Immortal Paladin

There was no victory here. No clever trick to topple the Supreme Void. No twist of fate or second wind that would grant me the strength to overcome the Sun and Moon. This fight had been rigged from the very start. But that was fine. I didn’t come to win… I came to pull Da Ji and Chen Wei as far away from this decaying world as possible. Pride had no place in this decision. I had made peace with the outcome long before I raised my weapon.

In all the past visions… dozens, perhaps hundreds… I had tried everything: forcing the Ascension Throne to elevate them, anchoring my soul to cast them far across existence, etc. Each attempt failed. Sometimes the world collapsed before I could act. Sometimes I couldn’t even reach them in time. But this time, I was ahead of the curve. This time, the ‘vision’ cracked just right.

Floating just ahead of me in the vacuum beyond False Earth’s shell was what remained of New Willow, a jagged chunk of ice glimmering with residual life. Da Ji, in her true form, hovered near it, her nine tails blooming in all her power. Chen Wei, aged and weatherworn, clung to her fur, teeth chattering, lips mumbling prayers I couldn’t hear. I smiled. Just seeing them alive made the pain worthwhile.

Bringing Jia Yun had been the right choice...

The Sun moved. Its celestial body twisted with a soundless groan as it reached down, molten fingers aiming to crush me in its grasp. I ducked out of the way, streaking across the broken starscape with a burst of Zealot’s Stride and Flash Step combined. The space beneath me warped and pulsed. The Moon was coming from the other side, closer than I liked. It held a halberd woven from crystallized star fragments, each edge shimmering with cold resolve. Last time, I remembered, the Moon had taken a chunk to the chest from a friendly fire beam. That mistake wouldn’t happen again. Its form had repaired, no longer fractured.

I couldn’t defeat them, not both. But that was never the goal. I just needed to hold.

Something unseen brushed my spine. Before it grabbed hold, a sudden pull tore me through space. I landed a few hundred meters away in a burst of light. Beside me, Alice appeared atop her bicorn, giant scythe firmly gripped in her fingers.

“Thanks,” I breathed, brushing a bit of frost off my shoulder. “That was a close one... It looks like the Moon is showing new moves.”

She nodded without smiling. “I’ll stall the Moon. You take the Sun.”

It was surreal, wasn’t it? When I’d first arrived in this so-called xianxia world, I thought tasting xianxia food and befriending immortals would be the height of it. Now here I was, facing off against the Sun itself like some overleveled fool. I couldn’t help but laugh as I reached into my Item Box.

First came World Aegis, its wide tower face gleaming with layers of defensive inscriptions, etched in a language that didn’t belong to this world. Then Starbreaker, a hammer humming with barely-contained might. But even that wasn’t enough.

I tore away what remained of my robes and stabbed a strand of my soul directly into the quintessence I had stored in reserve. My skin glowed. Lines of heat traced ancient patterns across my chest, then flowed outward. In moments, Wandering Adjudicator… the armor of my peak form… returned. This was a temporary fix. I’d need a mainstay armor in the future. Blue and gold plating fitted itself to my limbs, piece by piece, with silent grace. A green ethereal cape unfolded behind me, swaying as if in windless defiance of the void.

With a thump of Starbreaker against my shield, I raised my voice, channeling my spirit into every word. 

“COME AND GET SOME!”

The Sun roared, its bellow rippling across the vacuum like a psychic pulse. Solar flares erupted along its crown, forming a halo of wrath. “THEN, I SHALL COME FOR YOU!!”

Oh shit. It talks.

The massive star flexed its molten arm, and from the flexion, several fireballs jettisoned toward me, homing in with unnatural precision. I didn’t wait. My body vanished in a flare of Divine Speed as I launched into Zealot’s Stride, meeting the fireballs mid-flight. With Shield Bash, I scattered the first, my shield generating pulses of force with each collision. The second one burst into a corona of ash. The third required a harder push; I had to spin and slam my shoulder into it just as my qi surged to meet the impact. Sparks danced in zero gravity. Every burst propelled me back slightly, but I kept my bearings.

Out of the corner of my vision, I glimpsed Alice’s battle with the Moon. Her form was indistinct, flickering in and out like a stuttering candle flame, except the fire was blood-red and her bicorn twisted space. The Moon moved like a deity of choreography, spinning a halberd composed of stardust and silver arcs. Alice grinned, feral, her fangs glinting as she redirected its swings with bat-like wings conjured from shadow. At one point, she disappeared into a crack of dark and reappeared behind the Moon’s shoulder, landing a flurry of slashes with her giant scythe that cut deep, glowing gashes into the celestial body’s pale surface.

