421 Temple of the End

Earth floated in the middle of the ruins.

It was so small it could fit in my palm.

Of course, it was not the Earth I remembered. Not the endless blue sphere wrapped in clouds and oceans and noise. This one was compact and more of an object rather than a world. And yet, it was my soul.

Or rather, it 'served' as my soul.

The reason I had once been perceived as soulless was painfully simple in hindsight. This thing was too vast in essence, too dense in meaning, and too large in what it represented. Souls, as others understood them, were the quintessential source of your being.

However, the 'Source' within me was different. Perhaps, the 'Earth' within me was just one surface of it, a facet of something so incomprehensible that calling it a soul was already a concession to language.

From that Source, I regenerated again.

I lay on the cold stone of the Temple of the End, staring into the vast expanse of outer space. Above us hung the False Earth, enormous and distant, with a sun and a moon obediently orbiting it like props on a stage. Emerald robes wove themselves over my body, preserving whatever little dignity I still had left. The Hollow Star remained on my head, its presence heavy and constant, like a hand never quite loosening its grip.

I was furious.

But I couldn't express it.

Not because I lacked will, but because every time I tried, the other guy beat it out of me.

Feng Wei stood beside me, arms crossed, posture relaxed to the point of insult.

"Is that all you've got?" he asked. His voice carried no malice. That somehow made it worse.

I didn't answer. I rolled onto my side instead, turning my back to him, and let quintessence spill out through Hollow Star. Stone cracked. Roots erupted. Trees rose from nothing, their trunks thick and green, leaves unfurling in a rush of life. In seconds, a forest surrounded us, vibrant and breathing beneath the fake stars.

Feng Wei scoffed. "A forest? That's your answer?"

I stared at the canopy above me. "I like trees," I said flatly. "Green's easy on the eyes."

Silence lingered for a moment.

This thing on my head was convenient. With Hollow Star, I had crushed the Civil War, unified the Empire, bent fate itself into something manageable. But convenience always came at a price. This wasn't a crown.

It was a chain.

Supreme Beings. Ancient Souls. Lost Gods.

I didn't even care anymore.

Enemies. Friends. Titles. Roles.

"I just want them to leave me alone," I muttered.

Feng Wei's gaze sharpened. "And you think sulking here accomplishes that?"

I clenched my jaw.

"You're hiding," he continued, his voice rising. "Your people are dying out there, Da Wei. Your world is collapsing, with timelines bleeding into each other, and you're lying on the ground growing trees."

"If you'd just let me go," I snapped, pushing myself up on one elbow, "I could do something. I could go there and fix it."

"You'd lose," Feng Wei said without hesitation.

The certainty in his tone was like a blade between my ribs.

I didn't wait for him to say more.

I struck.

My foot swept low, thunder roaring as I invoked Thunderous Smite, aiming for his leg, hoping stupidly to catch him off guard. Feng Wei looked down, lifted his foot, and stomped.

Bone shattered and flesh tore.

Pain flared white-hot, but I rode it, forcing quintessence through the damage. Blessed Regeneration surged, rebuilding my leg mid-motion as I twisted into a roundhouse kick. Divine Smite ignited along my shin, the light so bright it carved shadows into the forest.

Feng Wei didn't even blink.

Restrictions still weighed on me. No Ultimate Skills. No Immortal Arts. Whatever seal he'd placed on me was airtight. But Hollow Star flooded me with quintessence, vast and inexhaustible, and I poured it into everything else.

Weapons bloomed into existence from swords, spears, halberds, and axes. There were dozens upon dozens I cast Blessed Weapon on all of them and hurled them forward with telekinesis, a storm of sanctified steel screaming toward him.

They never reached him.

The weapons collided mid-air, twisted by an unseen force, crashing into each other and detonating outward in a rain of fragments and light.

A shadow fell over me.

Feng Wei was already behind me.

He punched once.

There was no technique to it. No flourish. Just a fist, carrying a force so absolute it erased context. My body didn't break.

It ended.

The world folded inward, and I was reduced again and stripped down to the Source.

Once more, Earth floated in the center of the Temple of the End.

Feng Wei's voice echoed through the ruins.

"This is pointless," he said. "You know what you need to do."

I didn't respond.

"Stop running," he continued. "Unseal your memories of Earth and get this over with, you stubborn fool!"

The state of my people in the Hollowed World was probably the only reason I could still move.

That thought alone was enough to push me.

I unsealed my memories.

The process wasn't violent. There was no scream, no flash of pain. It felt more like loosening a knot I had been pretending wasn't there. Memories I had consciously locked away surged back from Earth, my life before all of this, and the weight of being taken, repurposed, rewritten.

