Immortal Paladin

251 End of Book 4 - Heart of the Hollowed World

[POV: Ding Shan]

It had only been a few days since the Guardians made their camp by the lake, but it felt longer. The sky had finally stopped misbehaving. At least, that was what they told themselves to sleep more easily at night. Ding Shan sat at the edge of the camp, his arms folded as he watched the clouds drift overhead like nothing had ever been wrong.

Just days prior, the heavens had lost their rhythm. The sun would vanish mid-stride, replaced by the moon in the blink of an eye, only for both to blink out altogether. Days bled into night without warning. Patches of darkness opened like hungry wounds in the sky even at high noon. There had been constellations none could name and streaks of starlight that defied logic. Ding Shan wasn’t sure if the world was ending or if he had eaten some weird mushroom.

Now, the sky was still, blue, and returned to being normal.

Su Ai was crouched beside the campfire, restringing her bow. Her fingers worked with habitual grace, though her eyes flicked nervously toward the sky every so often. “Commander,” she asked, voice low but clear, “uh… do you think Lord Wei forgot about us?”

From his perch by the lake, Li Feng turned his head with a makeshift fishing rod in hand. “No way… He didn’t, did he?”

Fu Wu gave a short sigh, brushing his fingers through his recently grown goatee. “Who knows what goes through a god’s mind? Right? I just hope New Willow’s still standing.”

Ding Shan, vice commander of the Guardians, let out a slow exhale. “Lord Wei did say that if we were stuck here for more than a month, we were free to do as we liked.” He left out the part where Da Wei had sounded like he was joking when he said those words. The memory certainly didn’t comfort Ding Shan. That kind of confidence, in hindsight, scared him more than any monster ever had.

Li Feng squinted. “Wait, what were our instructions again?”

Fu Wu raised a hand, counting on his fingers. “We stay here. We hold the camp. And if we meet a naked lady, we’re not supposed to provoke her. Instead, we tell her Lord Wei said a fight would happen beyond the sky.”

The others shifted awkwardly.

“The ‘naked lady’ hasn’t shown up yet,” Su Ai muttered, cheeks slightly pink.

But Ding Shan knew otherwise. She had appeared. He just couldn’t explain how. He’d glimpsed fragments. Dreams, maybe. He didn't know how to tell them about the weird visions sent to him by a mysterious existence that called itself an... ally. However, the strangest part was knowing something had happened without seeing it firsthand.

The trees stirred. Something moved.

Immediately, the Guardians were on alert. Blades slid from sheaths. Bows were lifted.

“It’s me,” called a voice.

Ye Yong stepped from the woods; her gait was heavy, and her tone was ragged. “The Night Blades have arrived.”

Li Feng relaxed first. “Oh right, we were supposed to wait for them too.”

Ye Yong, captain of the Night Blades, looked like she had fought her way through every hell between here and the Sacred Grove. Her dark leather armor was scratched. Dried blood flaked from her temple. She nodded once, then waved a hand behind her. The rest of the Night Blades followed. There were dozens of them, dirty and tired. Some greeted the Guardians with familiar nods. Others collapsed beside the lake, drinking deeply from the cool water. A few wordlessly rummaged through packs for dried meat or roots.

Ding Shan approached, eyes narrowing. “What happened? How did it go on your side?”

Ye Yong glanced at the lake. Then up. Then back at Ding Shan.

“New Willow flew into the sky.”

The words hit harder than any mortal wound. The camp went still.

A young Night Blade piped up, clearly still rattled. “It’s true. The whole city flew. It was frozen solid. And… and a magical giant fox showed up on top of it.”

Another added, “We think Lord Wei made a deal with an Immortal Beast. Took the city to heaven or something. That’s the theory, anyway.”

Ding Shan felt a familiar shiver crawl up his spine. So much had happened outside their eyes.

“The Sacred Grove is finished,” Ye Yong said bitterly. “After the Heavenly Alliance was pushed back, the wannabe warlords wasted no time. Each raised their flags, claiming independence. My unit was almost butchered by one of them. They thought we were to blame for offending the heavens. I’m not Lord Wei. I’m not the things he plays chess against.”