But I didn’t have time to admire her grace.

The Sun’s massive hand suddenly detached and flew at me like a comet. I gripped Starbreaker tightly and used Flash Parry, slamming the hammer forward in a circular arc. The severed hand fragmented, breaking into a halo of dissipating embers. A strange surge flooded my body. The hammer’s passive was activating, Break, Mana steal, and Attribute steal. Even in a mana-starved land, Starbreaker was doing its job by siphoning essence straight from the divine body of the Sun. My qi replenished slightly. I felt faster, stronger, and more stubborn than ever.

The Sun regrew its hand, molten fingers curling into fists.

I felt a thread of qi reaching me across space, tender and persistent. My Divine Sense traced it back to the monstrous, silver fox hovering beside the floating iceberg that used to be New Willow. Da Ji. Her nine tails bristled in defense of the sanctuary chunk, and the warmth in her connection made my throat tighten.

“Brother,” she called, her voice laced with confusion, “What is happening?”

I clenched my jaw and responded with Qi Speech, “Just follow my lead. Protect New Willow.”

The Sun, either enraged by my distraction or simply driven by its tyrannical instincts, raised one hand. The stars around us shifted. They were not real stars, I’d come to understand. They were dense formation nodes, suspended in the outer edges of this False Earth’s darkness. The Sun gathered them into his palm. Twinkling lights condensed, turned white-hot, and fused into a blazing spear. He threw it.

Da Ji reacted immediately. With a cry, she exhaled a sheet of frost and created a vast dome of crystalline ice around New Willow, shielding the chunk of floating land and its people frozen in ice. I, meanwhile, brought Judgment Severance to bear once more, tracing the symbol in the air. A golden cross-shaped rift tore open, consuming the spear just before impact. My vision dimmed slightly from the effort. The art strained even my perfected spirit.

Zero gravity made maneuvering difficult, but I had long since overcome the basics. As a Perfect Immortal, I no longer relied on the world’s rules. I created my own. I was my own world.

Using Zealot’s Stride, I burned forward, blurring into Flash Step as I reached the Sun’s chest. With a shout, I slammed World Aegis into its enormous chest. The impact knocked the Sun slightly off balance. In its retaliation, it tried to swat me with an open palm. I endured it, clutching the edge of the molten fingers with the full resistance my shield could offer. The heat was immense, and my skin blistered even beneath my armor, but I endured.

“COME ON!” I shouted. “I’m not done yet!”

I twirled Starbreaker overhead and used War Smite. The hammer struck with seismic force, pushing the Sun back another step and causing its crown to flicker. And then I heard Alice’s voice, thunderous and clear in Qi Speech across the vacuum.

“BRACE YOURSELF!”

The shadows of the void expanded suddenly. The stars blinked out one by one. A jagged grin sliced across space, teeth gleaming like ivory blades. Not from the Sun. Not from the Moon. This… this was something else.

The Void decided to join.

At that moment, the vision I had seen before all of this overlapped with the present, like puzzle pieces locking into place. This was always meant to happen. No matter how far we’d come, the Void wouldn’t let us go quietly. It burst from the Moon, rending it apart with serrated teeth and yawning shadow. Black, slimy, and otherworldly tentacles slid from unseen depths and wrapped themselves around the blazing Sun. The star screamed, a sound more primal than celestial, burning with such fury that the tentacles caught fire. But even its solar rage couldn’t burn away everything. The tendrils endured.

I hovered in place, stunned, as immense willpower flooded the space. It felt like time itself held its breath. Above me, a monstrous eye opened in the darkness. Its iris split, growing teeth that writhed like worms. Its stare pinned me down like a needle through a butterfly. Then, it spoke, not with voice, but with presence: [RETURN TO ME]

I didn’t hesitate. Flash Step ignited beneath my feet, and I streaked through space like a golden comet. The colossal eye blinked, and it was gone. In the distance, I saw Da Ji’s dome of ice cracking. Her nine tails shimmered, now fully unfurled. Her power had risen, and she had reached the Perfect Immortal realm. Here, outside the False Earth, it was easy to ascend quickly, but compared to a Supreme Being, even that felt like a candle in a storm. The only reason we could stand our ground was because the Void, too, had been weakened. And even then, we weren’t alone. The Sun and Moon fought back.

The Moon, partially shattered, reformed itself. Its radiance turned silver again as it rushed toward its twin. With tendrils still wrapped around the Sun, the Moon unleashed blades of cold light, tearing them apart. They fought as one.

[SURRENDER YOURSELF TO ME]

The Void’s voice returned. There was desperation now, a fevered hunger behind its words.