But then something else surfaced.

It was a memory of a voice. It was calm, vast, and neither male nor female.

"Destroy the world."

"Destroy the stars."

"Destroy this reality.

As if that alone wasn't enough, the voice then added.

"When there is nothing left to resist you… make it right again."

I blinked awake as my body regenerated from the Source, emerald robes reforming around me, Hollow Star settling back into place. The forest I had created earlier still stood, leaves rustling softly despite the void beyond.

I stared straight at Feng Wei.

"What was that?" I asked.

He didn't look surprised.

"That is what you sealed deeper than the rest."

I pushed myself upright, fists clenched. "That wasn't just a memory. That was an order."

Feng Wei nodded. "You unsealed what you consciously chose to forget. And what you were subconsciously made to forget."

I laughed bitterly. "You're telling me someone shoved a doomsday directive into my head and I just… misplaced it?"

"There are many things I'm not at liberty to explain," Feng Wei replied. "But I was not lying when I said I wanted to help you."

"Then elaborate," I said sharply. "Because right now it sounds like I'm a bomb waiting for the right trigger."

He exhaled slowly, as if weighing every word.

"You were forged," Feng Wei said at last. "Not born. Forged as a divine weapon."

My jaw tightened. "A weapon for what?"

"To strike an enemy," he answered, "that distorts reality itself."

I met his gaze. "You mean the Supreme Beings."

He shook his head.

"No. They were failures."

The word landed heavier than any blow he had dealt me.

"They were attempts," Feng Wei continued. "Weapons that broke under their own contradictions. Some collapsed. Some rebelled. Some tried to become gods instead of tools."

"And me?" I asked quietly.

"You might share their fate," he said honestly. "But I have a good feeling about you."

I looked away, running a hand through my hair.

"So let me get this straight," I said. "I was taken from my world, handed power that shattered the scale of existence, and conscripted into a war I don't even understand. And you expect me to trust you?"

"Yes," Feng Wei replied without hesitation.

I turned back to him. "Why?"

"Because," he said, "among the Ancient Souls and the Lost Gods, I am the only ally you will have at this moment."

Something in his tone told me he wasn't boasting.

"There was a previous weapon," Feng Wei continued. "Before you."

My chest tightened. "What happened to it?"

"It did something unthinkable," he said. "It split this world into two realities."

He raised his hand and traced symbols in the air. Runes formed, humming with authority.

"Time flows differently in each," he went on. "One moves forward. The other… not so much."

The runes shimmered, then unfolded into a mirage.

A man appeared before me.

He had my face.

Different armor wrapped his frame, darker, sharper in silhouette, carrying an authority that felt wrong just to look at. His eyes were colder than mine, heavier with certainty. Where I hesitated, he stood firm. Where I questioned, he seemed to already know the answer.

Feng Wei gestured toward the image.

"This," he said, "is the other result of that split."

I swallowed.

"And what is he to me?"

Feng Wei met my eyes.

"Your counterpart," he said. "Your mirror. Your other half."

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

The revelation left me silent for a long moment.

I stared at the mirage, at the man who wore my face, and felt a strange, creeping vertigo. It wasn't fear. It was the discomfort of recognizing myself in something I didn't want to acknowledge.

"Surely, we can talk this out. If there's no need to fight, then it is better to not fight, right?"

Feng Wei looked at me as if I had said something unbearably naïve.

"We're the same person," I continued. "Different paths, different circumstances, but the same core. If I can reach him—"

"Stop holding on to false hopes," Feng Wei cut in.

His tone was flat and unyielding.

"The only outcome of your meeting," he said, "is his death or yours."

I stiffened. "You're that certain?"

"Yes."

He stepped closer, and before I could react, his hand plunged into my abdomen. There was no pain. Only a cold, existential wrongness. Feng Wei withdrew his hand, and in his palm hovered the Source.

My Source.

The miniature Earth rotated slowly, light and shadow folding into one another. Seeing it outside my body made my stomach twist in a way no wound ever had.

"The other you," Feng Wei said calmly, "holds the other half."

I stared at the floating world, my breath shallow.

"The Source is incomplete," he went on. "And against a foe like that, incompleteness is death. The only way you win is by achieving superior mastery over it."

He released the Source.

It snapped back into my abdomen as if pulled by an unseen gravity. My body shuddered, quintessence rippling outward before stabilizing.

I exhaled slowly.

"You said the other Lost Gods and Ancient Souls aren't on my side," I said. "What does that mean? Are they backing him?"

