Immortal Paladin

158 The ‘Cleanse’

Nongmin stood above a burning realm, his robes untouched by the storm of ash that churned beneath him. The sky howled with fire and metal, yet none of it reached him. He did not move. He did not need to breathe deeply. Gravity itself, between Heaven and Earth, bent to his will… cradling him midair as if the very heavens refused to let him fall.

Below, a civilization died.

They had bark-like skin and faces that bloomed like flowers when they wept. Some could shift shape. Some even fought well. Third Realm, Fifth Realm, a few even Seventh. But they were too slow to adapt, too loyal to roots that hadn’t grown deep enough into this world. Their screams were soft. Their resistance, admirable.

Their death, necessary.

Another realm had arrived. That made it the seventh this millennium. Perhaps the forty-third since the beginning of records. And as always, when a new realm breached the seams of this hollow world… when new people spilled into the skies… they did what they had always done.

They burned them.

They buried them.

And then they erased the ashes, so the next generation could forget.

“Detonate,” he said.

His voice was calm. Soft. But somewhere far below, thousands of intricately carved formation lines… etched in secret, buried under stone, drawn in spiritual ink and hidden beneath dragon veins… ignited red. He had secretly laid the web last week through his stealth-class puppets, as a fisherman would. All it had taken was time. Time and resolve.

The land split like a corpse under a surgeon’s scalpel.

Flames rose. Roots turned black. Great towers made from living wood disintegrated in molten waves as the formation arrays betrayed their masters. Their architecture had been impressive… structures that breathed, absorbed sunlight, and resisted spiritual corrosion. In another world, they might have been trading partners. Rivals. Even friends.

In this one, they were fuel.

He reached into his pocket dimension, letting the void part. It reeked of old blood and refined metal, of beast cores and war oil. From that breach came his puppets… his children. Each carved from pale alloy and black-lacquered bone, all humanoid in frame with draconic masks twisted into sneering expressions. Some carried spears. Others halberds. A few wielded siege crossbows meant to pierce even Tenth Realm cultivators.

They landed in synchronized waves, each thudding impact another nail in the coffin of a fading people.

Elsewhere, the sky boomed, and from the clouds descended Tao Long… a living tempest in serpentine form. His coiled body shimmered with lightning. Each breath was a thunderclap. He did not need puppets. He was the weapon.

That, he respected.

As for himself? Nongmin didn’t respect himself.

Like his many puppets, formations, and his inventions, he was just another ‘thing’ in computation of all things, grand or small.

From his other side, a different shape emerged… bulkier, slower. One of his prototypes. A canon puppet. Not yet complete, but functional. Its legs were thick as trees, its arms ending in spirit-canons fed by compressed formation cores. He had not shown this one to Da Wei. Not yet.

Da Wei wouldn’t understand.

He would ask questions. Why build such things? Why prepare for these wars? Why, century after century, choose to join the purge instead of oppose it? The questions had already played out in the mirrors of the Heavenly Eye, rehearsed a thousand times in a thousand futures. Each one ending with the same silence. The same disappointment.

“Why?” Da Wei had once asked, in a future that would never be.

“Because peace is not something you build,” the man had answered. “It is something you enforce.”

He still believed that.

His puppets advanced in disciplined lines, overwhelming defenders, flooding citadels, tearing through canopy and stone. And when the enemy transformed… into bark-skinned beasts and hunters with eyes in their shoulders… his puppets adapted. Recalibrated. They rerouted qi through new circuits. They evolved.

Each puppet was a microcosm of his ideal military for the Empire: efficient, beautiful, and heartless.

A Seventh Realm general charged him once. There had been something in the man’s eyes… something familiar. Desperation. Defiance. A refusal to kneel, even in death. The Emperor did not hate him. In truth, he admired him.

But admiration had never stayed his hand.

He lifted a single finger. The Heaven-Earth thread beneath them tore open. A formation speared from the soil and pierced the general mid-flight at incredible speeds, all but Nongmin were able to perceive it. The general’s war cry ended in a cough of golden blood. The Emperor let him fall gently.

There was mercy in that.

He hovered for a long while afterward, watching the fire. Not only the fire of battle, but the kind that consumed identity. That erased names, customs, and birthrights. He did not smile. He did not mourn. He simply watched.

“This is necessary,” he told himself.

