405 Kills the Cat

Falling for Ru Qiu's provocation would not lead anywhere good. I knew that much instinctively. The Yellow Emperor standing before us was nothing more than a record, an echo pinned to a moment that had already passed. If I was ever going to confront him, I wanted it to be face to face, not through a distorted shadow where truth and interference could overlap. Worse still, if the Supreme Void truly lingered within this remnant, then using Divine Possession here would be tantamount to inviting catastrophe.

I had already tempted fate more times than I cared to count. I wasn't about to do it again.

"I'm not interested," I said flatly.

Golden light flared as I extended my hand. Holy Sword erupted from my palm, radiant and sharp, its presence forcing the cave to tremble as if reality itself had taken offense.

Ru Qiu stepped in front of me, brows knitting together. "What are you doing?"

"Killing him," I replied calmly. "Isn't that obvious? You dragged this poor Ancient Soul out of whatever hole he was hiding in. The least I can do is put him out of his misery."

Ru Qiu stared at me as if I'd insulted his ancestors. Then he sighed, disappointment heavy in his eyes, and turned to the trembling Yellow Emperor. "Tell him what you told me."

That explained a lot. Ru Qiu didn't arrive at his conclusions out of thin air.

The Yellow Emperor swallowed, sweat rolling down his face like molten wax. "The Six Supremes… they are not unified in belief, nor in desire," he said shakily. "But they are united in one thing. You."

I frowned. That was it? I had expected something grander or some elaborate cosmic design, a labyrinthine scheme spanning epochs.

He continued quickly, as if afraid I would interrupt. "They are colluding to destroy all champions chosen by the Lost Gods. Not by direct confrontation, but through fate, circumstance, and erosion. Ru Qiu was one such champion." He lifted a trembling finger toward me. "And now, it is your turn."

"So what?" I asked.

The words came out harsher than I intended, but I didn't take them back.

This wasn't news. I'd crossed paths with Supreme Beings before. I'd argued with one wearing the skin of a heart demon. I already knew they coveted the Source—Earth—and by extension, me. Hearing it stated aloud didn't change the reality of my situation in the slightest.

The Yellow Emperor's voice grew more desperate. "The Six Supremes were once champions as well. Chosen by us. Forged from the Source itself. Supreme Beings are born from it, beings capable of rewriting reality, and restoring what was broken. You are the same."

My grip tightened on the Holy Sword.

"You were forged as a weapon," he said, black tears spilling from his eyes. "A weapon meant to destroy the world in order to make it right. All of you resist this truth at first. Every champion does. And like your predecessors, you will seek to sever your destiny and walk free."

I exhaled slowly.

"You're starting to annoy me," I said.

The Yellow Emperor staggered forward, chains rattling as his knees hit the ground. His eyes, once filled with unbearable authority, were now raw and pleading.

"Please," he begged. "Do not follow their path. Do not become what they became."

I looked down at him, golden light washing over his bowed form, and wondered how many gods had once begged the same way.

The Yellow Emperor's tears thickened, turning more pitch-black as they slid down his cheeks. Then he laughed. It was loud, raucous, and obscene.

"Ha—ha—ha—ha—ha—ha—ha!"

The sound scraped against my spine. The dark flames Ru Qiu had wrapped around him sputtered and died as the shadows beneath the Yellow Emperor deepened, stretching unnaturally, as if the light itself was retreating.

"Close it!" Ru Qiu barked.

The black metal prison snapped toward the Yellow Emperor, segments folding inward, but they corroded mid-motion, eaten away by nothing I could perceive. I didn't hesitate. Holy Sword came down in a radiant arc as I flooded it with Holy Aura, Divine Smite detonating in a burst of gold meant to erase corruption itself.

Two fingers caught the blade.

"Pretty good acting, right?" the man asked casually.

My breath caught.

"That was shitty," Ru Qiu snapped.

He reappeared at the man's flank, Immortal Art flaring as a dark, fiery sword tore through the air. I never saw the counter. I only felt it.

The world tilted.

I watched my own body fall away from me, the left side sheared clean off, blood vaporizing before it could spill. Then everything went dark.

I blinked awake.

Spell Resonance triggered instinctively, Divine Word: Raise tearing me back into existence. I gasped, half-conscious, weaving quintessence-made robes around myself just to keep some semblance of dignity as my mind struggled to catch up.

The Heavenly Divine Cult was gone.

Not ruined, but gone!

"W-What?"

A massive gorge cleaved through where the complex once stood, exposing raw mountainside and open sky. Sunlight poured down mercilessly. I propped myself against broken stone, head ringing, heart pounding, and stared.