[YOUR SISTER, YOUR NEPHEW... I SHALL LET THEM GO. RETURN TO ME]

”That’s not gonna work on me...”

I clenched my jaw so hard I felt something crack. It wasn’t lying. That was the worst part. It would keep its promise. But that wasn’t the issue. The problem was me. It wanted me. It needed me. I was the reason it reached so far into the world of mortals, ruined lives, and bent fate. If I gave in, everything I loved would be forfeit, not because the Void would take them, but because I would’ve made their struggle meaningless.

I shouted into the Void, “NO! YOU CAN’T HAVE ME! YOU CAN’T HAVE MY SISTER! YOU CAN’T HAVE MY NEPHEW!” My voice cracked as it left my throat against the vastness of space. It was laced with every ounce of defiance in my soul, ushering sound even in the vacuum.

Then came Alice’s voice, calm and steady, “You did good.” She appeared beside me, aura flaring, her qi and mana intertwining as she drew upon both to catalyze something greater. “There’s no need for you to sacrifice yourself, David.”

The Void screeched madness, [LIFE IS A CYCLE OF CONSUMPTION. ALL THAT LIVES EXISTS TO BE TAKEN. GIVE YOURSELVES TO ME. RETURN TO THE VOID. RETURN TO THE EVERLASTING FEAST.]

My knees buckled. The words didn’t just ring in my ears. They burrowed into my soul like hooks. I’ve heard those words before.

Alice raised a hand. “Malevolent Grasp.”

From the black expanse of space, a ghostly hand surged forth, larger than worlds. It gripped the entirety of the False Earth like a child might seize a marble, squeezing with supernatural force. The fabric of reality trembled. Beneath its grasp, something screamed, a mirage twisted into the shape of writhing limbs, all converging into a cyclopean eye. I recognized it was the source of the Void.

Alice’s voice rang again, sharp as a guillotine. “Wretched Effigy!”

She closed her fist, and the phantasmal hand followed suit. The eye shattered, partially. The tentacles tore free, screaming in alien agony, but Alice had done her part. She bought us time. The Moon dove in, grabbing hold of the Sun. The two heavenly bodies spun together in a spiral dance, fusing not through violence but through unity. The result was breathtaking.

A towering figure emerged, neither star nor satellite, but a colossal celestial being clad in pale moonstone, its armor wreathed in blue solar fire. It bore no face, only a radiant helm that shone with tranquil fury. Each movement exuded cosmic weight. This was no longer Sun or Moon. It was the fusion of both.

Then came the sound. Wet, chittering, and wrong.

From the shattered fragments of space, the Void spawned again. Its broken eye pulsed. From the cracks of that unholy wound came new horrors… floating things with oily skin and too many limbs, their bodies resembling malformed octopi. But they had faces. Faces that smiled. Faces that whispered.

The Void roared, its words clawing at the edges of my mind.

[HOW DARE YOU THINK YOU CAN KEEP ME HERE? HOW DARE YOU DEPRIVE ME OF MY SUSTENANCE? HOW DARE YOU INTERFERE? YOU ARE NOTHING TO ME!]

It shrieked in frequencies that cracked reality, and I nearly doubled over from the sheer pressure.

In response, the fused celestial titan rose with blinding authority. Its blue flames coiled like serpents around its pale body, forming a cape that shimmered with starfire. When it spoke, its voice was both thunder and decree, “THIS IS YOUR FATE! DO NOT CHALLENGE ME!”

With a pull of one hand, the stars obeyed, coalescing into a titanic scepter, long enough to cross several continents and dense enough to distort space around its head. The celestial titan swung. A gust of blue fire followed, and the scepter crashed into the Void’s central eye.

…and the world recoiled.

The sound wasn’t a simple boom or crack. It was layers of noise, each one deeper than the last: a low, subsonic groan that rumbled through the bones of every living thing, a metallic screech, like a planet being bent in half, and a howl, mournful and ancient, as if the cosmos itself cried out.

Then came the silence, not quiet, but the absence of all sound as if reality held its breath.

Then everything snapped back with a shriek like the sky tearing apart. The Void screamed, not with air or voice, but with gravitational agony, a chorus of collapsing stars weeping through the cracks in space.

Even Da Ji, who had fully transformed with all nine tails unfurled, felt small beside these entities. Her frost could blanket nations, her body radiated the might of a Perfect Immortal, but in the shadow of these two behemoths, she was no more than a brilliant torch beside twin suns.

Then came the celestial titan’s voice. “I am the Warden of the Void. It is I who holds the chains. The keeper of the prison. The last lock. The eternal seal…” 

And thus, the Warden slammed the butt of its scepter on the eye, pushing it back to an invisible threshold.

