Immortal Paladin

206 Debate for Ownership

How to steal someone’s body 101, written and narrated by Jue Bu, your local perverted skull.

“It’s fairly easy, really,” Jue Bu had once said with the nonchalance of someone talking about fixing a loose roof tile. “You only need to keep three simple rules in mind.”

The memory world began to quake. The walls around us groaned and bent, reshaping from a quiet noodle shop into a maelstrom of shifting sceneries from endless deserts, a crumbling temple, a rainy back alley, and to a palace built on a lake of stars. Each was a fragment of Wen Yuhan’s past lives, jumbled and exposed in the chaos.

“Rule No. 1: Do not blink.”

Of course, Jue Bu didn’t mean it literally. In the mental world, “blinking” meant letting your focus slip, even for a moment. Once that happened, the world belonged to your opponent. You dropped your guard, even if subconsciously, and in a place like this, where the mind was both weapon and battlefield, that was as good as death. It was why most battles here devolved into psychological warfare, layered illusions, and soul-grinding debates that cracked open your worst fears. We didn’t punch here. We broke wills.

Considerably, there had been exceptions… like that time I was beating the shit out of a self-proclaimed Heavenly Demon to claim my disciple’s soul…

Wen Yuhan stood opposite me, unmoved by the shifting terrain. Her figure remained as clear and focused as her mind. She was rooted in this place, wrapped in the fabric of her own truths and her own story. I couldn’t land the first blow. Not in this domain. This was her memory. Her rules.

Ultimately, her 'rules' were more personal than absolute, thus feasibly allowing me to pick a fight with her, here...

“Rule No. 2,” Jue Bu’s disembodied voice continued in my head, with that unmistakable smirk woven into his tone, “use words. You gotta prod the nerves that haven't healed. Dig up the scars. Make ‘em flinch.”

I could feel Wen Yuhan’s will pressing down on me like the weight of a collapsing mountain. I had to crack her and force her attention to splinter. So I said, calmly and without threat, “I saw in your memories that you used to have two precious students. Used to, because they betrayed you. Here's the thing: I know one of those two students. He calls himself Shouquan now.”

There was a flicker. More like a single tremble in her eye. For someone like Wen Yuhan, who wore a mask like a second skin, even a twitch was a gaping wound.

Somewhere, even without Jue Bu physically present, I could hear his smug cackling: “Rule No. 3, and this one’s the biggie. To attack in someone else’s memory, you gotta assert your own.” And that's just what I did. By mentioning 'Shouquan', I asserted my memory of him.

In the blink of an eye, the noodle shop shattered like porcelain dropped on marble. The fragments curled outward into light. When the memory world reformed, we were no longer in her memory. This one belonged to me.

The room was quiet, understated, lined with old scrolls and a single flickering lamp… the quarters I used to sleep in at the Summit Hall. But I wasn’t here. Sitting at my desk was an old man with weathered hands and a calm presence. It was Shouquan, the Supreme Leader of Ward. He stirred tea without urgency, taking slow sips as if the fate of souls wasn’t being contested just outside his peripheral vision.

Wen Yuhan’s brows twitched again, more violently this time. She clicked her tongue, not in anger, but in annoyance. That, more than anything, told me I had scored a hit.

“You learned some rather annoying tricks,” she said coolly, but I could feel it. Her rhythm had been disturbed. Her control wasn’t absolute anymore. And I was just getting started.

I continued, keeping my voice even. “Shouquan did a lot in his life. He built a place called the Heavenly Temple to unite the Hollowed World. A noble dream, sure… but as always, people had hearts. And hearts meant desires. Desires meant priorities. And no matter how much someone claimed to uphold a cause, belief, or religion, when push came to shove, they’d always put themselves first.”

Wen Yuhan said nothing, but her silence wasn’t the dismissive kind. It was the kind that listened, maybe even remembered.