The thing that wore the Yellow Emperor's face had Ru Qiu by the throat.

Ru Qiu didn't look good. He had no arms. No legs. His body was little more than a torso, dark embers struggling to knit him back together.

He'd screwed up badly.

So had I.

If I'd attacked the moment something felt off, would it have mattered? I didn't know. That uncertainty burned worse than the pain.

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The man laughed again. "You two are, what, mega-jizzllion years too early to challenge the Void."

I frowned despite myself. "That's not a word."

"Sure it is," he said cheerfully. "Jizz plus gazillion."

Ru Qiu snarled, even now. "Gazillion isn't a real word either."

The Void squeezed his grip.

Ru Qiu's head came off.

Even for an Ascended Soul, that kind of damage was catastrophic. His vitality flickered, then vanished from my senses entirely.

Ah. Shit.

I exhaled slowly. I was probably about to die. Not the main body, thankfully, but still.

The Void snorted. "Don't look so serious. He'll live. Eventually. Guy's got layers of immortality stacked like bad DLC. Resurrection just takes time."

I stared at him. "You sound… familiar to him."

He smiled. "Yeah. I got to know another version of him. The one stuck in the False Earth."

Cold crept into my chest.

He knew.

He knew this wasn't real, not truly. This was a record, an echo preserved by something far beyond the Hollowed World. And somehow, impossibly, he was watching us from outside it.

"How?" I whispered.

The man tilted his head, eyes glinting with amusement, and looked straight at me.

"Da Wei," he said casually. "So… has One Piece finished yet?"

I stared at him, genuinely confused. "What's One Piece?"

The Void recoiled as if I'd just spat on sacred scripture. "You uncultured beast."

I didn't bother replying. My hand moved on instinct, silently lining up buffs—Lion's Cou— I never finished the thought.

The world inverted.

I crashed into the mountainside hard enough that stone screamed. My body tumbled through open air, clipped treetops, and finally buried itself into the forest below. Everything happened too fast and clean. I didn't think even my main body could've tracked that movement.

I coughed blood and forced myself to breathe, casting Blessed Regeneration as my ribs tried to knit themselves back together.

A vague memory surfaced of him flicking my forehead.

"Man, you're durable," the Void said.

He was suddenly there, standing beside me like he'd always been. I swung Holy Sword at reflex speed. The blade passed through an afterimage.

The Void was squatting on the tip of my sword.

He leaned forward until our faces were inches apart. "One Piece is the greatest anime of all time," he said solemnly. "A source of adventure and dreams for countless youths like me."

He tapped my forehead.

Pressure caved my skull inward. My vision went white, then red, then nothing as my head burst apart like wet clay.

I woke up again.

Spell Resonance dragged me back, Divine Word: Raise forcing existence into a body that didn't want it yet. I lay there staring at the sky, clouds drifting lazily as if nothing had happened.

"Oh good," a voice said cheerfully. "You're awake."

I stood up slowly.

The Void sat on a boulder nearby, completely relaxed, shaving a stick with razor-thin qi. Wood curled away in perfect ribbons until the thing resembled a polished wooden sword. He admired it, turning it side to side.

"Before you," he said casually, "before Ru Qiu, before the other six… there was me. The Supreme Void."

I stayed quiet.

"I never got along with them," he continued. "The six idiots were too attached to this world. Ru Qiu was the opposite, since he just wanted everything to end." He laughed. "Thought I'd like him. Turns out wanting to die is boring as hell."

He glanced at me. "Guy was wild in the False Earth, though. Picking fights with Ancient Souls, escalating everything. Zero chill."

I frowned. "And what does that have to do with me?"

The Void hopped off the rock and faced me, wooden sword resting on his shoulder. His grin was lazy, curious, and almost friendly.

"Well," he said, tilting his head, "I'm wondering if you're like all of them."

He paused, and then added lightly, "Or if you wanna be my friend."

"I don't think friendship works that way," I said carefully. "At the very least, our character has to align. Or we share a mutual goal."

The Void swung his wooden sword in a lazy arc, cutting air that screamed softly where it parted. He looked amused. "I like how straightforward you are."

He planted the sword on his shoulder and grinned. "My goal is simple. I want to destroy the world. All of reality. Every layer, every story, every piece of nonsense. Then we end it. Cleanly."

I frowned. "Then we can't be friends."

"A pity," the Void said lightly, as if I'd declined tea.

Something nagged at me. Yuan Shun's smile. Her words. 'Destroy the world with me.' The strange distortion I'd glimpsed in her shadow…

I looked at him. "Do you have anything to do with Yuan Shun?"

The Void yawned. "Oh. Her?" He waved a hand. "She's my disciple."