Fu Wu lowered his head. “I hope my wife and kids made it out…”

Ye Yong looked around. “So. What now?”

Ding Shan rubbed his chin. “Lord Wei said we should wait. Just a bit more. That a reclusive immortal would help us return—”

He froze.

A young man was sitting by the lake. No one else seemed to see him. No one reacted. No ripples disturbed the lake where he sat, cross-legged, in scholar’s robes too pristine for the wild.

Ding Shan recognized him instantly. It was the Enlightened Scholar. He’d once been a target. The Heavenly Alliance’s leader. The scholar smiled at him. It wasn’t threatening. Just… knowing. Ding Shan blinked… and everything changed. The Guardians and Night Blades were no longer at the lakeside. Trees surrounded them now, tall and quiet. Above the canopy floated a frozen island, still and majestic.

And just ahead was Da Wei.

He looked like death. His robes were in tatters, and blood still clung to his sleeves. But he was alive, barely, with the support of a pink-haired woman whose beauty didn’t seem quite mortal.

Da Wei lifted his head, his eyes dim but steady. He smiled.

“It looks like the ‘reclusive immortal’ kept his end of the bargain,” he said. “It’s nice to see you again, Ding Shan. I wonder, just who was that guy? Did 'he' tell you anything, Commander Ding?”

…

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[POV: ???]

A dirt road cut through the fields like an old scar left to fade. The man walked at an unhurried pace, a woman clinging tightly to his bicep as though he might drift away if she let go. He was called the ‘Enlightened Scholar,’ though the name had no basis in truth. It wasn’t his real name, nor was it an earned epithet. He had coined it himself long ago… out of convenience, not ego… back when he first decided to meddle in the stories of others. Somehow, the title stuck. Eventually, it became a mask so familiar that even he began to see it as his face. The name he once bore, the one before stars learned to shine, was long abandoned. Time had eroded the past, and though he hadn’t completely let go, he was getting there.

The woman beside him squinted at the sunlit road ahead, her voice light yet sharp. “If you could do something like that, why didn’t you just send that Da Wei fellow… or his sister… straight to the Hollowed World the moment they were born?”

By ‘something like that’, she meant sending the Guardians and the Night Blades to the Hollowed World.

“It’s fine, if you don’t wish to say…” she added.

Her hair shimmered with streaks of silver, and her gait betrayed a past life lived in darkness and silence. Da Wei would not have recognized her now, but once, she had been known as the Dark Witch of the Ascension Games. The Supreme Being's perverse game had warped her. The woman she used to be had been hollowed out and left to rot, only fragments remaining now.

Nu Wa, the woman she was slowly becoming again, had begun to return to herself.

She turned her head slightly, scrutinizing the man beside her. “If you’re so powerful, if you have the freedom to walk this world unmaligned… why stay?”

He didn’t pause, nor look at her. “Because I am duty-bound.”

The words struck her like a slap. Nu Wa winced, her lips curling into a grimace of disgust. She had tasted freedom once… or at least, the illusion of it. She’d found a breach and tried to escape this cursed world through the one that Da Wei himself pried open. But the Warden had caught her and flung her back like a stone skipping across fate. It had nearly killed her. Only by some miracle had she been found, patched back together, and kept alive.

He glanced at her now, voice soft but unwavering. “Fate has its own pull. If I had taken Da Wei or Da Ji and hurled them into the Hollowed World without resolving their story, the Supreme Void would’ve followed. Fate would attract it, dragging it after them like a comet trailing a star. Even the Warden couldn’t stop that. What we need is a proper conclusion to Da Wei’s journey here. That’s the only way to disconnect the threads of fate that the Supreme Being had bound on him.”

Nu Wa narrowed her eyes. “Then what have you really been playing at?”

“You’re mistaken,” he said calmly. “There’s no scheme.”

“But it was you who brought Da Wei here, wasn’t it?” she accused, stepping in front of him.

He stopped. She let go of his arm. For a moment, the wind stilled, as if the False Earth itself waited.

