Immortal Paladin

Chapter 477 464 Slanderous Developments… Ahem…

464 Slanderous Developments… Ahem…

[POV: Conquest]

This was a mistake.

Conquest understood it with terrifying clarity.

He needed to flee.

The instinct to retreat screamed through the conceptual lattice that formed his existence, yet instinct meant little before the Ophanim. Escape required agency, and agency required an intact will. Both were being steadily eroded.

Unbeknownst to both the target and the caster, an untapped omnipotence slumbered within those eyes. They had been inherited from a counterpart who had witnessed the proverbial dawn of creation. Their current owner, ignorant and reckless, had brushed against infinity and glimpsed a theoretical end to all things. Between beginning and ending, the Ophanim now stood at a convergence point that had never existed before.

It had never been stronger.

Conquest, as a Ruler of Laws, was not merely flesh and bone. He was a cluster of concepts personified into existence, unified by a singular sovereign will. Conquest was not simply his name. It was the governing principle that defined his being.

Yet before this power, his grandeur meant nothing.

His will was being worn down.

Each alternate reality forced upon him was not a crude illusion but a fully realized possibility, complete in causality and sensation. The erosion was subtle at first, like waves scraping against stone. Then it became catastrophic.

He died.

In one timeline, Da Wei dragged him from abstraction with Godslayer and crushed his skull between divine hands until pestilence bled like smoke from ruptured seams.

In another, holy chains bound him in place while radiant swords descended from every direction, each strike severing a law he governed, reducing him from embodiment to fragment.

In yet another, Da Wei allowed him to manifest Law of Death successfully—only to walk through it untouched, smiling, before whispering something incomprehensible and turning Conquest's own arrows inward, letting the curses feast upon their master.

There were timelines where Conquest was purified, his necrotic body dissolving under relentless divine radiance.

There were timelines where he was split into conceptual halves and forced to conquer himself, locked in endless self-devouring contradiction.

There were timelines where he never even saw the strike that ended him, because the Ophanim had already calculated the precise moment of irreversible defeat.

Each death carried full sensation.

Each end felt absolute.

Humiliation festered.

Pain compounded.

Worst of all, fear took root.

It was not the fear of destruction, because destruction was an occupational hazard of existence at his level. It was the fear of irrelevance. The fear of being toyed with. The fear of being studied, dissected, and replayed like a specimen beneath a lens.

This power defied proportion.

A Supreme Being? So what? Da Wei had not reached the pinnacle that Conquest's creator once occupied. He had not ruled an era. He had not commanded the Age of Divinity. Conquest himself had been fashioned from the blood, skin, and hair of the Supreme Being of Death. His origin was divine craftsmanship refined through endless odds.

"I refuse to be reduced to your plaything," Conquest snarled.

His ivory bow flared into a blinding white.

The Four Horsemen had been born privileged. From inception, they stood at the realm of Rulers of Laws. They comprehended universal principles as naturally as mortals breathed. They could peer behind the veil of phenomena and manifest an Immortal Art without putting much effort.

Yet beyond Immortal Arts lay something greater.

For a Ruler of Laws, true supremacy was expressed through the crystallization of one's Dao into a Domain. This was not a technique learned but an accumulation of total insight, the distilled essence of understanding. A Dao Domain could only be manifested once per existence, singular and absolute.

Even Supreme Beings treated such manifestations with caution.

"Dao Domain: Conquest of Thy Undying Will!"

Reality shifted.

A vast ethereal plain unfolded, stretching infinitely beneath a colorless sky. Glowing crowns materialized above the heads of imagined foes, symbols of sovereignty inverted into marks of subjugation. Countless spectral arrows formed in the air, each one etched with decrees of submission. They did not target flesh. They targeted resolve.

Within this Domain, resistance was futile. Enemies were pierced through the will itself, transformed into loyal thralls or shattered utterly. Against opponents of the same realm who had not manifested their own Dao Domain, it was near invincibility.

"This is my victory," Conquest declared, his voice resounding across layered realities. "Even if we are separated by illusion or divided by time—"

He died.

The Domain collapsed mid-proclamation.

Another timeline overlaid his triumph with brutal efficiency. Da Wei stepped forward within the Domain as though it were a shallow puddle rather than an ultimate manifestation. The golden chains of proximity reappeared. The crowns above his head shattered like fragile glass.

Conquest's throat was crushed.

Reset.

He activated the Domain again.

He died before the final syllable left his mouth.

Reset.

He loosed arrows meant to enslave.

They struck Da Wei and disintegrated as though embarrassed.

Reset.

"W-what?" Conquest uttered, flabbergasted.

