Immortal Paladin

393 Heavenly Master

[POV: ???]

The Eternally Stirring Stormy Skies weakened at last. The tidal waves of qi that had raged and collided for eons slowed into gentle spirals, then loosened into thin, docile ribbons of energy. The vast maelstrom, once a terrifying force that shredded continents and devoured reckless cultivators, began collapsing inward as if bowing before a higher authority.

The Heavenly Master floated at the center of the dying storm, her sleeves billowing in the still-trembling air. She inhaled softly. The final remnants of tribulation energy surged toward her lips and streamed into her lungs, absorbed like sacred incense. Her mismatched eyes glowed faintly gold and blue as the power settled into her core.

She exhaled in a long, satisfied breath.

“It’s done,” she murmured, brushing strands of hair behind her ear. “At long last.”

A sliver of annoyance crossed her face. “Shame about the intruders. With them meddling, my synchronization wasn’t as precise as I desired… but it should suffice.”

Her gaze swept across the empty sky, still tinged with lingering flashes of lightning. The Tribulation Heavenly Eye was no more, its essence processed, devoured, and woven into her being. The final missing piece of her strength had been taken.

Finally, she felt complete.

It had taken an agonizingly long time for her main body to acclimate to the Hollowed World. The constant repulsion from the world’s laws gnawed at her bones, while the distant pull of the Supreme Void tried to drag her back into the nothingness she once belonged to. Even standing still felt like resisting two tides at once. Yet she endured, adapting herself to the hostile fabric of this realm, stitching her essence into its seams thread by thread.

Now, at last, she felt stable and anchored to the world.

She smiled. “And soon… he will be anchored as well.”

A strange laugh bubbled from her chest, soft at first, then loud and unrestrained. It was madness mixing with ecstasy. “The destined moment approaches,” she declared, turning her face to the sky. “His coming is nigh. The destroyer. My beloved savior. My master who shall shatter the chains of fate.”

Her blissful expression wavered. Tears slid down her cheeks.

“Poor little Da Wei… only an avatar, yet still a lost lamb.” Her voice trembled with something close to sorrow. “It hurt to repel him away. But sacrifices must be made. I need time, the ritual needs time.”

A pulse of thought connected her to a shadow-copy hidden deep within the Heavenly Temple. The conduit flickered awake, streaming updates into her mind from political shifts, movements in the sects, changes in the dragon veins, and every fluctuation in the controlled territories. The Heavenly Master’s eyes turned ghost-white as she processed the avalanche of information. When the glow faded, she blinked slowly, focus returning.

“Everything proceeds as planned.”

The ritual, the world-shift, and the summoning. None of it could fail.

To guarantee that success, she had split herself long ago:

Her Shadow controlled the Heavenly Temple, ensuring absolute obedience from its disciples and elders.

Her True Self devoured the world’s balancing mechanisms, this storm included, so she could override the natural laws when the time came.

A faint ripple of essence signaled the Shadow’s work was complete. She recalled the fragment with a twitch of her fingertips. Darkness pooled behind her, folding inward until the Shadow was absorbed back into her chest.

Without delay, she sank below the stormy skies, returning to the heart of the Heavenly Temple.

The deep underground chamber stretched endlessly, lit only by torches of quintessence fed by dragon veins, yet even they flickered weakly in her presence. Tall obsidian pillars extended upward into shadow, impossibly massive and covered in runes worn by time.

Before her stood the Children, eleven figures cloaked in ceremonial robes, silent and perfectly still. Each bore a unique bloodline or mutation she had cultivated personally. There had originally been thirteen, but the civil war within the Empire had claimed two of her finest creations.

Behind them, scattered across thousands of Shenyuan, were the Faceless. They were her newest breed. Unlike previous models, they had no features, no thoughts, and not even wills of their own. They were husks, pure obedience shaped into flesh. A far cry from the progenitor and his firstborn clone, beings with personality, judgment, and potential. Those earlier models had been promising… but unpredictable.

“A pity,” she whispered, remembering her twin brother who was brilliant, arrogant, and foolishly kind to her when they were still together. Their bond in childhood was faint, but it lingered nonetheless, like a fading melody. “At least, this way, you continue to live in my memories, brother…”

She stepped to the edge of the black lake resting in the chamber’s center. Its surface swallowed light. No reflection appeared upon it. This was the Dark Veil, a curtain separating the Hollowed World from the Greater Universe.

