Immortal Paladin

[POV: N’wa]

N’wa woke with a violent retch, dropping to her knees as she vomited. Tears streamed down her face, and her body trembled as the memories of her past life settled into her mind. She had always believed herself more virtuous, more heroic, than the people she had condemned. Now, she understood how little she had known herself. The truth was far worse than she could have imagined.

When she finally looked around, she found herself back in the same room where she had been with Da Wei. The man remained motionless on the sofa, his eyes closed, apparently immersed in Ophanim. Meanwhile, Tao Long sat nearby, engrossed in yet another horse race.

Noticing her awakening, he turned toward her. “So, how did your past life treat you?”

“Did you know about… me?” she asked, her voice hoarse.

“I’ve heard the stories, but I wasn’t there myself. I think just about everyone knows them. If you want to speak with someone who has more direct experience, you have Da Wei and Ru Qiu.” Tao Long paused, studying her expression. “I don’t know what to say, but if it were me, I’d probably feel disgusted with myself, too.”

“You have no idea,” N’wa rasped as she struggled to her feet. “But disgusted? No. I was horrified by that thing.” Her hands clenched at her sides. “She’s a monster.”

Unable to bear the thought of leaving her past unexplored, N’wa sat down and pressed a hand against her left eye, where Da Wei had transmuted Ophanim. She needed to see more. There had to be a reason she had become that way. Something must have twisted her into the person she had seen in those memories. She refused to believe that the monster was all she had ever been.

Closing her eyes, she reached inward and began tracing the path her soul had taken through its previous existence.

“Don’t do it,” a woman warned her from within her mental world.

N’wa opened her eyes.

She stood inside an unfamiliar palace, surrounded by towering jade pagodas. Behind the woman before her lay a broken throne. The stranger had dark hair, charred lips, and unnaturally pale skin. N’wa had no idea where the palace was, yet she knew with absolute certainty that she stood within her own mental world.

“Where is this place?”

“You already know the answer, so why ask?” the woman replied.

N’wa refused to believe it, but there was no mistaking her identity. The Dark Witch. The person she had been in her past life.

What was she doing here? How could she possibly have appeared within N’wa’s mental world?

N’wa drew upon Ophanim, intending to pull herself away from the palace and delve further into her past.

“Immortal Art: Seven Gazes.”

The moment the Dark Witch uttered those words, N’wa found herself back inside the palace, as though she had never left.

“That power is too much for you,” the Dark Witch said. “If you dive too deeply, you will lose yourself, with no path back. I suggest you listen to me before risking your life on a journey you might never survive. You underestimate the dangers of using that eye. There are fates worse than death, and you should know that better than most, because we have lived through one. I can tell you with confidence that the fate we have now is better than what awaits you if you push that eye too far.”

“How bad could it be?”

The Dark Witch raised her hands and began murmuring an incantation beneath her breath.

“If you are so curious, why not have a brief taste of it?”

N’wa blinked.

She found herself suspended in an empty universe, surrounded by an endless void. At first, there was nothing. Then, gradually, she began to perceive the stars, the planets, and the countless celestial bodies scattered throughout existence. Beyond them, she sensed the entirety of creation, its innumerable layers of reality unfolding before her as though the universe had become an open book.

Then the information came flooding in.

Everything she perceived poured into her consciousness at once. The sheer volume of knowledge overwhelmed her mind, soul, and spirit, bringing all three to a complete standstill. She could neither think nor move. Her sense of self threatened to dissolve beneath the weight of an existence far too vast for her to comprehend.

In the next instant, she was back in the palace, standing before the Dark Witch.

“You would have been reduced to a vegetable if those hadn’t been memories reflected through the eye you wield,” the Dark Witch explained. “Even then, you barely managed to endure that brief glimpse.”

N’wa struggled to steady her breathing. “What do you want from me?”

“Revenge.”

“What did I even do to you?”

“Ignorant child, I am you,” the Dark Witch replied. “Why would I seek revenge against myself? I want revenge against our enemies.”

She stepped closer, her expression hardening.

