Immortal Paladin

487 Two VS One

The Origin King endured the Heavenly Tribulation as if it were nothing more than a passing inconvenience.

Lightning continued to descend in violent pillars, each strike carrying enough force to erase entire regions, yet he stood within it. In contrast, I felt every single discharge tear through me. My armor absorbed part of it, my regeneration fought to keep up, but the damage accumulated regardless.

Still, I didn’t stop. 𝗳𝗿𝐞𝕖𝘄𝗲𝕓𝗻𝚘𝚟𝕖𝐥.𝚌𝕠𝕞

His Origin Sword carved through the storm with impossible precision, each swing bending the flow of power itself. I met him head-on, Silver Steel and Soulsunderer moving in tandem, my dual-wielding stance reinforced by Monkey Grip as I forced both blades to keep pace with his singular, absolute weapon.

Steel met origin.

Reality fractured.

Each clash detonated outward, shockwaves rippling across the mountains. Peaks cracked, slopes collapsed, and entire ridgelines were gradually flattened under the sheer pressure of our exchange. Fire from my smites burned against the cold stone while his strikes erased both flame and matter alike.

I pressed forward, chaining attacks relentlessly. A downward cleave with Soulsunderer followed by a thrust from Silver Steel, both enhanced with layered smites designed to overwhelm.

They didn’t.

The Wheel of Infinity spun behind him, silent and inevitable. Every strike I landed, and every calculated blow was intercepted, redirected, or outright nullified by that rotating construct. Even my Reflect failed to return anything meaningful. It was as if causality itself refused to cooperate with me.

Worse, my Ophanim faltered.

At first, it was subtle. A fraction of a second delay. A slight misalignment in prediction.

Then it worsened.

Trajectories blurred. Outcomes fractured. The countless spinning rings within my vision struggled to lock onto a stable future. The more I pushed, the less accurate it became.

“…So you prepared for this, too.”

He didn’t respond, but he didn’t need to. The way he moved just outside the edge of certainty, and beyond the reach of my perception, told me everything.

I let out a breath, forcing a smirk despite the pressure.

“So tell me,” I said, my voice steady even as another strike collided with his blade, “how many timelines did we just go through?”

Our weapons locked for a fraction of a moment, power grinding against power.

“Out of all of them…” I continued, pushing harder, “…how many times did I win?”

This wasn’t tilting in my favor.

The inaccuracies in my Ophanim compounded with each passing second, and against someone like him, that margin of error was lethal. He wasn’t just matching me. Instead, he was adapting, tightening control, slowly forcing the flow of the battle into his domain.

“…Yeah,” I muttered under my breath, “figures.”

I shifted my stance and surged forward again.

“War Smite.”

The impact landed cleanly.

A burst of force erupted from my strike, sending him flying backward across the shattered terrain. The ground split beneath him as he was pushed away, but even as it happened, I felt that he shouldn’t have connected.

He let it.

Using the momentum, he created distance, sliding back just far enough to reset the engagement.

The moment he stabilized, his voice rang out.

“O Origin, bestow upon me your favor—”

“No.”

I vanished with Void Step. The movement was subtle, nearly nonexistent, slipping through space in a way that bypassed conventional perception. It was faster than anything I had used before, accessible only under the amplification of the Supreme Bearer’s Pact.

I reappeared in front of him mid-incantation.

“Dark Smite.”

Both blades came down in a crossing arc, darkness and radiance intertwined, aimed not just to damage, but to disrupt, to blind, and to force an opening before he could complete the invocation.

It didn’t matter.

“Return to Origin.”

The words landed before my strike did.

Everything vanished.

The power coursing through me from the buffs, the enhancements, the Supreme Bearer’s Pact, and even my Legacy Art. All of it was stripped away in an instant. It didn’t fade. It didn’t weaken. It simply ceased to exist.

“…You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Before I could react further, he was gone.

Then, his voice echoed faintly, carried on the wind itself.

“Immortal Art: Hidden One.”

Pain followed. The blade pierced through my chest from behind, clean and precise, its presence absolute as it drove through flesh, bone, and everything in between. I didn’t hesitate to use Void Step again. I twisted space again, forcing myself behind him despite the damage, my blades igniting with layered force.

“Thunderous Smite. Divine Smite.”

