Immortal Paladin

The banquet stretched across a table long enough to rival a palace corridor, every dish radiating spiritual essence that made my stomach tighten in anticipation.

A whole roasted qilin boar rested at the center, its lacquered skin glistening beneath a honey glaze that shimmered like liquid amber. Platters of jade river fish floated atop fragrant broth infused with lotus petals and star herbs. There were crystal dumplings stuffed with phoenix mushrooms, braised dragon-tail eel coated in black garlic sauce, mountains of golden fried rice mixed with immortal grains, jade bamboo shoots stir-fried with cloud peppers, spicy crimson prawns, steamed moon crabs overflowing with sweet roe, braised spirit ox ribs that practically fell apart on their own, and bowls of translucent noodle soup whose broth carried centuries of patient simmering. Fresh fruits harvested from spirit orchards were stacked beside delicate pastries shaped like blooming flowers, while porcelain jars contained wines whose fragrance alone was enough to intoxicate an ordinary cultivator.

My appetite awakened with a ferocity I hadn't experienced in what felt like several lifetimes.

I didn't bother pretending to be dignified. Slice after slice disappeared from the roasted boar before I moved to the fish, then the dumplings, then the ribs, savoring every mouthful as though my taste buds had finally remembered what genuine food was supposed to taste like. Every ingredient possessed its own distinct richness without overpowering the next. The spices complemented instead of competing, the meat melted apart without resistance, and even the simplest bowl of rice carried a subtle sweetness that lingered pleasantly. I cleaned plate after plate while the servants quietly replaced them with fresh portions, never once allowing the table to look anything less than abundant.

I guessed the stress of the outside world had been really getting to me. I hadn't felt an appetite this enormous since... forever.

Meng Po watched me with an amused smile. "Slow down, Da Wei. Nobody is going to steal the food. There's plenty left for you."

Across from me, the Supreme Death completely ignored my existence.

"Wife, ah... let me feed you this one."

Wendell carefully scooped a piece of fish with trembling hands, his face carrying the hopeless devotion of a lovestruck fool.

"Meng'er... I'm sorry about earlier. I didn't mean to raise my spiritual pressure that much. Please don't stay angry with me anymore."

Meng Po smacked his hand away with the handle of her ladle.

"You call that 'not much?' You nearly frightened our guest to death! If you break another table because you can't control yourself, you're sleeping outside."

"...Yes, dear."

"And stop trying to feed me every five breaths."

"...Yes, dear."

"You look ridiculous."

"...Still yes, dear."

I slowly chewed another mouthful while staring blankly at the spectacle unfolding before me.

Opposite me, seated in the place of honor, was the Supreme Death himself, acting like an overgrown puppy desperately trying to win the favor of a somehow younger Meng Po. Every gesture, every smile, every awkward attempt at affection chipped away at the terrifying image I had built of him over countless years.

I began losing every ounce of respect I had for the legend known as the Supreme Death.

This was supposed to be the same man who had fathered the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. The same existence whose actions could arguably be traced as the catalyst that allowed the Great Beast to manifest. There remained countless mysteries surrounding that calamity, and that was saying something considering I was probably the closest thing to omniscience that I would ever become. Out of everyone alive, I should have understood the event better than most.

Yet I understood almost nothing.

The only comforting part was that this Wendell wasn't drowning beneath the crushing depression I remembered from scattered glimpses across his history.

The truly unsettling part was Meng Po.

She looked nothing like the grumpy old hag I remembered. There were no wrinkles carved by endless years, no absent-minded muttering, no moments where she'd forget what she had been saying halfway through a sentence. She looked decades younger, vibrant enough that I could almost believe the old Meng Po had never existed.

I finally slowed my eating, cast Cleanse over myself to wipe away the stains I'd accumulated during my shameless feast, and leaned back in my chair.

"I appreciate it, really," I said. "You have an incredible spread. I'd love to postpone this conversation for another century if I could, but... how the fuck is it possible for you, Meng Po, to be in different places at the same time?"

That question sounded almost hypocritical coming from me.