And it was.

A single species from a new realm… even one as gentle as this… could unravel economies, disrupt cultivation methods, and destabilize the spiritual hierarchy. The four great powers understood that. The Martial Alliance. The Heavenly Temple. The Union. The Empire. Every century, they met. Every century, they voted.

And every century, they acted.

Yet even he knew a day would come when someone like Da Wei would break that cycle. Someone who hadn’t been raised in it. Someone who still believed life was more sacred than peace. That man would look upon him… not as an Emperor, nor as a guardian of realms… but as a butcher. 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ𝓋𝑒𝑙.𝑐𝘰𝑚

And he would be right.

That was the price of foresight. The burden of the Eye. He did not fear Da Wei’s judgment. But he knew better than to expect mercy. One day, perhaps, Da Wei would stand where he now stood, above a world in flames, and choose whether to burn him too.

Until then, he would carry this weight. Quietly. Unflinchingly.

Because someone had to.

***

This wasn’t the first time Tao Long had participated in a Cleanse.

Back then, he was still proud. Newly ascended to the Ninth Realm, his body brimming with the raw power of thunder and scaled qi, the Martial Alliance had called on him like some gleaming champion of the people. They made it sound glorious… like the gods themselves had commissioned the slaughter.

“Alien forces threaten our peace,” they’d said. “We fight so the heavens do not fall.”

He had believed them.

He still remembered the first Cleanse like a stone stuck in his gut. At the time, Nongmin had just broken into the Tenth Realm. The boy emperor… though younger in age, already so cold, so composed… stood above it all like some divine tactician. Tao Long had watched him command not soldiers, but symbols. Arrays, formations, and automata that followed his orders without question.

He’d thought of Nongmin as a rival back then. Couldn’t help it. They were the same realm just a few hundred years back, and then Nongmin suddenly hit Tenth Realm out of the blue. The Empire had always moved faster, tighter, and more ruthlessly. Moreover Nongmin… wasn’t really a man who tried to outshine anyone. He simply was brighter.

Nongmin had never seen him as a rival even then. No. He’d smiled, offered him wine that first night after the fires stopped. Called him friend. Called him citizen.

He had meant it, too. Bizarre bastard.

Now, years later, Tao Long descended from the clouds again, draconic form coiled with arcs of violet lightning. Below him, another territory crumbled. Another realm of innocents… Outsiders, yes, but not of the true kind, not from the Infinity, not the ones that twisted Heaven’s laws and fed on soul marrow. These people had simply… arrived.

Root-skinned and spirit-born. A civilization that sang to their dead through trees and sculpted cities from vines. They weren’t invaders. Just uninvited.

And that was enough for the four great powers to vote for execution.

Tao Long exhaled, drawing a deep breath that pulled qi from every crack in the sky. Thunder pooled behind his fangs. His scaled maw glowed with stormlight.

He hesitated.

Not out of mercy. That had burned away after his second Cleanse. But disgust… yes. That still remained. He had never liked bullies. And what was this, if not the largest, most decorated act of bullying in all the realms?

With a growl, he opened his jaw and roared.

The sky itself screamed in reply. A column of compressed wind, lightning, and storm qi surged from his throat, engulfing the northern quadrant of the arboreal city below. The trees burst into embers. The defenders… those who hadn’t already been torn apart by Nongmin’s puppets… scattered like ants caught in a flood.

He felt no pride. No joy. Only purpose, thinned down to duty.

“Shouquan,” he muttered beneath his breath, “I only wish to fight for the right cause. And now… I come back to this… Fate is truly a cruel mistress. Here I thought I only care for treasures.”

Years ago, when his disillusionment had nearly driven him into seclusion, it was Shouquan who had found him. An old man in white robes, with eyes that saw too far, and a voice that cut through lies. He hadn’t offered a flag. He hadn’t promised glory. Just clarity.

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“Fight the ones that deserve it,” Shouquan had said. “The ones that want to destroy this world. Not the ones who stumble into it by accident. Join Ward.”

Tao Long had followed him ever since.

Which made returning to this... unbearable.

He arced through the sky, twisting his serpentine form, and released another blast… this one slicing through a defense tower woven from living roots. It shrieked as it fell. Tao Long winced, despite himself. There had been children in there.

Not anymore.