“Even the most fanatical followers would make decisions for their own benefit, whether they admitted it or not. It’s human. It’s true for Shouquan, for you… and for me. The Heavenly Temple became no different. It prioritized survival over justice, politics over people. And when Shouquan realized that, he left. Maybe not all at once. Maybe he fought to preserve what it was meant to be. But in the end, he gave up and walked away.”

I let the next words hang in the air like a judgment passed. “Then he made Ward.”

The memory world around us shifted like a canvas dragged under a new brush. The warm light of my quarters faded into blood-streaked ruin. Rubble lined the edges of the shattered dome, and the four thrones that once represented the harmony of the Martial Alliance, the Union, the Empire, and the Heavenly Temple stood cracked. Smoke coiled from collapsed pillars, and the scent of ozone, metal, and death filled my nostrils.

Wen Yuhan took in the destruction, the corpses, and the smeared glyphs. “Where is this place?”

I answered plainly, as I stepped forward and wrapped my fingers around a spectral mirage of Silver Steel, my longsword. “This is where I broke the peace between the Four Powers. Where I slaughtered more cultivators than I could count in a single day, and a small legion of low-level angels.”

The sky above darkened, thick with the fluttering silhouettes of malformed angels. Their wings twisted, their halos cracked, and their eyes glowed. I swung my blade in a wide arc. The edge tore through air, space, and memory alike… and in that moment, I could almost feel my real strength again, thundering in my limbs like a forgotten melody.

Wen Yuhan danced away from the strike, light on her feet and unbothered, until the spears of low-ranking angels rained down and impaled her through the back. They pinned her like a butterfly to parchment, and the ground cracked beneath her as she struggled against the weight.

“This sure brings back a lot of nostalgia,” she said, a grimace forming into something resembling a smile. “Do you know how many of these angels I killed in my final moments before I got sent to this False Earth?”

Before I could answer, the angels turned to ash. Their bodies disintegrated as though her memory rejected them outright. A red hue bled into the world. The sky split open with several rifts, and from each one, more angels descended. Not the ones I had conjured. These were her memories now.

Wen Yuhan rose, the spears clattering to the floor like discarded needles. “Using ‘characters’ from your memories is one thing, Da Wei,” she said, her voice sharp now, laced with condescension. “But using every element of the story… the tone, the pacing, the transitions, and the direction of fate itself? That’s my domain.”

She stepped forward as more angels poured from the rifts, forming an army behind her. “You’re outclassed. Your tricks are clever. Your resistance is admirable. But ultimately—”

The angels raised their weapons as one.

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“—you have no chance of beating me in this game.”

“Yeah, I confess,” I said, meeting Wen Yuhan’s narrowing eyes without flinching. “This would’ve been a tough fight if I went in with the original plan. Hell, I might’ve lost. But then something changed. I found out we shared a certain bond with a certain someone. That link gave me the leverage I needed. In this world, memory is power… and connection? That’s the coal that maintains the ember and the power.”

The memory realm shuddered, responding to my will.

“I am curious though,” I added, cocking my head. “What was Shouquan like in his youth?”

Wen Yuhan’s expression hardened like stone. “I refuse to play your games,” she said flatly, then gestured. “Destroy him.”

The angels descended in a flurry of malformed wings and burning halos. Their weapons glinted with a light not born of Heaven. They struck, then burst into a cascade of gore the moment their blades touched my skin.

I remarked plainly. "Canonically, Angels of this level just explode by the graze of my armor... so yeah, this won't work...""

A second later, I stood clad in armor. It was my armor. The Wandering Adjudicator. The segmented metal shimmered with indelible memory, the same way I remembered it from my final campaign in the Hollowed World. To the Hollowed World, this wasn’t just a fantasy… it was fact. And in this world, what I remembered as fact became reality.

Low-level angels couldn’t touch me. I had beaten dozens with a single activation of Reflect. This was engraved into my story, my legend, and my very soul.

“It’s my turn,” I said, drawing on another truth. “Hit her, Shouquan.”

