Immortal Paladin

525 Another Trick

[POV: Da Wei]

The ascent stretched longer than it should have, as if the world itself resisted letting me go.

Slowly, I broke free from the Hollowed World’s gravity, rising past the final threshold where its pull weakened into nothing. The clouds parted beneath me, layers of white and gray torn open as I crossed through the veil that concealed the truth beyond. What awaited was not sky, but silence. It was the cold, empty vacuum that lay between the Hollowed World and the False Earth. The transition pressed against my senses, a stark shift from life into something vast and indifferent, yet I did not slow.

The crimson horse beneath me bucked violently, its rage still unspent, its will unbroken.

I reached down and grabbed it firmly.

Its body trembled under my grip, muscles coiling as it tried to throw me off, to return to its instinctive destruction. I forced my presence onto it, guiding its motion even as it resisted, compelling it to continue ascending rather than turning back into chaos. Behind me, I could feel Famine, relentless and closing the distance with that same dull, suffocating hunger.

There was no time to hesitate.

I pulled out the bridle and saddle.

Even as the horse thrashed beneath me, I moved with precision, forcing the bridle into place, securing the saddle with practiced efficiency. It fought every step of the way, its rage spilling into the surrounding space like a storm given form, but I held firm. There were many ways I could impose control using my Supremacy Trait, and I did so through sympathy and understanding.

I exhaled slowly, letting my will settle.

Then I spoke.

“Divine Word: Raise.”

The words carried weight beyond sound, resonating through the very essence of the creature beneath me. The Slaughter Palace trembled in response, its existence rippling as the countless souls that composed it stirred violently. This was no mere beast. It was a monument to carnage, forged from the dead, every life taken in War’s endless conflict, every scream and fragment of despair given shape within this crimson vessel.

And they resisted.

The Hollow Star upon my head pulsed faintly, releasing threads of quintessence that wove into the mass of souls. They pushed back, their hatred and pain refusing to yield, their existence defined by the very violence that birthed them. For a moment, it felt like trying to calm a raging ocean with nothing but bare hands.

So I changed my approach.

I reached deeper.

Through Divine Phantasm of Dreams, I connected to them as the Supreme Bearer. My consciousness split and spread, touching each fragment of soul individually. Through the Ophanim, I projected not force, but clarity. I let them feel my intent, my understanding, my acceptance of what they had endured, and bore them all.

“You’ve suffered enough,” I murmured, my voice carried into every corner of their being.

I took their weight upon myself, their anguish brushing against my thoughts as I guided them gently toward release. One by one, the vengeful spirits began to quiet, their resistance faltering as the rage that bound them loosened. I showed them the path to the Dark Veil of the Hollowed World, the innate cycle that awaited them beyond this existence.

Reincarnation.

Not an end, but a continuation.

Slowly, they let go.

The crimson horse beneath me began to unravel, its form destabilizing as the souls that sustained it departed. Its body flickered, edges dissolving into nothingness as the foundation of its existence faded away. For a brief moment, it seemed as though the Slaughter Palace would collapse entirely.

Then Hei Mao’s scarf reacted.

The white fabric lashed outward, embedding itself into the unraveling structure. From within it, Ezekiel emerged not as a singular being, but as a multitude, filling the gaps left behind. They patched the instability, reinforcing the horse’s form with borrowed existence, stitching together what remained into something stable.

The horse steadied.

Its crimson hue dimmed slightly, no longer a chaotic blaze but something more controlled. Around it, trails of skulls formed from mirage drifted in slow orbit, silent witnesses to what it had once been.

I exhaled.

Behind me, Famine was close.

The stars around us shifted.

What had once been distant points of light twisted into formation, aligning into constructs that pulsed with unnatural intent. The vacuum itself became hostile as they activated, releasing arcs of lightning and a barrage of spatial traps that erupted in every direction. Bolts tore through the void, distortions snapped open without warning, each one designed to intercept, to annihilate.

I leaned forward.

The horse responded.

We moved as one.

Through the Ophanim, every trajectory unfolded before me, every trap revealed an instant before activation. I guided the horse through them with precise control, weaving between lightning and void alike as if threading a needle through chaos. The saddle held firm beneath me, the bridle responding to my will as the creature followed my guidance without resistance.

Even so, Famine remained on my tail.

Ahead, something shifted.

The False Earth stirred.

The Sun and Moon that revolved around it trembled, their orbits collapsing inward as they converged into a single point. Light and shadow fused, giving birth to a presence that dwarfed everything around it. From that convergence emerged the Warden, its form vast and imposing, its authority pressing down upon the space around us like an unbreakable law.

And it was not calm.

“DA WEI~! DO YOU NOT KNOW YOUR PLACE?”

Its voice thundered through the vacuum, carrying fury that rippled across the surrounding formations. The sheer force of it made the stars tremble, their constructed traps momentarily faltering under its presence.

I couldn’t help the thought that crossed my mind.

Just how did Ru Qiu manage to sneak past this thing?

I didn’t slow.

“Move,” I said, my voice cutting cleanly through the space between us. “This is a one-on-one.”

