Immortal Paladin

The Great Beast behind us had not finished its transformation yet, but the pressure pouring off it already made reality scream. Ru Qiu and I ran across the blackened continent as ruptures spread through the earth beneath our feet. The land itself was made of corpses fused together into a diseased crust of flesh and bone. Millions of hollow eyes rolled beneath the surface while rotten mouths opened and closed in maddened unison.

“GIVE UP!”

“YOU’RE ALREADY DEAD!”

“RUN FASTER, LITTLE GODS!”

“WE’LL EAT YOUR BONES TOO!”

The entire continent sang and cussed its heart out in a choir of insanity. Some voices laughed hysterically. Others sobbed. Others moaned in pleasure every time the Great Beast devoured another stretch of corpses behind us. The sound drilled into my skull hard enough to make my vision blur.

Ru Qiu remained ahead of me, his Supremacy Trait amplifying his speed to absurd levels. Even then, I could feel my existence tearing itself apart after what I had done earlier. Cracks spread through my Divine Spark. My soul felt thinner. Every heartbeat came with a backlash that gnawed chunks off my existence.

Then the roar came.

The entire world shook.

I glanced back through my Ophanim despite the agony exploding through my eyes. Blood streamed down my cheeks immediately as forbidden sight flooded my mind. The Great Beast had finally emerged fully from the cocoon of flesh behind us.

Seven heads.

Ten horns.

Ten crowns.

Its body resembled a leopard swollen to continental size, but its paws belonged to a monstrous bear capable of crushing mountains effortlessly. Each of its lion-like mouths opened wide enough to swallow cities whole. The crowns atop its heads burned with dark authority as the creature devoured the continent beneath it greedily. Every corpse consumed caused its body to expand further.

It was still growing.

“Da Wei!” Ru Qiu shouted. “Hurry up! Use Divine Possession on me and do that fusion shit again!”

I immediately activated the spell.

Nothing happened.

I tried again harder, forcing Divine Qi through the pathway.

Still nothing.

The Divine Possession refused to manifest. Something blocked it entirely. Either the ability had entered some forced cooldown, or the world itself had locked it away from me.

“I can’t!” I shouted back. “It won’t activate!”

The ground exploded.

An abomination made of fused undead burst upward beneath Ru Qiu with dozens of screaming torsos stitched together into a malformed centipede. Ru Qiu reacted instantly, his transfigured flaming blade flashing in dark arcs. The creature split apart before it could even scream properly. He swung again and again, reducing more undead horrors into chunks while carving a path forward.

The Ophanim forced another vision into my skull.

Two seconds ahead.

My eyes bled harder.

“RU QIU, STOP!”

He turned instinctively.

An enormous paw descended from above.

The impact annihilated the path before us instantly. Flesh mountains erupted skyward while shockwaves tore apart entire sections of the corpse continent. The dead beneath us surged upward like an ocean suddenly coming alive.

I grabbed Ru Qiu by the collar and hurled him upward with everything I had. Then I chased after him while opening my pocket dimension.

“Mighty Duck!”

The xianxia paddle steamer burst forth into existence beneath us, its golden hull smashing through rising corpses while the massive side paddles roared to life. I poured Divine Qi into the vessel violently as we landed atop the deck.

The engines screamed.

Golden formations lit across the ship.

I slammed both palms against the deck.

“Divine Protection.”

“Divine Favor.”

Layers of radiant blessing wrapped around the Mighty Duck moments before the Great Beast lunged after us.

“LAW OF DEATH!” declared the Great Beast.

The Ophanim showed me our deaths two seconds before it happened.

I saw invisible laws descending across reality like execution blades. The vision struck me so hard I collapsed onto one knee and vomited blood across the deck. My Divine Qi dipped violently again as the Ophanim forcefully dragged knowledge into my brain.

“Ru Qiu!” I rasped. “Take the wheel! Dodge the laws!”

“The fuck you mean dodge them?!” he barked. “I can’t see shit!”

I reached upward without hesitation and tore my eye out.

Pain detonated through my skull as blood sprayed down my face. I grabbed the ruined eye and shoved it into Ru Qiu’s eye. Divine flesh connected instantly.

Ru Qiu nearly recoiled. “HOLY SHIT, DA WEI!”

“Share your quintessence with it!” I shouted. “Use the foresight to dodge!”

The moment the Ophanim linked with him, Ru Qiu staggered violently. He saw it now. Invisible currents of death sweeping through reality itself.

