Immortal Paladin

392 A Very Distant Past

[POV: Gu Jie]

The soaring boat shuddered as another wave of howling storm-winds slammed against its hull, forcing its frame to groan like an overworked beast. Dark clouds twisted into chaotic spirals above them, hurling debris the size of islands through the sky as if the heavens themselves wished to tear the vessel apart. Gu Jie steadied her breath while gripping the railing, knowing this journey would break weaker cultivators in a heartbeat. Yet this had to happen, and there was no other path waiting for her behind the storm.

Leaving the Holy Ascension Empire felt like abandoning a cradle she had never appreciated until she stepped beyond its borders. Her pursuit of the Supreme Beings’ origins devoured every step she took, but the only way to follow the faint traces left behind was to help the Heavenly Demon Ru Qiu unearth his lost past. She carried the heavy thought that one mistake could lead to a catastrophe big enough to overturn everything her father once built with his own hands. For the sake of preventing that future, she braced herself against this maddening sky.

A ripple of malevolent heat surged through the air as Ru Qiu drew in his power. Black flames curled around his arm and extended outward until an enormous sword of darkness formed, its edge humming with destructive intent. With one clean swing he split an incoming chunk of floating island, the mass collapsing into harmless gravel that scattered around them. The blast of wind that followed made Gu Jie’s robes whip against her legs. She shouted, “Hei Mao, I’ll leave the rest to you!”

Her Divine Sense, sharpened by her Destiny Seeking Eyes, spread outward like a field of starlight, projecting warnings, safe routes, and flashing images of what must never be done. Hei Mao gritted his teeth as he crouched low and pressed a palm onto the deck. Shifting shadows spread beneath his fingers, spilling across the entire boat. With a strained growl he activated placement dislocation, flickering the vessel out of harm’s reach as more colossal debris thundered past.

“Father, hold the post and don’t let go!” Gu Jie called out, glancing toward the masked figure clutching the support beam. Her father’s ghost avatar, cloaked in dark robes and that absurd porcelain mask, clicked his tongue behind the smooth surface. Da Wei muttered, “I still hate this. Blame your nonsense journey, not my stability. I am starting to regret making this body only at Eighth Realm, damn it!”

Their mission had already dragged on for more than a century. In their first decade, they chased forgotten sacred grounds of the Heavenly Demonic Cult only to find each location ruined beyond repair, stripped of corpses or clues. During the years that followed, they hunted three Heavenly Demons hiding in scattered corners of the world, all of whom schemed to rebuild their cults and revive the supposed age of supremacy. Every encounter ended with Ru Qiu losing his temper so violently that the deceivers died before offering any meaningful answers.

“Father, cast your barriers now!” Gu Jie urged as another wall of shrieking wind slammed into them.

Da Wei lifted his hand, his fingers glowing with threads of quintessence that flowed with surprising steadiness for someone at the Eighth Realm. His tone rang with a clear command as he said, “Shield of Faith.” A silver barrier expanded outward, wrapping the soaring boat like a protective shell. He followed it with, “Shield of the Eternal,” summoning a golden layer that pulsed with slow regeneration, reinforcing the fragile craft. The interior finally calmed, though outside the storm continued thrashing with unrestrained fury.

Hei Mao exhaled in relief as the pressure eased enough for him to guide the vessel through the chaotic skies. “Finally… I can steer without dying.”

From the bow, Ru Qiu’s eyes narrowed toward the storm’s center. “Gu Jie,” he shouted over the rumbling sky, “are we close?”

Gu Jie closed her eyes for a heartbeat, letting her senses stretch through the swirling abyss. “Yes,” she answered, her voice steady despite the storm. “We’re close. I can feel it.”

“How close?” demanded Da Wei, gripping the railing as the soaring boat lurched again.

Gu Jie did not shift her gaze from the trembling horizon. “Father, be patient.”

“I am patient,” Da Wei snapped, voice grinding like metal under strain. “But we’ve been chasing our own tails for the past century, in case you haven’t noticed.”

Gu Jie drew in a slow breath, letting her expanded senses drift through the storm. With the Destiny Seeking Eyes, she saw the essence of the world more clearly than Da Wei ever could from threads of possibility, distortions of fate, and layers of hidden truth displaying themselves from every angle.

