Immortal Paladin Chapter 454 441 Final Battle in the Dunes [Part 1]

441 Final Battle in the Dunes [Part 1]

[POV: David?]

Why did it feel like this was never going to end? I knew sothing was deeply wrong, yet I couldn't grasp it no matter how many tis I replayed the flow of battle in my mind. Da Wei kept dying again and again, his body torn apart, reduced to fragnts, only to reform as if death itself were an inconvenience. And despite all that, we were getting nowhere.

My curses did nothing. The layers of malice I had accumulated across countless iterations from plagues refined to perfection, cancers of the soul that devoured vitality, reflect damage designed to punish even immortals… They barely mattered. Da Wei laughed through it all.

"Two immortals going at it, bashing each other's heads for eternity!" he shouted, his voice echoing through the false void. "Isn't that romantic?"

The frustration clawed at , sharper than anything I had felt while challenging the Supre Void at the end of ti. Back then, even when I died endlessly, I could still spite it, mock it, scream my defiance into the abyss. At least I had the satisfaction of knowing I was annoying it. Here, the roles were reversed. I was the one being mocked.

"Hahahaha!" Da Wei laughed again, even as diseased sigils crawled over his armor. "These curses and cancer-like plagues with reflect damage look pretty yucky, but they tickle!"

That was what enraged the most. How was he out-spiting when we were supposed to be the sa person?

I gripped my sword and chased him through the fabricated outer space, our movents tearing through light itself. Every exchange was violent and precise. Every ti I thought I had him cornered, he slipped away at the last instant, answering with a different legendary weapon each ti. An arrow blazing with divine authority. A mace that distorted gravity. A sword that split concepts. An axe that howled like a dying star.

As if that wasn't enough, I had to keep track of his Divine Zone constantly. I countered it with the Ophanim on reflex, bending space and supremacy to my will while letting my curses tick in the background, stacking, maturing, waiting for the perfect mont to explode. I had planned it carefully, a delayed catastrophe ant to end everything in one decisive instant.

He anticipated it anyway.

Of course he did. He had seen my mories… and my tricks.

"Is the sword really the only weapon you know how to wield?" Da Wei jeered as he twisted away from another killing arc. "That's kind of sad, you know."

I roared and cut him down again, severing limbs in a storm of steel and light. His body fell apart, armor torn from flesh, blood scattering into nothingness. But there was no killing blow. The fragnts reassembled, tal and flesh fusing seamlessly as his armor reattached itself like a living thing. This ti, I had only managed to take three limbs instead of four.

He was adapting.

Not just reacting, but actively learning my Ophanim, mirroring it with his own warped mastery. The realization chilled . I had never imagined I would be the one pushed into a corner like this.

I twisted away as the stars around us suddenly aligned, forming a vast formation array. A pillar of starlight erupted at point-blank range, engulfing everything in blinding brilliance. Even as I endured it, I understood the truth. This outer space was fake, just like the stars themselves. They were nothing more than extensions of the world, obedient to the will of the one wearing the Hollow Star.

A truly unreasonable artifact.

If this continued, we really would fight for eternity.

I clenched my teeth. There was only one option left. If I couldn't kill him outright, then I had to take away the Hollow Star. Without it, the balance would break, and the battle would finally tilt toward a conclusion.

I steadied my breath, ignored the screaming of accumulated backlash in my soul, and made my decision.

"Divine Possession," I uttered.

…

..

.

Of course, Da Wei didn't dodge or counter. He had been provoking to use it for a while now, pushing, testing, waiting for the mont I would finally commit. If Da Wei used Divine Possession for mutual understanding, then I used it for consumption. Still, I didn't think it would be wise to invoke this Ultimate Skill the way I normally would. I didn't need all of him. I just needed the Hollow Star pried from his head.

So I did sothing different.

I summoned a mory from my past and forced it forward, shaping it into a distraction. He couldn't possibly see everything, not the full depth of it, but even fragnts would be enough to unbalance him. The mont the mory unfolded, the world twisted, and the ground vanished beneath us.

I found myself suspended in the sky, with Da Wei hovering beside . The air was heavy, dense with aning rather than pressure.

Da Wei glanced around, his expression wary but curious. "So this is your idea of a battle between souls?"

"No," I answered calmly. "I brought you here for a different reason."

Below us stood another version of , whole and complete, at the height of my power. He stood atop a mountain of blackened stone, unmoving, absolute. Around him, the Hollowed World stirred as vast armies gathered, drawn together by desperation and fear. They weren't here to conquer. They were here to subdue a calamity. If they failed, the world itself would end.