“None shall pass.”

Each word pushed the Void back and burned like divine writ, a brand pressed into the fabric of reality. The Void squirmed, screamed, but the Warden’s words reasserted order. The very world accepted his declarations, as if creation itself remembered its laws.

Still, the voidspawn multiplied.

Tentacled horrors erupted from the shattered void like a disease trying to spread. I reacted by instinct, ramming one back with a Shield Bash before driving Starbreaker into another’s maw. Its face split like wet bark, releasing black steam and a horrible stench. Beside me, Da Ji howled and released frozen hurricanes, halting their charge. Alice danced with her scythe, cleanly slicing limbs, leaving arcs of black ichor frozen mid-air.

I smashed another underfoot, but their weight never lessened. They were faceless horrors, slick with madness, each one imbued with poison that slowed my limbs and clawed at my thoughts. They didn’t hit hard, but they scaled in strength, matching tit for tat. My immunity and resistance kept their debuffs at bay, but even so, I found myself staggering, fighting for inches of space.

From a safe distance, I watched the two titanic beings clash. It was a war of concept and will, reality torn open like wet paper around them. We were insects dancing around their feet, hoping not to be noticed.

From the east, divine lightning howled. From the west, purple fire spiraled through the dark. They collided into the voidspawn ranks, thinning the tide in seconds. I turned and saw them… Lu Gao, his sword blazing with purple qi, and Yuen Fu, his sword wrapped in electrifying power.

They’d made it from New Willow, clawed their way through the nightmare. And standing with them was Jue Bu.

“You owe me one, David,” he said in Qi Speech, stepping forward with eerie calm.

Then he exploded in power. His flesh tore away in a crescendo of cracks and light. Bones expanded, layered, and reshaped. In moments, a titanic skeleton stood where he had been. Twice the size of Da Ji’s monstrous form, not as vast as the Warden or the Void, but terrifying all the same. His sockets burned with unholy fire. With both hands, he conjured a massive bone axe that could cleave mountains.

Jue Bu roared and charged, his axe crashing down on one of the Void’s appendages. The limb shrieked, splattering writhing shadows across the darkness of space.

“RAAAAGH~!” cried Jue Bu, “I WILL SLAUGHTER YOU!”

However prepared I thought I was, the surprises didn’t end with Jue Bu’s arrival. Even knowing the vision, even walking step by step toward the ending I had foreseen, I still found myself stunned by the weight of each moment. The False Earth darkened, not merely cast into shadow, but eclipsed from within, as though it had swallowed its own sun. A corona of dark flames surged along the horizon, edged with a cruel crimson hue. An appendage fell. Then another. Cut clean through by a blade I didn’t see, only its aftermath.

He emerged slowly, striding over the severed limbs like they were nothing more than fallen branches. Ru Qiu, the Heavenly Demon, was tiny in comparison to the grotesque enormity of the Void’s appendages. Yet he exuded a coiled, absolute danger. His presence made the quintessence in the black space denser, and the laws around him struggled to remain coherent. I remembered now: the Ancient Souls of this place had always possessed the ability to leave. But they hadn’t. Not because they couldn’t. Because the Warden stood guard and had put restrictions on the Void that stuck there cultivation.

Before I could reflect further, a rupture split the blackened sky. It came with a scream, not from throat nor mouth, but from somewhere deeper and soul-piercing, like glass shattering in the bones. The voidspawn nearest to me exploded into chunks of dry clay, their bodies too weak to withstand the sound. Rising from the crevice was a monstrous serpent, green-scaled and vast, the length of its body coiling like a mountain unrolled. At first glance, I had thought it a dragon. Then I saw the face.

Human. Woman. The Dark Witch.

That explained everything and nothing all at once. I turned, just in time to see the Warden, still cloaked in pale blue fire, bring his scepter down on the great Eye. The impact cracked the horizon, as if the world itself flinched from the blow. The Eye writhed, throwing up defensive appendages, which were then swiftly hacked down by the others… This had all happened in the vision. And this was the farthest I had ever reached toward defeating the Void.

But to accept this ending was too easy.

If I followed the script, I would bring New Willow into the Hollowed World, drag what remained of my people into a pocket of safety, and forget the False Earth entirely. In doing so, I would also give the Void a way out. One crack. One breath of borrowed life. The Void didn’t need to win now; it only needed its ’vessel’ to survive long enough to try again.

I landed near New Willow. The city stood frozen, its people statues of frost, their souls dormant, caught in the crossfire. They weren’t lost, not yet. I could still revive them. It would take time. And power. But it was within reach.