I struck.

He vanished again.

This time, behind me.

The sword drove into my chest a second time, almost perfectly mirroring the first strike. My body jerked forward slightly from the impact, blood spilling as the blade anchored itself within me. His voice came close this time, low and certain, brushing against my ear.

“It’s futile. The Origin has granted me many Immortal Arts at my disposal. And this one… was given specifically to deal with you.”

Nothing about this surprised me, since I’ve seen this already, albeit a bit blurry. He stood at the peak of Ascended Soul, layered with over a hundred layers of immortality. A single step away from becoming a Ruler of Laws. The only reason he hadn’t crossed that threshold yet was because of this world’s limitations.

Limitations I was about to remove.

But first, I let Soulsunderer go.

The blade vanished back into my pocket dimension as I reached forward and grabbed his sword with my bare hand. The edge bit into my palm instantly, slicing through flesh, but I held on, locking it in place.

“You call this the Origin Sword, right?”

Before he could respond, Dark Veil surged. My cape lashed upward, expanding unnaturally as it wrapped around his head and upper body, obscuring his vision, disrupting whatever perception he relied on.

At the same time, I focused inward.

My Ophanim spun inward, locking onto something far more precise.

"Divine Possession."

I didn’t need to leave my body anymore while using this. The moment the technique activated, something shifted. It was my soul extending through the connection I had established. His reaction was immediate. The Origin Sword tore free from my chest. It ripped sideways, biting more of me. Flesh, lung, and part of my chest were carved away to the right as the blade was forcibly withdrawn, leaving behind a jagged, open wound that would have ended anyone else instantly.

I didn’t let go.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

I unfurled the Dark Veil completely, letting it expand outward into a writhing shroud that swallowed the space between us. It stretched and twisted like a living storm, layers upon layers of darkness folding over one another as it obscured his vision. I used that moment to retreat, forcing distance while I began stacking buffs again, rebuilding everything that had just been stripped away.

Power started to return, piece by piece.

Then his voice came.

“Return to Origin.”

“…Damn it.”

Everything vanished again.

The power I had just gathered was erased mid-formation, leaving me exposed for a fraction of a second too long. I reacted on instinct, pulling the Dark Veil back and reshaping it instantly into a massive tower shield just as his attack descended from above.

The impact was overwhelming.

Force crashed down through the shield, through my arms, through my entire body, and I was driven straight into the earth. The world blurred as I was slammed downward, but the Dark Veil shifted again at the last moment, softening into something like an abyssal cushion that absorbed enough of the impact to keep me intact.

Even so, the shock rattled through me.

Starshroud’s voice rang out in my mind, sharper than usual.

“We’re getting overwhelmed! I’m teleporting us out. No way we’re taking that head-on again!”

Space folded.

In the next instant, we were gone, reappearing just as the Origin King crashed into where I had been, his descent tearing apart everything in that area with violent intent.

I exhaled, steadying myself as I reformed the Dark Veil back into a cape. With my free hand, I reached into my pocket dimension and pulled Soulsunderer back into reality, the blade humming faintly as it settled into my grip.

The environment had changed.

We stood within a forest now, dense and ancient, though already scarred by the distant war. Trees leaned at unnatural angles, their bark cracked from residual shockwaves, leaves falling like ash.

He didn’t give me time to breathe.

“Immortal Art: Rend the World.”

I recognized it instantly. Thirty years ago, I had seen this same technique when I tried to assassinate him. That attempt had nearly ended with my own death, saved only by a bluff that he hadn’t been willing to call at the time.

This time, there would be no bluff.

“Judgment Severance.”

I brought both weapons forward as I invoked the skill. A golden rift tore open in front of me, forming a massive cross-shaped fracture in reality itself. It pulsed with divine authority, expanding just as his attack arrived.

The collision never happened.

The rift swallowed it whole.

Reality folded inward, consuming the destructive force and stabilizing under my will. I reinforced it with faith, pouring power into the technique to ensure it held, allowing it to fully absorb what should have devastated everything in its path.

When it ended, the forest around us remained standing. barely.

We were far from the main battlefield now, enough that I couldn’t even sense it clearly anymore.

I didn’t bother checking.

My entire focus had narrowed to this.

To him.

