Immortal Paladin

401 Weight of the Source

I was falling.

The air screamed past me as I tore through layers of cloud, my body slamming into vapor so thick it felt almost solid. Below, an endless forest stretched like a green ocean, treetops rippling under the wind. The sight punched something loose in my mind.

Déjà vu.

I remembered coming into this world the same way by falling from the sky.

My Transcendent Heart activated instinctively, stabilizing my existence, anchoring me against the violent pull of gravity. Even so, a migraine bloomed behind my eyes, sharp and insistent, as if something was clawing its way up from the depths of my consciousness.

“I’m Ru Qiu.”

The voice was desperate and insistent.

“No,” I muttered. “I’m not.”

With the Transcendent Heart, I thrashed against the world of memories, forcing my will outward and asserting my existence. The pressure spiked, reality stretching thin and then I blinked.

I was no longer falling.

I floated higher, suspended above the clouds, watching another body plummet past me.

Ru Qiu screamed as he fell.

More accurately, it was Park Ru-gyu.

I watched him slam into the forest below, his body tearing through branches, snapping trunks, until he struck the ground with a fiery crash that gouged a crater into the earth. Trees toppled outward like broken ribs.

I blinked again.

I was floating beside him.

He stirred, groaning, and slowly pushed himself upright. He couldn’t see me. I could feel it immediately that I was only an observer here. A presence without substance.

“What…?” he muttered, swaying. “Where… is this?”

His voice cracked before the confusion could fully form.

Depression swallowed him whole.

He dropped to his knees and screamed into the dirt. “Seo-yeon—!” His fists slammed into the ground. “Min-jae—!”

He sobbed, cursing that pig over and over, his voice hoarse, venomous, broken. “It’s not fair. It’s not fair. It should’ve been me.”

I stepped closer, waving my hand in front of his face. “Park Ru-gyu,” I said urgently. “Hey. Can you see me?”

No response.

I raised my voice. “Park Ru-gyu!”

Nothing.

He looked like a wreck. His funeral suit was torn and smeared with dirt and blood. His eyes were hollow, emptied of light. Worse than that, there was something wrong with him, a strange presence coiled tightly around his existence, resisting me.

That was when I understood.

I couldn’t interact with him.

The resistance was too strong.

It was rare for me to encounter resistance like this. The last time Divine Possession truly challenged me was against the Warden, the one who nearly lasered my entire party into oblivion. Even then, that had been a battle of control.

This was different.

I wasn’t trying to steal Ru Qiu’s body.

I was trying to understand the person inside him.

I watched as Ru Qiu slowly pulled himself together. His breathing steadied. His shoulders stopped shaking. He still looked lost, but there was movement now and direction. The way he scanned the forest reminded me painfully of myself when I first arrived in a new world.

“I need… people,” he muttered. “Somewhere… civilized.”

He recovered fast, which was commendable.

Then a voice echoed through the space around me.

“You do not belong here.”

I stiffened and turned, instinctively bracing myself. “Show yourself.”

Golden light condensed before me, forming the outline of a human figure.

Reflexively, I summoned my equipment. Since this was a memory, I only needed to think of it. The Wandering Adjudicator settled against my back. Silver Steel formed along my right arm. A World Aegis tower shield manifested at my side… and all of them disintegrated into dust.

My clothes followed.

“What the fuck?” I snapped, looking down at myself, completely naked.

The golden silhouette sharpened, taking on clearer definition. Scholarly robes. Calm eyes. An expression of distant authority.

I stared. “I know you.”

He tilted his head slightly. “I do not know you.”

“You’re the Enlightened Scholar,” I said. “From the False Earth.”

“That is not a name I recognize,” he replied evenly. “You do not belong here.”

I drew myself up despite the situation. “I’m Da Wei.”

He regarded me for a long moment before answering. “You may call me the Yellow Emperor.”

I exhaled slowly, irritation bleeding through the shock. “Before we continue,” I said dryly, “could you at least preserve my dignity?”

The Yellow Emperor lifted a hand and flicked his wrist.

Light rippled over me, cool and precise. In the next breath, the familiar weight of the Lofty Jade Proposition robes settled onto my shoulders with emerald fabric layered with jade accessories, and golden highlights tracing disciplined lines along the sleeves. My dignity, at least, was restored.

