439 Accursed Paladin
[POV: David?]
My na was David, the Accursed Paladin, counterpart to the existence known as the Immortal Paladin.
At that mont, I was fighting him with everything on the line.
Among the countless mysteries buried within the Hollowed World, the Dark Veil had always obsessed the most. It was a cage, a perfect one, forged to imprison the Supre Void. Eventually, it imprisoned as well. That was why seeing Da Wei wield it so freely gnawed at to my core.
In my ti, I never found the Hollow Star that now rested upon his head. I never obtained the Destiny Seeking Eyes properly, either. I bargained with the Supre Void, again and again, but all I gained was the ability to reverse ti within the Hollowed World and try anew. Every failure stacked upon the last.
After countless retries, I finally succeeded in acquiring the Ophanim. I convinced the Supre Void of my era to allow devour even the Ancient Souls. The price was steep. A part of the Void now lived within , specifically the trait of supremacy that governed space and emptiness itself.
Through my disciple, Yuan Shun, I crossed the boundaries of ti and arrived here.
"You look deep in thought," Da Wei said lightly. "Jealous of my crown? Do you want it?"
The temptation flickered, brief but dangerous. Still, the Source mattered more.
I felt my connection to Yuan Shun weakening. She was losing. The distance between the False Earth and the Hollowed World was vast, so vast that even my perception faltered. The Dark Veil only worsened it.
I raised my hand and tore the ceiling apart with Divine Smite.
The sky above split open, revealing darkness. The sa Dark Veil now smothering the False Earth spread across the heavens. From the ground, shadowy, eldritch tendrils writhed upward, clawing at it, trying to devour the veil itself.
I turned to Da Wei and warned him, "If you let the Supre Void consu it, the barrier imprisoning this world will weaken. The Void will only grow stronger. Don't be a fool. Just because sothing is outrageous doesn't an it's a good plan."
He looked at strangely.
"Are you really ?" Da Wei asked.
I frowned.
"We are the sa, yet so different," he continued. "You value your life. If you truly knew , you would understand why I'm doing this. Mutual destruction. I've lived by that principle since the mont I was thrown into this world, forced to confront enemies beyond my ken."
His eyes sharpened.
"I'm tempted to see the life you lived, even though I keep telling myself not to rely on that strange skill. That's another difference between us. You use Divine Possession to consu and elevate yourself. I use it to understand others."
He shook his head slightly.
"Yeah. You can't be ."
A chill crept into my spine.
Sothing was wrong.
There was a crucial part of that he lacked. I had known that for a long ti. We were not truly the sa person, no matter how much I pretended otherwise.
But now I felt it clearly.
There was also sothing crucial that he possessed and I did not.
"At the sa ti," Da Wei said quietly, "the only one who could ever truly understand us is each other."
Realization struck like a blade.
I tore through the illusion, shredding the false continuity, ripping myself out of whatever construct I had been pulled into.
I blinked.
I was standing outside the ruins where the Ascension Gas were taking place. The Sealed Island stretched around us, unchanged. The sky was whole. The projection was gone.
Da Wei stood beside , calm, composed.
I spun toward him, fury and unease colliding in my chest.
"What did you do?"
"It's a mory, can't you see?" asked Da Wei back.
I leaned fully into the Ophanim, forcing my will through its layers, and realized the truth with a sinking certainty.
This too was a mory.
I tore it apart.
Reality snapped back into place, and I found myself once more inside the ruins, the projection of False Earth hanging between us like a suspended wound. For a brief, terrifying mont, I could not tell whether this was still a mory or the present.
Then I understood.
It was a mory.
"You…" I began.
Da Wei closed his hands slowly, his expression thoughtful rather than triumphant. "We all have our trump cards. Yours is the Ophanim. Mine is our favorite skill, Divine Possession. This place is inside your mind, and I am claiming you back."
"No," I snarled. "I am going to devour you."
The mories surged without rcy.
The Temple of the Four Heroes. Wen Yuhan, younger, different. The two disciples, earnest and afraid. Yuan Shun, sickly, quiet, looking at like I was her entire world.
"NO! NO! GET OUT OF MY HEAD!"
Da Wei did not raise his voice. He struck where it hurt most.
"You liked them, didn't you?" he said calmly. "That's what I think. That trait of supremacy you keep talking about, it isn't people falling for our overwhelming charisma. It's the opposite. We are easy to care for. Easy to love."
My breath hitched.
"It happened to ," he continued. "And it happened to you. Because of what happened to our predecessor, the Heavenly Demon, ti split between past and future. You are the past. I am the future."
The implication crushed down on .
"Do you see where I'm going with this?" he asked. "I know everything about you. I can see through you. That's why, despite your gifts, your powers, your boons, I was able to cast Divine Possession."
"ENOUGH!"
I ripped the mory apart with brute force.
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I was back in the present.