Feng Wei shook his head.

"They don't care," he replied. "The superior one will prevail. That is all that matters to them, which is precisely why my presence here is controversial."

I looked at him sharply. "Then why are you here?"

For the first time, Feng Wei's expression shifted.

"When I was cast down into the Hollowed World," he said, "I fell alongside two compatriots. I lived among mortals. I suffered. I learned."

His gaze softened, just slightly.

"I learned to love life again."

The words caught me off guard.

"And because of that," he continued, "I want to give them a chance."

"Them?" I asked.

"You," Feng Wei said. "And the people tied to you."

He lifted his hand and summoned the mirage once more.

This time, it wasn't a single figure.

It was devastation.

A crimson flood swallowing the Empire. Cities erased. Mountains drowned. Faces I recognized and cherished, falling one by one. I saw my Six Path souls being torn apart, erased with casual brutality.

And at the center of it all stood him.

The other me.

I felt something inside me crack.

My fist clenched so tightly I heard bone strain against itself. Rage surged up my spine, hot and suffocating, threatening to drown reason entirely.

I forced it down.

There was no point in losing control. No point in begging Feng Wei to send me back when he had already decided I wasn't ready.

With an edge creeping into my voice, I asked, "So what do I do next?"

Feng Wei studied me for a moment, as if measuring my resolve.

"Unsealing your memories has unsealed your potential," he said. "But even now, you cannot compete with him."

I met his gaze, jaw set.

"Then tell me how," I said. "Because I'm not staying here while my world burns."

Feng Wei did not answer immediately. Instead, he looked past me, toward the floating ruins of the Temple of the End, as though his gaze could pierce time itself. "I was able to retain memories of two realities," he said at last, "because I witnessed it happen."

I frowned. "Witnessed what?"

"The previous weapon," Feng Wei replied. "The one before you. I experienced the moment he split time with my own existence. From that moment on, I was no longer bound to a single flow."

His eyes returned to me.

"You were divided," he continued. "Not merely in power, but in concept. One part of you became the existence that dwelled within the Source. The other became the divine weapon you were forged into."

I felt a chill crawl up my spine.

"You," Feng Wei said, pointing at me, "have only existed in this world for less than five hundred years."

I bristled. "That's not—"

"Even if you include your time in Meng Po's world," he went on calmly, "cultivating there, learning the Six Paths, reaching the peak of the Longevity Path, it does not change the fact that your growth was erratic. Brilliant, yes. But full of sharp turns."

He paused, then added, almost casually, "And you have a flaw in your cultivation. One you likely only discovered recently."

My eyes widened. "How do you know Meng Po?"

Feng Wei waved it off. "That isn't important."

I exhaled sharply, irritation bubbling up. "You make it sound like I've been stumbling around blindly. The gap between me and him can't be that large."

He raised an eyebrow, inviting me to continue.

"I fought a Hell's Gate as a Demi-God with barely any cultivation," I said, unable to stop myself. "I survived a direct clash with Aixin, who should've been a high-ranking God, by charging in knowing full well it might kill me. I even challenged the Supreme Void itself in the False Earth—"

"That other version of you slew the Supreme Void," Feng Wei interrupted.

I stopped mid-breath.

"With words, the Source," he said evenly, "and a degree of brutality you cannot imagine."

Silence fell between us.

I closed my mouth.

"He began far earlier than you," Feng Wei continued. "Back when even the allies you rely on now had not yet been born. While you struggled, hesitated, and built bonds, he slaughtered his way to the top achieving a realm of power you would never be able to imagine. I shudder at the thought of what he would do to you once he got a hold of you."

My chest tightened.

"In a single century," Feng Wei said, "he became the strongest being in the Hollowed World."

I looked at him sharply. "You keep saying all this like you watched it happen. How?"

"I found a loophole in the reincarnation system of the Hollowed World," he answered. "As a Martial God, I slipped through it. I witnessed his path across countless lives. I saw the atrocities he committed."

His voice grew heavier.

"That is how I know he cannot be allowed to win."

I searched his face, finding no mockery there. Only resolve.

"Even if it costs me my soul," Feng Wei said quietly, "I am willing to go against the wishes of my people. After this, I will likely suffer a terrible fate."

He looked at me directly.

"Now that I've shown you my sincerity," he asked, "can you trust me a little more?"

I felt a knot tighten in my chest.

There was something in Feng Wei's tone that unsettled me, a quiet resolve that usually preceded acts I would later regret witnessing. I looked at him carefully before speaking.

"Fine," I said. "I'm willing to trust you."