I summoned Silver Steel into my hands while activating Divine Forge. The weapon glowed white-gold as I steadily fed True Divine Smite into it layer after layer.

Suddenly, Ru Qiu yanked the wheel hard left.

The Mighty Duck swerved violently.

“LAW OF DEATH,” declared the Great Beast again.

Nothing happened.

The invisible execution line narrowly missed the ship.

I immediately opened my pocket dimension again and tossed another weapon toward Ru Qiu. “Catch!”

He grabbed Soul Sunderer one-handed.

“The ship’s not gonna last long,” I said while forcing more Divine Qi into the engines, “but we have to make it count!”

Behind us, the Great Beast roared endlessly.

“LAW OF DEATH!”

“LAW OF DEATH!”

“LAW OF DEATH!”

Each declaration shook existence itself.

The Mighty Duck zigzagged madly across the corpse continent as Ru Qiu barely dodged the descending laws through the Ophanim’s foresight. Entire sections of reality vanished whenever we missed by inches. Corpses disappeared. Mountains disappeared. Space itself split apart under the authority of death.

Meanwhile, I cast another spell desperately.

“Divine Myriad Nebula.”

A massive golden cloud manifested above the ship. Countless motes of light spread outward like stars born across a newborn cosmos. Each mote contained a Divine Spirit, evolved Mana Souls refined beyond immortality itself. Unlike my exhausted Divine Spark, these spirits remained untouched by the Ophanim’s backlash.

Ru Qiu glanced toward the rear of the ship while steering furiously between death laws.

“Da Wei!” he shouted. “Empower the warp array!”

The Mighty Duck lurched violently again as another Law of Death erased the air behind us.

Ru Qiu bared his teeth.

“Let’s make a jump out of this hell!”

I slammed both palms against the warp array embedded within the Mighty Duck and poured Divine Qi into it desperately. The formation circles glowed gold for a brief moment before dimming again. I forced more power into the array, trying to brute force the activation despite the instability swallowing the ship around us.

Nothing happened.

The formation refused to complete.

I gritted my teeth harder and pushed again.

Still nothing.

“We’re spatially locked!” I shouted over the screaming engines. “The First Layer of the Underworld sealed the surrounding space!”

Ru Qiu barely twisted the wheel in time to avoid another invisible line of death slicing across reality.

“You’re telling me we can’t fucking escape?!” he roared.

“Don’t lose hope yet!”

The Great Beast bellowed again behind us.

“LAW OF DEATH!”

The Mighty Duck swerved violently while chunks of the corpse continent vanished into nonexistence beside us. I continued generating Divine Spirits through Divine Myriad Nebula as fast as possible. Golden motes multiplied throughout the cloud above the ship, each one acting as a reserve battery of untouched power. My Divine Spark was collapsing already. The Ophanim kept consuming me every second I used it.

But if I accumulated enough power?

Maybe I could force a warp.

Maybe.

Ru Qiu suddenly cursed.

“Da Wei! I can’t dodge three seconds ahead!”

Blood streamed nonstop from his borrowed eye now. The Ophanim overloaded his brain exactly as it did mine. The future branched too violently. Too many Laws of Death descended simultaneously.

I inhaled sharply.

“Divine Phantasm of Dreams!”

Illusions exploded outward across the battlefield.

Thousands of phantom Mighty Ducks manifested instantly, scattering across the corpse continent in every direction. False Divine signatures flooded reality as dream constructs copied our movements desperately. The Great Beast hesitated for less than a moment.

Then it declared once more.

“LAW OF DEATH!”

The invisible authority descended.

Entire layers of illusion evaporated instantly.

Then the attack connected with the real Mighty Duck.

All the blessings I placed on the ship shattered like wet paper.

Divine Protection collapsed.

Divine Favor collapsed.

The hull blackened immediately. Rot spread across the golden wood at horrifying speed while the engines screamed in agony. The side paddles decayed into brittle husks as the entire vessel began dying under conceptual death itself.

I activated Dark Veil instantly.

Darkness swallowed Ru Qiu and me.

At the same time, I ripped the warp array directly off the deck before the Mighty Duck fully disintegrated beneath us. The ship collapsed into decaying debris outside the veil while we floated within a sphere of absolute darkness.

Then the Dark Veil began shrinking.

The pressure hit immediately.

The artifact itself was being crushed by the surrounding laws. The sphere constricted rapidly, trying to compact us into nothingness alongside the collapsing reality outside.

Ru Qiu suddenly looked toward me strangely.