“Thanks,” I muttered.

I extended my Divine Sense carefully, probing his existence. It slid across him and met resistance. It was not hostility, but there was structure. His composition reminded me of a Holy Spirit, yet there was fragmentation to him, similar to the memory shard of the Game Master I’d once encountered inside Joan’s head.

“You’re not whole,” I said. “You’re… a construct. Or a remainder.”

He neither confirmed nor denied it.

I looked him straight in the eyes. “What did you desire so badly that you whisked a soul away from Earth and dragged him into this world?”

“You will know,” the Yellow Emperor replied evenly, “when the time comes.”

I frowned. “I want to know now.”

Silence stretched.

“I want answers,” I pressed. “Why Park Ru-gyu came to this world. And what Earth actually is.”

There was, frankly, a fucking lot I wanted to ask. LLO. The Yellow Emperor masquerading as the Enlightened Scholar in the False Earth. The Supreme Being nonsense. The Game Master. The Lost Supreme. The layers piled so deep they were suffocating.

I couldn’t chase all of it.

For now, I’d settle for the essentials, starting with me, Park Ru-gyu, and Earth.

The Yellow Emperor studied me for a long moment as he said, “You must promise me something.”

“What?” I asked.

“You will not tell anyone what I am about to say.”

I scoffed. “You’re really good at asking for secrecy after the fact.”

“The only reason I can tell you now,” he continued, ignoring the jab, “is because of where we are.”

I crossed my arms. “Then elaborate. Because from where I’m standing, you deliberately hid information from me back in the False Earth. The other you could’ve just talked.”

He nodded once. “That is true.”

My eyes narrowed.

“The Hollowed World,” he said, “exists on the fringes of existence. The Supreme Void is sealed there beneath a dark veil, further hidden from the peering eyes of higher powers.”

“So?” I asked. “I know that already…”

“So while the Supreme Beings cannot directly reach into the Hollowed World,” he continued, “they can still feel, see, and hear what happens within it.”

“Except,” I said slowly, “in the False Earth.”

“Yes,” he replied. “Except the Supreme Void and the Warden have eyes on the False Earth too…” He gestured outward. “This, is an opportunity. Even in the False Earth or in the outer space surrounding it, the original fragment of me could not speak freely. The Supreme Void was watching.”

The space around us shifted.

The memory advanced.

We floated above a small village, crude and weathered. Below, Park Ru-gyu stumbled into it, exhausted and disoriented. The villagers surrounded him, speaking in rough dialects, mangling his name.

“Ru… Qiu?” one of them said.

“Ru Qiu,” another repeated.

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The name stuck.

I watched as he adapted. He donned their clothes, learned their customs, altered the way he walked and spoke. Just like me. Just like how Da Wei had been butchered and reshaped by this world.

“This place,” the Yellow Emperor said, “is a pocket of time. Hidden within the memory of a late champion. Here, we are unseen.”

I clenched my fists.

I’d had enough circling.

I turned to him fully and said, “Then stop circling it.”

He met my gaze.

“Tell me what I am.”

The Yellow Emperor looked at me for a long moment, his expression unreadable, then spoke as if stating something obvious.

“You already know the answer,” he said. “You’ve known it for a long time. You’re just refusing to accept it.”

Below us, the memory continued to unfold. Ru Qiu walked among the villagers with an ease that unsettled me. He spoke their language fluently, laughed at their jokes, even argued with them over prices in the marketplace. I recognized the mechanism immediately of the illusory interface he interacted with. It was some kind of [System]. A mysterious authority that granted him understanding, strength, and structure the moment he arrived in this world.

It was a cheat, just like mine.

The realization crawled up my spine. When I possessed my Paladin, when I woke up with skills, stats, and knowledge I had no right to… Was it really that different? A tool given for a purpose. A favor granted in exchange for something else.

A wish.

The thought lingered, uncomfortable. Had I been tempted the same way? Had someone whispered promises to me before my computer exploded, before my death rewound into possession? I couldn’t remember. Worse, I wasn’t sure if that ignorance was accidental.

“I don’t even know what I want to do anymore with my life,” I muttered. “Please tell me I am not delusional and I had a life before this…”

The Yellow Emperor raised his hand, and space shimmered. A mirage formed between us: a blue sphere veined with green, clouds drifting lazily across its surface.