Above him, he glimpsed Nongmin… aloft, regal, unmoving, as though he were carved from stillness. Puppets poured from rifts in the sky, his canon prototypes stomping like gods of war. The Emperor looked so calm, so collected. His eyes never wavered. His orders never trembled.

Tao Long hated that about him.

And pitied him for it.

“They taught you peace could only be built on bones,” Tao Long whispered into the storm. “But I’ve met someone who disagrees.”

That someone… was Da Wei… He would never have allowed this. For all the strange man’s flaws, Tao Long had seen his sincerity and his awkward attempts at kindness.

A final bolt of lightning surged from his tail as he twisted one last time, collapsing the last enemy stronghold.

When it was over, and the air hung heavy with smoke and silence, Tao Long slowly shrank his form, coiling back into his human body. Hair damp with sweat, face hardened, he descended to the ground and stepped among the ashes.

A broken statue lay at his feet… one of the tree-folk elders, petrified mid-prayer.

“Forgive me,” he said softly.

No one answered.

Only thunder remained.

***

Yi Qiu’s red hair rose in streaks of fire, dancing in the updraft like a hundred blazing spears.

With a single punch, he shattered half a city block. Stone and wood scattered into the sky like kicked sand, and a pulse of flame followed, swallowing the air in a roaring plume. Screams echoed, briefly… then fell silent.

It wasn’t malice that drove him.

Just momentum.

He floated above the rubble, shoulders bare, his upper robe tied loosely around his waist. His body, though built like a boulder, moved with the grace of a man half his size and a quarter his age. Beneath his skin, molten cracks pulsed and throbbed with liquid qi, spilling light through the air like embers shaken from a forge.

"Mm," Yi Qiu grunted, scratching his jaw as another tower collapsed behind him. "Decent materials. Shame they couldn’t build better defenses."

His voice, rough with age but still powerful, echoed between broken walls.

He was tired.

Not in the way mortals tired… Yi Qiu could fight for months if he needed to... but he was tired in the marrow, where age caught up with every cultivator eventually, no matter how many pills they swallowed or realms they reached. His body still stood tall, like a war monument carved from flesh and fire. But he’d already buried four of his own children. One of them had even died of old age.

"That brat could barely conjure fire when I started teaching him," he muttered to himself. "Now I’ve outlived his entire sect."

A sudden ripple of energy bloomed beneath him. The ground shifted. Array symbols, ancient and foreign, formed a circle of glowing thorns…. and in the next breath, thick vine-like constructs surged upward, trying to swallow him whole.

Yi Qiu blinked.

"Again?"

The vines coiled, razor-tipped, fast, too fast for mortals… but Yi Qiu was not mortal.

With a shrug, he flexed his arm… and everything shattered.

The vines exploded into steam and splinters, as if they'd tried to bind a sun.

“That’s the third time someone’s tried that trick this week,” he said aloud, yawning as flames wrapped around his shoulders like a cloak. "Getting lazy, aren't they?"

The Cleanse. That's what they called it now. It used to mean something. Once in a while, a real threat appeared… Eleventh Realm monsters from the cracks in the void, dripping with forbidden qi, twisted by the Infinity. In those days, the four great powers would fight side by side to even have a chance of winning. He still remembered the thrill of trading blows with that crab-woman who wielded a world-forging hammer.

But lately?

"Children and cowards," Yi Qiu muttered, eyes narrowing. "Barely Tenth Realm among them."

The thought had barely finished when he was hit.

A shadow dropped from the canopy above, no warning… just an enormous hand of moss and bark slamming down from the heavens like a falling continent. It caught him mid-step and flung him across the sky.

Yi Qiu crashed into a mountain, stone splitting like fruit around him, and the impact formed a crater large enough to be seen from the upper heavens.

He blinked.

And laughed.

"Hah! Finally."

A second punch came, and this time the earth cratered beneath him as the moss-covered titan drove him even deeper. The ground cracked for leagues. Dust blotted out the sky. Then, with a final twist, the giant hurled Yi Qiu over a ridge like a ragdoll.

Yi Qiu flipped midair, righted himself, and landed boot-first on a distant peak. The mountain groaned under his weight, its summit crumbling into gravel. He cracked his neck once. Twice.

His Qi Sense unfurled like a net… and there it was. A real one. Tenth Realm. Perhaps high-tier. Maybe even a veteran.