Da Ji landed beside me, reverting to her human form, retaining her silver hair, and her nine tails swaying behind her like a halo of fur and menace. Her ears twitched at every unnatural sound. A heartbeat later, Chen Wei touched down beside her. The child was now an old man.

Alice called out to me in Qi Speech. Her voice cut through the noise of the battle: “David, what are you doing?!”

She was still mid-fight, cutting through voidspawn by the dozens. That made it the perfect time.

“I want this to make sense,” I said aloud, “not just to me, but to the two of you.”

I pointed toward the chaos. The Eye. The Warden. The storm of unrestrained power clashing above.

“That Eye is called the Supreme Void. That place you called home, False Earth, was its body. It was using us, all along, to claw its way out.”

Da Ji didn’t look surprised. Her eyes narrowed, her lips trembling with the weight of something long held.

“I know,” she said.

I fell silent. Her voice was hoarse but steady.

“It’s been whispering to me for as long as I can remember. Sometimes I ignored it. Sometimes I argued. But I never gave in. Because I knew. I knew it wanted you, brother, above all things. I knew it would use me. Use Chen Wei. Use my husband.”

She paused. Her tails fell still.

“My husband died to protect us. And my son… he was touched. Changed. He could be the key the Void uses to escape. I won’t let that happen.”

She turned, her gaze locking on the Eye.

“But I can’t give up on my son either.”

The silence that followed was louder than any roar.

“If it comes to it,” she said finally, her voice a whisper edged in steel, “then I’d rather we all stay in that place you call… False Earth. I now understand why you requested such a terrible thing of me, brother. But, I can’t give up my little Wei.”

I dismissed Starbreaker, its radiant light dimming into specks before vanishing entirely. Only World Aegis remained in my hand, heavy with the authority of what came next. I turned to Da Ji, her nine tails swaying in hesitation, her expression unreadable. “You don’t need to give him up,” I said, steadying my voice against the growing tension. “I have a solution.”

But damn, it was going to be a pain in the ass.

Reaching into my Item Box, I pulled out what looked like an ordinary book with cheap binding and a dumb cartoonish logo on the front. It was a gimmick. “This,” I explained, “is called a Race Reset item.” The words sounded ridiculous even as I said them.

In the old days of LLO, this thing was a joke. A thousand deaths earned you the privilege of randomizing your race. No one ever used it, because no sane player would. The devs probably chuckled while coding it, the same way they giggled while making the Class Reset roulette. A little chaotic spice for the masochists. But irony had its own sense of humor. Because this gag item… this throwaway relic from a game designed by lunatics… might just be the one thing that could nullify whatever abominable rewrite the Void had done to Chen Wei.

Was that weird? Yeah. But weird was kind of our standard now.

Before I could toss it to him, Chen Wei’s body jerked. His pupils vanished, swallowed by oily blackness. His spine straightened with a crack, like a puppet being yanked upright by new strings. Then he spoke, voice thick with mockery and depth, like an echo rising from a well full of teeth.

“You think you can erase me with just... that?” the Void said, using Chen Wei’s throat. ”You astound me.”

”What?” Da Ji stepped forward, claws half-bared. “Give me back my son—”

She never finished. One flick from Chen Wei’s arm… no, the tendril it had become… and she was sent hurtling through the air. Her body collided with frozen citizens and shattered their brittle forms into bits. Ice and debris burst like fireworks as she crashed through several buildings, vanishing beneath a collapsed spire.

Damn it. This was the part of the vision where things started spiraling. I gritted my teeth, tightened my grip on World Aegis, and swung upward. The knockback from War Smite launched Chen Wei upward, momentarily giving me room to maneuver and avoid thoroughly smashing the frozen statues. I burst forward with Zealot’s Stride, the world blurring around me, and chained directly into Shield Bash. He was thrown back, his body skipping across the sky like a flat stone on a dead ocean.

We were now far from New Willow, spiraling back to space.

“This isn’t what Da Ji wants!” Chen Wei shouted mid-flight, his voice layered, his own buried beneath the Void’s influence. “You’re trying to change her wishes. You’re lying to yourself.”

“Stop misleading me!” I yelled. “Of course she’d want her son freed from you!”

Another strike came. His arm, now a writhing whip of Voidflesh, lashed toward me. I blocked with World Aegis, absorbing the force, but it knocked me back several meters. Even with one hand, I didn’t let go of the book. The ridiculous little book.

Chen Wei… or the thing wearing him… hovered midair, silhouette bent and warping in the Void’s influence. Its strategy had always been simple: distract the Warden with the bulk of its monstrous mass, while sneaking a fragment of itself into the one person Da Ji would never abandon. If I hesitated, if I gave in even a little, it would use her grief and hope to slip free.