“No,” he said. “It wasn’t me. The plan was for him to grow in the Hollowed World, gather his allies, and prepare him for the battles ahead.”

“Then who brought him here?” she whispered.

“The Void did.”

A silence followed, not the kind borne from awkwardness, but the kind that sucked the light out of the air. A truth too vast to challenge. If it weren’t for his Immortal Art of Deduction, he would’ve never uncovered the layers of the Void’s design. The entity was cunning. Old beyond reckoning. Determined to claw its way free, even if it meant breaking every rule in existence.

Nu Wa looked down at her hands as though hoping to find clarity there. “What now?” she asked.

“The cycle continues,” he said with a weariness that suggested countless repetitions of the same conversation.

He had seen it too many times. The Ascension Games looping endlessly, orchestrated by the Void in a futile bid for freedom. Ignorant old souls replaying old wars, hoping to win the game and break free. But they never did. They couldn’t. The system wasn’t designed to allow it.

She stepped back, her eyes wide. “What do you want from me? No… You did something to me, didn’t you? I should’ve been free… The Heavenly Demon… he escaped, didn’t he?”

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His expression hardened. His voice deepened just enough to instill dread. “You may keep your Seven Gazes. But the eyes you stole must be returned. The game must remain balanced.” That was the reason he saved her all along. In order to free the Destiny Seeking Eyes from her, he would need her consent.

Nu Wa shuddered. “Who… who are you, really?”

He smiled, not out of cruelty, but with a bittersweet nostalgia. “In a time before the Void gained awareness… I used to call myself the Game Master.”

A ripple passed through the qi of the world, subtle at first, then overwhelming. All throughout the False Earth, cultivators felt their strength falter. It was as if Heaven itself exhaled, and their borrowed power was drawn away. Nu Wa’s knees buckled. Her aura collapsed, her skin withered, her hair bleached gray. In moments, she looked like a shriveled husk of her former self.

“No! No!” she cried out, her voice cracking like brittle glass.

He remained unchanged, untouched by the regression. “Before I was the Game Master… when the universe had no stars and immortality had not yet been born… I was known by a different name.”

He stepped closer, and there was something ancient in his gaze. A solemnity that spoke of forgotten epochs.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “It’s a pity to see you like this. You were once something greater, something I admired. In the ancient past… I was your fan.”

Her breath caught. Her eyes turned silver-white, yet she stared at him with the clarity of one who finally remembered. Her tears fell without restraint as she lowered herself into a kowtow, forehead pressing to the earth.

“Your Majesty,” she wept. “Please… have mercy. I didn’t mean— I didn’t mean…”

But the words never finished. Her body turned to clay, brittle and crumbling. The soil absorbed her like a parched mouth drinking rain. No resistance. No struggle. Just a quiet surrender to inevitability.

The man stood still as wind swept across the road, carrying with it his voice, echoing like a farewell.

“I’m sorry. But there’s nothing I can do. This is our eternal fate… and our punishment.”

Thus, the Yellow Emperor continued on his duty.

…

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[POV: Gu Jie] 𝒇𝒓𝒆𝒆𝙬𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝒎

Being unable to see was a pain in the ass. Gu Jie had dealt with plenty of setbacks in life, from mutilation, starvation, betrayal, and a whole life of being half-dead and half-lucky… But blindness? That one had a special place on her shit list. She remained seated beneath a crooked tree, arms crossed, kicking at the dirt with her boot, grumbling to herself.

“Stupid master,” she muttered. “He could fly over here and pick me up in a heartbeat. Tch. Useless.”

Of course, that might be too much, considering what her master had just gone through, but there was just something scary about being robbed of the light out of your eyes.

Gu Jie wasn’t stupid enough to really wait. The world wasn’t kind to sitting ducks. So, she pushed herself up and began walking, relying entirely on Qi Sense. It wasn’t perfect, since her scanning radius flickered like a broken lantern, but it was enough to avoid tree trunks and the occasional pothole.

“I miss my Sixth Sense Misfortune, I’ll… no, wait, I don’t want that curse back,” she corrected herself with a groan. “At least now I won’t randomly get hit by lightning again… Ugh… I hate to say this, but the Destiny Seeking Eyes sure are convenient.”