There were countless powers scattered across the universe.

The path of cultivation alone branched into endless interpretations, each accompanied by its own scenery, philosophy, and revelation. A single lifetime could not exhaust its variations. Immortal Arts stood among its most celebrated manifestations, allowing even mortals to refine their existence, ascend beyond mediocrity, and touch true greatness.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

Beyond Immortal Arts lay the laws.

Beyond laws lay the Dao Domain.

And beyond even those stood something rarer still.

The Supreme Beings possessed a mysterious quality that no scripture properly recorded, and no cultivation manual adequately explained. It had no singular technical designation. Scholars and immortals alike referred to it simply as the supremacy trait, a title derived from the bearers themselves.

It was subtle.

It did not always manifest as an overwhelming force or a radiant spectacle.

Instead, it bent destiny in small, decisive increments. It altered inevitabilities. It asserted existence over contradiction. It created a gulf so vast between its wielder and all others that comparison itself became flawed.

Conquest, as a Ruler of Laws, should have been capable of extinguishing an Ascended Soul without difficulty. By all conventional measures, Da Wei remained within that lesser realm.

Yet there was nothing measly about him.

Within Da Wei dwelled a supremacy trait of his own, one still immature, still undefined, yet undeniably present. It elevated his existence beyond the sum of his cultivation and skills.

Again and again, Conquest invoked his Immortal Art.

Again and again, he manifested his Dao Domain.

Each time, the result was the same.

They failed before the one who called himself the Supreme Bearer.

The urge to flee swelled within Conquest's mind. Survival, once secondary to pride, now screamed for priority. Yet even the possibility of retreat was denied. Every path branched into another death. Every attempt to disengage was intercepted by those all-seeing eyes.

He was trapped.

Conquest was the youngest of the Four Horsemen, but he was still one of them. Pride was not optional; it was foundational. However, if this continued, even that would erode into nothing.

"I will not be humiliated any longer!"

He was already weakened from the destruction of his proxy in the Hollowed World. The loss had not been trivial. Still, pride and injury were irrelevant now. Escape was paramount.

Da Wei had proposed negotiation.

But negotiation required leverage.

Conquest had none.

If he submitted in this position, he would be used and discarded.

Fear etched itself into the very framework of his being. For the first time since his creation, he understood why even gods tread carefully around Supreme Beings.

With cold resolve, Conquest turned his own curse inward.

He targeted the core of his conceptual existence, striking at the anchor that localized him here. If destroyed properly, he would rematerialize at a distant fragment of himself, severing this encounter entirely.

He executed the self-annihilation flawlessly.

"The next time we meet, I will repay this humiliation—"

Reset.

The world reassembled.

He stood once more before Da Wei.

His self-inflicted conceptual death had meant nothing.

"J-just what are those eyes?" Conquest asked, genuine fear cracking through his voice.

He attempted again, this time driving his curse deeper, unraveling more thoroughly, aiming to erase not merely manifestation but continuity.

He failed.

The Ophanim observed.

The Ophanim recalculated.

The Ophanim denied.

Da Wei grinned, almost sheepish.

"These eyes?" he said casually. "I am curious as well. Perhaps they are the next level of an Immortal Art. That sounds impressive enough. Speaking of which, what was that domain technique you just used? It looked interesting."

Conquest trembled.

"What do you want from me?" he demanded. "Release me!"

Da Wei laughed lightly, as though the situation were a friendly spar rather than existential torture.

"Relax. Your will is weaker than I expected. I thought we would go at this for months. You have only died around a hundred times. That is not very impressive."

Conquest's jaw tightened.

"Do you know," Da Wei continued conversationally, "there are two kinds of death? One is mortal death. The other is conceptual death. Which do you think hurts more?"

"I do not need your lecture!" Conquest roared.

Of course he knew.

Mortal death was inconvenience.

Conceptual death was erosion.

Da Wei went on anyway.

"You have experienced hundreds of mortal deaths at my hands. Head crushed. Body cleaved. Essence burned. Most immortals shrug that off. I have endured my share. My counterpart's inherited memories were full of it. Feng Wei nearly ended me more times than I can count."

He tilted his head slightly.

"Conceptual death is different. You felt it twice. It gnaws at what you are, not just how you manifest."

Da Wei's smile widened.

"As for me? I experience it every reset. Exalted Renewal is not merely suicidal. It consumes my existence for power. Each loop costs something real. I am simply accustomed to it."

Conquest stared, horror deepening.

"So yes," Da Wei concluded lightly, "it is somewhat disappointing that you are surrendering so soon. Conquest, one of the Four Horsemen, reduced to this after barely a hundred deaths. I expected a stronger will."

