Cho Yanshi had procured food, giving them all meals that were suited to their personal preferences.
Despite not knowing them all on a personal level, her choices were spot-on. Hei Shisan, Shen Wuyou and Qin Shuyue all felt as though she knew exactly what they liked and disliked.
"It's a talent of hers," Lu Chen said as he inhaled his food, "to always feed you the very thing you crave."
"An inherent skill," Cho Yanshi superimposed as she sat with her own bowl.
"Who are you two... really..." Qin Shuyue wasted no time, dropping her spoon and leaning in.
Cho Yanshi paused just as she was about to sip some broth, exhaling as she put her spoon down. "I suppose food can wait."
"My name truly is Cho Yanshi. That is not the aspect of my identity that is a secret. I suppose, in a sense, it is my race that sets me apart."
Lu Chen silently nodded as he finished his meal.
"Your race? Are you some kind of beastkin? Or a demihuman?" Shen Wuyou gaped.
Hei Shisan shifted, "Or a demon..."
Lu Chen's right arm draped over the back of his chair, his elbow on the table. "And what is a demon? Do you know?"
Hei Shisan pursed his lips. Shen Wuyou opened his hand and watched as his dice spun to life.
Qin Shuyue stared uncomfortably at Lu Chen. "Demoms are the fiendish scum of the Netherworld. Their only purpose is to occupy the many layers of Hell and make it a torturous nightmare for unfortunate souls. They're grotesque and cruel beings."
Lu Chen nodded; Cho Yanshi took a silent sip of her soup.
"You must come from a God Clan." Lu Chen's lips quirked upward, not unkindly, but with the unmistakable air of someone who'd already decided on the answer.
"What are you trying to say?" Qin Shuyue remarked as sharply as she could, trying to seem offended.
"The way you talk of demons. Sounds like some heavenly propaganda. I just assumed someone in your family was... heavenly inclined."
She scoffed, but said nothing more.
"Was her explanation wrong then? I'm not from a God Clan but the description I've heard isn't much different," Hei Shisan harrumphed with folded arms.
"Categorically." Lu Chen calmly stated.
Cho Yanshi let the silence breathe, allowing their thoughts to wander, before she spoke.
"Of the Three Realms... which is the most powerful?"
It went without saying that their answers were all similar.
"Heaven."
Flashing a knowing smile, Cho Yanshi dabbed the edge of her mouth with a soft cloth.
"Who decided that?" The very image of patient curiosity, Lu Chen posed the question as he looked to them for an answer.
"What do you mean who decided that? It goes without saying, doesn't it? Heaven is the absolute peak- the pinnacle of power." Qin Shuyue was perplexed that he could even ask such a thing.
"She's right," Hei Shisan added. "Heaven is the closest Realm to the Dao, and the Heavenly Dao is paramount. Heaven knows no equal."
Shen Wuyou fiddled with his dice, stopping and restarting their endless spinning as he listened, then pausing briefly after they had spoken to say, "Statistically speaking."
Hearing this, they all looked at him with differing expressions.
He chuckled nervously, "Well, when you deal with chance, and you look at the grand scale of things... It's not that heaven has no equal..."
Brows furrowed. Some eyes narrowed while others widened. All listened close.
"It's just that... the probability of anything approaching Heaven's level. It was low before but... it's only getting lower. Right now, it's almost impossible, but the possibility suggests that there may be something stronger."
Shen Wuyou gulped.
"Careful, Wuyou," Hei Shisan pat him on the shoulder with a smirk, "That sounds an awful lot like blasphemy to me."
A weak smile was Shen Wuyou's best response.
Qin Shuyue sat back noisily, "Probability doesn't change fact, it supports it. If it's almost impossible for Heaven to be surpassed, then Heaven remains the strongest of the Three Realms."
Shen Wuyou nodded slowly as Hei Shisan gave him another pat.
Lu Chen smiled, "Not bad, though, Wuyou. Tell me, who is it you know that's so closely entwined with the Dao of Gambling."
Shen Wuyou perked up slightly, "My father."
"She's not wrong, though." Cho Yanshi pushed her bowl to the side.
"If it's impossible to overcome Heaven, then Heaven must be the strongest of the Three Realms."
All eyes were on Cho Yanshi as she sighed.
"That is the current state of things. Thanks to ceaseless effort, Heaven has mercilessly suppressed the other two realms. Any avenue for challenge has been all but permanently cut off."