I watched as banners rose from every direction. The Martial Alliance ford disciplined ranks, their formations flawless. The Heavenly Grace Empire marched with divine authority, their presence radiant and rciless. The Union gathered in calculated silence, each unit moving with purpose and coordination.

In this world, the Heavenly Temple did not exist. I had destroyed its founding precedent with my own hands. Wen Yuhan never lived long enough to carve his legacy into history, and because of that, Shouquan never inherited the Temple of the Four Heroes. There was no transformation into the Heavenly Temple, no twisted doctrine masquerading as righteousness.

Mo Yun, too, had been spared a fate he never deserved. Without the Heavenly Temple hunting him, he was free to pursue knowledge on his own terms. The Scholar Union rose not as a rcenary institution, but as a true gathering of minds, built on inquiry rather than survival.

As the vision sharpened, I could make out familiar faces among the forces below. Ru Qiu stood at the forefront of the Martial Alliance. Shouquan commanded with grim resolve. Mo Yun observed from the rear, eyes calculating, already adapting to the inevitability of conflict.

I turned to Da Wei, my voice steady and deliberate. "Da Wei, I want you to watch this. I want you to imprint this sight into his mind."

He stiffened as understanding crept in.

"This," I continued, "was the cost of his humanity. This is what he chose when he walked that path." I looked back down at the version of myself facing the world alone. "And if you want your humanity back through , then understand this clearly."

I t Da Wei's eyes, letting the weight of the mory settle in.

"This will happen again."

…

..

.

David swung his sword, and the world answered.

The earth scread as the blade descended. Fault lines tore open across the land, splitting an entire continent as if it were brittle clay. From those wounds, the Dark Veil spilled forth like living shadow, flooding the battlefield with an oppressive, light-devouring presence. Mountains shattered in the distance as long-ranged artifacts awakened in panic. From peaks, from fortified lines, from soaring vessels hovering above the clouds, spells and projectiles erupted in a desperate barrage, filling the sky with fire, lightning, light, and annihilation.

David did not dodge.

He stepped forward and absorbed everything.

The attacks slamd into him, vanished into his body, and were returned a thousandfold. Reflect detonated outward in a catastrophic wave. Entire formations ceased to exist in an instant. Defensive arrays folded like paper. Cultivators were erased mid-chant, their bodies torn apart before their minds could even register fear. David was already moving as the counterattack blood behind him, leaping into the heart of the enemy with a speed that turned motion into illusion.

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He cut through them with a single sword.

Every swing was precise, rciless, and absolute. Lines of cultivators fell as if scythed by an unseen hand. Defensive techniques shattered on contact. Weapons broke. Bodies were cleaved in half, crushed into the ground, or reduced to fragnts that never hit the earth. David moved like a calamity given form, weaving through ranks as if they were standing still. Those who tried to retreat were cut down from behind. Those who stood their ground died faster.

The battlefield began to resemble a massacre rather than a war.

Yi Qiu roared and entered the fray, his qi erupting in twin torrents of fire and earth. Rivers of magma surged forward, jagged stone spears rising to impale David from every direction. The ground itself tried to bury him alive. David answered without slowing. Frost Smite detonated, flash-freezing the magma mid-flow, while Aqua Smite followed, shattering the frozen mass into glittering shards that scythed outward and slaughtered those sheltering behind Yi Qiu's techniques.

David's tempo increased.

He wove Ultimate Skills seamlessly between sword strikes, chaining devastation without pause. Each step forward erased more lives. Cultivators died before they understood which technique had killed them. Panic spread, discipline collapsed, and the battlefield dissolved into chaos.

Mo Yun tried to turn the tide from afar.

Complex long-ranged spells ford in layered arrays, beams and sigils converging with terrifying precision. David parried them all. So were cut apart by his sword. Others were deflected with casual movents of his free hand. A few were reflected directly back along their casting lines, detonating Mo Yun's own formation and killing dozens around him. Distance ant nothing. Preparation ant nothing.

Then David raised his sword skyward.

He unleashed Heavenly Punishnt, but this was not the skill the world knew. The sky tore open as an enormous golden sword descended, so vast it eclipsed the horizon, its edge spanning an entire continent. It was an Ultimate Skill ant for a single target, rewritten through obsession and repetition into an instrunt of mass execution.

Shouquan reacted instantly.