It was not omniscience, but she stood closer to it than most beings could dream. Even so, she knew she had more to learn. Her cultivation had risen steadily, and now that she stood at the Eighth Realm, Heart Path, her ability to perceive emotions made her acutely aware of her father’s knotted worry beneath all the complaining.

Da Wei raised a finger and began counting off their miseries. “Let’s review, shall we? We ran from that evil spirit even Hei Mao couldn’t exorcise, survived that plague-driven mad monster that chased us for three continents, ran from several battalions of Heavenly Temple soldiers—again!—and suffered through those ridiculous side quests that keep falling from the sky. Now we’re sailing through a giant storm to chase the past of someone whose memories are so unreliable they fall apart when he blinks too hard.”

Ru Qiu crossed his arms, the remnants of black fire still flickering around him. “I am not just some guy you can insult on his face. I helped end the Civil War, if you recall.”

Da Wei avoided looking at him. “And now you actually know how to talk back. Wonderful. Truly, this day gets better.”

Ru Qiu’s brow twitched. “We wouldn’t have to endure half of this if you hadn’t been so easily distracted.”

Da Wei thrust his arms out. “Distracted? Should we have ignored kidnapped nomad children? Or that plague-ridden city crying for help? Or that bandit who stole an old lady’s treasure? Or every other disaster that kept dropping itself in front of us?”

Hei Mao let out a long sigh. “Master, you’re too high-strung.”

Da Wei looked genuinely wounded. His porcelain mask dipped, then he forced himself upright. “Fine. Maybe I am. I’m just… worried this will end up fruitless. I don’t mind helping. I never have. But the danger keeps escalating. Honestly, we’re facing more life-threatening nonsense than the ‘Da Wei’ who infiltrated the Heavenly Temple as of this moment.”

Hei Mao turned to Gu Jie. “It’s unnatural, Senior Sister.”

Gu Jie nodded. She felt the same unease. At first she blamed her father’s notorious “misfortune,” or even her own. Yet she had long prepared countermeasures, calculated probabilities, and refined her Destiny Seeking Eyes to their peak. As a Paladin–Warlock dual Legacy bearer with those Immortal Eyes, her supernatural insight exceeded almost every legendary seer in the chronicles. That clarity allowed her to see the truth: they were being cursed. Purposefully. Continuously. With precision.

Ru Qiu’s voice cut through the whipping wind. “Cursed or not, we’re continuing.” His eyes gleamed with cold conviction. “Recovering my past might be the only key to regaining the peak of my strength.”

Hei Mao’s brows pulled together, his shadows wavering at his feet. “Is that even possible with you here, Senior Sister? I mean, us? Cursed?”

Da Wei threw up his hands. “The world is enormous. Anything ridiculous becomes possible the moment we leave home.”

Ru Qiu’s expression sharpened as he stepped closer. “Will it interfere with our goals? Should we look for who is responsible of this misfrtonues? What are the chances its your father who is the cause of it?”

“Hey!” cried Da Wei. “That’s too low even for you.”

“We’ll deal with every obstacle the same way we always have,” Gu Jie replied, refusing to let uncertainty shake her tone.

Ru Qiu huffed under his breath, his annoyance poorly masked as the dark flames around him flickered in agitation.

There was more behind Ru Qiu’s insistence on recovering his past. For all his brutality, Gu Jie saw a quiet urgency beneath the cold exterior. The Heavenly Demon who once shaped the ideals of a cult that worshiped absolute strength now walked beside them with an almost vulnerable determination. It reminded her of the lessons she had learned from her father, her master, and every teacher she had ever followed. No matter the person’s rank or reputation, emotion always governed their steps. Even those who embraced calculated cruelty did so from the emotional core of apathy itself. Ru Qiu was nowhere near apathetic; in fact, he felt far too much. His simmering agitation, his disrupted calm, and the way he clung to the hope of rediscovering himself made him seem painfully similar to Da Wei.

Gu Jie let her Divine Sense expand upward, brushing through the madness of the sky. “We’re almost past the storm,” she announced, urging them to hold tight. “This one is special because of what it’s hiding.”