To what came next.

It was time.

I drew in a breath and let it out through a Lion’s Roar, my voice carrying with force that bent the world itself.

“Hey! Look what I got here!”

I held it up, the Key. Even at a glance, its presence distorted the space around it, its significance undeniable.

The Origin King stopped on his tracks.

“Don’t you dare, Da Wei!?”

I didn’t hesitate and snapped it in half. The sound was sharp, absolute, and final. Before he could react further, I tossed both pieces into my pocket dimension.

“Now,” I said, meeting his gaze, “what are you gonna do?”

He disappeared, and then he was in front of me.

“Immortal Art: Star Collision.”

This time, he didn’t even use the edge of his blade. The flat of his sword struck me. Every bone in my body shattered at once. The force didn’t just send me flying. Instead, it erased any resistance I had, driving me downward like a meteor. The forest vanished above me as I tore through layers of earth, rock splitting and vaporizing as I descended uncontrollably.

I didn’t stop until I reached something deeper and older.

I crashed into the center of what used to be a dungeon.

Or what remained of it.

The core lay shattered ahead of me, its fragments dim and lifeless. In front of it, a rift cut through space-time itself, jagged and unstable, like a wound that refused to close.

He arrived a moment later, his strike came down and ended me.

Everything went dark.

“Divine Word: Raise.”

I came back.

The resurrection was in progress, my body reconstructing, existence reasserting itself.

“Return to Origin.”

It stopped.

My resurrection halted mid-process, my form incomplete as his will pressed down on the mechanism itself, trying to erase the very concept of my return. I felt his presence intrude, his intent shifting as he reached into my pocket dimension, searching.

The Key.

He was looking for the Key.

But a faint glow pulsed from my finger. The Iron Band of Resurrection activated. It didn’t care about his authority. It didn’t care about interruption. It simply worked. Life surged back into me violently, overriding the halt, forcing completion. My body snapped back into existence fully, breath returning as if it had never left.

I didn’t waste the moment.

I pushed off the ground and leaped straight toward the rift.

For a brief second, I caught his expression.

Bewilderment.

That alone made it worth it.

I fell through the rift and the sky.

Gu Jie had been right.

Losten wasn’t just a world. Instead, it was positioned within a pocket space, suspended between the Hollowed World and the moon itself. As I emerged, gravity reclaimed me, and I began to fall from above, the night stretching endlessly around me.

The battlefield was nowhere in sight.

Only the vast sky.

I breathed in.

Qi.

Real qi.

It flowed into me freely now, no longer suppressed, no longer devoured. It filled my body, intertwined with my other energies, feeding into them, amplifying them, restoring what had been lost.

I healed rapidly.

Flesh reformed. Bones stabilized. Power surged back through my veins as divine and natural forces synchronized.

He came after me.

There was no hesitation, no pause to reassess the situation. The Origin King tore through the boundary I had crossed, chasing just behind me like something unhinged. I could feel it immediately. His presence, which had already been overwhelming, began to rise further.

Then it broke.

The limit he had been, restrained by the peak of Ascended Soul, shattered like glass.

Something else emerged.

His aura expanded violently, blooming into something absolute, something that no longer felt bound by the same rules. Laws bent around him instinctively, as if acknowledging a superior authority. His clothes burned away in streaks of light, replaced by armor of gold and deep blue that formed directly over his body. Behind him, a pair of radiant wings unfurled, vast and resplendent, each feather carrying the weight of divine order.

He had stepped into it.

Ruler of Laws.

Even he seemed disoriented for a moment, his gaze sweeping across the unfamiliar sky.

“What… is this place?”

I couldn’t help it.

I grinned.

“Welcome to the Hollowed World.”

The answer barely left my mouth before the world responded. Night vanished. Day arrived with violence. The sky ignited as something descended. It was a massive, blazing construct shaped like a fist, the literal manifestation of the sun itself crashing down toward us with annihilating force.

I didn’t stay to watch.

“Egress.”

Space folded around me, and I vanished just as the sun’s fist came down.

The Warden… really didn’t like outsiders.

—

I reappeared in my office. It was quiet, calm, and completely disconnected from the chaos I had just left.

Jue Bu was there.