Her lips curved.

“It’s time,” she said softly. “The ritual must begin.”

She turned to the Children, her voice echoing through the chamber with chilling clarity.

“Guard the entrance. Let no one pass. Not even the Six Elders.”

One of the Children stepped forward, bowing with perfect composure. “Heavenly Master, the Six Elders have been reduced to three. They will seek answers… or direction. They may not act rationally.”

She didn’t bother looking at him. “Let them do whatever they wish. Their desires do not matter. You, however, only need to obey.”

The Children knelt as one, their voices rising in unison, cold and reverent.

“We obey. We walk the Dao Above All.”

Their robes fluttered as they dispersed, sprinting up the long, spiraling staircase toward the distant entrance. Their shadows stretched far behind them like dark spears, fulfilling the task she gave them.

The remaining three Elders of the former Six would also play their roles well, just as she intended. They might squabble among themselves, hide information, or posture in the name of power, but in the face of the incoming storm, they would always yield. Self-preservation was instinctive to them. And the Heavenly Temple’s survival meant obeying its ruler, her. They would not dare to resist once the ritual began.

Even their rebellion would be a tool in her hands.

The Heavenly Master stepped closer to the black lake and allowed the power of the Tribulation Heavenly Eye to seep into her vision. The darkness parted mildly for her sight. She could feel echoes of her twin brother, the former master of the dark veil… but his consciousness was gone, just as she had planned.

“It was your fault,” she whispered softly, “for daring to covet Da Wei’s vessel.”

Her lips curved faintly, almost tenderly. “No one understands Da Wei as I do. Not Nongmin. Not the Bloody Fated One. Certainly not you.”

She pressed her palm to the formation plate at her side. Runes lit in pale blue light. The dormant mechanisms awoke, stirring the lake into a slow spiral. Without its original owner, the dark veil could now be manipulated using the Faceless, her countless puppets.

From the tunnels above, the Faceless marched into the chamber.

They did not scream by choice.

They screamed because the veil ripped them apart the moment they hurled themselves into it one after another, melting into pure essence that fed the ritual.

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The Heavenly Master did not flinch.

During the time her “shadow” secluded itself, she had studied the dark veil’s rules. When her retreat ended, she let the shadow oversee the seers, rerouting their visions, shaping their oracles, ensuring no prophecy would interfere. If any seer glimpsed a future that contradicted her plans, the shadow silenced it cleanly.

Everything was aligned. Nothing would go wrong.

She lifted her hands and began to chant softly, her tone elegant, almost ancient.

“In the waking of the first breath, life found its trembling dawn…”

The lake churned, turning inward.

“In the closing of the final breath, all returns to shadow’s womb…”

The lake grew deeper and darker.

She continued the poem, an old incantation tied to the origins of the veil. Each stanza peeled another layer of the world’s surface, stirring the primordial material beneath. The dark veil itself was born from a higher dimension, a remnant of an existence erased by the Supreme Beings… her brother.

The Shenyuan clones had originally been her attempt to reconstruct him, little vessels to hijack the veil’s authority from him. But clones carrying his essence were never obedient. Never loyal. They echoed his will far too strongly.

So she had engineered his demise.

Her brother would never follow her plan. He was too principled and stubborn in his ways. To dethrone him, she needed an external tool. She needed someone who could kill an existence erased from all memory, and Da Wei was the only one capable.

Thus she arranged for Shouquan to “remember” the forgotten brother, planting the seeds for the betrayal that would push Yuan Shen to violate his slave contract with the Supreme Beings. The ending was perfect. Da Wei killed him. And with her twin erased a second time, the dark veil finally lost its heart.

All that remained was to claim it.

One by one, the last of the Faceless threw themselves into the lake. The final echo of their existence dissolved into the depth.

The Heavenly Master raised her wrist.

With a calm expression, she slit her skin. Dark red blood flowed like silk.

She let it drip into the lake.

At once, a crimson formation blazed beneath the surface, spreading like veins across the water.

Her voice echoed, soft but unshakably triumphant.