The Hollowed World sprawled wider than any sane map could encompass, swollen by countless realms that had fallen into it over millennia. Periodic Cleanses and the ruthless destruction of entire races kept the ruling powers in control, but the descended fragments of foreign worlds remained everywhere, creating a monstrous planet of hundreds upon hundreds of continents. So much uncharted land gave birth to bizarre landscapes, mutated territories, and sacred grounds twisted by the weight of too many worlds combined. The Eternally Stirring Stormy Skies was one such anomaly, a region where the ocean died into black stillness, the land tore itself apart, and the sky roared endlessly.

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Da Wei scanned the violent spirals around them. “I can’t detect any formations.”

“I can’t either,” Gu Jie answered. “The storm might not be a spell. It feels like a natural phenomenon… or something even older.”

Hei Mao nodded as another wave of pressure pressed down on them. “This place is hostile to life and everything unnatural. Even as a ghost, I felt myself dissolving at the edges.”

Da Wei shuddered. “The avatar I’m using is built on my Ghost Soul. I feel the same. Like something is trying to peel me away layer by layer.”

Ru Qiu raised his hand toward the thinning clouds. “We’re here.”

The soaring boat burst through the last wall of thunder as light exploded around them. They shot into the calm center of the storm where silence reigned so completely it felt terrifying.

Suspended in the middle of the sky gazed an enormous blue eye, large enough to dwarf mountains, its unblinking pupil fixed upon them with ancient stillness.

Da Wei’s scream tore across the silence. “WHAT—THE—ACTUAL—HELL?!”

Hei Mao swallowed hard as the enormous blue eye rotated soundlessly toward them. Shadows fluttered behind him as he leaned closer to Da Wei. “Master… does that look familiar to you?”

Da Wei stiffened. “Unfortunately, yes. That damned thing appeared when the Heavenly Tribulation lightning almost killed Ren Xun’s and Lin Lim’s child. The Animal Soul experienced the same phenomenon.” His voice cracked with old fear. “I never wanted to see it again.”

A thin sheen of sweat gathered on Gu Jie’s brow as she seized the steering handles, twisting the soaring boat just enough to avoid the invisible pull coming from the eye. Her breath came tight and short. Hei Mao sensed it instantly. “Senior Sister, what’s the problem?”

“Father,” Gu Jie said sharply, “don’t even think about using Divine Possession on the Heavenly Eye. Don’t you dare.”

Da Wei flinched. “I wasn’t planning to…”

Ru Qiu took a step forward, his shoulders tense. “There’s something wrong with that eye.”

Gu Jie forced the boat into balance as the surrounding winds dipped unnaturally low, the arrays humming under her quick adjustments. She manipulated the formation plates with delicate movements, steadying the vessel so it wouldn’t drift any closer to the monstrous gaze.

They had come here because the storm was tied to the Heavenly Demon’s lost past. They expected clues, relics, perhaps an old ruin lingering in the eye of the storm, but she did not expect this. She recognized it the instant she saw it, for it had haunted her visions for years. The Heavenly Eye, one of the two halves of a single Immortal Art. Its twin was the Sixth Sense Misfortune. Many believed the Heavenly Eye to be a singular, bestowed ability, but they knew nothing of its origins.

The truth was darker: the Heavenly Eye was further split into two. Nongmin had wielded the bestowed half, while the other half was the Tribulation Heavenly Eye, the one floating before them. The reason it remained a singular name was because they were not two entities; they were the two pieces of one original whole. The bestowed eye allowed a person to see from a higher dimension, a place where mortal logic collapsed. Yet the information was so vast, so incomprehensible, that it needed to be filtered. The Tribulation Eye was that filter.

A sharp pain exploded behind Gu Jie’s eyes. She gasped, blood spraying across her sleeve as she clutched the railing. Hundreds of thousands of streams of information stabbed into her mind at once.

Da Wei spun toward her. “Jie’er, what’s happening?!”

Ru Qiu pointed at the giant eye. “It’s that thing. It’s doing something to her.”