He stood in front of a painting, or rather… something that was trying very hard to be one. His hands moved with delicate precision as he manipulated qi, holding together an arrangement of fruits, carefully placed, shaped, and suspended to resemble the form of a naked woman.

He leaned back slightly, grinning in a way that could only be described as shameless.

“Ah… perfection. Look at the curvature on that—”

He froze.

Slowly, he turned toward me, eyes widening.

“This is not what you think it looks like—”

“Dude,” I cut him off flatly, already moving past him, “you’re acting as my shadow, the Emperor.”

I didn’t even bother looking twice.

“Never mind that. Give me the Hollow Star. I’m busy.”

There was a brief pause.

Then he straightened, expression shifting instantly as he formed a hand sign.

“Castling.”

Space flickered. The Hollow Star appeared above me, settling onto my head as if it had always belonged there. Power surged. Behind me, Starshroud’s presence flared with unmistakable excitement.

“Finally! Time for revenge! Supreme Bearer’s Pact!”

I felt it again, that overwhelming ascent, that flood of eldritch strength merging with everything I already had. This time, I didn’t hesitate. I began casting immediately.

“Holy Wrath.”

“Blessed Weapon.”

“Bless.”

“Lion’s Courage.”

“Armor of the Indomitable.”

“Sacred Bulwark.”

“Shield of the Eternal.”

“Divine Word: Life.”

“War Aura.”

“Radiant Ascension.”

“Judgment Flame.”

“Aegis of the First Light.”

“Sanctified Dominion.”

Power stacked endlessly, reinforced by the Hollow Star, stabilized by my control, amplified beyond what it had been before. It wouldn’t be like last time. Not even close. Behind me, Jue Bu glanced toward the window, frowning.

“Why did it suddenly get dark outside?”

I ignored him.

Instead, I reached out, invoking the authority embedded within the Dark Veil. Space responded instantly, bending to my will as I locked onto the battlefield I had just left behind.

And then, I was back and suspended in the air.

What I saw… even I had to take a moment to process.

The Warden had fully awakened.

It had merged with the moon itself, its form expanding into something incomprehensibly massive. A titan, its body carved from celestial mass and ancient authority, its presence dwarfing everything around it.

And it was beating the Origin King without restraint.

Each strike from the Warden carried catastrophic force, slamming into him with enough power to distort the very laws he now wielded. The fact that he had ascended to Ruler of Laws didn’t seem to matter.

Not here.

Not against this.

The Warden wasn’t just powerful.

It was purpose-built.

Created by the Six Supremes to contain beings like the Supreme Void and the Lost Gods, it existed on a level that rendered most advantages irrelevant.

Even his.

I exhaled once, steadying myself.

Then I stepped forward into the air.

“Legacy Art: God Emperor.”

My armor erupted into white and gold, radiance spilling outward as I entered the battlefield once more. With the Hollow Star and Supreme Bearer’s Pact reinforcing me, the transformation stabilized at a level far beyond before.

Now, it was two against one.

I gripped Silver Steel and Soulsunderer, then moved. I didn’t approach directly.

Every attack came from an angle that didn’t exist a moment before, slipping through gaps created by the Warden’s relentless assault. I didn’t give him time to adapt, layering unpredictability over raw pressure.

He fought back, desperately.

Laws manifested around him, bending reality in precise, calculated ways. Space twisted to redirect attacks. Time staggered in short bursts to create openings. Concepts themselves were weaponized as he lashed out, each Immortal Art reinforcing his position.

But I had something he didn’t.

Near-infinite quintessence.

“Heavenly Punishment.”

I cast it once.

Then again.

Then again.

I didn’t stop.

Each invocation tore open the sky, calling down divine judgment in relentless succession. Pillars of golden destruction rained down, overlapping, chaining into one another as I wove them into my attacks.

At the same time, I struck.

A slash from behind.

A thrust from below.

A smite layered into a feint.

Every movement deceptive. Every attack timed to coincide with either his defense breaking under the Warden’s blows or his focus shifting to counter the barrage from above.

The heavens responded in kind.

Hundreds of golden divine swords manifested, forming high above before raining down in a brutal, unending storm. Each blade carried divine authority, each impact detonating with overwhelming force as they struck the battlefield in rapid succession.

He endured and adapted.

But slowly?

I began to grind him down.