“Cooperate with Da Wei. He is a sword, sharp and unbreakable. You will never be able to wield him, for he is his own person, but he can cut apart the ill fate that has bound and humiliated us. The Yellow Emperor will learn his place, and he will answer for his sins.”

The Dark Witch stopped before N’wa and tapped her forehead.

Through Ophanim, a succession of memories flooded into N’wa’s consciousness, each one carrying fragments of a life she had thought she understood. The memories revealed more than the Dark Witch had intended to convey to Da Wei. They were not merely a message to be delivered but a legacy N’wa herself had been meant to inherit.

Then the palace faded.

When N’wa awoke, she was back in the room, with Da Wei still sitting motionless on the sofa. She rose to her feet and glanced down at herself. She was still wearing her graduation gown.

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She needed a change of clothes.

Nearby, one of the thugs was cleaning up the mess she had made while vomiting. N’wa paid him little attention. Instead, she reached for the mystical eye, carefully removing Ophanim without damaging her actual eye. The borrowed eye returned to its original form as she undid the transmutation that had allowed her to wield it.

“Catch,” she said, tossing it toward Tao Long.

He caught it without difficulty.

“Give it to Da Wei as soon as he wakes up,” N’wa instructed.

“What about you?”

“I have plans,” she answered. “I’m going to do my part. I’ll take care of the Slayer Order problem and investigate the active aspects of the Supreme Void.”

Tao Long regarded her with newfound interest. “I admire the fighting spirit, but don’t you think you’re a little ill-equipped to handle all that on your own?”

“I can handle myself,” N’wa replied confidently.

The memories she had received from the Dark Witch had not been limited to the information intended for Da Wei. Along with the revelations about her past, she had regained fragments of her former abilities and, more importantly, learned how to harness them. She was no longer the same woman who had entered her memories, and she had no intention of remaining helpless while others dealt with the consequences of her past.

“Just to be safe, take this.”

Tao Long offered her a single scale.

N’wa accepted it and examined the object in her palm. The scale was blue, roughly the size of her hand, and bore the character for Tao Long’s name. Beneath its surface, she could sense a faint but unmistakable power.

She immediately understood its purpose. With this scale, she could summon Tao Long from anywhere.

“Thank you,” N’wa said, closing her fingers around the scale.

She had a past to confront, enemies to hunt, and a future to reclaim. This time, she would decide for herself what kind of person she would become.

…

..

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[POV: Hei Mei]

Everyone was doing their part to prepare for the battles ahead, and Hei Mei was no exception. At first glance, she seemed content to spend her days in the grand library, educating herself about the history of this strange world. Normally, she could be found among its shelves, quietly minding her own business. Today, however, she had ventured into the vast desert at the edge of the Tower’s first floor.

There were no signs of civilization here. The endless expanse of sand belonged to the monsters that roamed beneath its scorching skies.

Hei Mei navigated the wasteland with ease, avoiding the desert monsters as she followed an emerald butterfly made of flames. It was the Soulful Guiding Fire, a unique tracking spell her master had taught her. Whenever she had free time, she explored the first floor in search of clues about certain echoes that might prove useful to their cause.

This was not her first visit to the desert, but it was the first time she had felt genuinely optimistic about a lead. Her studies had gradually revealed patterns in the Tower’s history, allowing her to recognize traces that might help her locate specific echoes. This time, she was confident that her deductions had led her to the right place.

The emerald butterfly suddenly plunged into the sand.

Hei Mei stopped and assumed a stance, holding her palm like a sword. She had adapted Divine Smite using the principles preserved in her memories of Yuan Shun. Unlike the original technique, this variation focused on piercing through walls and barriers, allowing its force to reach places that would otherwise remain inaccessible.

“Divine Smite.”

She thrust her hand into the sand.

A faint crack echoed from somewhere deep underground. The ground beneath her began to shift as the sand collapsed inward, revealing a passage into the depths. Hei Mei remained calm as the earth swallowed her. Within moments, she found herself in a dim underground chamber, its darkness briefly illuminated by the emerald butterfly.

Undead monsters filled what appeared to be an ancient burial ground.

Hei Mei raised one hand and unleashed Searing Smite, bathing the subterranean chamber in light. The sudden illumination revealed countless rotting corpses scattered among weathered tombstones and crumbling burial structures. At the center stood a coffin that radiated an ominous presence.

