Immortal Paladin

441 Final Battle in the Dunes [Part 1]

[POV: David?]

Why did it feel like this was never going to end? I knew something was deeply wrong, yet I couldn’t grasp it no matter how many times I replayed the flow of battle in my mind. Da Wei kept dying again and again, his body torn apart, reduced to fragments, only to reform as if death itself were an inconvenience. And despite all that, we were getting nowhere.

My curses did nothing. The layers of malice I had accumulated across countless iterations from plagues refined to perfection, cancers of the soul that devoured vitality, reflect damage designed to punish even immortals… They barely mattered. Da Wei laughed through it all.

“Two immortals going at it, bashing each other’s heads for eternity!” he shouted, his voice echoing through the false void. “Isn’t that romantic?”

The frustration clawed at me, sharper than anything I had felt while challenging the Supreme Void at the end of time. Back then, even when I died endlessly, I could still spite it, mock it, scream my defiance into the abyss. At least I had the satisfaction of knowing I was annoying it. Here, the roles were reversed. I was the one being mocked.

“Hahahaha!” Da Wei laughed again, even as diseased sigils crawled over his armor. “These curses and cancer-like plagues with reflect damage look pretty yucky, but they tickle!”

That was what enraged me the most. How was he out-spiting me when we were supposed to be the same person?

I gripped my sword and chased him through the fabricated outer space, our movements tearing through light itself. Every exchange was violent and precise. Every time I thought I had him cornered, he slipped away at the last instant, answering with a different legendary weapon each time. An arrow blazing with divine authority. A mace that distorted gravity. A sword that split concepts. An axe that howled like a dying star.

As if that wasn’t enough, I had to keep track of his Divine Zone constantly. I countered it with the Ophanim on reflex, bending space and supremacy to my will while letting my curses tick in the background, stacking, maturing, waiting for the perfect moment to explode. I had planned it carefully, a delayed catastrophe meant to end everything in one decisive instant.

He anticipated it anyway.

Of course he did. He had seen my memories… and my tricks.

“Is the sword really the only weapon you know how to wield?” Da Wei jeered as he twisted away from another killing arc. “That’s kind of sad, you know.”

I roared and cut him down again, severing limbs in a storm of steel and light. His body fell apart, armor torn from flesh, blood scattering into nothingness. But there was no killing blow. The fragments reassembled, metal and flesh fusing seamlessly as his armor reattached itself like a living thing. This time, I had only managed to take three limbs instead of four.

He was adapting.

Not just reacting, but actively learning my Ophanim, mirroring it with his own warped mastery. The realization chilled me. I had never imagined I would be the one pushed into a corner like this.

I twisted away as the stars around us suddenly aligned, forming a vast formation array. A pillar of starlight erupted at point-blank range, engulfing everything in blinding brilliance. Even as I endured it, I understood the truth. This outer space was fake, just like the stars themselves. They were nothing more than extensions of the world, obedient to the will of the one wearing the Hollow Star.

A truly unreasonable artifact.

If this continued, we really would fight for eternity.

I clenched my teeth. There was only one option left. If I couldn’t kill him outright, then I had to take away the Hollow Star. Without it, the balance would break, and the battle would finally tilt toward a conclusion.

I steadied my breath, ignored the screaming of accumulated backlash in my soul, and made my decision.

“Divine Possession,” I uttered.

…

..

.

Of course, Da Wei didn’t dodge or counter. He had been provoking me to use it for a while now, pushing, testing, waiting for the moment I would finally commit. If Da Wei used Divine Possession for mutual understanding, then I used it for consumption. Still, I didn’t think it would be wise to invoke this Ultimate Skill the way I normally would. I didn’t need all of him. I just needed the Hollow Star pried from his head.

So I did something different.

I summoned a memory from my past and forced it forward, shaping it into a distraction. He couldn’t possibly see everything, not the full depth of it, but even fragments would be enough to unbalance him. The moment the memory unfolded, the world twisted, and the ground vanished beneath us.

I found myself suspended in the sky, with Da Wei hovering beside me. The air was heavy, dense with meaning rather than pressure.

Da Wei glanced around, his expression wary but curious. “So this is your idea of a battle between souls?”

“No,” I answered calmly. “I brought you here for a different reason.”

Below us stood another version of me, whole and complete, at the height of my power. He stood atop a mountain of blackened stone, unmoving, absolute. Around him, the Hollowed World stirred as vast armies gathered, drawn together by desperation and fear. They weren’t here to conquer. They were here to subdue a calamity. If they failed, the world itself would end.