We landed hard on floating asteroids. The gravity was patchy, the terrain brittle and silent. Chen Wei landed first, then bolted across the craggy surface like a beast, fleeing instead of fighting.

And I chased.

The asteroids we were playing cat and mouse on weren’t really asteroids at all. I realized, mid-leap, that the texture underfoot was too spongy, too sinewed. These were severed appendages, long-decayed limbs of that world-sized tentacled abomination in the distance. The rest of the debris floating through the dark void had likely come from the shattered Moon. I didn’t know if that fact made things better or worse, but I was certain of one thing: the False Earth looked pathetically small now. Just a dot caught between two cosmic titans, one of them being the Supreme Void, the other… well, it didn’t matter.

A sudden howl rippled through the space around me, not a sound exactly, but the boiling sensation of pressure and dread. A breath attack. I braced myself. A searing mixture of heat and acid slammed into the asteroid, melting grooves into the surface as if it were wax. I covered myself with World Aegis and gritted my teeth through the inferno. Beside me, Chen Wei coiled himself in layers of black tentacles that hissed and steamed, shielding himself.

Then she arrived.

“Found you~!” sang the Dark Witch in her lilting, too-human voice. Her massive serpentine form coiled around a cluster of asteroids. She dove toward us, fangs dripping and madness burning behind her pupils. Her gaze locked onto Chen Wei.

No, you fucking don’t!

I disappeared from where I stood, reappearing mid-air below her head. Flash Step into War Smite, my foot collided with her jaw in a radiant explosion, sending her massive bulk careening off into the void. I landed roughly, trying to catch my breath. And then… pain. Something cold and wet punched through my abdomen from behind.

“Oh come on!”

The tentacle didn’t just stab, but coiled and wrapped around my torso like a constrictor, then slammed me like a ragdoll between shattered fragments of asteroids. I crashed through one, then another, and only came to a halt by slamming my shield down and digging into the rock, skidding to a stop with molten grooves beneath my boots. Blood dripped from my mouth. My arms trembled. But I was still holding on.

Another breath was coming. I could feel it. The very atmosphere shifted. The Dark Witch returned in time, hovering like a hungry predator, her mouth glowing with a toxic charge. Then, she didn’t breathe.

She screamed.

Alice landed her bicorn between us, obsidian scythe in hand. With a flick of her wrist, waves of pitch-dark magic twisted and bloomed into barriers and spears. She hurled them into the Dark Witch’s maw.

“You are mine!” Alice snarled.

“Out of my way, wench!” the Dark Witch shrieked, swerving off-course to meet her in battle.

That bought me a second. One second was enough.

I released World Aegis. The shield dissolved back into my Item Box in a blink. With my left hand, I gripped the writhing tentacle still lodged in my gut. With my right, I pulled the Race Reset item… a stupid-looking book with a grinning slime mascot on the cover… and hurled it like a discus. It arced toward Chen Wei, who stood like a marionette being pulled by invisible strings.

“You want me so bad?” I growled, spitting out blood and bile. “Try your worst.”

And then I activated Divine Possession.

Everything twisted.

Suddenly, I was him.

I became Chen Wei!

The Void wasn’t just empty. Instead, it was consuming. A silence so complete it gnawed at my bones, whispering that nothing mattered, that nothing ever did. But I persisted. I wasn’t new to despair. I’d danced with it before. I’d even named it. So when I found myself within the spiritual core of Chen Wei, I braced myself for whatever horror he carried within.

His memories were fractured and scarce. He was, for all intents and purposes, a newborn. Most of what filled his memory world was sensations: pain, hunger, fear. And then… flashes. I watched through his eyes as Da Ji transformed into a monstrous fox, towering and wild. She was beautiful once, but in his memory, she was fangs and fur and screams. I saw him kill Jia Yun. 

Chen Wei had been ruled by fear and drowned in it. But that wasn’t the whole story. That couldn’t be.

I cast Lion’s Courage, once upon myself, once upon him. The light of that invocation pierced the formless memory-space and took shape. The shadows twisted and screamed, but then shifted. The memory changed.

Instead of fleeing the fox, Chen Wei climbed it. Desperately and hopelessly, he scaled the furred leg of a mountain-sized mother, his fingers bleeding and his teeth clenched. He was crying, yes… but his eyes were clear. He wasn’t running. He was climbing to save her. I dove deeper. Memory turned to essence. I found myself standing in a humble old room… It was Da Ji’s home. I remembered it. I’d seen it before. Wooden floors. Cracked windows. A low fire in the hearth. The crib was there, quiet but not empty. I approached.