“I have a plan,” I said. “Do you trust me?”

He consulted the Ophanim instinctively.

And through the shared connection, I saw what he saw.

A future.

A single successful path.

Ru Qiu laughed weakly despite blood pouring down his face. “That’s a fucking terrible plan.”

“It works.”

“Barely.”

“Still works.”

The sphere trembled violently around us.

I grabbed the warp formation array tighter.

Then I punched Ru Qiu directly in the chest.

My fist pierced through flesh and bone while Divine Qi surged into the formation array simultaneously. Using the engineering principles I learned from Nongmin and his workshop, I forcibly embedded the warp array around his heart itself. Formation lines spread across the organ instantly like glowing circuitry.

Ru Qiu coughed blood into my face.

“Fuck you,” he wheezed.

Then I tore his heart out.

The Dark Veil shrank harder.

Cracks spread across the sphere.

I held the glowing heart tightly while Ru Qiu remained suspended before me through sheer cultivation alone. Even without a heart, his body still radiated terrifying vitality.

“Let loose,” I told him.

Then I let him fall.

The Dark Veil exploded with turbulence immediately.

Ru Qiu descended through the collapsing darkness like a meteor while countless Laws of Death converged toward him. He roared and unleashed everything he had left.

Sword intent erupted.

Supremacy flooded the battlefield.

The Great Beast lunged downward to meet him.

At the same time, I cast another spell.

“Spell Resonance.”

“Divine Word: Raise.”

I poured the resurrection authority directly into Ru Qiu’s severed heart. The formation array fused with the Divine Word instantly as the heart pulsed violently within my hand.

Outside, Ru Qiu collided with the Great Beast.

The impact tore apart entire sections of the corpse continent.

Then the Dark Veil finally shattered.

Reality flooded back in.

And I saw Ru Qiu getting ripped apart by a Law of Death.

His torso vanished first.

Then his left arm.

Then half his skull.

But before the law completely erased him, Ru Qiu swung Soul Sunderer with monstrous force and severed one of the Great Beast’s horns clean off.

The creature howled.

I hurled the heart with everything I had.

The tiny object shot across the battlefield like a comet while I activated the warp array embedded inside it using every remaining drop of Divine Qi I possessed.

Because it was small…

Because the spatial lock could not fully grasp something that tiny…

The warp succeeded.

The heart disappeared.

I exhaled shakily.

Then the Great Beast focused entirely on me.

I caught Soul Sunderer midair while gripping Silver Steel in my other hand.

And I fought.

The battle became a blur of blood and death.

I dodged until I couldn’t.

I cut through descending laws with Divine Smite until my arms split apart from recoil. I carved chunks off the Great Beast while its seven mouths roared endlessly into the underworld. The corpse continent collapsed further beneath every exchange.

But I lasted about as long as Ru Qiu did.

Not longer.

A Law of Death descended from above faster than the Ophanim could process.

The law touched me.

My body came apart instantly.

Not flesh.

Not soul.

Existence itself.

I felt my arms disappear first. Then my chest unraveled into fragments of fading light. My thoughts slowed as death consumed every layer of my being simultaneously.

And then, I died.

…

..

.

[POV: Ru Qiu]

A lone heart floated silently beyond the borders of the First Layer of the Underworld.

The organ drifted through the dark void while countless formation lines glowed across its surface like burning veins. Despite being separated from its owner, it continued beating furiously, each pulse growing louder and heavier until the surrounding space itself trembled.

Then the Spell Resonance embedded within activated.

“Divine Word: Raise.”

Radiant light exploded outward.

Flesh regenerated rapidly around the heart. Bones formed. Veins spread. Organs reconstructed themselves alongside torrents of Divine Qi and quintessence. Within moments, Ru Qiu’s body fully reformed from nothingness, his naked figure suspended against the endless darkness outside the First Layer.

He inhaled sharply.

Pain struck his mind immediately.

Ru Qiu looked downward instinctively toward the First Layer of the Underworld. The colossal continent below had changed even further during his escape. Endless blackened corpses slowly merged together into grotesque masses while flesh mountains crawled toward the Great Beast like offerings toward a god.

The Great Beast itself had grown much larger.

Its seven crowned heads rose beyond the horizon now while entire continents disappeared into its mouths. The severed horn Ru Qiu cut off earlier had already begun regenerating.

Then a voice echoed faintly through his head.

“Let’s escape. I didn’t think it would be this bad. We need to hurry.”

