Chapter 2101: Chapter 51: The Disappearance of Ian Silverpeak

[Please, you must accept this]

...

Terra, The Empire, South Ridge Duchy.

Harrison Port, gathering place of the White Folks.

The cemetery.

A short yet sturdily built old man walked along the paths of the graveyard.

Slender raindrops fluttered in the overcast sky; they vanished the moment they landed on people’s shoulders, and only after a long, patient soaking would they finally bestow a sense of "dampness."

Elder Pude walked for a while, then slowly came to a halt before an apparently ordinary grave at the side of the cemetery.

"Ernesto, and Evelyn." Gazing at the simple tombstone, he could not help but murmur, "Your child... has truly grown powerful to a degree that even I can hardly imagine."

"I had thought he was the hope of the family’s revival, that he could lead us back to the Imperial Capital... but who could have known?"

"He is His Majesty’s hidden card, the disciple of the First Knight. He not only leads us back to glory, he even, even..."

Even he himself, has become The King.

His gaze drooped slightly—Pude Chehalorvo, or rather, Pude Silverpeak.

The previous Great Elder of the Silver Peak Family, now Elder Emeritus for life, could not help but sigh; his tone held both remembrance and quiet joy: "My parents have been dead for many years; I never truly missed that family. I only strove and struggled because of my mother’s wish. Yet even so, when my life ran its course, I was nothing more than mediocre, with little to show."

"You children, who should have held far greater hope and future, fell one after another before my eyes. The rise and fall of a family always spans several generations. You did all that you could do, and your child has fulfilled the great vow of restoring the family."

"Only... I keep wondering, that child... had he already foreseen this day long ago?"

The Prophet is a strange kind of being. 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ𝓋𝑒𝑙.𝑐𝘰𝑚

Without a Prophet’s Prophecy, many people would be confused about which direction their future path should take; yet once there is a Prophet’s Prophecy, whether they are willing to admit it or not, they are given a road—either to follow the Prophecy, or to rebel against it.

They no longer lose their way.

But likewise, precisely because neither Prophets nor those who believe in them are ever truly confused, onlookers cannot help but be puzzled, even afraid... afraid of that firmness, and of whether all the conditions that lead to the Prophecy’s fulfillment have long since been set in stone.

As a kind of irreplaceable "fate."

Humans are an even stranger sort of being.

When there is no road, they seek a road.

When there is a road, they seek reasons and meaning.

Once they have reasons and meaning, they begin to care whether all of it springs from their own free consciousness—whether they are walking their own Dao in accordance with their own will, and not because of someone else’s influence, a Prophecy, or some kind of destiny.

If it is proven to be fate, they sink into decadence, rage, and pain.

If it is proven not to be, they are confident, brave, and at peace.

Of course, there are some who, once convinced of fate, instead become confident and at peace. Humans are just that strange.

They are forever perplexed.

But Elder Pude is different.

After living alongside the most powerful Prophet in this world for so long, the old man harbors a vague, indistinct feeling...

Perhaps the Prophet does not merely foretell the "future."

He also decides his own "past."

Ian Silverpeak. This child, who from youth to adulthood has always had firm opinions of his own—did he, for the sake of that future he beheld, in order to comply with "fate," sacrifice many people?

Not only those of the present and the future, but those of the past as well?

After all, on Terra, everyone knows... a happy family, a smooth and uneventful life, can never awaken Spirit Energy.

Though he clearly knows such thoughts are exceedingly foolish, wholly illogical, Elder Pude still cannot help thinking this way.

It is not to reproach Ian, but out of sorrow.

If, indeed, all of this is true, then after foreseeing it all and yet being able only to choose thus—just what kind of calamity did Ian behold, and what vast and towering fate is it that he must stand against?

Elder Pude does not know. He merely turns his head, looking to the other side of Ian’s parents’ tombstone, at a nameless grave.

The body buried in that grave had once been his idol, and even more so, Ian’s teacher.

"He is going to open an entirely new era; he is going to save the world. What he intends to do... is a great work beyond anything all past Monarchs could ever have imagined."

"Does he still remember you?" Elder Pude shook his head slightly, preparing to turn and leave.

His own life is nearing its end. Even if the Silverpeak Domain has that so-called "Artificial Underworld" that can preserve the soul forever, as for his fleshly body... it too should seek a patch of earth in which to be buried.

Perhaps that will be a brand-new beginning as well.

Yet at the very instant Elder Pude turned around, he saw a human figure, standing beside him before the tombstone.

[They will always be my parents, and my teacher]

Ian, a mere phantom woven from the fine rain that filled the sky, glimmering with a faint light, stared at the tombstone before him. Then he turned his head to look at Elder Pude: [And Elder, you will always be my family as well]

[Precisely because I must open up the future, I will never forget the past]

"..."

Elder Pude stood there in a daze. Only after a very long time did he slowly shake his head with a wry smile and say, "Just the wild fancies of an old man."

[Not entirely wild fancies. The future determining the past may not be empty words]