My heart sank. "What do you mean by that?"

"I imbued my essence into her," he said casually. "Marked her. Raised her as a Void Disciple." His eyes narrowed, sharp with curiosity. "But the moment you appeared with your people, she severed the connection."

He vanished.

The world collapsed.

I slammed into the mountainside, pinned there as the wooden sword pressed into my chest like a nail through an insect. The pressure was unbearable. Stone cracked around me.

The Void loomed above, eyes dark and endless. "Care to explain," he asked pleasantly, "why your essence suddenly manifested inside my disciple the moment she saw you?"

"I… don't understand," I gasped.

He twisted the sword.

Pain exploded through me as void qi slithered inside my body, cold and invasive, unraveling layers of existence I didn't even know I had. I screamed despite myself.

"I've been watching you," he said, voice sharpening. "Through her. I deduced you came from the future. And somewhere between that future and this timeline, something happened." His smile vanished. "Something ruined my plans."

The pressure increased. "What did you do?"

Fear swallowed me.

Staring into those eyes of pure emptiness and absence given form, I felt a terrifying nothingness. Out of desperation, instinct screaming, I cast Divine Possession.

The world vanished.

I floated in darkness. No memories. No attachments. No soul. When I blinked, I was standing within the eternal stillness of nothing, and I found myself utterly lost. Accompanying this feeling of lost was a horrifying pull, a desire to turn everything into the same stillness.

I tore myself back.

The Void clicked his tongue. "Useless."

He leaned closer. "I'll ask again. What did you do?"

"I don't even know your so-called plans," I said hoarsely. "How am I supposed to answer?"

He studied me, and then shrugged. "Fair. I don't mind sharing."

He paced, wooden sword tapping the ground. "It started when the Heavenly Demon broke the barrier between past and future. A pathetic attempt at survival." His eyes gleamed. "I used that opening to exert my will into distorted history."

"The Eternal Undeath Cult," he continued. "was built in the ruins of the Heavenly Demonic Cult. I needed a vessel, but I couldn't move too much. The Warden was watching." He chuckled. "So I chose a disciple instead. Someone to watch over the destined body."

He stopped in front of me.

"A body that could see into the abyss," he whispered, fingers tightening on my jaw, forcing my eyes up to his. "And sing to the darkness."

My expression betrayed me.

He laughed softly. "Ah."

His gaze pierced straight through my thoughts. "So you do know."

I tried to look away. He didn't let me.

"Hei Mao," the Void said, savoring the name. "That was his name, wasn't it?"

I swung my fist.

I didn't even feel the impact, because my arm was suddenly gone.

There was no transition, no resistance. One moment I was moving, the next my limbs were severed cleanly, falling away like discarded thoughts. The pain came a heartbeat later, screaming through every layer of my being.

The Void stared into my eyes with naked fascination, as if I were a puzzle finally coming apart. He reached out, fingers precise, and picked not flesh, not bone, but something deeper, something essential.

I shut my eyes.

He laughed.

Then he plucked my head out, spine and all, tearing it free from my body in a single smooth motion. Agony detonated. I screamed, soundless and useless, as my perception twisted violently.

"That won't help," he said cheerfully.

I felt a blade of void qi slice across my face. My eyelids were cut away.

"Look at me."

My vision locked onto his.

The Void was laughing now, delighted, eyes alight with revelation. "I finally get it," he said. "That's why I failed."

He leaned closer, voice dropping into something almost fond. "Karma really does strike in the strangest places."

His grip tightened. "The twin of my Void Disciple," he murmured. "Stealing my vessel of all things!"

"Enough," I spat with bloodied lips. With what little agency I had left, I gathered holy power inward and cast Divine Smite on myself. Radiance erupted inside my skull. Everything went white.

I should have killed myself sooner.

That was the first coherent thought as my Ghost Soul tore free, drifting in a cold, hollow state. I'd hesitated. And because of that, I'd endangered my disciple.

"Hei Mao."

I reached outward, ignoring the pain, the fear, and the lingering echo of the Void's gaze. Through faith, through bond, through something deeper than qi or mana, I felt a faint thread of faith connected to my disciple. It was trembling, but intact.

I followed it, but shortly stopped.

A sick realization crawled up my spine. "What are the chances he's not following me?" I materialized above a still lake, my form translucent, barely anchored. The water below reflected a warped shadow.

My shadow blinked.

Eyes opened within it.

"Well done," the shadow said, voice smooth and amused. "You catch on quickly."

Cold seeped into my being.

The eyes curved into something like a smile. "Tell me, Da Wei. Have you ever heard the saying that… Curiosity kills the cat?"