And he did. The Supreme Leader of Ward appeared out of nowhere as if stepping from a fold in the wind. His palm crackled with lightning and screamed with wind. Before Wen Yuhan could react, the strike connected. She went flying, so fast and so far that the memory around us fractured and collapsed into something new.

We landed in an old stone temple. Dust floated lazily through moonlight slanting through broken rafters. Two youths knelt on the worn steps. One of them, no older than twenty, sobbed desperately. It was Shouquan, or at least the version of him that still worshipped his master. “Please,” he begged to someone unseen, “Take me in. I want to learn. I want to protect.”

Beside him knelt another boy. But this one had no face.

“I see,” I murmured, the pieces slotting together. “Your memories are incomplete.”

Wen Yuhan stiffened. I didn’t need my Divine Sense to feel the tremor that went through her spine.

I smirked. “I imagine you can’t even trust your own memories. With a mind like that, how do you expect to hold your body? This is going to be easier than I thought. Lucky me.”

She snapped her head toward me, fury gleaming in her eyes. But she didn’t shout. She didn’t lash out. She breathed, slow and cold, forcing herself back into composure.

“Two can play the same game,” she said icily. “Do you know? Da Ji is not what she seems?”

Before I could speak, the temple evaporated. The air turned sharp and thin. We were suddenly atop a frostbitten mountain. Snow whipped around us in a blizzard of cutting winds. I grit my teeth.

Ah, shit. She was asserting her memory now and trying to steal back the tempo. I couldn’t let her.

Still, I commented aloud, “Feels almost like the mountain where the Arch Gate was…”

Shouquan reappeared in a flash of wind once more, launching a brutal punch toward Wen Yuhan’s face. She caught it. Not by blocking, but by anticipating. Her palm slapped his wrist away, and with a flick of will, erased him from the playing field.

“The Arch Gate that I used to own?” she said with a biting smile. “Yes, I know it well.”

Ah… she exiled Shoquan by exerting her memory more strongly this time. She’s good.

I grinned. “Wow, so you used to own it? A pity. I should’ve asked for permission before I owned it.”

The mist parted.

Another me walked out.

It was a darker version of me from another timeline. It was the Da Wei that had stared back at me in Nongmin’s vision. The Villainous Paladin. The one who walked away from morality and chose destruction if it meant going home. The one who saw the whole Hollowed World as an obstacle.

He didn’t hesitate. One smooth step, one glint of steel… and Wen Yuhan’s head flew cleanly off her shoulders. The body hit the snow. The blood melted it instantly. And then, of course, she rematerialized beside the corpse. Arms crossed. Face miffed.

I laughed.

“Man,” I said, “that’s gonna hurt your life points a lot.”

Maybe I was having too much fun. But hey… if we were fighting in stories, then it was about time I enjoyed writing mine.

“The Supreme Beings really screwed you bad,” I said, circling her slowly. “Missing memories? Shackled powers? You’re basically suffering from impaired vision… Tell me, how do you plan to win a war when you can’t even see all the pieces on the board?”

Wen Yuhan stood still, her face composed, but her silence was brittle. I could feel it cracking under her skin.

“I mean, you can’t even perceive multiple timelines,” I added, leaning forward with a smile that didn’t reach my eyes. “But I have a friend… you’ve heard this already, I’m sure. He possesses something extraordinary: the Heavenly Eye. With it, he can see across timelines, digest their information, and make sense of it at speeds your current self couldn’t even dream of. Through his visions… he saw me at my worst. The villain.”

The mist stirred. A subtle ripple passed through the air, like a warning before a storm.

One after another, figures stepped forward from the haze. All of them were… me. Villains from timelines that never got the happy ending. One wore crimson armor soaked in angelic blood. Another carried a black glaive forged from a devil’s bone. A third whispered Divine Words laced with madness. They each bore my face, my name… but none had my mercy. The pressure they exuded made the dream-realm creak under its own weight.

