Immortal Paladin

522 Forced into a Corner

I remained hidden within the Divine Phantasm of Dreams, my presence erased from the senses of the world as I observed from a layer beyond reality.

Below me, War stood at the center of devastation, his blazing sword carving through the second continent even as the first still crumbled beneath his feet. The sheer scale of destruction would have driven lesser minds into madness, but to me, it was nothing more than a calculated exchange.

I invoked my authority over the Hollowed World and shifted another continent into place above him, letting it descend with crushing inevitability.

Through Qi Speech, I taunted him.

“Do you realize, War, that we have already danced across seventeen continents?” I allowed a trace of amusement to seep into my tone as I continued, my consciousness stretched thin across the battlefield. “Every soul that once lived upon them has been evacuated elsewhere. I am not so crude as to slaughter them for convenience. I marked each landmass the moment we began, all so I could use them like this. Now then, be a good opponent and cut this one too.”

War’s fiery blade roared as it split the falling continent apart, magma and stone scattering like rain. Yet before the debris could even settle, I had already drawn a third continent into position and released it without hesitation. Either he had underestimated what it meant for me to hold dominion over this world, or he simply lacked the foresight to grasp it. Conquest would have adapted by now, but War was different. His strength lay in overwhelming force, not in subtlety. He compensated for his lack of strategy with sheer, unrelenting violence.

Beneath him, the Dark Veil churned like a living abyss, a purgatory that devoured all things that fell into it. If I could force him down just once, even briefly, I could seal him within and claim victory. I held no illusions about destroying a Ruler of Laws, not after my encounters with Aixin and Conquest. Their existence was etched into the very fabric of reality. But sealing them was another matter entirely, and one I had prepared for.

I maintained my vigilance, every sense sharpened as I tracked the shifting probabilities through Ophanim and the Divine Zone. Then, without warning, War’s weight of existence surged. It was not a gradual escalation, but a violent eruption, as if he had torn through the suppression imposed by the world itself.

“With my blood, I summon—”

He slit his wrist without hesitation, and the moment his blood touched the air, the Hollowed World trembled.

“Slaughter Palace!”

His blood multiplied, scattering across the void before coalescing into something monstrous. Beyond the boundary of my world, a palace formed, vast and grotesque, constructed from writhing flesh and congealed blood. Its presence pressed against reality with its own independent existence, alien to my dominion. The moment I tried to account for it through Ophanim, a sharp drain tore through my reserves, forcing me to channel more quintessence from the Hollow Star and refine it into Divine Qi just to maintain equilibrium.

War used that opening without hesitation. His blade carved through the third continent, splitting it apart and creating a path forward. I reacted instantly, invoking Divine Step through my authority and reappearing above him, but the flow of battle had already shifted. I still had fourteen continents left to deploy, yet I could see it clearly now how he would cut through them all if I relied on brute repetition.

I extended both hands and closed them with decisive force, invoking the authority of the Hollowed World to crush him from all directions at once. Space folded inward, pressure mounting to a catastrophic degree as the split continents themselves converged.

For a brief moment, it appeared absolute.

Then I felt it.

Through the Divine Zone and the clarity of Ophanim, I sensed no damage, no weakening, and no disruption in his existence. Instead, something vast began to spread beneath the surface, writhing and multiplying with unnatural speed. The ground split open, and from within, countless forms emerged.

Blazing ants.

They crawled over one another in endless waves, their bodies igniting as they surged upward like a living inferno. Each one carried a fragment of War’s intent, their presence forming a collective that rivaled the scale of the continents themselves.

“I CAN SMELL YOU~!” War’s voice echoed, manic and triumphant, reverberating through the battlefield.

The ants locked onto me in unison, their bodies flaring brighter as they launched themselves skyward. They came like meteors, streaks of fire cutting through the heavens, turning my advantage into a storm of relentless pursuit.

“Divine Protection,” I invoked, weaving together the principles of Divine Flesh, Shield of Faith, and Shield of the Eternal into a single cohesive safeguard that wrapped around my body like a second existence.

The spell settled over me with a quiet radiance, stabilizing my form as the storm of flaming ants surged closer. I moved without hesitation, chaining Divine Step after Divine Step, each displacement precise and deliberate as I avoided their relentless trajectories.

At the same time, I extended my authority over the Hollowed World, attempting to displace the ants themselves, casting them away from my vicinity as if they were nothing more than debris in a storm. It worked only briefly. Entire clusters vanished from around me, relocated to distant layers of the world. Yet the effect did not last. I felt it clearly that my authority was slipping, no longer absolute over those constructs. War’s influence had taken root within them, anchoring their existence beyond my immediate control.

