Immortal Paladin

497 Aixin’s Deal

Aixin descended upon us, her form eclipsing the scattered stars like a living law etched across the void, her face hidden behind that blinding, indifferent radiance that made it impossible to tell whether she even acknowledged us as anything more than irritants.

We had lasted three hours in that first bout, which in hindsight felt like a miracle. Ru Qiu had been the first to fall, not because he was weak, but because he lost himself in the rhythm of destruction, pushing too deep, too recklessly, until Aixin’s vast, luminous, and absolute hand came down on him again and again until his body unraveled into near nothingness.

I had dragged him back from that brink, stitching existence over absence with Divine Word: Raise.

By the second bout, which ended even faster, my party began to suffer more consistent loses.

We recovered quickly, trying to do our best the next bout.

Jue Bu was particularly motivated.

“If seeing Da Wei in a skirt is the last thing I get in this life, then I’ll die smiling! Come on, you oversized lantern, hit me harder!”

Aixin paused for the briefest fraction of a moment, probably from confusion.

Over a hundred bouts passed like that, a cycle of violence and resurrection that blurred into something almost mechanical. Jue Bu died as often as he charged, which was to say constantly, his body breaking, burning, and scattering across the battlefield only to be pulled back together by either my hand or Alice’s.

Without us alternating the burden, Jue Bu would have stayed dead.

Jue Bu was the perfect vanguard, his Paladin constitution and Immortal Art turning him into a wall that refused to stay broken.

Even death itself had little claim over him, thanks to the Supreme Void’s curse etched into his soul, ensuring that even in true annihilation, he would simply return through reincarnation in the Hollowed World. That alone made it easy for me to keep placing him at the front, over and over again, without hesitation.

Ru Qiu, on the other hand, became our blade, unpredictable and devastating in equal measure. His Supremacy Trait, Supreme Fallen, defied any logic I tried to impose on it. His flames, once dark and devouring, had turned white. It was pure in color yet anything but gentle in effect.

Aixin, for all her overwhelming power, avoided those flames whenever possible, her movements shifting ever so slightly whenever Ru Qiu prepared to strike. That subtle wariness was the only real leverage we had against her, a thin crack in an otherwise impenetrable existence.

By the time we reached the thousandth bout, months had passed within the Hollowed World, and we had dragged the battlefield across vast stretches of existence until we settled within the dense asteroid belt marking the boundary between the Greater Universe and the Underworld.

The environment itself became another casualty of our persistence, debris shattering, drifting, and reforming under the constant strain of our clashes.

Aixin’s patience, if she ever had any, had long since eroded. My repeated use of the Dark Veil had annoyed her enough that she brought the fight away from the Hollowed World.

“You dare coinfront my powers?” her voice thundered, layered and vast. “Then witness the consequence with your very eyes!”

The explosion consumed everything. Space itself seemed to tear asunder as the shockwave cascaded outward, igniting the surrounding debris and triggering a chain reaction among the scattered small suns nearby. One after another, they erupted, transforming the battlefield into a blooming field of supernovas, each one feeding into the next until the void burned as if it had become a furnace.

I died in that instant, my body erased before thought could catch up, but death had long since lost its finality for me. Spell Resonance dragged me back, consciousness snapping into place as power surged through me, and the Divine Word formed effortlessly.

“Divine Word: Raise.”

Light answered, reconstructing what had been lost. I saw Jue Bu’s last stand in fragments as I returned, his Immortal Art flaring as he shielded Alice from the worst of the blast, his body disintegrating under the strain. Ru Qiu was already gone by then, his presence reduced to embers scattered across nothingness.

I spoke again without hesitation, directing the Ophanim as the mechanism of resurrection took hold.

“Divine Word: Raise.”

Alice’s voice followed mine almost immediately, calm and unwavering despite the devastation around us.

“Divine Word: Raise.”

Jue Bu reformed with a ragged laugh that carried more exhaustion than humor, while Ru Qiu reappeared in a silent burst of white flame, already preparing to reengage.

Aixin stared at us then, her massive form hovering amidst the dying echoes of her own destruction, her radiance flickering with something that could only be described as frustration.

“WHY DON’T YOU JUST DIE!?”

I understood her perspective all too well. From where she stood, we were nothing more than persistent insects, four insignificant entities that refused to remain dead no matter how thoroughly she crushed us. Each time she erased us, we returned, buzzing back into existence, continuing the same futile assault.

The pattern never changed. We unleashed everything we had, our strongest techniques crashing against her like waves against an unmoving cliff, accomplishing little more than drawing her attention.

In response, she obliterated us with overwhelming force, resetting the cycle once again. The only difference each time was who spoke the words of resurrection first, whether it was me or Alice, our coordination ensuring that neither of us collapsed from overuse.

It was not victory in any conventional sense, but it was not defeat either. It was something stagnant, a loop sustained entirely by our refusal to remain gone.

Then her gaze settled on me, sharp despite the obscuring light, and her voice cut through the void with a singular, focused intent.

“I WILL KILL YOU, DA WEI IF THAT’S THE LAST THING I WILL EVER DO!”