I stood upright, drenched in sweat, my heart hamring violently in my chest. The Dark Veil was gone. The nukes had already been unleashed. There was no gar army flooding in from the Hollowed World.
On the projection, I was winning.
And yet, I felt no triumph.
I stared at Da Wei, and dread crept into like poison.
No. I refused to believe I was afraid of him.
"Oh my," Da Wei said lightly, glancing at the projection. "It looks like I'm losing."
He laughed, long and unrestrained.
"I can't bring my gar army with , unfortunately, and the sa goes for the Dark Veil. It was all just an elaborate ruse to make my point."
"What are you playing at?" I demanded.
"Mutual destruction."
This ti, I did not believe him. It had to be another deception.
"If we continue like this," Da Wei said, "there will only be mutual destruction. So I'm going to kill myself, so you may live."
My thoughts froze.
What?
Da Wei stood, spreading his arms wide, completely exposed.
"Use Divine Possession on ," he said softly. "Consu . Let's beco one again."
I was about to invoke Divine Possession when sothing finally clicked. This man had far too much experience with counter-possession. He had dueled pinnacle existences, beings who lived and died by devouring wills. I knew what I had seen in his mories.
Casting that Ultimate Skill now would be suicide.
"I almost fell for it," I said coldly.
"It's finally complete."
"What?"
Da Wei smiled, calm and almost gentle. "I was stalling for ti. We're still in a mory."
"Impossible!" I snapped. "No one can fool my Ophanim—"
The realization struck like a blade to the gut.
He hadn't fooled the Ophanim.
I had.
"H-How was that even possible?"
True dread flooded my veins as the mory peeled away. Reality snapped back into place, and we stood once more in the present. The Dark Veil lood overhead, restored. The army of Paladins Da Wei had summoned from the Hollowed World stood ready, their presence heavy and undeniable.
"How?" I demanded. "Why is your mastery of Divine Possession so—"
I couldn't find the word.
"Obscene?" Da Wei supplied.
I nodded despite myself.
"You said it yourself," he continued. "There's a part of you I don't have. Which ans there's a part of you don't have either. Let enlighten you."
His gaze sharpened.
"The thing you have that I don't is true humanity."
My chest tightened.
"Your desire to go ho. Your willingness to do anything, no matter the cost. Hurting everyone along the way, hurting yourself, carrying sadness upon sadness until it reshaped you. That isn't obsession. It's the aftermath of a soul worn thin by endless suffering."
Each word landed with surgical precision.
"You repeated countless iterations, choosing to shoulder everything alone. That's your curse. Your humanity. The isolation you inflicted on yourself."
His voice softened.
"And now, you're paying the price for being alone… and being human."
The mories surged unbidden. The first ti I arrived in this world. Trying to be better. Trying to be good.
What did it earn ?
Wen Yuhan, condemned by the Supre Beings and cast into the False Earth. Her disciples turning on her, corrupted by a false reality. Yuan Shun dying because she could not bear the Heavenly Eye.
That pain never faded.
In the first iteration, I fought like a cornered animal, drifting from place to place, searching desperately for escape. Everywhere I went, I brought suffering. Slaughter followed like a shadow.
Eventually, I killed everyone.
That was when I rembered Wen Yuhan's stories about ti travel. That was when I challenged the Void.
I died. Again and again.
And I always returned with the magic of resurrection.
When I finally gained the power to reverse ti, I tried to fix things. Each attempt tore sothing out of . The futility beca clear, and the path always looped back to the sa beginning.
The path ho.
The desperate need to leave.
And now it had led here.
To him.
To Da Wei.
I refused to accept it. I refused to accept that this man who rejected his own humanity so casually was . Anger boiled over, raw and bitter.
"So that's it?" I spat. "True humanity, huh? You sound so enlightened, so superior, yet all you've done is piss off."
I laughed harshly.
"The irony's amazing. I'm the one with humanity?"
I locked eyes with him.
"Then tell ," I demanded. "What is it that you have that I don't, that makes you so confident spouting this self-righteous bullshit?"
"The divine self," Da Wei said.
Of all the answers I expected, that was not one of them. Hearing it spoken in my own voice unsettled more than any accusation ever could.
"It's sothing I struggled to accept," he continued, calm and relentless. "I wrestled with it again and again. But every ti I crawled back from the edge of annihilation, the truth beca clearer."
I scoffed. "So now you think you're a god?"
"I never said that," Da Wei snapped. His tone sharpened. "It's an ideal. That's the difference. It's why my mastery of Divine Possession surpasses yours. To truly be with another existence, to understand them completely, without doubt or resistance, is like being touched by the divine."
He stepped closer.
"I didn't reject humanity. I overca it. I can heal, kill, or resurrect anyone at will. That kind of power would justify calling myself a god, and yet I refuse. Because I am more than that."
His gaze did not waver.