“This,” he said, “is the Source.”

I stared at it, breath caught in my throat.

“Earth,” I said quietly.

He nodded. “Among your people, yes. To us, it is something more. The origin point. Not just of your universe, but of many that exist beyond your observable reality.”

I clenched my jaw. Half of what he said washed over me as meaningless abstraction. The other half felt like it was brushing against truths my fractured memories couldn’t quite reach. It made my head throb.

“This is a terrible way to explain things,” I said. “You know that, right?”

The Yellow Emperor closed his hand, and the mirage vanished. “The Source has many names. To my people, it is the ultimate afterlife. A place where endings and beginnings coexist.”

Below us, Ru Qiu left the safety of the beginner village. The [System] guided him gently, rewarding him simply for existing, his body refining itself with every breath. Watching him, I felt a strange dissonance.

He wasn’t desperate enough.

Not the way I had been.

“Why does it feel like he’s wasting time?” I asked. “Wasn’t there a deal? A wish? Why isn’t he chasing it?”

As if mocking me, the memory shifted. Ru Qiu rescued a young woman near a waterfall, her clothes soaked, her expression grateful. Moments later, he was awkwardly courting her, blushing like an idiot.

The Yellow Emperor’s voice was calm. “Because he cannot remember the deal.”

I turned sharply. “What?”

“For the contract to function,” he continued, “the memory of it must be sealed.”

I laughed once, humorless. “That’s not a feature. That’s a design flaw. How is he supposed to fulfill a deal he doesn’t remember making?”

The Yellow Emperor said nothing.

That silence reeked.

“So let me guess,” I said. “You’re not telling me the full truth.”

Still nothing.

I exhaled slowly, forcing my temper down. “Did I make a deal too?”

He finally looked at me. “I did not witness it.”

“But I probably did,” I pressed. “And I don’t remember it.”

“Yes,” he said. “You probably did.”

I snorted. “What, I wished for money? A soulmate? That’d be pathetic.”

“You were human,” he replied evenly. “Pathetic wishes are common.”

I frowned. “Then tell me the desire, the details of the deal. Tell me how it’s fulfilled! Or what? Is this some giant fraud or something? A prank, maybe? It isn’t funny…”

“There is no need,” he said. “If it is meant to happen, it will. Moreover like I said, I did not witness it myself, so how do I know what was entailed in the contract?”

That answer made my skin crawl. It sounded too familiar, like fate pretending it wasn’t manipulation.

“So this doesn’t end with the Supreme Beings,” I said slowly. “Does it?”

He didn’t deny it. Annoyance finally tipped over into anger. I stepped forward and threw a punch straight at his face. My fist passed through him like smoke.

He looked down at my arm, unimpressed. “You are about a million years too early to hurt me.”

“You’re a pretentious prick, you know that?”

I kept talking as the memory unfolded, my voice overlapping with the slow churn of Ru Qiu’s life. I asked questions without order or restraint about the [System], about Earth, about wishes, about gods, and about whether any of this had ever been fair. Half of my attention remained anchored to the man below, watching him live, fail, rise, and rot beneath the weight of eternity, while the other half stayed fixed on the Yellow Emperor, trying to pry answers out of stone.

Most of the time, he listened. Occasionally, he answered. More often, he didn’t.

Ru Qiu’s life accelerated.

He slept with the jade beauty he had rescued, passion blooming quickly into familiarity. Children followed, one, then several, then too many to count. From that foundation, he built something larger than family. He gathered followers, organized belief, and named it the Divine Cult. His doctrine was simple, almost crude: help yourself first, then help others. Strength before dependence. Agency before prayer.

I exhaled slowly. “That sounds uncomfortably familiar.”

The Yellow Emperor said nothing.

Time blurred. Ru Qiu outlived his first wife, then his children. Grief hollowed him out, leaving behind a colder, quieter man. He took two more wives, less out of love than habit, and continued spreading his teachings. When realms descended into the Hollowed World, he met them alone. Immortals fell screaming beneath his hands, their techniques shattered by brute inevitability.

He was monstrous.

Not because of cruelty, but because of scale.

“How is he doing this?” I asked. “He’s not even fully immortal.”