The giant stepped out fully from the shattered forest. It was no puppet or spirit. Covered in moss and leaves, the creature stood taller than any temple, shoulders wide as rivers, its steps shaking valleys.

Yi Qiu grinned.

He slowly peeled away the rest of his robes, now shirtless, exposing skin veined with molten light. His qi surged, and the temperature in the region climbed by dozens of degrees. Birds dropped mid-flight. Trees burst into flame. The very sky wavered under the pressure.

“Good,” he whispered. “Don’t die too quickly.”

His feet dug into the stone, leaving craters, and his core expanded. The air trembled.

Yi Qiu roared.

It wasn’t just a shout. It was a declaration. A primal, joyous cry that rippled through the Cleanse. Flames erupted from the ground, slicing through forest and stone. Rivers boiled. The atmosphere fractured. The creature staggered for a moment, just a moment, as it raised its arms defensively.

And Yi Qiu charged.

He was many things. Alliance Master. Veteran cultivator. Teacher. Father. Grandfather. Legend.

But before all that… before the titles, the wars, the halls of power… he had been a martial artist.

And today?

Today was one of the rare days the Cleanse felt fun again… and that his martial arts could find meaning.

***

The sky was quiet where Tian En stood. Not peaceful… never peaceful… but quiet, as though the heavens themselves were holding their breath. Her feet hovered a few inches above the clouds, lotus-light, untouched by wind or rain. Below her, a vast enemy stronghold clung to the earth, its towers glimmering with foreign qi, its walls lined with glyphs carved into obsidian and bone.

Tian En sighed.

She raised her hand… delicate, pale, and uncalloused despite the centuries. She unfolded her fan with a single motion. A soft snap echoed like thunder. And then she waved.

It wasn’t a dramatic motion. She did not scream, did not call upon thunder or invoke any immortal’s name. She simply waved her fan.

The world shuddered.

Below her, the city folded inward. Every spire, dome, and wall collapsed at once… not from an explosion, not even from force, but as if gravity itself had changed its mind. Metal twisted like clay. Earth groaned. Thousands died without ever understanding why. The entire stronghold flattened beneath a pressure that could not be seen, only felt.

Still hovering in the air, Tian En closed her fan.

"I hoped they didn’t have to build them so high," she said, not unkindly.

She let silence settle again, save for the distant sound of wind catching ruined banners and setting them adrift.

The Cleanse. That was what they were calling it now. As if branding it with purpose could make it less dirty.

Her lip curled, not quite in distaste… just tired recognition. She had participated in more cleanses than she cared to count, long before the term had ever been coined. Back then, the Heavenly Temple had acted as both sword and scale, answering threats to the realm with divine precision. But the lines had blurred. Enemies no longer looked like demons. Sometimes, they looked like frightened farmers with strange qi.

But she had to do it.

The Temple had decided, and that meant something… still, even now.

She drifted lower, her presence casting ripples through the fabric of space. Grass wilted where she passed. Not from heat or poison. Merely from the pressure of her existence. Even nature bowed to her cultivation.

The Seers had told them it was time.

Those secretive fanatics in white robes, eyes always closed, faces always unreadable. They rarely spoke, and when they did, entire generations changed course. This time, their words were simple: "Send her. It must be her."

At first, Tian En had refused. She always refused.

They’d begged her to take the mantle of Temple Master for nearly four thousand years. Her name alone could rally nations. Her cultivation had reached heights most could only dream of, and her technique… Heaven’s Stillness… was considered peerless among the great legacies.

But she had no interest in leading. No interest in ruling.

“I’ve raised enough generations,” she once told the elders. “I have nothing left to govern.”

Yet the Seers had insisted. Not on leadership… but on presence.

“Represent the Temple at the World Summit,” they said. “Just this century. No titles. No ceremonies. Merely... be there. Bring your granddaughter along with you.”

It had been too odd to ignore. And so, reluctantly, she agreed.

Now she found herself once again in the dirt, flattening cities with a fan.

“You’ve lived too long,” she murmured, speaking to herself as the wind carried ash through her hair. “Too long if this feels normal.”

She looked toward the horizon. Others were fighting now. Tao Long’s storm qi rippled in distant clouds. Yi Qiu’s fire cracked the sky. She could sense more… an entire war unfolding across the realm, each of the Four Great Powers sending their champions to burn away the foreigners like rot from a wound.