Ru Qiu froze briefly.

The ache around his eye intensified.

Only then did he realize the Ophanim still remained embedded within his socket. Through the eye, fragments of Da Wei’s lingering will continued echoing toward him weakly. The connection felt unstable, exhausted, almost fading.

Ru Qiu clicked his tongue.

“You idiot,” he muttered.

Then he turned and fled immediately.

The space beyond the First Layer swarmed with countless drifting vessels, wandering cultivators, scavengers, and players trying to navigate the Underworld safely. Ru Qiu spotted the nearest warp-capable ship within minutes.

And took it.

He landed directly onto the vessel’s deck hard enough to crack the floorboards.

The players aboard immediately recoiled.

“What the hell?!”

“Why’s this guy naked?!”

“HAHAHAHA! LOOK AT THIS MAN!”

“Brother, at least steal some pants first!”

Ru Qiu drew his dark flames.

The laughter died instantly.

“I’m taking your ship,” Ru Qiu said flatly. “Get off.”

One player frowned. “The hell you mean your—”

Ru Qiu released a sliver of his aura.

The deck ruptured beneath everyone instantly.

“I said,” he repeated coldly, “I’m taking your ship.”

Nobody argued afterward.

The players fled the vessel frantically while cursing him nonstop. One of them still shouted insults about his naked body before jumping overboard onto another nearby craft.

Ru Qiu ignored all of them.

He found spare clothes inside the ship eventually, throwing on whatever fit while heading directly toward the warp chamber. He felt too exhausted to even weave clothes through quintessence. The moment he touched the controls, he could feel Da Wei’s condition worsening through the Ophanim.

Exhaustion.

Instability.

Existence decay.

Da Wei was fading.

Ru Qiu immediately flooded the warp arrays with quintessence far beyond safe operating limits. The ship screamed violently as the formation overloaded.

Then it warped.

Again.

Again.

Again.

Ru Qiu abused every vessel he stole afterward the same way. Once one ship’s arrays burned out, he abandoned it and seized another immediately. He crossed vast stretches of the Underworld relentlessly while the Ophanim continued transmitting fragments of Da Wei’s deteriorating state.

By the time Ru Qiu reached the Hollowed World, the connection had become frighteningly faint.

He descended from the final ruined vessel like a storm and immediately searched for Alice.

Fortunately, she found him first.

Alice froze the moment she saw the Ophanim embedded in his eye.

“Where’s Da Wei?” she asked sharply.

Ru Qiu answered immediately. “Dead.”

Her expression paled.

“We need Jue Bu,” Ru Qiu continued. “Now.”

The three of them soon gathered inside a heavily fortified chamber beneath the Hollowed World. Spiritual stones lined every wall while an enormous dragon vein surged beneath the formation floor like a living river of energy.

Alice looked visibly shaken.

“What happened?” she asked quietly.

Jue Bu remained calmer than both of them. The man observed Ru Qiu carefully before speaking in an objective tone. “Explain the situation precisely.”

Ru Qiu leaned against the formation pillar tiredly.

“I’d rather have Da Wei explain it himself.”

Without wasting more time, Ru Qiu reached upward and forcibly plucked the Ophanim out of his socket. Blood streamed down his face immediately as he handed the eye toward Alice carefully.

The Ophanim still pulsed faintly with residual existence.

Alice held it gently.

Then she spoke.

“Divine Word: Raise.”

Jue Bu immediately added his own power.

“Reincarnation Scroll of Blasphemous Continuance.”

Massive formations activated throughout the chamber simultaneously. Ru Qiu stepped forward and added his quintessence into the resurrection process without hesitation. The dragon vein beneath them erupted violently as absurd quantities of energy flooded toward the Ophanim.

Then the drain began.

The dragon vein dimmed rapidly.

Entire sections of spiritual stone cracked apart and turned gray. The resurrection consumed power at horrifying speed because Da Wei’s existence had been damaged too severely. Ordinary resurrection methods could not fully grasp him anymore.

Even the Ophanim itself trembled under the strain.

But slowly…

Very slowly…

A body began forming from the eye.

Bones emerged first.

Then flesh.

Then Divine pathways.

Da Wei reconstructed himself gradually within the center of the formation while residual Divine Qi wrapped around him weakly. His cultivation remained mostly intact somehow despite the catastrophic damage done to his existence.

Finally, his eyes opened.

Da Wei looked around the chamber quietly.

Then he smiled tiredly.

“So,” he said nonchalantly, “what did I miss?”