Then one of them changed.

The ant distorted mid-flight, its blazing form stretching and collapsing inward before expanding into War himself. His armored figure erupted into being right before me, already in motion, his blade descending with lethal intent. I reacted on instinct, cutting him down in a clean arc. His body split, and exploded.

The detonation rippled outward, violent and uncontrolled, yet I noted something immediately. My reflect had not triggered.

Understanding dawned in the same instant.

Through Qi Speech, I let my voice slip toward him, edged with amusement despite the escalating danger. “It seems you are not as daft as you appear, War. You have learned to step around my tricks rather than crash headlong into them.”

From the mass of converged continents below, War burst forth once more, and this time, he was different. Blood streamed endlessly from his back, his previous flaming wings gone, replaced by a flowing crimson cape that seemed to breathe with a life of its own. His ascent was not graceful but violent, his body swelling and tearing as if unable to contain the power surging within him.

The transformation did not end there.

War exploded into bits and gore.

From beneath the shattered remnants of the continents, something colossal rose. A giant clad in red armor emerged, at least twenty feet in height, mounted atop the Slaughter Palace as it twisted and reshaped itself into a grotesque crimson steed. In his grasp was an enormous flaming sword, its blade radiating destruction with every movement. The sheer weight of his existence distorted the surrounding space as he galloped forward, weaving through debris with impossible speed.

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I answered by casting more illusions.

Through the Divine Phantasm of Dreams, I created multiple versions of myself, each illusion carrying enough substance to deceive. They scattered in different directions, mimicking my presence across layers of space. Yet even as I moved, I noticed something unsettling.

The ants had stopped pursuing me.

Instead, they hovered.

Countless blazing bodies floated and revolved in a calculated pattern around my position, forming a structure that pulsed with intent. I focused, running the pattern through my analysis, and the conclusion came swiftly. It was a formation.

I did not hesitate. Divine Step carried me out of its center just as the first explosion triggered. A chain reaction followed, detonations cascading through the space I had occupied mere moments before. Yet the instant I reappeared elsewhere, I saw it.

War was already there.

Not in the present, but in the immediate future my Ophanim revealed to me. I moved accordingly, adjusting my stance before his strike even arrived, and when his massive blade descended, I met it head-on. Steel clashed against something far more monstrous, and this time, I felt it. The strain traveled through my arms, into my core, forcing me to acknowledge the raw force behind his attack.

Within me, Starshroud stirred, her voice calm yet resolute. “I am ready.”

“Final Adjudication!”

A vast construct manifested behind us, an enormous scale suspended in the void, its chains slithering outward like living entities. The moment it appeared, Starshroud’s voice rang out with cold authority. “Wretched Effigy.”

An effigy of War formed instantly, bound by the chains of Final Adjudication that lashed out without mercy. They did not stop there. Every ant within the vicinity was struck, each one tethered to the judgment imposed by the scale. Then the power detonated.

Divine force erupted outward as a directed annihilation that tore into War from within, seeking to dismantle his existence piece by piece.

For a fleeting moment, it worked.

Then War moved.

With sheer force, he tore the scale apart, shattering something that should have been absolute. The backlash rippled through the construct as it collapsed, its chains snapping under pressure that defied logic. It was not mere strength. It was something deeper, something tied to the laws that defined his existence.

He flickered, closing the distance once more.

I did not meet him directly this time. Instead, I descended rapidly toward the mass of continents below, dispersing the converged debris with a thought. The singular structure fragmented into countless floating islands, each one shifting and repositioning under my control. I moved across them in rapid succession, leaping from one to another, forcing War to navigate an ever-changing battlefield.

Even as I moved, my mind did not rest.

I began a new chain of analysis, dissecting every interaction, every fluctuation in his power, searching for the precise condition required to seal him. I had done it once before. That alone proved it was possible. There was no reason I could not achieve it again.

Perhaps he sensed it.

Perhaps he understood, on some instinctual level, that the trajectory of this battle was no longer in his favor.

War drew in power with reckless abandon, pulling upon the very laws that bound him despite the suppression that limited him to the Ascended Soul. His voice carried across the battlefield, heavy with authority.

“Dao Domain: War of the Eternal Forge.”

The world changed.

A domain unfolded around us, not as a simple overlay, but as a complete transformation of reality. Blood seeped into everything. The sky darkened and began to bleed, the ground pulsing as though it were made of living flesh. Even the air grew thick with the scent of iron.

Then came the sound.

Countless anguished souls cried out from within the seams of the world, their voices overlapping into a chorus of suffering that pressed against my mind. The domain was not merely a battlefield. It was a forge of torment, a place where existence itself was broken down and reforged through endless war.