Gu Jie shut her eyes as another wave of raw knowledge crashed through her skull. “It’s… the Tribulation Heavenly Eye,” she whispered. “Just looking at it, I feel like I’ll die.” She swallowed a ragged breath. “This one isn’t like Nongmin’s. This one can pass heavenly judgment. It’s more like the Warden that watched over the False Earth, a guardian overseeing the Hollowed World.”

Suddenly, old conversations resurfaced.

Back then, the late Wen Yuhan had spoken cryptically to Da Wei about the divided Immortal Art. The Sixth Sense Misfortune gathered all the world’s ill fate, allowing good fortune to blossom elsewhere. But the Heavenly Eye served another purpose entirely. It was a surveillance tool used by the Supreme Beings themselves. Nongmin later confirmed it through his research notes, warning Gu Jie explicitly to avoid revealing herself to such powers. For some reason, the Supreme Beings despised the Destiny Seeking Eyes.

Ru Qiu’s voice cracked as he stared into the swirling blue iris. “There’s… someone inside the eye.”

Gu Jie forced her trembling eyelids to lift, though every instinct begged her to keep them shut. The knowledge she absorbed from the Tribulation Heavenly Eye churned like a storm inside her skull. Compared to her Destiny Seeking Eyes, the Heavenly Eye operated on a level of perception that dwarfed her entirely. It was not that it was deeper or stronger; it was that its method demanded far less mastery while returning impossible clarity. A lower skill ceiling… but one that pierced through everything.

Blood slid down her cheeks in thin crimson lines as she finally pried her eyes fully open. The enormous, lake-clear surface of the Heavenly Eye reflected back at her. It was alive, ancient, and overwhelmingly powerful. Her knees weakened. Da Wei hurried to brace her, letting her lean on his shoulder, while Hei Mao seized the steering wheel to keep the soaring boat steady.

Gu Jie blinked through the agony, her vision sharpening until the silhouette at the center of the eye took shape. Ru Qiu hovered beside her, tension thick in his voice. “What do we do now?”

“I… I don’t know,” Gu Jie whispered. They all knew the Heavenly Eye had ties to the Heavenly Demonic Cult, but no one expected a being to be sealed within it.

The Heavenly Eye flared gold, its blue draining away like water. Light rippled outward and then the massive structure shattered into motes that dissolved into the sky. Standing where the divine eye had been was a woman with one blue eye and one golden eye, her presence oppressive like a tightened noose.

Hei Mao froze. His body flickered chaotically, vanishing and reappearing on the ship’s bow as if his ghostly form couldn’t remain stable. Da Wei lunged for the steering wheel before the vessel crashed. Hei Mao’s scream ripped through the storm.

“Hei Mei! Sister!”

Gu Jie’s heart clenched at the name. Hei Mao rarely spoke of his past without bitterness or pain. His twin sister had died in the most horrific way. In the past, Yuan Shen had sent a loose self-conscious avatar to slaughter Hei Mao’s entire family in order to seize his body. Hei Mao had survived only by chance at the cost of becoming a ghost. Everything else from every relative to every cherished person had been wiped out.

Yet here stood a woman with Hei Mei’s form.

The woman tilted her head and asked coolly, “Who is Hei Mei?”

Gu Jie’s breath hitched as she finally put the dots. “The Heavenly Master…” she whispered. Her entire spine locked. Yuan Shen had a twin sister. This was her.

Da Wei leaned close. “We should run,” he breathed.

Ru Qiu surged forward, fury igniting his features. “Heavenly Master! Why are you here?!”

The Heavenly Master’s mismatched eyes slid toward him with pure disdain. “Disgusting. I am appalled that a stain like you managed to free yourself.”

Hei Mao’s crimson scarf lashed violently behind him as he lunged forward. “Give my sister back!” he roared. “You monster, get out of her body!”

Crimson light bloomed under his feet with Zealot’s Stride, propelling him forward in a blur.

The Heavenly Master lifted a single hand.

A bolt of lightning tore the world open.

Hei Mao vanished without a sound.

Da Wei’s teeth ground audibly. “You—!”

Another bolt struck. His form shattered into silver sparks and disappeared, before he could unleash a spell.

“Father! Hei Mao!” Gu Jie choked, reaching out with her senses, but everything was chaos.