The horse surged forward beneath me as I continued, my gaze locked ahead.

“And while you’re at it, let me borrow the False Earth.”

The silence that followed lasted less than a heartbeat.

The Warden’s expression twisted.

It did not take that well.

With a motion that carried absolute authority, it summoned its mace, the weapon forming from condensed celestial force as it prepared to strike.

Honestly, I was honored.

The Warden knew my name. For the longest time, I had thought of him as nothing more than a silent sentinel, an unmoving existence wedged between the Hollowed World and the False Earth, radiating menace without ever speaking. Yet here he was, roaring my name like I had personally offended the order of the cosmos.

Then his mace came down.

There was no elegance in it, no restraint. It was just raw, overwhelming force. I leaned forward and guided my horse through the Ophanim’s predictions, shifting our trajectory at the last possible moment. The mace tore past us, its wake distorting space as if reality itself had been struck.

I barely had time to breathe before a black hole bloomed in front of me. I drove my will into the horse and invoked Divine Step through it, forcing a spatial leap that hurled us across a massive distance in an instant. The world snapped, reformed, and Famine was suddenly beside me.

The scale within his hollow abdomen tilted.

Everything shifted.

Gravity bent toward him in a single, overwhelming pull, dragging my body sideways as if I had been caught in a collapsing star. My grip tightened, but the force was absolute. However, another force intervened.

The Warden extended his hand.

Celestial gravity surged outward, colliding with Famine’s pull and wrenching me aside with brutal authority. The sudden shift tore me free from my horse, sending me spiraling away as control slipped from my grasp.

I twisted midair and looked back.

The horse did not hesitate.

It lunged at Famine, teeth snapping as it bit, chewed, and fought with savage persistence, its form flickering between physical and something more abstract as it clung to him like a maddened spirit.

My Ophanim flickered.

The predictions blurred.

The Warden’s sheer weight of existence pressed down on my perception, distorting the clarity I relied on. Possibilities fractured into static as his presence overwhelmed the threads of causality I was trying to read.

Then his hand closed around me.

The world shrank to the space within his grasp.

I didn’t struggle.

I acted.

The stars around us shifted through my authority as the owner of Hollowed World.

They were not truly stars. Not in the natural sense. They were constructs, formations born from the Hollowed World itself, and that meant they fell under my authority. I seized control of them, bending their arrangement in an instant as they converged toward the Warden’s hand.

They wrapped around his fingers like chains. They were not strong enough to hold him, but enough to interrupt for a moment. That was all I needed. I vanished with Divine Step, slipping through the gap as his grip faltered, reappearing just behind his enormous hand.

“LAW OF HUNGER.”

The voice tore through everything.

A hole opened in space, right through the Warden’s hand.

Famine stared straight at me.

My horse had changed.

It was no longer bound entirely by flesh, its form slipping into something more spiritual as it clung to Famine relentlessly, biting into his ears, snapping at his limbs, even tearing into the black horse he had summoned.

“Let me handle this, master,” Hei Mao said.

Control shifted seamlessly.

The body I possessed moved with fluid precision as his scarf unraveled into countless red strings. They lashed outward, anchoring onto the environment as he pulled and redirected himself, dancing through the flurry of spear strikes that followed. Each motion was deliberate, efficient, using the Warden’s own massive hand as leverage as he skimmed along its surface to evade the assault.

Behind us, the star formation shattered.

The Warden’s palm healed, breaking free from the temporary restraint as if it had never existed.

Through the Ophanim, I saw a violent eruption of flames.

The Warden ignited.

Not ordinary fire, but something celestial, something born from fury itself as his entire form erupted with blinding intensity. The surrounding space warped under the heat, even the vacuum seeming to recoil from his anger.

I didn’t hesitate.

I seized the star formations again.

This time, I forced them together, compressing them into a dense cluster before injecting quintessence into their core. The result collapsed inward, forming a gravity well that dragged everything around it backward, including us.

The pull snapped me toward my horse.

It materialized beneath me at the perfect moment.

“NEIGHHH!”

I landed cleanly, reins tightening as we were yanked away from the epicenter.

Behind us, the Warden exploded.

A wave of celestial flame surged outward, crashing into Famine with overwhelming force. The impact distorted everything in its path, forcing me to pour even more effort into maintaining our escape as the shockwave chased us through the void.

We broke through it.

Ahead, the False Earth loomed closer with every passing second.

“We won!” Hei Mao cheered within me.

“Don’t jinx it,” I snapped.

Because I knew better.

Famine was not dead.

The proof came immediately.

An enormous scale manifested above us, vast and oppressive, its chains lashing outward like living serpents. It was not mine. This one carried a corrupted presence, something twisted and wrong that made even my instincts recoil.

I guided the horse sharply, my movements growing more refined with every second as I dodged the chains with tightening precision.

The Warden appeared.

No transition. No warning. Just there.

He swung his mace.

The weapon collided with the scale, the impact detonating with enough force to tear through the surrounding space. I ducked low on instinct, pressing myself against the horse as the clash erupted above us, and then I drove us downward.

The False Earth rushed up to meet us.

We descended fast.