“Come forth… harbinger of the end, as foretold by prophecy.” Her eyes gleamed gold and blue. “Overlord of the new world.”

Tar-black strands shot out of the dark lake like serpents, splattering across the pillars and clinging with a wet, sticky crackle. Each web thickened, pulling taut as if dragging something massive from the depths. The entire temple trembled. A slow and thunderous heartbeat echoed through the chamber.

From the churning veil, a colossal cocoon rose. Its surface was midnight black, but a core of molten red pulsed beneath it like a living star. Veins of crimson essence wrapped around it in dense, spidery nets, twitching with latent force.

The Heavenly Master’s breath hitched.

Her cheeks flushed scarlet.

A mad, trembling laugh broke from her lips as she stretched her arms toward the cocoon. “Finally… finally! Only I am worthy. Only I deserve to stand beside your immeasurable existence… my lord… my destined one…”

The cocoon pulsed again, brighter. Her pupils dilated as if she were witnessing a dream she had chased for eternity.

Where had this obsession begun? Where had her madness rooted itself?

Long ago, before she became the Heavenly Master, when she was merely a gifted prodigy, she was the first of her generation to wield the Heavenly Eye. Her twin brother carried the Sixth Sense Misfortune. Between them, destiny unfolded like a book.

Yet only she had seen this future.

In the Heavenly Eye’s countless visions, she had lived innumerable lives, watched countless possibilities. Among them was one particular destiny, delayed and fragmented, yet irresistibly true. A destiny in which she stood beside this very cocoon’s inhabitant, an existence vast enough to break fate itself.

She had desired that fate more than her own name.

But the smile faded.

A chill crawled up her spine.

“How long,” she whispered into the dim cavern, “have you been here?”

A voice, weary yet sharp, answered from the shadows.

“Over a few decades,” it said. “Long enough to wander your temple freely. Long enough to witness how deep the rot has gone.”

An old man stepped forward, illuminated by the sickly red glow of the cocoon. His hair was silver. His robes were worn. But the eyes filled with a mix of sorrow, anger, and quiet resolve, were unmistakable.

Shouquan.

Or as she once knew him… Quan Shou.

Someone who had once been close to her and who should have died with the ideals she long abandoned.

The Heavenly Master exhaled softly and channeled a stream of quintessence into her own eye. Using her memories as a guide, she corrected the fractured segments of her Heavenly Eye, stabilizing its structure and what had been half became whole. Instantly, countless threads of possibilities unraveled before her. She saw every outcome this conversation could take. Every word he might choose. Every plea.

Quan Shou trembled with rage. “How dare you?” he roared. “How dare you stain the legacy your brother and I shed blood to preserve? The Heavenly Temple was sacred! It was a shield for the innocent! This… this perverted thing you’re doing goes against our late master’s teachings!”

She chuckled lightly, almost pitying him. “Still senile, old fool? Even now? I thought you’d have grown wiser.”

Quan Shou’s face twisted with anguish. “There is still room for redemption.”

She laughed harder, disbelief sparkling in her mismatched eyes. “Redemption? For me? You really have gone blind.”

As she studied him more closely with her repaired Heavenly Eye, the truth clicked.

He wasn’t here.

Not truly.

The Shouquan before her was an astral projection, crafted with such mastery that not even the temple formations had sensed him. Of course. He was the master of Ward. Her brother’s sworn brother. The protector of the Hollowed World.

Even weakened, even trapped in the Tenth Realm, he was still Shouquan.

But while she couldn’t kill a projection… she could trace it.

Her fingers formed a subtle seal. In a few breaths, she followed the astral threads all the way to his real body in the Union.

A flash of surprise appeared in Shouquan’s projection. He hadn’t expected her to track him so quickly.

She smirked. “So this is how far you’ve fallen. Working with the Union? How cute. An old guardian among upstarts and mercenaries.”

Shouquan didn’t dignify the insult. His voice steadied, iron-hard. “You won’t win this war. My disciple and I have spent years building trust with the Union. The Holy Empire has aligned itself with the Martial Alliance. And the Union is preparing to follow.”

He lifted his gaze, meeting hers with unwavering resolve.

“The Heavenly Temple will be isolated.”

