Immortal Paladin

[POV: David_69]

From the debris and the cloud of dust, a silhouette rose. At first, it was only Da Wei’s severed head, hovering unnaturally. Then tendrils of blood lengthened outward like limbs, grotesque and serpentine, dragging the head upright as though it were a puppet of gore. Silver Steel floated at its side, orbiting the abomination like a loyal guardian blade.

“Fucking hell…” Dave muttered under his breath.

Tao Long reacted first, unleashing another roar of draconic lightning. His scaled chest heaved as his breath lit the sky in a storm of destruction. The torrent rushed down like judgment itself, but the floating head merely pulsed with alien light.

“Judgment Severance.”

A golden rift, in the shape of a radiant cross, split the heavens above. The dragon’s breath vanished into it, devoured without a trace. Tao Long gasped, choking the power back as the cross sealed with finality.

Dave’s claws tensed. Judgment Severance… He remembered that spell. It devoured everything, swallowing mana, qi, quintessence, and even divine arts without bias. Yet even as the head commanded that annihilating spell, its body was regenerating, flesh sprouting like vines from bone, sinews weaving themselves, organs pulsing into being.

“That’s… impossible,” Dave growled. “Judgment Severance should’ve halted any healing in that duration.”

But Aixin persisted. Her laughter rippled through Da Wei’s regenerating flesh. Green and white garments of quintessence wove themselves around the emerging body like silk spun by unseen hands.

When the figure finally stood, it was Da Wei’s form, perfect, whole, and dressed in divine robes. Aixin’s voice purred from his lips. “Oh my… it feels so good to be moving again.”

Dave’s golden eyes narrowed, his beastly irises burning. With the heightened senses of his Divine Transformation, he felt the truth and the unnatural density of that presence. This was not an Ascended Soul. It was beyond even that.

His Lord had told him before: the Aixin he fought back in Losten was merely a fragment. Now, what stood before them was a fragment within a fragment, refined through the stolen vessel of his lord.

Aixin flexed her stolen arms, admiring them with unsettling delight.

Zai Ai landed at Dave’s side, her Raindrop blade orbiting her like an eye of steel. Her voice was steady, but her gaze was wary. “What’s the plan?”

Before Dave could speak, Yi Qiu cracked his knuckles. Flames and blood qi writhed around him, his mane wild, his grin savage. “I’ve been looking for a fight of a lifetime for too damn long. And I can’t believe I’ll find it here. But don’t mistake me… I haven’t forgotten why I came.” His voice roared like a lion. “Aixin! What’s your relationship with the Heavenly Temple!?”

The stolen lips curled into a smile too delicate for the monstrous revelation it carried. “That’s none of your business.”

She trailed a hand across her stolen chest, moaning low, and the sight twisted the stomachs of those who watched. “But really… this body… It’s incredible. So much hidden potential… If I gave this to my master, would he praise me? Care for me? Cherish me?” She shuddered in ecstasy. “No, no, no… I shouldn’t give this to him… I should take it for myself! And then… and then I’ll take my master for myself! Yes… yes! That sounds far more fun!”

Yi Qiu snarled. “Who is this ‘master’ you keep raving about!?”

Aixin spread her arms wide, exalting as though she stood before a congregation. “The most beautiful being in all creation! My master, my devoted ruler… the Supreme Being of Hearts! He cares for all, loves all, and in his great benevolence allows the rest of creation to love him back!”

Her laughter rang across the ruined Nameless City, shrill and intoxicating.

“Disgusting.” Zai Ai spat the word with venom.

She couldn’t have been more wrong. Aixin’s crotch swelled unnaturally, her breath quickening as her devotion to her unseen master twisted into physical arousal. Then, before the eyes of Dave and his companions, the body warped again. Quintessence flickered like a thousand ribbons, reshaping Da Wei’s masculine frame into the form of a woman. The engorged flesh vanished, the contours softened, and the goddess moaned with unsettling delight.

“Ah…” Aixin’s voice trembled, flushed red across ears and cheeks, her body shifting into the feminine fully. “That’s better… I am a woman in mind, body, and spirit, after all.”

Dave’s lip curled, fangs bared. It was wrong, watching his lord’s stolen body defiled in such a way, paraded for mockery.

From within his chest, Da Wei’s voice rumbled through the Animal Soul. “If you need help, you only need to say so… I have enough Manasouls in me to make it work somehow—”

Dave cut him off with a growl. “I mean no offense, my Lord, but I’ve got this handled. You have your battles, and I have mine. Know that my heart is emboldened by courage for the simple reason that I know you are watching. Be at ease, my Lord… and watch me triumph over this foe.”