The path through the forest felt endless. She made her way down a slope when her foot caught on something uneven, and her world spun. She landed on something soft, mouth-first.

“Uegh!” she cried out, recoiling instantly. Her hands scrambled in the dirt as she tried to pull herself back. But before she could make sense of what she’d fallen into, a sharp pain pierced her skull.

“Argh, shit!” she gasped, doubling over. A migraine flared behind her eyes. Her whole body trembled, bile rising up her throat. Then it came… she puked something rancid and dark. Not food. Not blood. It felt like… luck, fate, and all the curses she’d stored for some time spewed out from her mouth.

And as the last of it left her, something returned.

Her Destiny Seeking Eyes opened once more.

Light returned. The world around her swam into view, blinding and sharp and terrifying. She blinked rapidly, adjusting to the sensation of sight again. Her nose twitched. The smell of vomit hit her. Then she realized that she was kneeling right in front of someone. Her face hovered a breath away from a man’s chest. Her eyes slowly panned up, and her pupils shrank.

It was him.

Ru Qiu. The Heavenly Demon.

His robes, chest, and even his face, splattered with dark streaks of whatever she’d just purged.

Gu Jie didn’t scream. She didn’t even breathe. Around them, the forest had been annihilated. A massive crater yawned beneath their feet. Trees had been uprooted. Rocks split. The sky still shimmered with residual Qi as if a demonic storm had only recently passed.

‘Shit. Shit. Shit. What did I fall on?!’

Ru Qiu lay there, seemingly unconscious, though his presence pulsed like a storm about to reignite. She moved a hand slowly to wipe her mouth, hoping maybe he wouldn’t wake up and she could still make a run for it. Then his fingers snapped closed around her wrist. Gu Jie froze.

The heat from his palm was overwhelming, but more than that was the sheer presence that gripped her entire being. His eyes opened, glowing with faint, deep crimson, and for a second, he looked like a devil clothed in skin. But the words he spoke did not match the ruin nor the reputation of the Heavenly Demon.

In a voice so soft it sent a chill through her bones, he asked, “Who are you?”

…

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[POV: Chen Wei]

Chen Wei’s eyelids fluttered open as though waking from a thousand lifetimes, each layered with death. Yet there was no fear, only a strange detachment. His body didn’t ache, and his memories felt distant, like old clothes folded in someone else’s drawer. He raised a hand to shield himself from the sunlight, blinking away the brightness. His hand looked unfamiliar. It was smooth, fair, and unmarred by the battles he remembered.

“What happened?” he murmured.

“Oh, Little Wei…”

The voice pierced through the haze. Chen Wei sat up abruptly, instinct guiding him faster than thought. He was immediately enveloped in a warm, tight embrace. When he looked up, he saw her long silver hair cascading past furred fox ears, her expression tender and motherly. It was Da Ji. His mother.

He glanced around and saw ruins where the Shrine of the Great Guard used to be. The snow was gone. No statues either, or the remnants of rubble that used to be there. Instead, there was the sound of tools, wood, and conversation. Life was returning.

“Was that all a bad dream?” he asked, uncertain.

“Unfortunately, that isn’t the case,” said a woman nearby.

Chen Wei turned toward her and froze. She looked familiar, with soft brown hair now, but he knew her from before.

“You… you were that fox lady. What happened to your hair?”

She gave a wry smile. “If anyone’s the fox now, it’s your mom. She stole a fragment of the Immortal Beast’s power my Sect had spent decades nurturing. So, I lost the silver hair… and most of my cultivation along with it.”

“I am sorry,” Da Ji said, genuinely.

Jia Yun remarked. “That’s not your fault, ancestor.”

Chen Wei blinked. “Ancestor?”

Jia Yun folded her arms, her tone clipped but familiar. “A lot happened while you were in that coma. Lord Wei resurrected everyone from New Willow. Your mother helped. You’ve been out for weeks.”