I watched as banners rose from every direction. The Martial Alliance formed disciplined ranks, their formations flawless. The Heavenly Grace Empire marched with divine authority, their presence radiant and merciless. The Union gathered in calculated silence, each unit moving with purpose and coordination.

In this world, the Heavenly Temple did not exist. I had destroyed its founding precedent with my own hands. Wen Yuhan never lived long enough to carve his legacy into history, and because of that, Shouquan never inherited the Temple of the Four Heroes. There was no transformation into the Heavenly Temple, no twisted doctrine masquerading as righteousness.

Mo Yun, too, had been spared a fate he never deserved. Without the Heavenly Temple hunting him, he was free to pursue knowledge on his own terms. The Scholar Union rose not as a mercenary institution, but as a true gathering of minds, built on inquiry rather than survival.

As the vision sharpened, I could make out familiar faces among the forces below. Ru Qiu stood at the forefront of the Martial Alliance. Shouquan commanded with grim resolve. Mo Yun observed from the rear, eyes calculating, already adapting to the inevitability of conflict.

I turned to Da Wei, my voice steady and deliberate. “Da Wei, I want you to watch this. I want you to imprint this sight into his mind.”

He stiffened as understanding crept in.

“This,” I continued, “was the cost of his humanity. This is what he chose when he walked that path.” I looked back down at the version of myself facing the world alone. “And if you want your humanity back through me, then understand this clearly.”

I met Da Wei’s eyes, letting the weight of the memory settle in.

“This will happen again.”

…

..

.

David swung his sword, and the world answered.

The earth screamed as the blade descended. Fault lines tore open across the land, splitting an entire continent as if it were brittle clay. From those wounds, the Dark Veil spilled forth like living shadow, flooding the battlefield with an oppressive, light-devouring presence. Mountains shattered in the distance as long-ranged artifacts awakened in panic. From peaks, from fortified lines, from soaring vessels hovering above the clouds, spells and projectiles erupted in a desperate barrage, filling the sky with fire, lightning, light, and annihilation.

David did not dodge.

He stepped forward and absorbed everything.

The attacks slammed into him, vanished into his body, and were returned a thousandfold. Reflect detonated outward in a catastrophic wave. Entire formations ceased to exist in an instant. Defensive arrays folded like paper. Cultivators were erased mid-chant, their bodies torn apart before their minds could even register fear. David was already moving as the counterattack bloomed behind him, leaping into the heart of the enemy with a speed that turned motion into illusion.

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He cut through them with a single sword.

Every swing was precise, merciless, and absolute. Lines of cultivators fell as if scythed by an unseen hand. Defensive techniques shattered on contact. Weapons broke. Bodies were cleaved in half, crushed into the ground, or reduced to fragments that never hit the earth. David moved like a calamity given form, weaving through ranks as if they were standing still. Those who tried to retreat were cut down from behind. Those who stood their ground died faster.

The battlefield began to resemble a massacre rather than a war.

Yi Qiu roared and entered the fray, his qi erupting in twin torrents of fire and earth. Rivers of magma surged forward, jagged stone spears rising to impale David from every direction. The ground itself tried to bury him alive. David answered without slowing. Frost Smite detonated, flash-freezing the magma mid-flow, while Aqua Smite followed, shattering the frozen mass into glittering shards that scythed outward and slaughtered those sheltering behind Yi Qiu’s techniques.

David’s tempo increased.

He wove Ultimate Skills seamlessly between sword strikes, chaining devastation without pause. Each step forward erased more lives. Cultivators died before they understood which technique had killed them. Panic spread, discipline collapsed, and the battlefield dissolved into chaos.

Mo Yun tried to turn the tide from afar.

Complex long-ranged spells formed in layered arrays, beams and sigils converging with terrifying precision. David parried them all. Some were cut apart by his sword. Others were deflected with casual movements of his free hand. A few were reflected directly back along their casting lines, detonating Mo Yun’s own formation and killing dozens around him. Distance meant nothing. Preparation meant nothing.

Then David raised his sword skyward.

He unleashed Heavenly Punishment, but this was not the skill the world knew. The sky tore open as an enormous golden sword descended, so vast it eclipsed the horizon, its edge spanning an entire continent. It was an Ultimate Skill meant for a single target, rewritten through obsession and repetition into an instrument of mass execution.

Shouquan reacted instantly.