The Grand Ascension Empire fancied itself a rising giant, but they had barely a fraction of the Tenth Realm experts the Temple had. In truth, none of the other factions compared. Not the Martial Alliance. Not the Union. Not even the Ward her selfish Master had created after he abandoned the Heavenly Temple.

The Temple had always been oldest. And oldest meant deepest. Few realized what slumbered beneath its foundations.

Tian En looked down once more. The earth was silent now. The city erased.

She closed her eyes and whispered, not to the dead, but to herself.

“One more year,” she said. “Maybe two. Hmmm… I wonder how long does it take before the world ends?”

The wind changed. She vanished.

***

This wasn’t funny.

Mao Xian grimaced as a wall of smoke rolled over the blackened ridge. The wind carried screams. Cultivation lightning streaked overhead, piercing the clouds, and somewhere in the chaos, a building full of civilians collapsed like dry parchment.

“I should’ve insisted,” he muttered. “Should’ve begged Master Zai Ai to take this slot.”

His hand trembled slightly, fingers brushing the hilt at his waist. The blade was real. The terror was realer. A massive charred pillar exploded nearby, and he ducked instinctively, cursing under his breath.

Ninth Realm. Barely.

He was qualified… technically. But only barely. He had hoped the Alliance Master would keep him close, maybe even give him the promised “grand tour” of a military operation. That bastard had vanished two hours in, laughing as he flew off like a meteor, straight into the heart of the battle.

Now here Mao Xian was. Alone. In enemy territory. With a woman made of thunder.

Shan Dian.

The Accursed Lightning.

She danced through the air ahead of him, laughing, her purple hair flowing like a war banner behind her. A flick of her fingers loosed a storm of crackling, sapphire-blue arrows that homed in on fleeing figures below… humans, or close enough to be mistaken for such. Her expression carried no mercy. Only delight.

“What the hell is this…” Mao Xian breathed.

He had founded the Adventurer’s Guild with visions of exploration, of discovering ruins buried beneath worlds forgotten by the stars. He wanted wonder, not war. But war came anyway. The Union didn’t like him poking around their fiefdoms, and sects hated that he gave power to rogue cultivators outside their command chains. The Guild was supposed to be neutral. Adventurers. Pathseekers. Free spirits.

Instead, he’d been blacklisted by half the world and dragged into a cleanse that was starting to feel more like a massacre.

“I liked it better when we were chasing sandworms,” he muttered.

Shan Dian turned mid-air, her body silhouetted against a wall of burning smoke. Her eyes found his like a bolt to the spine.

“Ninth Realm?” she called, voice like thunder sliding into silk. “You’re that guy, aren’t you?”

Mao Xian tensed. “That depends.”

“The funny one.” She grinned. “The one the Union wants dead.”

He opened his mouth.

She flicked her wrist.

Mao Xian felt a sharp, sudden impact… no pain, just absence. His body reeled, skidding back across shattered stone. He looked down.

There was a hole in his chest.

A perfect fist-sized hole, bored through flesh, bone, and qi alike. He fell to one knee. Blood splattered the ground in a wide arc behind him. He blinked. “Oh.”

She laughed and turned away. “Pathetic.”

Mao Xian died.

Except he didn’t.

The blood retreated. The flesh reknit. The silver lines under his skin flared to life, forming complex script that twisted through the air around him like tiny serpents of light.

The air shimmered.

And then, he stood.

His cultivation bloomed… not Ninth Realm. Tenth. Maybe even beyond.

Above him, a silver halo appeared, not of flame or lightning, but of pure meaning. The kind of cultivation that should not exist in this era. The kind of aura that devoured attention and silenced gods.

Shan Dian turned just in time to see the blade flash.

Her head hit the ground a second after her body.

Mao Xian exhaled slowly, watching as her lifeless eyes widened in disbelief. His blade was still humming.

He stepped over to her corpse and looked down, not with hatred, but with purpose.

“You can’t die just yet,” he said calmly. “I still have a use for you.”

He pressed his palm to her severed head, and silver light poured from his fingertips, crawling into the empty sockets and spreading down the spine like a second soul threading its way into a new vessel.

The wind shifted.

He didn’t flinch.

This wasn’t funny. But that didn’t mean it couldn’t be useful.