Through Ophanim, I attempted to purge the ghosts that bled through the seams of the domain, directing threads of refined Divine Qi toward them in precise exorcism patterns. The effort failed almost immediately.

The spirits did not resist in the way independent entities would, nor did they disperse under divine authority. Instead, they remained anchored, inseparable from the very fabric of the Dao Domain itself. That realization settled heavily in my mind, and I shifted my focus without hesitation.

I began analyzing the cost of this manifestation.

War was still suppressed at the level of an Ascended Soul, yet he had forcefully invoked a Dao Domain that clearly exceeded that boundary. The strain should have been catastrophic. I ran the calculations through Ophanim, layering probability upon probability, and the conclusion became starkly clear.

The qi expenditure required to sustain this state was immense, far beyond what he should be capable of maintaining. At most, it would last him exactly one minute before total depletion.

Yet I saw him succeed.

Not once, but across multiple projected futures.

Within a single microsecond, I expanded my perception, tracing thousands of branching outcomes while accounting for his overwhelming weight of existence. Each future unfolded with slight variations, influenced by infinitesimal changes in movement, timing, and intent. However, my precognition was not without limits. The act of observing one future inherently constrained the ability to peer into another, and even as I forced my mind to stretch across parallel possibilities, I felt the narrowing of my vision.

Time was not on my side.

Despite the overwhelming data, I reached a conclusion that I did not like. I did not have enough time to successfully seal him within the duration of the domain. Worse still, the nature of his attacks had fundamentally changed. If War landed a fatal strike within this domain, it would not simply destroy my body or bypass my layers of immortality. It would strike at the law that constituted my very existence. Damage at that level would unravel me completely, collapsing the structure that defined me as Da Wei.

This was the endgame.

I moved.

Divine Step carried me across bleeding space as the domain reacted violently to my presence. Blood surged upward, shaping itself into countless weapons that pursued me with relentless precision. Blades, spears, chains, and constructs beyond simple definition formed and launched in waves. At the same time, blood wraiths clawed their way into existence, their distorted forms rushing toward me with feral intent.

I fought back without pause.

Through the Divine Zone, I unleashed Divine Smite repeatedly, each strike calculated and directed to maximize efficiency. The smites tore through the wraiths, dispersing them into fragments of corrupted qi, yet more continued to emerge, sustained endlessly by the domain. My movements became tighter, sharper, each step guided by layers of foresight as I navigated the storm.

Even then, I thought.

I reviewed every ability at my disposal, every artifact, every authority I held. Options rose and fell within my mind as I calculated their viability. Despite the pressure, despite the looming threat of annihilation, a part of me remained calm enough to find amusement in the situation.

After all, I was not the only one who could see in the future.

This very moment had already been accounted for.

My lips curved faintly as I recalled her. Gu Jie. My daughter had left me with more than just parting words. She had woven a thread of destiny into me before I stepped into this battlefield, a subtle reinforcement that sharpened my precognition just enough to tip the scales when it mattered most.

That was how I was able to joke even in this situation.

I raised my hand.

“With this treasure,” I said through Qi Speech, extending my middle finger toward War in blatant provocation, “how about I give you a time out?”

The Ring of Dark Banishment responded instantly. The artifact, taken from the Origin King, activated with a quiet but absolute authority. Its effect did not target War directly. Instead, it latched onto the crimson steed beneath him, the transformed shape of the Slaughter Palace and the source of his Dao Domain.

The horse vanished.

The effect was immediate and decisive. The Dao Domain destabilized, its duration collapsing from a full minute to a mere ten seconds. The strain on War intensified drastically, forcing his already unsustainable expenditure into a rapid burnout. I had considered targeting him directly, but the projections were clear. He would escape within twenty seconds if I did so. The horse, however, was less resilient in that regard. By severing that anchor, I forced him into a corner where every moment drained him further.

Now he had only two choices.

He could cancel the Dao Domain and conserve what little remained of his strength, or he could continue sustaining it and risk me completing my simulation.

If he chose to withdraw, I already knew the outcome. With the domain gone, I would have the time I needed. The simulations would align, and the path to sealing him would reveal itself. Gu Jie’s intervention ensured that much.

If he chose to persist…

I still had one final card to play.

I tilted my head slightly, my gaze locking onto him as the bleeding world trembled around us. “So then,” I said, my tone light despite the tension coiling beneath it, “what is your plan now, War?”

One second passed.

That was all it took.

Raw and unrestrained fury ignited within him, flooding the domain with killing intent so dense it distorted even my perception.

“I WILL KILL YOU!”

I exhaled slowly as I reached my conclusion.

So he chose this path after all.