I felt Wen Yuhan’s anxiety spike. The shiver that traveled down her spine wasn't physical… but I knew it was there. I’d seen for myself through Nongmin’s vision just how monstrous I could become. And now, so had she.

But of course, she wouldn’t go down that easily.

“I see,” she muttered, lifting her chin with regained composure. “Before I died and was exiled from the Hollowed World… I divided my Immortal Art: Destiny Seeking Eyes into two. The Heavenly Eye and the Sixth Sense Misfortune. I did it in the hope that someone would carry on my legacy. But the Supreme Beings twisted them both. The Heavenly Eye became a tool… an observer they embedded into the world as their early warning system. And the Sixth Sense Misfortune…” her voice cracked slightly, “was cursed to bear the bad luck of the universe. All to make the Greater Universe more ‘prosperous’.”

I blinked.

It was a fatal mistake.

The reveal had been too much for me… I mean, seriously!? No wonder Aixin was able to fuck me up so bad…

I opened my eyes to Yellow Dragon City.

Gu Jie clung to my leg. The girl’s weight was real, and her voice was tiny, muffled by sobs. My mind raced to reassert control, but Wen Yuhan had already stepped forward, smiling as if she’d just scored match point.

“I imagine you have a home,” she said, voice soft as silk but laced with poison. “You’ve been cagey about it, but I imagine… wherever your home was, you’ve always missed it deeply.”

I knew what she was doing. She was trying to expel me, so she'd get her body back by tempting me with memories of him.

“Do you miss home, Da Wei?” she asked, figuratively twisting the knife. "I am sure you do..."

The dreamworld shook as cracks formed in the scenery. My consciousness trembled like it was being peeled off her mind.

But I didn’t run.

I embraced it.

“Yeah,” I admitted, my voice a whisper at first, then a roar. “I miss home. I miss being a ‘god,’ sitting behind a screen, pretending to be a Paladin of Light, trying to save a world I didn’t belong to.”

Reality snapped.

We were back in my apartment.

It was dark, lit only by the glow of a computer monitor. Another version of me sat in the chair, clicking away, completely engrossed. Onscreen was LLO… or rather, what it had once been. Now, the images shifted into a xianxia-style landscape, complete with floating sects, immortal beasts, and spirit rivers.

Being able to edit details of a memory had been one of the most important things I learned from Jue Bu…

Wen Yuhan stood frozen, stunned by what she saw.

“What… is this place?” she asked, her voice thin. “Where are we?”

“This,” I said without mercy, “is reality.”

Her eyes flicked back to the screen, where a younger her fought the Yama King in cinematic combat.

“That’s you,” I said, pointing to her virtual self. “And that’s me,” I added, nodding toward the man on the chair, the one who had once dreamed of heroes.

She flinched. “I… I don’t understand.”

But she did. In the mental world, understanding was contextual. Meaning didn’t rely on words. Her soul had already grasped the implications.

“We live in a game, Wen Yuhan,” I said, stepping beside her. “You live in a game. And most importantly… you’re not real. This? This might as well have been someone’s dream.”

Her knees buckled slightly.

“YOU’RE LYING!” she screamed. “NO! THIS ISN’T REAL! THIS CAN’T BE REAL!”

And if I were acting the villain, then I might as well play the part.

The scene changed again.

A classroom now. Chalkboards. Dust. And another me standing before a bunch of high school students, enthusiastically explaining the history of basketball. The world outside the windows was grey. Earthly. Godless. Devoid of qi or divine technique. No cultivators. No wars of immortals. Just traffic, school bells, and old men watching cockfights on alley TVs.

“This,” I said as gently as I could muster, “is the real world. One where qi doesn’t exist. Where no gods listen. Where everything has rules. And you are not in it.”

That was the final blow.

Wen Yuhan’s strength cracked. Her composure dissolved. Her arms trembled as she hugged herself, and finally, her pride shattered with her voice.

She cried.

And in that moment, I almost pitied her.

Almost.