464 Slanderous Developnts… Ahem…
[POV: Conquest]
This was a mistake.
Conquest understood it with terrifying clarity.
He needed to flee.
The instinct to retreat scread through the conceptual lattice that ford his existence, yet instinct ant 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 rely flesh and bone. He was a cluster of concepts personified into existence, unified by a singular sovereign will. Conquest was not simply his na. It was the governing principle that defined his being.
Yet before this power, his grandeur ant 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 beca catastrophic.
He died.
In one tiline, 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 embodint to fragnt.
In yet another, Da Wei allowed him to manifest Law of Death successfully—only to walk through it untouched, smiling, before whispering sothing incomprehensible and turning Conquest's own arrows inward, letting the curses feast upon their master.
There were tilines where Conquest was purified, his necrotic body dissolving under relentless divine radiance.
There were tilines where he was split into conceptual halves and forced to conquer himself, locked in endless self-devouring contradiction.
There were tilines where he never even saw the strike that ended him, because the Ophanim had already calculated the precise mont 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 specin beneath a lens.
This power defied proportion.
A Supre 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 Supre 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 Horsen 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 phenona and manifest an Immortal Art without putting much effort.
Yet beyond Immortal Arts lay sothing 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 Supre 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 ford 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, transford into loyal thralls or shattered utterly. Against opponents of the sa 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 ti—"
He died.
The Domain collapsed mid-proclamation.
Another tiline 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 ant 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 lifeti could not exhaust its variations. Immortal Arts stood among its most celebrated manifestations, allowing even mortals to refine their existence, ascend beyond diocrity, 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 sothing rarer still.
The Supre 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 incrents. It altered inevitabilities. It asserted existence over contradiction. It created a gulf so vast between its wielder and all others that comparison itself beca flawed.
Conquest, as a Ruler of Laws, should have been capable of extinguishing an Ascended Soul without difficulty. By all conventional asures, Da Wei remained within that lesser realm.
Yet there was nothing asly 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 ti, the result was the sa.
They failed before the one who called himself the Supre Bearer.
The urge to flee swelled within Conquest's mind. Survival, once secondary to pride, now scread 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 Horsen, 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 frawork of his being. For the first ti since his creation, he understood why even gods tread carefully around Supre 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 fragnt of himself, severing this encounter entirely.
He executed the self-annihilation flawlessly.
"The next ti we et, I will repay this humiliation—"
Reset.
The world reassembled.
He stood once more before Da Wei.
His self-inflicted conceptual death had ant nothing.
"J-just what are those eyes?" Conquest asked, genuine fear cracking through his voice.
He attempted again, this ti driving his curse deeper, unraveling more thoroughly, aiming to erase not rely 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 ?" he demanded. "Release !"
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 tis. 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 mories were full of it. Feng Wei nearly ended more tis 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 ? I experience it every reset. Exalted Renewal is not rely suicidal. It consus my existence for power. Each loop costs sothing real. I am simply accustod to it."
Conquest stared, horror deepening.
"So yes," Da Wei concluded lightly, "it is sowhat disappointing that you are surrendering so soon. Conquest, one of the Four Horsen, 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 an, 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, asuring 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 sothing you want badly enough, I can leverage that into a mutually beneficial arrangent. However, if you are this weak-willed, then you might just beco a liability."
He tilted his head.
"Of course, soone 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 tornt, 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 !"
The desire to escape tastasized into obsession. Pride, dignity, and sovereignty? None of it mattered anymore. Even unbearable concessions seed 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 sothing 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 chanisms are layered beyond even conceptual death. That is troubleso."
Conquest dared to hope.
"Therefore," Da Wei continued, "I will make use of the opportunity before . 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 sothing 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 sa endless ethereal plain.
The sa inverted crowns.
The sa spectral arrows.
"How?" Conquest gasped.
Da Wei examined the phenonon with open curiosity.
An arrow ford above Conquest's head.
It descended.
It pierced his will.
"From this point forward," Da Wei said calmly, "Conquest will no longer exist."
The chanism 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 rely 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.
"Co 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 sothing 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 sa cloth."
Da Wei looked scandalized.
"That is slander. This has absolutely nothing to do with ."
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