Hei Shisan's eyes flickered with realization, a sign of deduction being made. "The Holy Wars..."
"So you know about the Continents and the Holy Wars. Someone's been sticking their nose in restricted literature," Cho Yanshi smiled.
"It's true, the Holy Wars were poorly veiled attacks on the other two Realms, specifically the Netherworld- or, as it used to be known- the Hellish Realm."
"Netherworld definitely sounds better," Lu Chen remarked, masking a burp.
"Total repression is a specialty of Heaven, and that is what it enforced during the Holy Wars. The Paramount Daos of both the Earthly and Hellish Realms were ground to dust, leaving almost no way for them to recover."
"Not without causing Heaven to rain down all manner of destruction on you," Lu Chen added with an exhausted sigh.
"These 'Paramoumt Daos' could never have been a match for Heaven if they were so easily snuffed out," Qin Shuyue scoffed.
"Not snuffed out," Lu Chen glared. "Like all Dao, the Paramount Daos of the Netherworld and the Earthly Realm can be followed as long as someone walks the path aligned with them."
"What Heaven did was make it insanely difficult for someone to ever rediscover that path..."
Cho Yanshi clasped her hands tight, "And made it even harder to walk that path once someone did find it."
Lu Chen closed his eyes and fell silent.
"Also, Heaven was the first Realm born of the Primal Chaos. It had the advantage, and it did not hesitate to use it." Cho Yanshi said as she leaned over onto the table.
Shen Wuyou frowned, "Heaven always had the advantage. It was playing a winning game. Why would it go even further?"
Judging by the way Hei Shisan and Qin Shuyue perked up, it seemed as though they were wondering the same.
"Heaven's motives are its own, in the end," Cho Yanshi said, most diplomatically.
"Fear," Lu Chen simply stated.
They looked at him, and for a moment pondered on what his statement could mean. How it would change their entire worldview if it was true.
"Heaven beat up its younger siblings and crippled their cultivation. Fear is the only sensible answer," Hei Shisan nodded.
Shen Wuyou joined in with him, but Qin Shuyue lightly tapped the table as she ran a few ideas around in her head.
"Not necessarily. Heaven has always stood on the side of righteousness... Absolute good. What if it foresaw great evil coming from the other Realms? Something that could destroy everything, and not just itself."
Cho Yanshi stared into Qin Shuyue's eyes with a thin smile, "You are right, in a sense."
"Heaven foresaw something detrimental to itself, and immediately acted out of self-preservation. That is what Lu Chen and I were told."
"It is what we believe."
"And who told you?" Qin Shuyue asked with a fiercely curious look.
"Our Lord," Cho Yanshi started as she looked to Lu Chen, who nodded.
"King Yama."
Realization led to stunned silence, and for a moment none of the three were even capable of taking a breath.
"He told us that Heaven's self-absorbed nature led it to view anything equal to itself as a direct challenge. Heaven cannot abide being equal to anything," Lu Chen spat.
"It manipulated and destroyed, justified of itself to act without mercy and somehow still be righteous. Heaven slaughtered more innocents than the other Two Realms combined in those Wars, and brought the Netherworld and Earthly Realm to heel."
Lu Chen stood, taking a few steps away from the table before he turned around.
"The Dao of Heaven cares only to exhalt itself. To glorify itself. To bring praise to itself. That is why it suppressed the other two Paramount Daos that were supposed to grow alongside it."
"Those Paramount Daos... just what are they?" Qin Shuyue asked, a hint of acceptance in her tone.
"They thrived in the era before. No one knows what they're called anymore. Possibly not even the oldest gods," Cho Yanshi lamented.
"Whoever the Sovereign of Heaven is, they're the only person who could answer that," Lu Chen speculated while walking back to the table.
"All we know is what King Yama told us. That the Paramount Daos came out of the Primal Chaos, and their birth created the other two Realms, making them Three Realms in total."
"Paramount Daos are the absolute Dao of their Realm, meant to be cultivated by the being that would be considered the Sovereign of its respective Realm."
Shen Wuyou gasped, "So, aside from Heaven, there's no other Sovereign..."
"Exactly," Lu Chen sat on the table's edge, arms folded.
Cho Yanshi took a breath, "Which brings us to the fourth and final thing that ever came out of the Primal Chaos."
They all looked at her and, for some reason, the mischievous smile of a certain yellow-haired young man glistened in their minds' eyes.