Ru Qiu grabbed her arm. “Hold on!” Quintessence erupted beneath his feet as he dragged her toward the edge of the storm, aiming for the ocean below.

Gu Jie extended her mind, seizing control of the soaring boat. With a savage command, she hurled it toward the Heavenly Master in a desperate attempt to ram her.

The Heavenly Master merely appeared before their path, untouched.

“The time has finally come,” the woman said calmly. “My plans will move in earnest.”

Her hand swept outward as two lances of lightning fell from the sky.

Ru Qiu and Gu Jie were swallowed by blinding white.

The last thing Gu Jie heard before consciousness shattered was the Heavenly Master’s voice, cold as winter. “See me in the next century. By then… it will be war.”

Countless thoughts crashed through Gu Jie’s mind like broken shards of prophecy. Threads from her visions with fragmented warnings, blurred figures, and impossible futures. They all suddenly aligned, giving shape to things she had never fully understood. Yet not all of them fit. Some visions remained cloudy, refusing to settle into clarity. Fear crawled through her bones as the memory she tried hardest to forget surged forward: the hazy image of her father drenched in blood, standing over a field of corpses. A vision? A possibility? Or a truth yet to come? Her heart clenched painfully as lightning swallowed her.

Gu Jie blinked, the blinding white dissolving into blue sky. Air whipped around her. She was falling. Ru Qiu’s grip tightened around her waist as they plummeted, his expression tight with concentration. “Hold on,” he muttered.

They slammed into a distant hill, the impact breaking apart in a muffled thud thanks to Ru Qiu’s cushioning quintessence. He stood first, steadying himself before reaching down to offer her a hand. Gu Jie’s head pounded. Her vision doubled, then steadied. The sky felt foreign. The lands below felt hollow. The spiritual qi tasted… wrong. As if the world itself had shifted.

A silhouette appeared on the cliff above them. Da Wei. His mask remaining pristine, his robes dusted with debris, and his stance unusually tense. He leaped down, landing before his daughter. “Jie’er… thank the heavens, you’re fine.” But his eyes betrayed anxiety. It was real, heavy worry.

Ru Qiu scanned the surroundings. “Where’s the ghost brat?”

Branches rustled as Hei Mao stumbled out of the thickets, brushing leaves from his scarf. “I’m here… what happened? Everything feels… off.”

Gu Jie closed her eyes. Her Destiny Seeking Eyes flared faintly beneath her lids, their sight stretching across time. She saw herself, countless versions, walking foreign streets, questioning strangers, and searching for answers she didn’t yet know. When she opened her eyes again, her voice trembled despite herself. “I… I don’t know. I’m not confident about anything right now. Something’s wrong. Deeply wrong.”

Before anyone could speak, a sharp voice rang out. “Don’t move!”

They turned.

A young girl stood at the edge of the clearing, her posture fierce despite her small frame. Draconic scales shimmered lightly along her cheeks and forearms, her eyes sharp with instinctive majesty. She looked vaguely familiar to Gu Jie, though she couldn’t place why. The girl lifted her chin proudly.

“I am Zhou Yong, disciple of one of the Four Heroes, the Dragon God of Truth, Yinglong!”

Hei Mao blinked, utterly baffled. “Zhou Yong? But… she’s tiny. Is she related to the Dragon God Zhou Yong we know? Why do they share the same name?”

Da Wei rubbed his temples. “Did we travel to the future and she regressed in age somehow? But why doesn’t she remember us?”

Gu Jie shook her head slowly. “No… Father. What if… we didn’t go forward?” She looked at the draconic girl again, her heart sinking as the pieces aligned. “What if we went back? So far back that the existence we knew as the Dragon God… is still a child?”

Zhou Yong stomped her foot. “Silence!”

They all froze.

Little Zhou Yong puffed out her chest, her draconic aura flaring adorably, but dangerously. “I, Zhou Yong, disciple of the Dragon God of Truth Yinglong, shall slay the Demon King, Heavenly Demon Ru Qiu, mortal enemy of the Four Heroes!”

Ru Qiu stared at her.

His eyes slowly grew moist.

“…I finally remember,” he whispered. “Fuck. I forgot to turn off the stove.”