After all, Divine Phantasm of Dreams allowed me to project countless versions of myself throughout the Hollowed World simultaneously. I had no business questioning someone else's impossible existence.

"I remember watching you die," I continued quietly. "I wasn't strong enough to truly resurrect you. I tried... but I couldn't. The best I managed was something much smaller. I brought Xin Yune back instead."

The warmth around the table faded.

Wendell released a long, weary sigh. "You shouldn't be here."

"No, it's fine," Meng Po replied gently. "Wendell, you should leave us—"

"I refuse."

The atmosphere changed instantly.

Gone was the lovestruck husband stumbling over his own words.

The Supreme Being returned, madness slowly filling his eyes.

His voice carried enough authority to suppress worlds. His momentum alone made reality itself groan beneath the invisible weight pressing against it. Even before he intentionally directed that pressure toward me, instinct screamed that I had just witnessed my own death.

Not just this incarnation.

My main body.

Somewhere unimaginably far away, I could almost feel it suffering a grievous injury simply from the possibility of provoking this man.

This was far more serious than I had assumed.

"How did you know my name?" Wendell asked.

His eyes bored into mine without blinking.

"You haven't answered that part yet."

I met his gaze without looking away.

"You were born in America. As a child, your mother brought you to Chicago hoping for a better life. Instead, both of you found hardship. She worked herself to death just to keep the lights on, and when she died, you learned what loneliness truly meant. You killed a man not long afterward. Whether it was self-defense or desperation stopped mattering the moment his blood stained your hands. That was the day something inside you changed forever. Later you enlisted and fought in Vietnam. You came home carrying scars nobody else could see. Even then, there were still people who reached out to you. Eventually you met a woman named Gloria. She became your light when you believed you no longer deserved one. The two of you had a daughter together."

I smiled faintly.

"Her name was Naomi—"

"ENOUGH!"

The roar shattered the room with his fear.

It spread across Wendell's face as though memories buried beneath countless eras had suddenly clawed their way back to the surface.

"I... I remember..." he whispered hoarsely. "But I don't want to remember..."

"Wendell, calm down," Meng Po murmured.

I moved before thought caught up with instinct. My body blurred sideways with Divine Step just as the entire banquet table disintegrated into gray dust, decaying at impossible speeds.

The roasted meats rotted into ash. The porcelain cracked apart under the weight of centuries that never existed. The immortal wine evaporated into foul-smelling mist. Even the polished wood aged until nothing remained except brittle fragments collapsing onto the floor.

Wendell's eyes had become completely pitch-black.

His gaze locked onto me.

Then Meng Po reached up and gently cupped his cheek.

"Darling..."

Her voice carried the warmth of home itself.

"It's time for your medicine."

She lifted a porcelain cup to her lips, took a small sip, and leaned forward.

She kissed him.

The liquid passed from her mouth into his, carried by nothing more than that gentle embrace. The oppressive aura engulfing the palace steadily receded, the darkness within his eyes dissolving until they once again reflected the man sitting across from me instead of the embodiment of death itself.

When the kiss ended, Wendell blinked several times before looking around in confusion.

"Ah," he said with an embarrassed smile. "I see we have a guest..."

Meng Po gave his shoulder a light push.

"Go on. Leave us for a while."

"But—"

"I'll handle our guest."

Wendell hesitated for only a heartbeat before nodding obediently.

"...Very well."

Without another word, the Supreme Death quietly stood and left the hall.

I let out a slow breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I honestly didn't know my Supremacy Trait would make him react like that."

Meng Po shook her head.

"You couldn't have known."

"I still should've been more careful."

Silence settled between us for a brief moment before curiosity finally got the better of me.

"Can I ask something else?"

She nodded.

"How did the two of you end up together?" I asked. "No offense, but... the Wendell I knew was a man who loved his wife and daughter so much that he wouldn't have exchanged them for anything. Seeing him here, married to someone else..." I scratched my cheek awkwardly. "Let's just say it wasn't on my list of things I expected to see."

Meng Po lowered her eyes.