A sealing spell erupted beneath the descending blade, layers upon layers of runes forming a colossal array meant to contain the impossible. For a heartbeat, it worked. Then a second manifestation appeared. A massive golden scale burst into existence, radiating judgment so dense it warped reality. The seal shattered. The cultivators beneath did not even have time to scream.

They were erased.

Some turned to ash. Others collapsed into blackened heaps of charred remains. Entire regions were wiped clean, leaving nothing but scorched land and lingering echoes of judgment.

And then time reversed.

The devastation rewound. Lives returned. Formations reformed. Spells were cast again.

David slaughtered them again.

The sequence repeated. Again and again, time was reversed, and again and again, the battlefield was reduced to ruin. No matter the variation, no matter the adjustment, the outcome was the same. Death followed David like a certainty, inevitable and absolute.

It was not a battle anymore.

It was an execution, repeated across countless iterations, carved into the world by a man who refused to stop swinging his sword.

…

..

.

Throughout all of this, I had been buying time.

Every confession, every bitter recollection, every drawn-out exchange had been deliberate. I took whatever advantage I could, no matter how small. When the opening finally appeared, I canceled Divine Possession outright and forced myself back into reality. The shift was violent, like tearing free from a cocoon of thought and memory. When my senses stabilized, the Hollow Star was already in my hand.

Da Wei’s expression darkened.

“Human Path: Enlightenment of the Fool!” he declared.

So that was how he wanted to play it. Fine. He was not the only one who learned by watching the other bleed.

“Human Path: Enlightenment of the Fool!” I answered.

His Six Path abilities collapsed in an instant. Tracking them had never been difficult, not when he could only activate one at a time. My helm dissolved into motes of light as I placed the crown upon my head. Power flooded me, vast and immediate, bending space to my will.

“Checkmate,” I said.

I moved faster than I ever had before. Da Wei slowed noticeably, his rhythm broken, his movements just a fraction too late. That fraction was enough. My sword drove straight toward his chest, aimed cleanly for the kill. Without his equipment compensating for him, he could not keep up with me anymore.

“Fool,” Da Wei muttered.

My stomach dropped.

It was that trick again. The realization crept in with sickening clarity as the world subtly warped at the edges. I had not truly escaped Divine Possession. We were still inside a memory.

Da Wei smiled, wide and cruel. “Fooled you once, shame on me. Fooled you twice, that’s on you.”

The memory looped again and again. Scenes of my suffering replayed in the background like a grotesque gallery, wars and failures bleeding into one another as Da Wei hunted me through them. Yet even as I ran, I noticed something that made my heart pound.

The Hollow Star was still with me.

If I could escape this place while wearing the crown, I could truly claim it. That thought sharpened my focus. We darted through collapsing memories in a vicious game of cat and mouse.

“These tragedies around you,” Da Wei shouted after me, his voice echoing across fractured realities. “These wars and deaths. They all happened because you are stuck in the past and refuse to change!”

“It’s easy for you to say!” I shouted back.

I tore open the Void within me and let it surge outward. A colossal, writhing tentacle erupted from my shadow and wrapped around Da Wei, pinning him just long enough. I tore myself free and everything went black.

When I came to, I was falling.

The Hollowed World rushed up to meet me, wind screaming past my ears. From the distance, I saw Da Wei descending as well. I reached up and touched the crown on my head. It was real. I had stolen it.

This time, there would be an end.

I activated Zealot’s Stride and closed the distance in a blink, swinging my sword with everything I had. I was certain this was no longer a memory. When the blade connected, Da Wei exploded into scattered bones.

An Ezekiel.

Of course it was. He had mastered the Human Path’s shapeshifting far too well. I poured more quintessence into my body just in time to block a sudden strike from my left. Steel rang against steel as Da Wei reappeared, glaring at me.

I was stronger now. Far stronger.

I caught him, seized his skull, and crushed it in my hand. Fragments of bone and matter scattered through the air. Then that body shattered as well, collapsing into another burst of skeletal debris.

“Asura Path: Tyrant of Stars!”

A crushing force slammed down from above. Gravity wrapped around me like chains as Da Wei crashed into me, intent on driving me into the earth. I reformed my helm with a thought and stabbed my sword into the gap in his armor.

“It’s your end now,” I said.

Holy Sword ignited in my grasp, radiant and absolute. I canceled his Asura Path the same way I had shut down his Human Path, severing the technique at its root.

“Asura Path: Tyrant of Stars!” he tried again.

His presence faltered. I seized him by the throat and hurled him overhead, smashing him down into the sands of the Great Desert. The ground erupted on impact.