"I am a paladin. A defeater of hell. A sunderer. A father. A master. An emperor. But those are only labels. Nas imposed from the outside. An idea is different. Humanity is different. Divinity is different."
For the first ti, he looked tired.
"I didn't want it to co to this," he said quietly. "But I have to reclaim my humanity through you. And you can try to reclaim yours through ."
I cursed under my breath. "You're insane. What, you think you're so kind of protagonist?"
He laughed softly and shook his head. "Never. Titles like that don't suit us. I don't see myself as a hero or a villain."
His eyes bored into mine.
"But I see what you're doing. You call this world a ga and act like it's one because that's how you hide your pain. You don't really believe it's fake. And that's why you're desperate to leave."
My silence betrayed .
"You lie to yourself," he continued. "You say it's a ga so you don't have to care. So of course I look mad to you, because I chose to embrace this world. But did you ever ask yourself this?"
He paused.
"What if the opposite is true for ?"
The realization struck with nauseating clarity.
At the deepest level, this Da Wei probably believed it was a ga.
I knew it. I had seen it in his mories through the Six Path Souls I consud. The reckless self-sacrifice. The compulsive charge forward. The obsession with roles and battles. The way he treated annihilation like a reset instead of an end.
That was why he terrified .
Because I didn't want to beco him.
"I'm leaving this place," I said, forcing the words out.
Da Wei answered softly, without hesitation.
"And I'm going to save it."
Exactly at that mont, Da Wei's eyes glowed.
The Ophanim manifested within them, unmistakable and complete.
So that was what he ant.
In the brief duration I fell under his Divine Possession, he had learned my Ophanim. Not copied it. Not mimicked it. He understood it. The realization struck like a blade to the spine. If I let him fully master it on top of the Six Paths, then I wouldn't just be outmatched.
I would be obsolete.
I couldn't derive his Six Paths. I lacked the six refined souls, each walking a different doctrine of existence. That limitation frustrated . But limitations only mattered if you accepted them.
I raised my hand.
"Divine Possession of Myriad Souls."
Every soul I had scattered across the False Earth responded.
They ca screaming back to , saints, sinners, kings, peasants, warriors, lovers… countless fragnts of will and mory collapsing into a singular point. My body burned as they fused with , power swelling beyond sanity, beyond reason. My armor reshaped itself into obsidian black etched with crimson sigils, a red cape unfurling like spilled blood.
Da Wei didn't retreat.
"Six Paths Unity: Divine Sage."
Six souls manifested around him, orbiting in perfect harmony. Heaven. Asura. Human. Animal. Ghost. Hell. Each Path resonated with terrifying clarity. Sage marks blood around his eyes as white armor encased him, a golden cape billowing behind his back. Above his brow, the Hollow Star glead, smug and radiant.
So that crown really could do anything, almost as good as the Source.
In this space, we were not supposed to hurt each other.
But the False Earth was already devouring fragnts of the Dark Veil. The Warden was enraged. The Supre Void was stirring. The rules were unraveling.
I drew my longsword and swung.
Steel t steel.
Our blades clashed perfectly, paths traced with impossible precision. I was faster, barely, but he adapted instantly. Every exchange sharpened him. Every feint I made, he learned. Every correction I attempted, he mirrored.
Then the Dark Veil tore.
The Warden revealed himself fully, a titan beyond scale, seizing the Sealed Island and hurling us into the void like discarded pieces. Space twisted. Gravity scread. I caught a glimpse of the Warden and the Supre Void tearing at each other, devouring the Dark Veil between them like carrion beasts.
Da Wei vanished from my sight.
A blade ca from behind.
I parried on instinct.
Ezekiel.
The skeletal construct shattered as a Manasoul detonated within it. I Void-Stepped away just as Heavenly Punishnt descended, golden judgnt cleaving through debris. Da Wei was already in front of , spear thrusting for my throat.
I deflected, countered, and cleaved… It was another Ezekiel again.
How?
An arrow streaked toward , humming with Divine Smite. I dodged and the arrow unfolded mid-flight, transforming into an Ezekiel wielding a longsword. I parried, but my arm jolted.
Too heavy.
Wrong.
The skeleton twisted, and beca Da Wei.
Shapeshifted. Perfectly tid. Disgustingly clever.
My mories had sharpened him. My experiences had refined his instincts. His battle IQ had evolved a level higher.
His sword broke through my defense and pierced my chest.
Pain blood.
But not yet.
I released the Manasouls I had embedded into the debris of the shattered Sealed Island. The fragnts ignited, transforming into colossal manifestations of Heavenly Punishnt, gigantic golden swords screaming through space toward him.
I seized Da Wei by the shoulder, locking us together, activating Reflect at full capacity.
"Since you like mutual destruction so much," I snarled, blood spilling from my lips, "how about we actually try it?"
The swords descended.
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