We kept going like that, locked in a loop of slaughter and revival that blurred into something grotesquely routine, as if death itself had become a minor inconvenience rather than an ending.

Time lost meaning inside that cycle, reduced to repetitions of impact, disintegration, and rebirth. At some point during one of those countless bouts, while Ru Qiu’s white flames carved fleeting scars across Aixin’s radiant form, his voice cut into my mind with a sharp edge of irritation.

“You better have a plan, Da Wei, or I swear I’m going to lose my mind in this endless circus.”

I answered him without turning, already weaving another sequence of spells as Aixin’s presence loomed overhead like an inevitable collapse of reality.

“You’ll be fine. Just keep burning her.”

A moment later, Aixin’s attention shifted toward me again, her colossal form drawing in heat and matter until her fist ignited into something that resembled a condensed nebula, swirling, radiant, and catastrophically dense. She moved faster than scale should have allowed, and when that fist connected with me, there was no resistance, no struggle, only immediate obliteration. I vanished within that superheated impact, reduced to nothing before I could even register pain.

Alice’s voice followed soon after, calm and practiced despite the ongoing chaos.

“Divine Word: Raise.”

Existence returned to me like a thread being pulled taut again, my awareness snapping back into place as if the gap of death had been nothing more than a skipped moment.

That pattern continued.

A hundred years passed like that.

Then a thousand.

Then ten thousand.

Yet those spans of time only truly applied to Aixin and me, because what we were experiencing was not entirely bound to reality as it should have been.

We were inside the Ophanim, layered with Divine Possession, projecting an alternate future that straddled the boundary between illusion and truth. It was not a simple fabrication, but something that forced existence to entertain the possibility of what could be, repeating it until even something as vast as a Ruler of Laws began to feel its weight.

At first, Aixin simply continued, annihilating us over and over without pause, but slowly, subtly, something shifted. I noticed it in the way her movements lost a fraction of their immediacy, in the way her attention lingered just a moment longer than before. Eventually, she stopped entirely.

Her massive form hovered in the fractured void, her obscured gaze fixed on me, while behind and around her, my companions continued their assault without hesitation, their attacks colliding against her like a relentless storm.

I took a step forward, brushing off the residual energy of my latest resurrection, and spoke.

“Are you ready to talk?”

Her response came sharp, laced with contempt.

“What is this petty trick?”

I sent a pulse of Qi Speech to the others, urging them to halt and pull back, carving out a rare pocket of stillness in the battlefield. Then I turned my full attention to her, letting a hint of casualness slip into my tone.

“Well, I don’t think we’ll be able to talk calmly under normal circumstances. I know, at least a little, that you need to vent, so I made space for that. As for this petty trick, it’s a combination of an Origin Art and an Ultimate Skill. I haven’t named it yet, but I’m thinking of calling it Divine Phantasm of Dreams. Sounds good, right? I’ve been considering overhauling my entire skill system, merging the useful parts, trimming the excess, making everything more efficient. Of course, that comes after I secure my people and their future growth. Unfortunately, you’re in the way of that. So, could you kindly fuck off?”

Her sneer was palpable even through the divine light.

“How about no?”

She moved again without hesitation, her arm sweeping down as space itself warped and folded under the sheer force of it, crushing me flat in an instant. The illusion held, the cycle resumed, and we fell back into that endless exchange once more.

Another ten thousand years passed within that fabricated continuum.

Then another.

Through it all, I came to understand one thing clearly. In terms of raw destructive capability, Aixin surpassed even Conquest in sheer intensity, despite lacking a Dao Domain.

Against Conquest, I had relied heavily on attribute advantage, exploiting the natural opposition between us to carve out a path to victory. That advantage did not exist here. Using Exalted Renewal would have changed nothing, because every clash ended the same way, with me being erased before I could leverage any sustained effect.

Eventually, even she reached a point where the repetition lost its meaning.

After another stretch of countless years, she stopped again, her presence settling into something more controlled, more deliberate.

“What do you want?” she asked.

I answered immediately, because this was the opening I had been waiting for.

“Leave the Hollowed World alone and stop bothering me. Is that really so difficult?”

She tilted her head slightly, considering.

“What do I get in return?”

I let out a quiet breath, almost amused.

“Less annoyance. We won’t be here to harass you anymore if you just decide to leave.”

Her response came with a quiet, cutting certainty.

“How naive. A Ruler of Laws is undaunted. Our minds are beyond such trivial fatigue. We can repeat the same action for hundreds of thousands of years without the slightest disturbance. I am no different. We can continue this indefinitely, trapped within your illusion without conclusion.”

I shrugged lightly.

“It worked on Conquest.”

The memory flickered briefly in my mind, an outcome so excessive it bordered on absurdity, though I chose not to elaborate.

Aixin laughed then, a sound vast and layered.

“Naive, so naive. You believe your attribute advantage granted you that victory, but you misunderstand entirely. Observe.”

She raised her hands, and I felt it immediately as she grasped at the underlying structure of the illusion, tearing at the laws themselves. The fabric of the Ophanim construct warped violently, distortions rippling outward as if reality was being peeled apart.