"You have to understand something, Da Wei."

Her voice carried none of the playful confidence from earlier.

"He's not always like this."

I frowned.

"What do you mean by that?"

"Come with me."

She turned toward the open corridor.

"Let's take a walk."

I followed after her, leaving behind the ruined banquet hall.

The upper floors of Woodland Fortress overlooked nearly the entirety of the city. Towering pagodas pierced the clouds while bridges connected floating gardens overflowing with spirit flowers. Rivers of luminous water wound between districts built from polished jade and ancient timber, their reflections dancing beneath a sky that possessed neither sun nor moon. Thousands of echoes carried on with their daily lives below, each believing this place to be as real as any world outside.

It was beautiful.

Painfully so.

"Do you know how this place came to be?" Meng Po suddenly asked.

"You mean the fortress?"

She smiled faintly.

"No."

Her eyes drifted toward the endless heavens beyond the walls.

"I mean the Tower."

I remained quiet.

"There was a time when the Supreme Heart relentlessly pursued me," she began. "The bastard was an unbelievably persistent son of a bitch. Flowers. Gifts. Grand declarations. Even poems. They were all terrible."

I couldn't help snorting.

"I eventually threatened to destroy the Wheel of Reincarnation if he didn't leave me alone."

"You actually said that?"

"I did."

"And?"

"He never courted me again."

She smiled knowingly.

"Because he was never after me."

"The Wheel?"

She nodded.

"He always wanted the Wheel of Reincarnation."

Her fingers brushed across the stone railing.

"The Wheel wasn't merely responsible for guiding souls into their next lives. One of its greatest functions was preserving an imprint of everything that ever passed through it. Dead worlds. Dead civilizations. Dead souls. Every memory. Every emotion. Every possibility. They never truly disappeared. Instead, they remained as echoes."

The realization slowly settled inside me.

Meng Po continued, her voice steady yet laced with quiet reflection. "When the Six Supremes passed judgment upon me, I accepted my death. I knew I couldn't win."

Her gaze grew distant, as if she were peering back through the veil of time. "But something felt... wrong. The authority that struck me at my final moments belonged to the Supreme Death as if mocking me." She turned her eyes toward the horizon. "I am certain it wasn't Wendell wielding it, when he should've been dead."

"I am aware," I said, "You colluded with the Judges of the Underworld to fake the continued existence of the Supreme Death to maintain some semblance of autonomy within the Underworld."

She nodded. "I sensed someone else manipulating his authority. For the briefest instant, I saw a shadow, a Hidden Supreme. He was standing behind the Six Supremes, watching... controlling. I barely caught a glimpse before everything faded."

She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them again with a faint, weary smile. "My greatest surprise wasn't dying. It was opening them again." She spread her arms toward the endless expanse of the Tower. "I found myself here. The Wheel was gone. What remained had become this Tower."

Meng Po looked directly at me. "I believe Heart succeeded. He obtained the Wheel of Reincarnation and transformed it into this place for some purpose I still cannot comprehend."

I took a deep breath, the weight of her words settling over me. There was a lot to unpack, yet everything she had said fit together almost perfectly. If Meng Po herself was merely an echo preserved by the Wheel, then Xin Yune, her genuine soul, proved her existence in the waking world. That actually explained far more than I expected.

It also irritated me. The Tower classified beings like Meng Po as NPCs. NPCs! As though they were nothing more than scripted constructs instead of people whose lives had once been painfully real.

"The existence controlling the authority of the Supreme Death was Conquest," I said.

Meng Po turned toward me, listening intently.

"I'm certain of that much," I continued. "The Hidden Supreme..." I rubbed my temple, frowning. "I'm still conflicted. Every time I tried tracing him, I only caught fragments. Every glimpse contradicted the last."

I exhaled slowly. "After your death, Horse-Face and I searched everywhere. We used Divine Possession to trace every lingering connection tied to your soul. It wasn't easy. There were moments when I thought we'd finally found you." A bitter laugh escaped me. "Every single trail led somewhere else."

Meng Po nodded softly. "I'm glad you understand. Remember, I'm not real."