Only now did Chen Wei truly notice the people moving about, workers rebuilding, cultivators erecting pillars, spiritual runes flaring softly across the ground. It felt like a miracle.

He looked down and saw the formation beneath him. “What is this?”

“A healing array,” Da Ji answered, placing a hand on his shoulder. “Brother’s healing magic couldn’t wake you. So we had Fu Wu create something more dependable, an array that draws in the world’s natural Qi to mend you slowly.”

“Fu Wu?” Chen Wei echoed.

Da Ji smiled. “You’ll meet him soon. There are many I want to introduce to you.”

“Take it easy, ancestor,” Jia Yun muttered. “He’s basically a baby—”

Chen Wei frowned. “That’s rude.”

Jia Yun smirked. “A baby in an adult body. No common sense, and certainly no instinct for survival. He doesn’t even know how to interact properly in this world yet.”

Chen Wei scratched the side of his head, feeling something strange and pointed. His fingers traced the length of what seemed like… an ear?

“Wait… did I grow a horn?”

“No,” Jia Yun replied, far too gleefully.

With a flick of Da Ji's wrist, she conjured a mirror and angled it toward him.

Chen Wei stared at his reflection. Twin long ears protruded from the sides of his head. His eyes were gold now. His hair had lightened. He didn’t look human anymore. He looked like… a weird long-eared pretty human.

“What in the world is this…?” His voice cracked somewhere between outrage and despair.

Jia Yun nodded. “Da Wei… changed your race to an elf…”

“Why!?” Chen Wei shouted, his voice almost breaking. “What even is an elf!?”

Da Ji coughed awkwardly. “Everything is going to work out fine, son…”

…

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[POV: Jue Bu]

The ground was still trembling from the aftershocks when Jue Bu finally sat down on the cracked rooftop of a crumbling pagoda, panting. His body ached not from damage, but from fatigue, tension, and the simple stress of impersonating someone who had apparently a 'reputation' as a fearsome calamity.

He muttered to himself, half-prayer and half-expletive. “I should never have taken his body. Should’ve stayed a floating skull.”

The irony was bitter. In the aftermath of the Supreme Being's clash against about everyone, Jue Bu had walked away with a sense of rare optimism. The kind that made you think things just might go your way. Da Wei’s insane gambit had somehow opened a wound in the power structure of the highest realm. Jue Bu had actually believed, for the first time in eternity, that winning was possible.

And yet.

“I’m not Da Wei!” he shouted again, ducking beneath a volley of flame-laced talismans.

From the crowded streets below, several bounty hunters were already scaling the walls using various movement techniques. Bells rang across the air, one after the other. Temple bells. Alarm bells. Talisman chimes. Even wind chimes, because why not… everything here made a noise when it saw him.

“It’s the Unholy Taint!” someone yelled. “The one who cursed the Divine Balance and sundered the Summit!”

Another voice followed: “Ring the black alarm! Call the Diamond Monks! Alert the Martial Judges!”

A third: “Catch him alive or dead!! There’s a huge bounty on his head that can elevate your status to a ruler of a nation!”

“LEAVE ME ALONE, YOU DARN FOOLS!!” Jue Bu screamed back in raw frustration, his voice echoing off the walls. "I AM NOT DA WEI, DAMN IT! MY NAME'S JUE BU!" He leapt from the rooftop, crashing beside a galloping Lu Gao who was somehow keeping pace despite dragging a heavy sack of weapons on his back.

“Yeah, no way this is Da Wei,” Lu Gao huffed, half-glancing at Jue Bu. “Way too ugly or something.”

Jue Bu grabbed him by the collar. “Why are you here!?”

“I don’t know, one moment I was carrying this sack, next thing you’re being chased, and I’m being called an accomplice.”

“Because you are!” yelled a third voice, Yuen Fu, breathless, robe torn at the hem as he sprinted ahead, occasionally glancing back in absolute terror. “Why are they throwing gold at me? Is that a flying brick!?”

“It’s a karma brick! It's a fucking spell, okay? Dodge it,” Jue Bu shouted, rolling mid-air and barely avoiding a righteous smiting beam. “It’s what happens when they weaponize fucking virtue!”