A sealing spell erupted beneath the descending blade, layers upon layers of runes forming a colossal array ant to contain the impossible. For a heartbeat, it worked. Then a second manifestation appeared. A massive golden scale burst into existence, radiating judgnt so dense it warped reality. The seal shattered. The cultivators beneath did not even have ti to scream.

They were erased.

So turned to ash. Others collapsed into blackened heaps of charred remains. Entire regions were wiped clean, leaving nothing but scorched land and lingering echoes of judgnt.

And then ti reversed.

The devastation rewound. Lives returned. Formations reford. Spells were cast again.

David slaughtered them again.

The sequence repeated. Again and again, ti was reversed, and again and again, the battlefield was reduced to ruin. No matter the variation, no matter the adjustnt, the outco was the sa. Death followed David like a certainty, inevitable and absolute.

It was not a battle anymore.

It was an execution, repeated across countless iterations, carved into the world by a man who refused to stop swinging his sword.

…

..

.

Throughout all of this, I had been buying ti.

Every confession, every bitter recollection, every drawn-out exchange had been deliberate. I took whatever advantage I could, no matter how small. When the opening finally appeared, I canceled Divine Possession outright and forced myself back into reality. The shift was violent, like tearing free from a cocoon of thought and mory. When my senses stabilized, the Hollow Star was already in my hand.

Da Wei's expression darkened.

"Human Path: Enlightennt of the Fool!" he declared.

So that was how he wanted to play it. Fine. He was not the only one who learned by watching the other bleed.

"Human Path: Enlightennt of the Fool!" I answered.

His Six Path abilities collapsed in an instant. Tracking them had never been difficult, not when he could only activate one at a ti. My helm dissolved into motes of light as I placed the crown upon my head. Power flooded , vast and imdiate, bending space to my will.

"Checkmate," I said.

I moved faster than I ever had before. Da Wei slowed noticeably, his rhythm broken, his movents just a fraction too late. That fraction was enough. My sword drove straight toward his chest, aid cleanly for the kill. Without his equipnt compensating for him, he could not keep up with anymore.

"Fool," Da Wei muttered.

My stomach dropped.

It was that trick again. The realization crept in with sickening clarity as the world subtly warped at the edges. I had not truly escaped Divine Possession. We were still inside a mory.

Da Wei smiled, wide and cruel. "Fooled you once, sha on . Fooled you twice, that's on you."

The mory looped again and again. Scenes of my suffering replayed in the background like a grotesque gallery, wars and failures bleeding into one another as Da Wei hunted through them. Yet even as I ran, I noticed sothing that made my heart pound.

The Hollow Star was still with .

If I could escape this place while wearing the crown, I could truly claim it. That thought sharpened my focus. We darted through collapsing mories in a vicious ga of cat and mouse.

"These tragedies around you," Da Wei shouted after , his voice echoing across fractured realities. "These wars and deaths. They all happened because you are stuck in the past and refuse to change!"

"It's easy for you to say!" I shouted back.

I tore open the Void within and let it surge outward. A colossal, writhing tentacle erupted from my shadow and wrapped around Da Wei, pinning him just long enough. I tore myself free and everything went black.

When I ca to, I was falling.

The Hollowed World rushed up to et , wind screaming past my ears. From the distance, I saw Da Wei descending as well. I reached up and touched the crown on my head. It was real. I had stolen it.

This ti, there would be an end.

I activated Zealot's Stride and closed the distance in a blink, swinging my sword with everything I had. I was certain this was no longer a mory. When the blade connected, Da Wei exploded into scattered bones.

An Ezekiel.

Of course it was. He had mastered the Human Path's shapeshifting far too well. I poured more quintessence into my body just in ti to block a sudden strike from my left. Steel rang against steel as Da Wei reappeared, glaring at .

I was stronger now. Far stronger.

I caught him, seized his skull, and crushed it in my hand. Fragnts of bone and matter scattered through the air. Then that body shattered as well, collapsing into another burst of skeletal debris.

"Asura Path: Tyrant of Stars!"

A crushing force slamd down from above. Gravity wrapped around like chains as Da Wei crashed into , intent on driving into the earth. I reford my helm with a thought and stabbed my sword into the gap in his armor.

"It's your end now," I said.

Holy Sword ignited in my grasp, radiant and absolute. I canceled his Asura Path the sa way I had shut down his Human Path, severing the technique at its root.

"Asura Path: Tyrant of Stars!" he tried again.