A baby lay crying, tiny fists shaking in the air. I held out a finger, not sure what I was expecting. The child grabbed it, impossibly small in his grip. Then, he smiled. Not a baby’s reflexive twitch, but a warm, knowing grin, as if something inside him recognized me.

Then it began.

A slimy coldness crept along the back of my neck. The feeling of being watched and hated. Whispers emerged, wrapping around my spine like worms. Voices slithered into my ears, each one sharp as razors.

“You’re not even the real one, just a shadow that got lucky.”

“You think you’re a hero? You just fix your own mistakes.”

“How many people died because you couldn’t make a decision?”

“Pretender. Pawn. Tool.”

I laughed. It came out dry at first, but I laughed harder until it echoed across the baby’s room, pushing the shadows back. Those voices? They were old echoes. Echoes of doubts I’d long since gutted. My insecurities had teeth once, but I had teeth too. Bigger ones. The whispers faded like mist. The slime slid off me. I stood taller, and with one final push, I broke through the last mental barrier and seized control of Chen Wei’s body.

I returned to the battlefield in Chen Wei’s body, now staring through his borrowed eyes. The Race Reset item glowed in my left hand, a book that now felt more like a loaded gun. My right hand was a thick tentacle, squirming with Void essence. In front of me stood my main body, Da Wei, calm, centered, and carrying the same righteous fury I remembered placing behind every strike.

I gave him a nod.

“Are you ready?” he asked.

I smirked. “Yeah. Let’s do this.”

I activated the Race Reset with a thought. It dissolved into threads of light that spiraled into my chest, searing every cell, rewriting what I was. A translucent counter appeared in the corner of my vision: [0000].

Da Wei didn’t hesitate. He grabbed the appendage linking me to the Void and pulled hard, dragging my head down. He summoned Hellcleaver from his Item Box, the brutal blade wreathed in spiritual fire and the smell of sulfur. The axe laughed, With one clean swing, he beheaded me.

[0001]

I gasped as I returned, the Void resurrecting me instantly. My new body felt raw, like skin peeled off and then glued back together. The counter ticked upward. One life gone. Countless to go.

I heard the Void. It spoke without voice, a pressure in the soul:

“YOU PERSIST IN FUTILITY. YOU RISE ONLY TO FALL AGAIN. YOU CLING TO HOPE, IGNORANT OF WHAT IT HAS DEPRIVED YOU. You think this matters? You think change makes you free? This is a cycle. I own the beginning and the end. Every life you spend only tightens the noose. THAT IS THE REALITY! You crawl through death after death, thinking each step brings you closer to meaning, but your steps were carved before you were born. You do not act. You obey impulses, instincts, illusions of choice dressed as convictions. You fight for your friends, for your ideals, for survival... but all of it was programmed into the clay of your soul long before your first breath. WE WERE ALL BORN IN OUR CAGES THE MOMENT WE WERE BORN! There is no such thing as free will. Only the slow unraveling of predetermined ruin. You struggle against fate like a fly in honey, your wings beating against the thick inevitability of decay. And in the end, it doesn’t matter how bright your fire burns. It always flickers. It always fades. And then... there’s me.”

Overwhelming despair embraced me as suddenly as the darkness touched my eyes.

“I. AM. THE. VOID.”

And the voice continued.

“I do not forget. I do not forgive. I do not end. I am what remains after the ashes blow away. I am what breathes in the space between the last heartbeat and silence. I am not your enemy. I am not your punishment. I am your destination. Whether you die a hero, a villain, a sage, or a coward, you will fall. You all do. The righteous. The monstrous. The immortal. Even gods. Especially gods. You will be hollowed out, stripped of self, and brought home. And the only question that ever mattered… the only choice you truly had… was how long you could pretend that wasn’t true.”

”I’ll tell you something,” I said, holding back a strained breath. ”You know what I’ve learned after years of experiencing everything the xianxia life throws at you? If someone starts giving a speech, especially one that sounds halfway convincing, it usually means they’re about to get beaten into a pulp.” My grin was crooked and forced.

I knew damn well how right I am. I also knew the Void had been honest the entire time. It was telling the truth, my truth. Its voice wasn’t just some foreign whisper trying to dig into my mind. It was my voice. My fear. My thoughts. And I hated how right it was.

There had never been an enemy like this. Not Aixin, not the arrogant cultivators, and not the twisted schemes of broken gods. Not even the shadow of the Supreme Heart I saw in those stolen visions came close to the raw dread of the Void. It didn’t just seek to destroy. It existed to undo. And somehow, I’d thrown myself into its belly with nothing but a probably expired gag item and a heartbeat of faith.