“At ease, you rotten filth.”

She spoke in the tongue of the dead, imbuing her words with necromantic authority. The undead responded immediately, their wills bending to her command as she wrested control of them.

Then the boss monster of this hidden space began to stir.

The coffin shifted, its lid scraping against the stone before sliding aside. A woman wrapped in strips of linen slowly emerged. Her body had been mummified, and golden motes of light flickered within her eyes.

The Tower’s system identified her as the Queen of Destiny.

Most echoes within the Tower had been converted into NPCs, a term Hei Mei had picked up from Da Wei. They retained enough of their original identities to fulfill their assigned roles, even if their memories and personalities had been altered. However, not every echo received such treatment. Some were transformed into monsters instead, their identities buried beneath layers of madness and corruption.

The Queen of Destiny was one such case.

“It’s time for you to join us,” Hei Mei declared. “But first, you need to regain your sanity.”

The Supreme Void must have deliberately turned this particular echo into a monster. Otherwise, there would have been little reason to imprison her in such a place. The fact that the Queen of Destiny had been hidden away suggested that the Supreme Void understood how valuable she might be to Hei Mei and her allies.

Unfortunately for it, Hei Mei had found her.

The Queen of Destiny released a piercing shriek.

Blood trickled from Hei Mei’s ears, but she remained unfazed. She immediately ordered the undead under her control to swarm the monster, forcing it to defend itself against the encroaching horde. One by one, the undead were torn apart, but their deaths served a purpose.

“Corpse Explosion.”

The bodies erupted in succession, unleashing waves of destructive energy that battered the Queen of Destiny and disrupted her movements.

While the undead kept the monster occupied, Hei Mei began preparing a formation spell derived from one of her master’s more formidable arts. She cut her wrist and used her own blood to draw the formation across the ground, carefully laying out its intricate patterns.

The battle dragged on for hours.

Hei Mei resurrected fallen undead whenever she could, replenishing her forces while maintaining enough distance to avoid being overwhelmed. The Queen of Destiny proved far more troublesome than she had anticipated. Divine spells, hexes, and streams of flame repeatedly tore through the battlefield, forcing Hei Mei to evade or endure their effects. Several attacks struck her directly, leaving her battered and bleeding, but she refused to abandon the formation.

She had not come all this way merely to retreat.

Every movement served a purpose. Every sacrifice bought her another moment to complete the ritual. The Queen of Destiny could be powerful, but Hei Mei had no intention of defeating her through brute force. She needed to subdue the echo, preserve its essence, and bring it back with her.

At last, the enormous formation was complete.

Hei Mei stood at its center, her blood running through the intricate patterns beneath her feet. She raised her hand and released the art she had spent hours preparing.

“Reincarnation Scroll of Blasphemous Continuance!”

The formation ignited.

This was the very art her master had used to save Da Wei from an otherwise inevitable end, allowing a soul that should have perished to undergo reincarnation. It had given him another chance at existence when none should have remained.

Now, Hei Mei intended to use it to gain an ally for the terrible battle that lay ahead.

The original art was designed to operate through an existing reincarnation cycle, enabling an artificial reincarnation within its established order. Hei Mei, however, had modified its direction. Rather than sending the target into the ordinary cycle, she intended to guide the reincarnated soul into her own.

It was a dangerous undertaking, but not an impossible one.

She knew that two souls could coexist within a single body. One of Da Wei’s disciples possessed dual souls, and Hei Mei herself had once shared her body with Yuan Shun. She understood the risks, but she also knew that such an arrangement could succeed under the right circumstances.

The Queen of Destiny shrieked as chains emerged from the formation.

They wrapped around her body before sinking into her very essence, binding the echo and dragging it toward Hei Mei. The monster struggled violently, its golden eyes blazing as it fought against the force pulling it apart. Yet the formation continued to tighten its hold, stripping away the corrupted shell that had imprisoned the Queen of Destiny.

Hei Mei stood her ground as the chains drew the echo closer.

“Help us,” she commanded, her voice cutting through the chaos. “Now, come to me!”