“Die,” I roared, unleashing everything.

Skill after skill crashed down on him. Light, frost, void, judgment, annihilation. I tore him apart where he lay, reducing him to ruin.

When it was over, I stood alone in the scorched desert.

There was no relief.

Instead, the unease only grew deeper, coiling in my chest like a living thing.

Da Wei resurrected.

“Spell Resonance, Divine Word: Raise.”

How was that even possible?

I forced my Ophanim to observe him more deeply, tearing apart layers of causality and flow until the answer became painfully obvious. Faith. An overwhelming amount of it was pouring into him, dense and fervent, reinforcing his existence moment by moment. I had thought I crippled his medium of faith, but I was wrong. It wasn’t gone.

His disciples.

I clicked my tongue and funneled quintessence from the Hollow Star, accelerating my healing to a terrifying degree. Flesh knit together, bones realigned, and the lingering damage evaporated under the crown’s authority. Across from me, Da Wei leaned forward and summoned his longsword, the familiar weight of intent pressing down on the battlefield. I raised my own blade, stance steady, ready to answer anything he tried.

“Two minutes before you fully recover and return to your prime,” Da Wei said calmly. “Is that right?”

“I can do it in a minute and a half,” I replied.

It wasn’t entirely true, but pressure mattered in battles like this.

Da Wei nodded, unbothered. “Do you know something? Even if you can’t see the future, you can often guess its outcome. In my case, I know every viable choice available in the present. It’s almost a prophetic ability anchored in now, not later.”

He took a step forward, voice steady and confident. “That’s how I narrowed this place down as the perfect location for our final fight. In the past, I wondered how Aixin managed to descend a part of herself into this world. Why did her first manifestation begin here, of all places?”

My eyes narrowed.

“So I researched it,” he continued. “Imperial records. The Ward’s collections. Even texts from the Heavenly Temple Academy. This land holds more secrets than anyone realizes.”

Then he smiled.

“Did you know this place is so thin that it’s little more than a layer draped over the Dark Veil itself?”

My blood ran cold.

As someone who understood the Dark Veil better than almost anyone, this was the first time I had ever heard such a thing. Instinct screamed at me to move. I kicked off the ground and shot upward, trying to escape into the sky, but it was already too late.

A shadow surged from the sand like a living thing and wrapped around my foot, yanking me back down.

“You might own the Hollow Star now,” Da Wei said evenly, “but I still own the Dark Veil.”

He clenched his fist.

Dark spears erupted from below, forged from the Veil itself, impaling me through the torso and limbs. Agony flared as they pinned me in place, my body trembling under the pressure.

“I am going to seal you,” he continued, “the same way one of the Six Supremes sealed Yuan Shen.”

“Don’t underestimate me!” I roared.

I reached desperately for the Hollow Star’s authority, trying to force it to respond, but a splitting headache detonated inside my skull. My vision swam as Da Wei began chanting in a low, rhythmic tone. Then something grotesque happened.

Da Wei laughed softly, and conversed in Qi Speech. “There’s a series of chants I heard from a certain Martial God. Apparently, it’s a method for controlling us through the crown. Ever hear the story about the monkey and the golden headband?”

My teeth clenched as I tried to pry the Hollow Star from my head. It wouldn’t budge. The crown felt heavier by the second, its authority turning against me.

Was I really going to be sealed like this?

I knew I was stronger than him at my peak. That was what made it unbearable. The unfairness of it all burned hotter than the pain.

“Don’t think you’ve won!” I snarled.

I tried to summon Yuan Shun, but there was no response. The connection was severed. No, not severed, but suppressed. She was trapped inside a formation barrier designed specifically to block greater spatial movement.

Da Wei drew a breath. “This is the end—”

An arrow slammed into him mid-sentence.

The impact sent him flying sideways, carving a trench through the sand. He managed to defend at the last instant, but the disruption was enough. The Dark Veil’s grip loosened, and I tore myself free with a shout.

I surged into the air using Zealot’s Stride, ignoring the screaming pain in my head as I searched for the source of the attack.

I found it.

Conquest stood atop a distant mountain peak, bow still raised, wind tugging at her silhouette like a banner of defiance.

A slow grin spread across my face.

So it wasn’t over yet.

I looked down at Da Wei, suppressing the throbbing agony in my skull as best I could. “Looks like it’s time for round three.”

Da Wei scoffed, brushing sand from his armor. “I wouldn’t count on it. From where I’m standing, you’re losing pretty badly too.”