“The [System],” the Yellow Emperor replied. “It evolves him in proportion to danger.”

I frowned. “That’s obscene.”

“It is efficient.”

The truth clicked into place as the memory clarified. Ru Qiu’s growth wasn’t linear. It was idle, passive, and constant. An echo of some forgotten Earth game called Idle Immortal. Even when standing still, his cultivation rose. And yet, despite everything, he remained stalled at Ascended Soul, Level One.

“That’s the same problem I have,” I said quietly. “Why?”

“I do not know,” the Yellow Emperor admitted.

That answer bothered me more than ignorance should have.

Centuries passed like breaths. Millennia followed. Ru Qiu reigned for over a hundred thousand years, a supreme overlord in all but name. He took thousands of wives, fathered innumerable children, and stood unmatched in battle. And yet, no enemy wounded him more deeply than the one he could never defeat.

Depression.

The stronger he became, the farther people drifted. Reverence replaced affection. Fear replaced familiarity. He stopped being a man and became a concept. A disaster waiting to happen.

I swallowed. “That’s how it starts, isn’t it?”

The Yellow Emperor did not contradict me.

Then the tone of the memory changed.

The next descending realm did not come as refugees or conquerors. It came as judgment. A proxy descended, bearing the will of a Supreme Being, declaring Ru Qiu an enemy of all life. A future calamity. A necessary execution.

Immortals poured into the Hollowed World.

They died in droves.

Endless war followed, stretching across eras. With every battle, Ru Qiu’s image twisted further. Protector became tyrant. Defender became demon. Stories spread, reshaped by fear, until even those he once saved prayed for his death.

I felt something cold settle in my chest.

The Yellow Emperor finally spoke, his voice heavy with something that might have been regret.

“The day the Heavenly Demon was nearly completed,” he said, “was the day the Hollowed World almost perished.”

According to the Yellow Emperor, the Source was not merely a place or an origin, but a special kind of existence that allowed observed reality to continue without collapsing under its own contradictions. Champions like Ru Qiu all carried fragments of it within themselves. It had no sentience, no will that could be reasoned with, and yet it behaved erratically enough that fate itself bent around it like a servant. If the Source wished, it could grant miracles or catastrophes with equal indifference.

“Think of it less as a god,” the Yellow Emperor said, “and more as inevitability given form.”

I watched the memory ripple, and I understood what he meant when Ru Qiu’s [System] changed. What had once been a passive structure gained something disturbingly close to intent. The Source had given the [System] a soul.

Ru Qiu didn’t fall all at once. He wore down.

Too many centuries of war, worship, betrayal, and isolation eroded his resolve until there was nothing left to brace against the weight of eternity. When he finally broke, the [System] moved to preserve its vessel and, in doing so, became the dominant will.

I watched the Hollowed World burn beneath a blackened eclipse. Entire armies of descending immortals were erased as if swept aside by a careless hand. Mountains folded. Seas boiled. Civilization vanished in waves of annihilation.

“Why?” I demanded. “Why did it spiral this far?”

“The vessel was too weak,” the Yellow Emperor replied quietly. “The Source overflowed. Once it did, there was no restraining it.”

He paused, then added, “It would have ended everything.”

The vision shifted. Four figures emerged not from the present, but from the past. Heroes sent backward through time to sever the catastrophe before it could be completed. Without them, the Hollowed World would have been erased entirely.

“And the Supreme Being?” I asked. “They interfered too, didn’t they?”

“Yes,” he said. “Reluctantly.”

The memory distorted when I tried to look too closely at that presence. Its scale was wrong. Just brushing against it sent a spike of pain through my skull, as if my mind couldn’t agree on what it was seeing.

Three of the heroes carried Ancient Souls. The fourth bore the blessing of foresight, acting as the Yellow Emperor’s and the Supreme Being’s proxy. I watched as they ambushed Ru Qiu at the very beginning of his journey, when he had only just arrived in this world. At first, they overwhelmed him. Techniques landed. Blood spilled. For a brief moment, history leaned toward their victory.

However, Ru Qiu adapted.

He grew stronger with every exchange, his power climbing unnaturally fast as danger intensified. The fight escalated into something grotesque, stretching across land and sky.