For a moment, I thought it would collapse.

It didn’t.

The illusion held.

She studied the phenomenon with interest rather than frustration.

“An Origin Art, is it? Something used by the Origin Gods and certain Shén. Intriguing. Give me time, and I will dismantle this construct and complete its analysis within the next fifty to a hundred thousand years.”

Two thoughts surfaced immediately in my mind.

First, Pestilence might be playing me.

Second, I had started overestimating myself.

Aixin extended one hand again, her posture shifting back into readiness.

“Know this, Da Wei. I can end you, but I am choosing restraint. However, your companions are another matter.”

A flicker of foresight brushed against my perception, a brief glimpse into a branching future where her probability of killing the others rose sharply. Behind me, they were already preparing to charge again, completely unaware of that shift.

I raised my hands quickly, stepping forward.

“Wait, wait, wait. We can talk about this.”

I needed her out of the Hollowed World, and this was likely the only chance I would get where she was even remotely receptive. I thought back to everything I had done to provoke her, every layer of irritation I had stacked upon her patience. Now that she had cooled, even slightly, there was an opening to exploit.

An idea surfaced, simple but direct.

“You want to bring me to the Supreme Heart, right?”

Her answer came without hesitation.

“Yes.”

I nodded once.

“Fine. Then let me meet him.”

Alice’s voice cut through everything the moment the words left my mouth, sharp and unrestrained in a way she rarely allowed herself to be.

“Absolutely not, David! You are not going anywhere with her!”

Before I could respond, Aixin moved.

Her massive hand descended, and the next instant, I found myself caught within her grasp, her fingers closing around me with a precision that felt almost delicate despite the overwhelming force behind it. Only my head remained exposed beyond her hold, the rest of me imprisoned within a palm that radiated heat and light like a contained star.

Her voice carried something new this time, something almost… pleased.

“Perfect! I will show you to my father!”

Behind me, Jue Bu did not miss the opportunity to speak, of course. His voice rang out, loud and utterly shameless even in the presence of a being like Aixin.

“Oi, Da Wei! I knew it! You definitely got that dog in you!”

I closed my eyes briefly, already regretting whatever was about to follow.

“You’re already meeting the father, and you barely even knew the gal!” he continued, before snapping his fingers with exaggerated realization. “Ah, but wait, wait, you two have been fighting for so long. That’s a deep relationship right there! Maybe meeting the father now is actually kind of late, huh?”

It would have been amusing under different circumstances.

Unfortunately, it was about me.

I let out a slow breath before speaking, keeping my tone even despite the situation.

“Yeah, about that… I will gladly come with you, but not now. I’m busy. How about the next ten thousand years?”

Aixin leaned closer, her immense presence pressing in as motes of divine light drifted from her form and brushed against my skin. Each contact burned, not enough to destroy me, but enough to remind me how insignificant my durability was compared to her existence.

I continued anyway.

“I mean it. By then, I’ll come to you voluntarily, instead of you dragging me like this. If you disagree, then you’ll have a fight on your hands, and I’ll resist with everything I’ve got.”

There was a pause.

Then she spoke, her tone measured, almost contemplative.

“I know you, Da Wei. You are as tough as you are stubborn. Forcing you would not be simple. If an agreement is what you seek, then an agreement you shall have. Sear this into your soul. In ten thousand years’ time, I will take you away. Let this Binding Vow bloom. Do you accept?”

I did not hesitate.

“I accept.”

Something ignited against my wrist, a searing mark that felt less like heat and more like a concept embedding itself into me. It etched deep, beyond flesh, beyond spirit, settling somewhere fundamental.

Aixin released me immediately after.

Her colossal form shifted, space bending unnaturally around her as she accelerated into something resembling a warp. In the next instant, she was gone.

Just like that.

I blinked.

The battlefield vanished, the endless cycle collapsing, and I found myself standing back in the present, as if the immeasurable stretch of time we had just endured had been compressed into a single fleeting moment.

My gaze dropped to my wrist.

A ring of faintly glowing stars circled it, subtle yet unmistakable.

Jue Bu’s voice broke the silence.

“What in the world? She just vanished…”

Everything had reset to the moment I had just dragged Alice and Jue Bu out from the Hollowed World. The transition was so abrupt that it almost felt unreal, if not for the mark still burning faintly against my skin.

Alice hovered closer, her eyes scanning me quickly.

“What happened?”

Before I could answer, space behind us distorted as something tore through the Dark Veil. Ru Qiu burst out from the Hollowed World, his arrival abrupt and forceful as he hovered nearby, white flames flickering faintly around him before settling.

He looked around, clearly expecting a fight, only to find the three of us standing there.

I could not help it.

A grin spread across my face.

“Well, it looks like you’ll get to wear a skirt, Ru Qiu.”

Jue Bu immediately followed up with a low, delighted laugh.

“Fu fu fu, I am looking forward to it.”

Ru Qiu frowned, confusion written plainly across his face.

“What happened?”

I met his gaze, the grin never leaving.

“Well, I scared her off. I’m awesome.”

“… ”