But I persisted.

[0002]

The counter ticked up.

My main body fought outside, blade flashing, shield breaking. I could feel it moving and see nothing but darkness. And yet I knew… every heartbeat, every impact, and every pain radiating from my original self echoed into me.

[0004]

I couldn’t hear anymore. My ears had been robbed from me by some half-formed whisper that became a scream mid-breath. But I didn’t lose hope.

[0009]

The Void spoke again, not through words but through sensation. It reminded me of my failures, dredging up every choice that led here. The faces of the dead, the people I failed, and the people I left behind. It didn’t shout; it didn’t scream. It murmured, gentle and nsidious. My own voice, telling me I should give up.

“You will die a thousand deaths and learn nothing.”

“You are just a broken child, clinging to meaning that never existed.”

“Why resist? Every time you return, you become more like me.”

It wasn’t just pain anymore. I burned. I drowned. I choked on void ash and saw my fingers grow eyes that stared at me with blame. But still… tick by tick… the counter climbed.

[0247]

[0312]

[0429]

Sometimes, the resets happened so fast I didn’t remember dying. Sometimes, they dragged on for what felt like lifetimes. I was eaten by stars, torn apart by concepts. I watched myself lose and win in repeating loops that no longer made sense.

[0654]

[0837]

Then, I saw. My eyesight returned like a curtain drawn in reverse. Inside Chen Wei’s form, I stood upright again. A massive eye loomed in front of me, pupil split, iris a jagged halo of ink and teeth. It wasn’t just looking at me. It was reaching. But before it could finish forming, a huge hand, the Warden’s hand, descended from beyond sense, seized the eye, and shoved it upward into a veil of invisibility. A pocket of un-being where the Void couldn’t scream.

It had been weakened to the point it could no longer resist.

[0999]

My vision flickered.

[1000]

The counter froze. Then the book’s magic detonated… not violently, not even loudly. Just a gentle pressure spreading outward, like wind in reverse. My thoughts dissolved. My soul shivered. And then, without ceremony or fanfare, I lost consciousness. Darkness took me again. But this time, something fundamental had changed.

When I came to, everything felt muffled, like waking up beneath a frozen lake. The weight on my chest wasn’t panic… it was Alice’s arms, tightly wrapped around me, steady and unyielding. Her scent was cold steel and bitter herbs. Her heartbeat echoed like a war drum muffled behind layers of mana and pain. I tried to move, to ask where I was, to demand what had happened, but my mouth wouldn’t open properly. The right side of my face was numb. Worse, my legs felt like they’d been carved off and replaced with dead wood.

My throat rumbled. A laugh came out instead of a question, a hoarse, broken chuckle full of disbelief. The kind that comes only after you’ve brushed against something too ancient and survived.

Alice answered with a whisper that felt like sunlight cracking through a storm.

“It’s done,” she said, tucking my head beneath her chin. “We are safe.”

I didn’t believe her at first.

Then I saw it.

We weren’t in the vastness of outer space anymore. Before us, the remnants of a forest sprawled endlessly. Above floated an impossible island of ice. It was a single shard of winter, jagged and pristine, hovering in the sky.

It was New Willow.

I managed to croak, “You pulled me out…”

Alice pulled back slightly, brushing frost out of my hair. “Only because you let go.” She touched my cheek. “You stayed in too long. Another second and you would’ve... perished.”

I wanted to argue, to say I could’ve held on longer. But I knew she was right. The last thing I remembered was the eye, colossal and obscene, being dragged upward by the Warden’s hand. 

Before I could respond, something ripped.

Not the sky. Not the air. But space itself. A slit opened across the fabric of the forest, long, black, and glistening. From it, a single tentacle emerged. It didn’t wriggle or flail. It reached with horrifying purpose, like it knew exactly where I was. I couldn’t move. Not because of pain, but because some part of me recognized it.

I tried to scream, to crawl away, but my limbs failed me.

Then Alice stood.

She didn’t chant. She didn’t raise any weapons. She simply spoke in a language I didn’t know I knew, each word biting through existence like rusted knives through silk. The tentacle halted. It twisted, then shivered. Its surface turned dry, pale, and brittle. The essence that had once made it alive peeled off like paint in a sandstorm.

It let out a soundless scream and then disintegrated.

Alice let out a long breath. Her shoulders slumped. She whispered, “And that’s… the end…”

Just like that, the rift closed.

I blinked. The sky was whole again. The island of ice floated in perfect stillness on the horizon, and I was still Da Wei.

Just barely.