He raised his golden eyes toward Aixin, but his mind sharpened inward, threading his Divine Sense deeper than ever before. He studied the abomination before him, this consciousness possession technique. He recognized it because his lord had once explained the concept: a fragment of divinity descending into a vessel, usurping body and will. That was what Joan suffered, and what Da Wei’s corpse endured now.

But the question pressed against him like a blade to his throat: where was Aixin’s main consciousness? Was it bound within Joan, or here in this stolen shell? If the latter, then they faced only a splinter of her might.

In his probing search for a way to save Joan, Dave had uncovered two methods of severance. The first was annihilation, destroying the vessel entirely, body and soul, incinerating it until nothing remained. His Lord had known this way and chosen against it. Killing Joan would never be acceptable.

The second method, however, had once been beyond Da Wei’s reach. But Dave… Dave had walked further, studied deeper, and wrestled with truths buried in the Hollowed World. This method was dangerous, but it was not impossible: kill the intruding ‘consciousness and power’ within the vessel, without destroying the vessel itself, through the application of an Immortal Art.

The Animal Soul stirred within him.

“You’ve grown,” Da Wei murmured, voice weighted with both pride and regret. “You’ve reached a height I wouldn’t have foreseen before. You learned these methods on your own from the Hollowed World’s secrets. I failed you. I knew those methods existed… but I never told you. I regret it.”

“It happens,” Dave replied in his heart, steady and quiet. “Maybe it was fate. We didn’t exactly have many opportunities to talk after you died.”

“I should have at least spoken through the Animal Soul, given you some thread of knowledge—”

“And give me false hope?” Dave interjected sharply. “I know you, Lord, more than you know yourself. Because I’ve been you. I lived you, and you lived me.”

Silence pulsed between them, heavy with unspoken understanding.

Immortal Arts could not be taught, and that was a fact. Harder still was to create them anew. Yet there was another path, an exception to the rule: inheritance. And inheritance was something Dave carried within him, something he gained from his adventures… It was an Immortal Art claimed through ordeal, trial, and near-death. He had not spoken of it, not even to his closest companions. It was his alone, a flame earned through inheritance, etched into his soul.

Dave inhaled once, a golden flare bursting through his nostrils. Then he exhaled, speaking aloud in the language of Qi Speech, clear and resolute to his allies.

“Delay Aixin. I’ll do the rest.”

Theoretically, Dave could have used his Lord’s Immortal Art. But the Immortal Art left to him through Da Wei was of support in nature, meant to heal, shield, and sustain, not to strike down an enemy. Against Aixin, support was not enough to expel her.

Yi Qiu’s body twisted as his veins glowed red, crawling across his skin like molten rivers. His hair lashed behind him, and his eyes burned mad. With a roar, he charged in, fists crashing with enough force to shake stone from the ruins.

Aixin only smiled. She caught Silver Steel from the air and, with a single motion, decapitated him.

Yi Qiu staggered forward, grasping his own severed head, and slammed it back onto his neck with a grotesque laugh. His flesh knitted, blood boiled in reverse, and the wound sealed. “Ga ha ha ha ha! You’ll need more than that!”

Puppet-like arms, red and glistening, as though carved from living sinew, erupted from beneath Aixin’s robes. They coiled around her like a lover’s embrace, trapping her in place. It was Zai Ai’s work!

Overhead, Tao Long’s draconic form descended in a blur of scales and lightning. His massive tail whistled through the air and cracked against Aixin’s chest. The impact sent her hurtling across the ruins like a falling star.

Zai Ai’s voice cut sharply, without hesitation. “Go.”

Dave barely registered it. His focus was already elsewhere, and that was on Joan, lying still on the dais. Her body remained unconscious, but her astral form shimmered into being, standing before him, her hand outstretched.

“Behind you!”

The warning came a second too late. A blade of radiant steel burst from Dave’s back, puncturing clean through his chest.

Aixin’s cold laughter answered it. “It’s a mistake sending only three people to me, you know…”

Dave gritted his teeth, clutching the blade with one hand as divine light poured from his wounds. His left hand shone with healing spells, pouring radiant energy into himself even as the sword twisted.

“Sanctified Resurgence!”

White fire coursed through him as the Ultimate Skill took hold. His health rebounded in a violent surge, and with it came strength, speed, and resilience that towered like a pillar. His body trembled as the buffs stacked onto his frame, pushing him past his limits.