As I looked around the fortress once more, a deeper realization settled over me. If I hadn't learned the truth today, I would have felt obligated to resurrect every echo trapped inside the Tower. Now I understood that doing so wouldn't necessarily be salvation. These weren't imprisoned souls waiting to be revived. Instead, they were memories given form, echoes preserving histories that would have otherwise vanished forever.

We continued walking for what felt like hours, perhaps it was hours. Maybe centuries passed outside. Time inside the Tower never behaved the way it should. Our conversation drifted across countless subjects, from the present to alternate futures branching into impossible possibilities. Gradually, Meng Po lowered her guard, allowing me to extend Ophanim further than I normally dared. Every answer she gave became another thread in an ever-expanding tapestry of information, helping me understand the Tower from perspectives I could never have reached alone.

Eventually, our conversation circled back to Wendell.

The instant Ophanim brushed against anything related to the Supreme Death, blood poured from my nose. I instinctively covered it before another crimson drop could reach the floor.

Meng Po stepped closer, her expression filled with worry. She gently wiped the blood away with a handkerchief. "Sorry about that. His Weight of Existence is too heavy." She looked directly into my eyes. "You're only here through a clone while your consciousness descended in a spiritual body. Even then, your main body could still be injured simply by trying to perceive too much of him."

I immediately dismissed Ophanim. "Then let's keep this conversation in real time," I said with a weak chuckle. "Tell me how you ended up with... him." I gestured toward the corridor Wendell had disappeared into. "I mean, it does prove something."

"What?"

"You weren't exaggerating when you called yourself the most beautiful woman in the universe."

Her fist immediately landed against my shoulder.

"Ow!"

"Stop it," she glared. "Take this seriously."

"Hey," I rubbed my shoulder, grinning. "It wasn't me who said that first."

Her expression softened almost immediately. "I'm sorry." She sighed. "I'm just worried about him."

She gazed out across the fortress, her voice growing quieter. "When the Tower first awakened, chaos consumed everything. There was a terrible war. It lasted for centuries. Every floor became a battlefield as countless powerful echoes fought to determine who would become the strongest... and who would rule each floor."

"Wendell entered that war. Not because he wanted power." She closed her eyes. "He simply killed. And killed. And kept killing. He slaughtered so many echoes that entire regions became empty."

"I finally found him on this floor. He had been isolated there. No one dared approach him anymore. He rampaged alone." Her smile carried an indescribable sadness. "I couldn't leave him like that. So I brewed him tea."

I blinked. "...Tea?"

"My Forgetfulness Tea." She nodded. "I borrowed his Supremacy Trait and incorporated it into the brew. It became far more potent than anything I'd ever created. I used it to ease his suffering. Little by little... I erased his memories of Earth."

She looked almost guilty. "Afterward... I forced him into a Binding Vow."

I stared. "...You what?"

"I bound us in marriage."

I opened my mouth, closed it, then opened it again. Somehow, after everything I had witnessed today, that revelation still managed to exceed every expectation I had.

Ophanim quietly whispered the emotions hidden beneath her words: loneliness, compassion, duty, and sacrifice. She hadn't done any of it for herself. She had done it because no one else could. Instead, it was because someone had to save the man who could no longer save himself. Admittedly, there was an ulterior motive to.

"Thank you," I said, my voice cracking. "From the bottom of my heart... I mean it."

Meng Po smiled gently. "There is no need to thank me. I only did what I believed was right."

Only then did I truly grasp the scale of what she had accomplished. When the Tower descended upon the Seventeen Continents on the Hollowed World, it hadn't annihilated everyone living there. It had transported them. Countless lives had been thrown into the first floor all at once, where panic, greed, and violence immediately threatened to consume them.

Meng Po had stepped into that chaos. She imposed order. She gave the echoes purpose. She prevented the Tower from becoming an endless slaughterhouse. Without her, the Tower would have devoured itself long before anyone from the outside ever entered it.

I swallowed the lump in my throat. "No," I shook my head. "Really. Thank you."