The cocoon pulsed behind her, casting a long shadow across his fading form.

Shouquan’s words reverberated across the chamber.

“If this breaks into a world war… the Heavenly Temple will be outnumbered!”

Laughter fluttered from her lips, light and breathy at first, then rising into a manic crescendo that echoed against the pillars and the churning lake. The dark cocoon pulsed behind her like a heartbeat answering her joy.

Shouquan’s astral form flickered. “What is so funny?”

She brushed a tear from her eye and exhaled in amusement. “You. I find you adorable, Shou.”

His expression darkened as his voice softened with something almost paternal. “Yuan Shun… there is still time for you to do the right thing.”

The name pierced her composure like a blade.

Her laughter died.

A cold flare burned behind her mismatched eyes. “Never call me that!” she roared, her voice cracking through the cavern like thunder. “Only one title is fit for your tongue. I am the Heavenly Master!”

Shouquan pressed his lips together. “You have truly lost your mind.”

She sneered, leaning forward as the tar-like webs trembled around her. “Do you truly believe the Heavenly Temple would be outnumbered?”

“The Holy Emperor has the Hollow Star,” Shouquan countered. “And the support of the masses. You cannot ignore that.”

She chuckled again, low and dangerous. “The Hollow Star? That toy is nothing more than a chain. A burden. A shackle that should never have been worshiped.”

Her eyes narrowed as faint lines of light curled between her fingers.

“I tire of this conversation, Shouquan. And if you honestly believe this will become a war decided by armies… then you are more foolish than I feared.”

His brows knitted. “What do you mean?”

Her smile widened. “This will be a war between Supremes. Even if the armies clash, they will be irrelevant. The victor will not be decided by the marching dead or the shouting masses.”

Her fingers closed.

The formation she had woven in secret ignited in a ring of pale-white flame.

“Begone.”

Shouquan’s astral projection shuddered. Light sheared across his form. His final expression was a mix of pity and grief before his image dissolved into drifting fragments.

She exhaled in relief as the last spark vanished. “Finally, some peace and quiet.”

The Heavenly Master had never been naive enough to bow to fate.

Even as a child, she understood destiny was not a gift. It was a cage, a threat, and something to seize before it seized you. No one would hold her hand. No one would guide her to the future she desired. So, she had learned to carve it out herself no matter the blood she waded through.

Her robes fluttered as she slipped them from her shoulders, baring pale skin that shimmered faintly under the glow of the dark lake. The cavern cooled. The air stilled.

She stepped forward.

The surface rippled as her foot touched it, accepting her like a hungry maw.

“With Yuan Shen gone,” she murmured, “the dark veil is masterless. And I will claim it.”

She waded deeper, the tar-like water clinging to her thighs, her waist, and her chest. The lake had once bound her brother as punishment for the sins that he willingly committed for the sake of his stupid ideals. And she would not be chained as he was.

Instead, she would claim, dominate, and twist the dark veil to her will.

If she succeeded, the Ancient Souls lurking in the void would no longer sense her. Even the highest powers of the Hollowed World would be blind to her movements. Only then could she accelerate the awakening of the cocoon for the final battle she had foreseen… the battle she dreaded yet craved.

She submerged her head as cold swallowed her.

The darkness pulled her deeper into the abyss.

Yuan Shun?

That was a ghost of a girl and a frail child she had long discarded.

If Shenyuan had been the peeled shell, the superficial mask of Yuan Shen, then Shunyuan was the egg, the core, and the ideal manifestation of Yuan Shun—her true self, reborn.

She had always believed she was her brother’s opposite. His mirror reversed. Misfortune and vision, shadow and gaze.

The lake closed above her as her lungs burned and her limbs thrashed soundlessly as she sank deeper into the pitch-black void. She opened her mouth, screaming without air, without voice.

In the absolute dark, two characters ignited like stars—

顺 (Shùn)

缘 (Yuán)

Shùn. Favorable.

Yuán. Connection. Fate.

Together, they glowed an impossible blue, swirling around her drowning form as the meaning of her divine name expressed itself on the dark veil.

“Shunyuan.”

顺缘

“Favorable circumstances.”

Or otherwise…

“Good luck.”

The divine name she invoked burst brightly as she sank into the abyss.