His presence faltered. I seized him by the throat and hurled him overhead, smashing him down into the sands of the Great Desert. The ground erupted on impact.

"Die," I roared, unleashing everything.

Skill after skill crashed down on him. Light, frost, void, judgnt, annihilation. I tore him apart where he lay, reducing him to ruin.

When it was over, I stood alone in the scorched desert.

There was no relief.

Instead, the unease only grew deeper, coiling in my chest like a living thing.

Da Wei resurrected.

"Spell Resonance, Divine Word: Raise."

How was that even possible?

I forced my Ophanim to observe him more deeply, tearing apart layers of causality and flow until the answer beca painfully obvious. Faith. An overwhelming amount of it was pouring into him, dense and fervent, reinforcing his existence mont by mont. I had thought I crippled his dium of faith, but I was wrong. It wasn't gone.

His disciples.

I clicked my tongue and funneled quintessence from the Hollow Star, accelerating my healing to a terrifying degree. Flesh knit together, bones realigned, and the lingering damage evaporated under the crown's authority. Across from , Da Wei leaned forward and summoned his longsword, the familiar weight of intent pressing down on the battlefield. I raised my own blade, stance steady, ready to answer anything he tried.

"Two minutes before you fully recover and return to your pri," Da Wei said calmly. "Is that right?"

"I can do it in a minute and a half," I replied.

It wasn't entirely true, but pressure mattered in battles like this.

Da Wei nodded, unbothered. "Do you know sothing? Even if you can't see the future, you can often guess its outco. In my case, I know every viable choice available in the present. It's almost a prophetic ability anchored in now, not later."

He took a step forward, voice steady and confident. "That's how I narrowed this place down as the perfect location for our final fight. In the past, I wondered how Aixin managed to descend a part of herself into this world. Why did her first manifestation begin here, of all places?"

My eyes narrowed.

"So I researched it," he continued. "Imperial records. The Ward's collections. Even texts from the Heavenly Temple Academy. This land holds more secrets than anyone realizes."

Then he smiled.

"Did you know this place is so thin that it's little more than a layer draped over the Dark Veil itself?"

My blood ran cold.

As soone who understood the Dark Veil better than almost anyone, this was the first ti I had ever heard such a thing. Instinct scread at to move. I kicked off the ground and shot upward, trying to escape into the sky, but it was already too late.

A shadow surged from the sand like a living thing and wrapped around my foot, yanking back down.

"You might own the Hollow Star now," Da Wei said evenly, "but I still own the Dark Veil."

He clenched his fist.

Dark spears erupted from below, forged from the Veil itself, impaling through the torso and limbs. Agony flared as they pinned in place, my body trembling under the pressure.

"I am going to seal you," he continued, "the sa way one of the Six Supres sealed Yuan Shen."

"Don't underestimate !" I roared.

I reached desperately for the Hollow Star's authority, trying to force it to respond, but a splitting headache detonated inside my skull. My vision swam as Da Wei began chanting in a low, rhythmic tone. Then sothing grotesque happened.

Da Wei laughed softly, and conversed in Qi Speech. "There's a series of chants I heard from a certain Martial God. Apparently, it's a thod for controlling us through the crown. Ever hear the story about the monkey and the golden headband?"

My teeth clenched as I tried to pry the Hollow Star from my head. It wouldn't budge. The crown felt heavier by the second, its authority turning against .

Was I really going to be sealed like this?

I knew I was stronger than him at my peak. That was what made it unbearable. The unfairness of it all burned hotter than the pain.

"Don't think you've won!" I snarled.

I tried to summon Yuan Shun, but there was no response. The connection was severed. No, not severed, but suppressed. She was trapped inside a formation barrier designed specifically to block greater spatial movent.

Da Wei drew a breath. "This is the end—"

An arrow slamd into him mid-sentence.

The impact sent him flying sideways, carving a trench through the sand. He managed to defend at the last instant, but the disruption was enough. The Dark Veil's grip loosened, and I tore myself free with a shout.

I surged into the air using Zealot's Stride, ignoring the screaming pain in my head as I searched for the source of the attack.

I found it.

Conquest stood atop a distant mountain peak, bow still raised, wind tugging at her silhouette like a banner of defiance.

A slow grin spread across my face.

So it wasn't over yet.

I looked down at Da Wei, suppressing the throbbing agony in my skull as best I could. "Looks like it's ti for round three."

Da Wei scoffed, brushing sand from his armor. "I wouldn't count on it. From where I'm standing, you're losing pretty badly too."