't be here now.

But after a millennium of study, she had ventured into even deeper mysteries—the healing of a shattered soul, a challenge that few had the nerve to even consider.

Because when a person dies, the body that holds the soul together crumbles.

The soul shatters along with it, fragments scattering into the boundless universe, losing their sense of self, like raindrops merging into the ocean.

It's tempting to believe that, with enough effort, those fragments could be gathered, and the person could be revived.

But that's a comforting lie.

Souls, by their nature, transcend dimensions.

It's this very transcendence that allows Wang Xiao to travel across dimensions in the astral plane with the ease of a traveler crossing through an open gate.

At his level of Transcendence, such feats were child's play.

For someone like Aurora, though? Not so much.

Attempting the same would be a gamble—her soul fragments could scatter across infinite dimensions, each piece trapped in a different reality.

In effect, it would erase her from existence, scattering her like cosmic confetti.

So, what would happen to someone like Mary?

Without a soul core to anchor her, her death would mean total dissolution.

Her soul fragments would scatter into the void, her existence nullified, dissolving into the ether without a trace.

And if those fragments were to find new vessels, new bodies to inhabit, they would become part of something new, losing all connection to who Mary once was.

Her past, her power, her very essence would fade away, becoming one with the new soul they joined—poof, gone, like she had never existed at all.

To successfully revive someone, one had to act with the speed and precision of a lightning strike, ensuring not a single fragment of the soul slipped away into the vast, web of dimensions.

Even one stray piece, lost or merged with another existence, would forever alter the revived being.

They wouldn't be the same—never again.

Imagine bringing someone back only for them to return as something less than themselves.

Wang Xiao refused to tolerate such failure.

Perfection was the only outcome.

This was why, when his daughters suggested that they could die and he could just revive them later, he laughed.

Not because the idea was impossible—nothing was impossible for him—but because they said it so casually.

Death, to them, seemed like a brief nap, as if Wang Xiao could pluck them from the jaws of death with the same ease he flicked away a fly.

Anran's revival had been an exception, a rare alignment of perfect circumstances.

Her body had remained untouched by decay, and Eveline—had stitched her wounds, holding her essence together like a weaver preserving the final thread of life.

Wang Xiao had spent days sifting through Amelia's dry research reports, confirming that only if the body was fresh, and the death recent, was revival even an option.

And even then, it was a coin toss.

Maybe the person would come back.

Maybe they'd come back weird.

The word "might" popped up a lot in Amelia's findings, and no one understood the catastrophic possibilities of that word better than Wang Xiao.

Where others saw risk, Wang Xiao saw only inevitability.

Yet — He would shape the outcome, as always.

Because in the grand scheme of things, existence itself was his to command.

Even the so-called "Divine laws of the cosmos" bent under the weight of his will.

Mortals could hardly grasp the truth that was laid bare before him.

Take the delicate balance of population, for example.

In any given world, there was a threshold beyond which the population couldn't grow.

Fertility rates would plummet, and souls would scatter to other dimensions, seeking balance.

An immutable law?

For them, maybe.

But Wang Xiao?

If he wished, that balance would shatter.

Killing? That was nothing.

The deaths of four billion people alongside Aether?

A footnote in his legacy.

If anything, he had done them a favor.

He had accelerated their demise, sparing them the agonizing slowness of fate's hand.

They were bound to die anyway. Wang Xiao had simply decided when.

The heavens themselves had rules—rules that Wang Xiao had broken time and time again.

But if the heavens dared to stop him, they shall cease to exist.

That was the difference between him and the rest of the universe: where others saw limits, he saw obstacles to be obliterated.

The cosmos didn't dictate his path he dictated the cosmos.

He wouldn't allow his daughters to be raised in a world riddled with imbalance, so he had taken them to Xianthera, a realm untouched by the filth of lesser beings.

There, they could grow in purity, without the taint of mediocrity.

'He' had 'groomed' them, yes, but his guidance was far superior to the pathetic conditioning society would have imposed.

How could mere mortals, who barely understood the laws governing their own miserable existence, presume to lecture him—a true Transcendent—on what was right or wrong?

These mortals, who crumbled under the weight of their own weakness, collapsing under emotions they couldn't control, dared to judge him?

Laughable.

Where was their justice when he slaughtered thousands?

Justice, in the truest sense, was power.

Strength dictated what was right, not some fragile system of laws that cracked under the first real challenge.

Governments ruled through strength, enforcing their laws with armies, not ideals.

Courts?

Mere ornaments, symbols of authority that only held meaning when backed by force.

When nations clashed, it was military power—not diplomacy—that decided the outcome.

Strength was justice, and Wang Xiao?

He "was" strength.

Mortals bickered over trivialities while his people—those he had raised—understood the real truth: strength alone guarantees one's rights.

Without it, rights were nothing more than wishful thinking.

Of course, even that had its layers.

Yue, his daughter, had come to understand something more.

With Wang Xiao as her shield, she could afford to look beyond the pursuit of power.

She had the luxury to seek enlightenment in other ways because "he" would annihilate anything that threatened her.

And she was right.

Wang Xiao wouldn't argue with her choice.

She had the privilege to explore the world beyond force, but only because of his protection.

He had allowed it.

No matter what anyone else thought, Wang Xiao saw through the hollow principles that governed the weak, pounding them for their lifetime.

He had spent a lifetime tearing down the illusions that mortals clung to, shattering their fragile realities.

And he did it without hesitation, because unlike them, he saw the truth of existence:

Power is all that matters.

Eleanor, for all her differences, had come to similar conclusions.

She had taken a different path, one less soaked in blood, but still arrived at the same destination.

She understood the fabric of existence, the weaving of souls, the deeper mysteries that mortals dared not contemplate.

But make no mistake: while Eleanor explored the body & soul, Wang Xiao was more than willing to burn the very heavens if they so much as thought of standing in his way.