Yuen Fu turned to Lu Gao. “Where did you get those sacks? Did you steal those?”

Lu Gao spat back. “Don’t judge me! They were trying to scam me, and we need weapons!”

Soldiers were shouting now: “Deploy the Heaven Net!” “Trap them in the Spirit Cage!” “It’s the villainous Da Wei and his followers!”

Jue Bu cursed internally. “Why does everyone think I’m him!?”

“You stole his face!” Lu Gao shouted as he punched a chasing hawk-shaped artifact out of the sky. “Worse, you stole his body!”

“Technically,” Jue Bu said, dodging a Lightning Chain, “he gave it to me. I just didn’t give it back.”

Another magical whip snapped beside his head.

“For Heaven’s sake! I even talk differently!”

“You’re not helping your case,” Yuen Fu shouted. “Let’s just make a break for it, there are too many of them!”

A monk with red eyes and tattoos burning like incense called out from the air, “The Unholy Taint walks! You dare return after sundering the Peace Between the Four Powers!? You won’t leave alive!”

“What the hell did Lord Wei do!?” asked the rattled Yuen Fu.

The trio crashed into a fruit stall, scattering peaches and terrified vendors. Without missing a beat, they were up and running again, Jue Bu conjuring bone wings to launch himself to another rooftop, Yuen Fu and Lu Gao following closely. He looked over his shoulder one last time. Smoke trailed behind them. Incantations echoed like war drums. The Martial Alliance was mobilizing. From the looks of it, they'd probably declared a war footing just for him.

“All this because of one Supreme Being fight... Is there no forgiveness in this world?”

Lu Gao wheezed, “Not when the whole realm thinks you’re some kind of apostate hero turned demon king.”

Jue Bu buried his face in his palm, then in his other palm, then wanted a third hand just to groan into.

“Curse you,” he muttered. “Curse you, David the Paladin!”

…

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[POV: The Warden]

The last tendrils of the Supreme Void were flung through the skies like rags in the wind, pulled screaming into the breach between worlds. The Warden stood unmoving on the broken plain of twilight, scepter humming with residual power. Its radiant armor was fractured, glistening with webs of cosmic fissures, and its form trembled beneath the weight of its duty. But its task was complete. The Supreme Void had been forced back into its prison shell: the False Earth.

The Hollowed World pulsed once, acknowledging the balance restored.

The Warden tilted its helmeted head upward. Its eyes blinked once. Time and space, brittle from the battle, bent and then stitched itself closed with quiet reluctance. With a sigh that echoed like a dying supernova, the Warden raised its hand toward the bleeding horizon. Its shape, tall and luminous, slowly began to unravel. Light peeled off its armor like bark from an ancient tree. The grand mantle of Law flaked into sigils that dissipated on the wind. Beneath the skin of the Warden, two orbs coiled and shrank inward. No longer one, but two once again… two halves of its eternal purpose.

The Sun and the Moon, vessels of justice and judgment, curled like tired beasts into the sky. One, golden and warm, glided to its throne above the Hollowed World. The other, silver and cold, descended to cast its light upon the False Earth. They did not speak. They had no mouths. But between them hung a silence filled with millennia of sorrow and resolve.

And then they watched no more.

From the Void that surrounded all things, beyond breath, beyond form, something stirred.

The stars in the firmament twitched.

Darkness blinked.

Enormous eyes opened. Not metaphor. Not a dream. Eyes that saw the weave of time, that traced fate like veins in stone. They gazed at the False Earth. They scanned its scars, its souls, and its secrets. But the Hollowed World… they could not perceive. Not fully. Not yet. The Hollowed World was veiled, its name buried, its axis shattered and remade by hands long forgotten.

The eyes narrowed, confused.

And then… one by one… they winked out.

Silence fell, not soft, but heavy, like a tombstone slamming shut.

From the far edges of this silence, a thump echoed.

A heartbeat.

Then another.

From behind the dimension, beyond the Warden, behind even the veil the gods themselves dared not name…

‘Thump.’

The universe held its breath.