He roared, swinging his clawed hand toward Aixin, only for the sword to twist free and carve through his right arm at the shoulder. Blood sprayed, and then a golden boot struck his ribs. Dave’s body cratered into the stone below, rubble raining down as he gasped for air.

“Toyed with… so easily.”

He forced himself to his feet, but reality pressed sharply in his chest. He was only at [Level 1] of the Ascended Soul, his Divine Transformation borrowed and unstable. In this state, he was an insect scratching at a star.

From the ruins, Aixin’s voice carried, calm and detached. “You sure are resilient, just like your master… We are quite alike, you and I…”

A resounding crash shook the battlefield as Dave culdn’t help it, but look up. Tao Long’s massive dragon body fell and eventually slammed into the earth, blood gushing from scales torn asunder, misting the air crimson. He writhed, thunder crackling weakly across his broken horns.

On the ground, Yi Qiu dragged himself from a pile of rubble as he entered the ruined Summit Hall. His body was crushed, twisted, half destroyed, yet still he laughed. “Ga ha ha ha ha ha! That was something! Woman, marry me! I think I just fell in love with you!”

“Trash.”

Aixin’s eyes narrowed. She flicked her hand, and Silver Steel shot forward like a spear. It punched through Yi Qiu’s skull, pinning him to the stone. His laughter died abruptly.

The possessed goddess turned, her stolen body glowing with quintessence, her smile growing wide as she spread her arms.

“You see? We are not so different, Child of Da Wei. We both live as shadows of the supreme masters we serve. Both of us were molded by circumstances we cannot escape. We are the children of powers greater than ourselves, forever chained by the weight of their existence. Tell me… how can you deny me, when you are me?”

“We are not alike at all…” Dave spat blood as he spoke, his voice ragged but steady. His chest burned from the hole pierced through him, his right arm gone, but his eyes gleamed with stubborn defiance. “From the sound of it, I can confidently say that your master doesn’t love you. But my lord? Ah…” A cough racked his chest, crimson flecking his lips. “…I think he cares for me a bit too much.”

Aixin’s expression warped, disbelief curdling into fury. “How dare you think of me as your lesser!?”

She extended her hand, summoning Silver Steel with a commanding gesture. The blade trembled, pulling against the ground and Yi Qiu’s skull, but it would not budge.

“What…?”

The air rippled. From within Dave, golden light burst forth. A dog, radiant and shaggy, its tail wagging fiercely, erupted from his body. The Animal Soul in the shape of a Golden Retriever bounded across the ruined dais and lunged at Aixin.

“Divine Possession!”

The dog merged into her chest like molten light.

Aixin’s body spasmed violently. Her arms jerked, her face twisted. “W–What’s the meaning of this?! I… I—” Her voice faltered, breaking into a gasp as her stolen body convulsed. “I… can’t… move…! Impossible! Da Wei, how are you still alive!?”

She froze mid-step, her limbs locked as if a greater will had shackled her. The Animal Soul wrestled for dominance inside her, its cheerful loyalty and warmth overwhelming the goddess’s fraying consciousness.

Dave staggered, the remnants of his Divine Transformation unraveling around him. His aura dimmed, his strength drained, but his resolve only sharpened. This was the moment. His heart beat once, heavy with purpose.

“Joan,” he whispered, stepping forward with trembling feet. “I am here.”

He invoked the paths of light that had carried him this far. Divine Speed. Zealot’s Stride. Flash Step.

Space folded, and he appeared over Joan’s sleeping form, his body bathed in dying light. His claws shimmered, wrapped in quintessence as he gathered everything from his courage, his despair, and his hope into a single strike.

“Immortal Art—Godslayer!”

His claws plunged down, tearing through Joan’s chest. Blood sprayed in an arc, staining his fur as her astral cry echoed against the broken sky.

“NOOOOO!” Aixin’s scream tore out of Da Wei’s possessed throat, raw and desperate. But the voice fractured mid-sound, cut short as her stolen body collapsed like a puppet with its strings severed.

The form twisted, contorting grotesquely before shrinking. The tall and proud features of Da Wei warped into the shape of a golden wolf. The wolf shivered, shrank further into a golden retriever, then dwindled again until at last what remained was a small, trembling golden puppy lying unconscious on the cracked dais.

“...Joan,” cried Dave as his consciousness began to fray. “I… I made it…”

With that, the golden radiance in his irises dimmed. He fell forward, collapsing on top of her, unconscious, his weight resting against the one he had sworn to save.