As they battled, I turned back to the Yellow Emperor. “Are Supreme Beings soulless like me?”

He shook his head. “You misunderstand. The Source is your soul. Once it leaves you, what remains is a remade soul of your own born from the Source.”

“That makes no sense.”

“It does,” he said evenly. “The Source is simply too vast to be perceived as one.”

The battle raged for twelve days.

On the thirteenth, Ru Qiu shattered the [System] itself and tore open the barrier between past and future. The collision nearly allowed him to merge with his future incarnation, the Heavenly Demon. Continents fractured. The dark veil tore. Time screamed. If Wen Yuhan had not foreseen this outcome and if she had not condemned billions of souls to reverse destiny by feeding them to an evil spirit, the world would have ended there. Even so, the damage could not be undone completely. Past and future bled together. History scarred itself permanently. Traces of the Heavenly Demon remained embedded in reality.

I stared at the evil spirit anchoring the reversal and felt a chill crawl down my spine.

“That’s Jue Bu,” I said. “In the past. Damn, it’s a small world…”

The memory shifted again, collapsing inward until the familiar, false geometry of another world took shape.

The Yellow Emperor’s voice followed it.

“To recover the Source,” he said, “I had no choice. I whisked Ru Qiu away… to the False Earth.”

The Yellow Emperor continued as if we were discussing something trivial, his voice steady and distant. “As a consequence, the Four Heroes likely received the ultimate punishment. Erasure. Not death, but removal from existence itself.”

I shook my head. “That might not be true.”

As the memory drifted, pieces I had inherited from Wen Yuhan finally settled into place. Of course, she didn’t remember everything about the Heavenly Demon or the Four Heroes. The past and future had partially merged, grinding memories down into fragments. And knowing her and the kind of person she was, the reason the Dragon God, the Repentant Listener, and the Martial God escaped ultimate punishment was obvious.

“She took it,” I muttered. “All of it.”

Wen Yuhan would never speak of that sacrifice. She would bury it beneath composure and duty, ashamed of the cost, even as she cherished those friends fiercely. The thought unsettled me. Becoming a proxy for a Supreme Being wasn’t something that happened without consequence. There had to be more layers she either couldn’t remember or refused to confront.

The memory continued without ceremony.

Ru Qiu wandered through the False Earth, reincarnating again and again, drifting through eras until he was ensnared by the Supreme Void’s Ascension Games. I watched his first encounter with me, the way he descended upon the battlefield and slaughtered my fellow soldiers without hesitation. It was… thorough. I didn’t feel anger watching it. Only a distant unease, like observing an old scar being reopened. The memories marched forward, inevitably converging toward the present, until the fabric of the vision began to fray.

The Yellow Emperor was gone.

“Tch,” I muttered. “Could’ve at least let me land one hit.”

The space around me thinned, the last remnants of his essence dispersing as if he had spent what little remained simply to suppress me long enough to leave. Prideful to the end.

The world went white.

I exhaled slowly and found myself standing before Park Ru-gyu in an empty field of memory. No sky. No ground. Just the two of us and the weight of everything that had been.

“Hey,” I said, breaking the silence. “We’re from the same place. Earth.”

He looked at me calmly, far too calm for someone who carried the weight of annihilation in his past.

“But I don’t remember it,” I added. “So we probably won’t get along.”

He studied me for a moment, then nodded. “Even so, sharing a home means something. In a world like this, it’s not nothing.”

I hesitated. “What happens to you now?”

A faint smile touched his lips. “I’m only a memory. An echo. I’ll return to being Ru Qiu, just one who remembers everything.”

That answer didn’t reassure me. I shifted uneasily. Standing before him felt like standing near a sleeping catastrophe. He wasn’t a fully realized Supreme Being, but he was close enough that my instincts screamed caution.

“Do you want the Source?” I asked bluntly. “Like them?”

His gaze sharpened, just a fraction.

“Don’t trust anyone,” he said quietly. “Not even those closest to you.”

The white world shattered.

I inhaled sharply and blinked awake, my vision swimming. I was back in my body, sitting beside the sleeping Ru Qiu. He was turned away from me, shoulders trembling, tears soaking into the bedding as he cried in his sleep. I stayed silent, watching him breathe, my heart heavier than when I had entered his memories.