"I will not fall for your cheap provocations!" Conquest cried.

Da Wei actually looked offended.

"Oh no," he replied flatly. "That was a lecture. Did you forget already? I told you I want to make a deal. But if you are this much of a chump, I might as well try to kill you outright. I mean, I am just an inferior little Ascended Soul, and you are a Ruler of Laws. It is embarrassing."

He paced slowly in the fractured void, Ophanim turning lazily behind his pupils.

"Sure, I cannot win against you without Exalted Renewal. That much is obvious. But as I continue fighting you inside these alternate realities, gathering data, measuring your responses, studying your immortality… I am starting to think I might genuinely have a shot at killing you."

Conquest's expression twitched.

Da Wei continued conversationally, as though discussing academic performance.

"I operate under the assumption that any thinking entity is driven by motivation. You included. If there is something you want badly enough, I can leverage that into a mutually beneficial arrangement. However, if you are this weak-willed, then you might just become a liability."

He tilted his head.

"Of course, someone weak is easier to control. But I cannot afford baggage I do not want to carry. If that sounds unfair, then I apologize. It was not my intention to wound your ego. I used to work in education, you know. Constructive criticism is important."

Conquest had underestimated the degree of humiliation Da Wei was capable of inflicting.

Ordinarily, such condescension would have triggered apocalyptic retaliation. His temper alone had ended civilizations before. Yet here, in this suffocating loop of calculated torment, rage had no outlet.

He died again.

Reset.

He tried to negotiate between deaths.

"What do you want?"

Reset.

"I will submit."

Reset.

"Enough of this madness!"

Reset.

"Release me!"

The desire to escape metastasized into obsession. Pride, dignity, and sovereignty? None of it mattered anymore. Even unbearable concessions seemed preferable to enduring another cycle.

For an existence with so few equals, pain had always been theoretical to Conquest. He inflicted it. He conceptualized it. He embodied it for others.

He did not experience it.

Now, subjected to repeated mortal deaths and intermittent conceptual erosion, he encountered something alien.

Helpless suffering.

It felt obscene.

Da Wei eventually stopped pacing.

His expression turned aloof.

"I have concluded that I still cannot kill you," he said plainly. "I lack a proper killing move to permanently erase a Ruler of Laws. Your resurrection mechanisms are layered beyond even conceptual death. That is troublesome."

Conquest dared to hope.

"Therefore," Da Wei continued, "I will make use of the opportunity before me. I am going to seal you. I do not have extensive experience with sealing techniques, so please endure it."

Conquest's dread spiked.

"Aaaaaaah!"

Pain lanced through him as something shifted at the foundation of his Dao.

Then Da Wei spoke words that should have been impossible.

"Dao Domain: Conquest of Thy Undying Will."

Reality answered.

Conquest's own Domain unfolded.

The same endless ethereal plain.

The same inverted crowns.

The same spectral arrows.

"How?" Conquest gasped.

Da Wei examined the phenomenon with open curiosity.

An arrow formed above Conquest's head.

It descended.

It pierced his will.

"From this point forward," Da Wei said calmly, "Conquest will no longer exist."

The mechanism was horrifyingly elegant. Using the Ophanim's total observational supremacy and the supremacy trait's distortion of destiny, Da Wei had not copied the Domain in the conventional sense. He had asserted that he could wield it, and reality, briefly confused, complied.

If this continued, Conquest would not merely be defeated.

He would be overwritten.

Sealed by his own Dao Domain.

That fate was worse than annihilation.

In sheer desperation, Conquest invoked his Domain himself, attempting to reclaim authority.

A second arrow manifested.

It pierced him again.

His sovereignty fractured.

In that sliver of collapsing coherence, Conquest acted.

"Come forth… Pestilence."

He did not possess foresight like the Ophanim, but he possessed cunning. A Ruler of Laws was not a monolith. He was an accumulation. If Conquest could not survive intact, then he would fracture voluntarily and preserve a portion under a different configuration.

Better mutilated survival than total subjugation.

The arrows completed their descent.

Conquest was conquered.

Where he had stood, another presence stabilized.

Her aura was thinner, sharper, more specialized. The overwhelming sovereignty of Conquest was gone, replaced by something narrower yet intact.

She bowed her head.

"I serve and obey."

Da Wei blinked.

"What the fuck is going on?"

Ru Qiu folded his arms.

"No wonder you are friends with a degenerate like Jue Bu," he said dryly. "You are cut from the same cloth."

Da Wei looked scandalized.

"That is slander. This has absolutely nothing to do with me."