“Shit.”

The Warden was really pissed.

I steadied my breath and spoke inwardly. “Hei Mao, listen carefully. Supernatural forces are suppressed on the False Earth. I need you to detach.”

There was no hesitation in his response.

“We’ll go through this together. I’ll stay by your side.”

For a moment, I said nothing.

Then I exhaled softly.

I was blessed with a good disciple.

Behind us, space distorted again.

Famine appeared, keeping pace as if distance meant nothing to him.

His hollow gaze locked onto me.

“THERE IS NOWHERE FOR YOU TO GO.”

According to Ru Qiu, the nature of the False Earth had changed, now entirely deprived of qi.

I felt it the moment we crossed the threshold.

The familiar flow within my meridians vanished as if it had never existed, leaving behind a strange emptiness that made my body feel heavier than it should have. Gravity asserted itself fully, no longer softened by the subtle buoyancy of qi, and the world pressed down on me with a raw, physical weight. My breathing adjusted instinctively, my senses recalibrating to a system that no longer responded to the foundations I had relied on for so long.

Famine had it worse.

He fell.

There was no grace in it, no control. Just a violent crash as he and his horse slammed into the ground, carving a deep trench into the earth upon impact. Dust and debris surged outward, the land itself buckling under the force of his descent. Whatever advantage he held in the higher realms, it clearly did not translate cleanly into a world stripped of qi.

I didn’t waste the opportunity.

Quintessence surged from the Hollow Star upon my head, flowing downward into my horse in steady streams. It responded immediately, its form stabilizing as the foreign energy replaced what it had lost.

“Master,” Hei Mao’s voice came through, strained but steady, “the Mark of the Hollow can no longer be sustained.”

“I figured,” I muttered.

Even with the vast reserves of quintessence at my disposal, I could feel the limitations creeping in. This world rejected too much, resisted anything that strayed too far from its natural order. Sustained output would be costly. Reckless expenditure would be fatal.

Still, this would be enough.

Below, Famine stirred.

His body knit itself back together, flesh reforming with unnatural efficiency as the laws bound to his existence continued to function despite the absence of qi. He rose slowly, his hollow torso churning as the scale within tilted and corrected itself. While he could no longer wield qi like I once did, he didn’t need to. His connection to those deeper laws remained intact, crude as his understanding might be.

I exhaled lightly.

That still left me with the advantage.

Quintessence was not bound to the same restrictions. Given time, I could refine it into Divine Qi, shaping it into something usable even in this environment. My toolkit had narrowed, but it hadn’t vanished. His, on the other hand, had become far more limited in application.

Of course, there were trade-offs.

I could already tell that the heavier techniques were off the table. Immortal Arts, Ultimate Skills. Anything that required immense, sustained output simply wouldn’t function properly here. Even my Ophanim had dulled. The precognitive clarity I relied on had blurred into indistinct fragments, the weight of the Supreme Void’s existence interfering with my sight like static over a once-perfect signal.

It didn’t matter.

This was still my victory.

I remained aloft, supported by the last vestiges of controlled motion through quintessence, and turned my gaze toward the horizon.

A city lay in the distance.

According to Ru Qiu, the civilization here had been around the Renaissance when he last visited. What I saw now told a different story. Smoke curled into the sky from distant structures, and beyond them, I caught sight of something unmistakable. It was a train, its metal body churning forward as it expelled thick plumes of smoke into the air.

Industrial.

I watched it for a moment, quietly fascinated.

It was strange.

By all accounts, this world should have progressed further. Time had passed. Enough time that their development should have advanced beyond this stage. And yet, they remained here, suspended in a level of growth that felt… delayed.

I tilted my head slightly, thinking.

“Ah, such a pity, it would be nice to look around,” I said aloud, more to myself than anyone else. “Sometimes, I just want to stop… go somewhere quiet, learn about their people, their worlds, the way they live. Not this. Not constant fighting. Not cosmic wars hanging over my shoulders like some obligation I never asked for.”

The words lingered in the air.

Famine looked up at me.

“DOES. THIS. WORLD. FASCI. NATE. YOU?”

I nodded once.

“Yes,” I said simply. Then, after a brief pause, I added, “It’s a shame. I’d rather not see it caught in the crossfire. But the Supreme Void and I…” I let out a quiet breath. “We’re mortal enemies.”

“YA BET!”

A floating eye appeared beside Famine’s shoulder, its presence immediate and invasive. It spun slightly, its gaze locking onto me with a mixture of amusement and irritation. I recognized it instantly, a fragment of consciousness cast outward, a byproduct of the Supreme Void’s influence bleeding into the Greater Universe, despite his sealed status and forced slumber.

It was creative, but not unique.

“I was wondering when you’d show yourself,” I said, my tone even. “Saves me the trouble of guessing.”

The eye narrowed slightly.

“Oh? And how long have you been aware?”

I met its gaze without hesitation.

“The entire time,” I replied calmly. “I knew what he was the moment I saw him.”

For a brief second, silence stretched.

Then I lifted my sword slightly, its edge catching what little light this world offered.

“I’m going to destroy your disciple now.”