He exhaled, as though he had been holding his breath for a long time. "The truth is that I don't know the next step."

I stared at him. "You dragged me here, beat me into the ground, tore open my memories, and you don't know what comes next?"

He did not flinch. "Only you can know it."

I rubbed my face with one hand and sighed. "That's reassuring. Truly."

"You must find a way to use the Source creatively," Feng Wei continued. "In a way that only you would think of. The Source is not just power. It is a world. A myth. A foundation."

I glanced at the floating False Earth above us. "Even the best motivational speeches have their limits."

Feng Wei nodded once. "I know. Which is why I have an idea."

I looked at him warily. "I'm listening."

"You need to spend more time living as the Source," he said.

There was a pause.

"How?" I asked.

He answered by punching me. The annihilation fist landed before I could react, and my body collapsed inward, unraveling into light, matter, and concept. I was reduced once more to the Source.

Darkness embraced as awareness soon took over.

I regenerated slowly and painfully, my existence knitting itself together through vast expenditure of quintessence. If I had used Divine Word: Raise, it would have been faster and cleaner. But this regeneration was different and cruder. I was rebuilding myself from the inside out.

I blinked awake.

Another fist slammed into my face again… and then again.

I lost count of how many times it happened. Each cycle ended the same way. Obliteration. Return. Reconstruction. Impact.

Somewhere between the countless repetitions, something changed.

At some indeterminate moment, I stopped reforming as myself first.

I became aware before I had a body.

I was the sky.

I was the earth beneath it.

I was the sea, the currents, and the pressure of water miles below the surface. I was the wind scraping across continents, the tremor of tectonic plates, and the quiet pulse of life spreading everywhere at once.

I could feel them.

Every human being. Every breath. Every fragile existence scattered across the surface of Earth.

The sensation was overwhelming, and intimate beyond comfort. I did not observe them from afar. I felt them as extensions of myself.

Instinctively, I searched for one presence in particular.

Me.

My awareness narrowed, compressing, racing across oceans and landmasses until it settled on a familiar archipelago. I descended, perception sharpening until I could see stone, soil, and grass.

I stared at my grave.

The earth above it was undisturbed. Beneath it lay my casket and inside was my rotting mortal body. There was no denial left in me then. No clever excuse or metaphysical loophole.

I was dead.

Before I could linger on the realization, an immense force seized my awareness and tore it outward. The world collapsed into abstraction, and sensation inverted violently.

I was back in the Temple of the End.

Feng Wei stood before me, his expression unchanged.

His fist was already moving.

Darkness rushed to meet me again as he annihilated me once more, sending me back into the Source.

I did better this time.

Instead of resisting the sensation, I immersed myself in it.

I was the sky again, and the earth beneath it, the seas and the oceans, but it did not stop there. I became electricity humming through utility poles, signals racing along cables, and data pulsing through invisible pathways.

Before I realized it, I became the internet.

The realization nearly startled me out of the state. It was absurd and intimate at the same time. I could feel buildings as static weight and purpose, cars as motion and inertia, a stapler as cold metal and trivial function, a urinal as porcelain and neglect. I was everything that had been made, shaped, or repurposed.

Everything except life.

I could not become people. Nor animals. Nor plants. Living things resisted me instinctively, as though the Source respected a boundary I could sense but not cross.

As I drifted through this omnipresent awareness, nostalgia crept in, followed closely by bitterness. This world, my old world, was achingly familiar. The temptation to return, to simply remain here and dissolve into quiet omniscience, was strong.

But there were still people who needed me.

That thought anchored me.

I regenerated from the Source once more.

Feng Wei annihilated me again.

The cycle repeated, but each time I gathered myself faster. I learned how to reassemble my sense of self before it scattered too far, how to stabilize my awareness before being dragged back into form.

Time behaved strangely within the Source. It was static and dynamic at once, frozen and flowing simultaneously. The contradiction did not hurt my mind the way it should have; it simply existed. I felt that even if millions of years passed outside, nothing fundamental would change here.

With that realization, I began to observe.

I watched lives unfold across the planet, not as a voyeur but as a silent witness embedded in the structure of the world itself. That was when I found them.

Wen Yuhan.

Yuan Shen.

They were here.

They lived in China under different names, a mother and son pair, their lives comfortable, even privileged. Wealth had found them easily in this incarnation. Yuan Shen, however, suffered from blindness. I wondered if it was karma, a quiet echo of the things he had done in another life.

For the longest time, I had believed the two of them existed only in my memories, phantoms carried over from the Hollowed World and the False Earth.

Yet here they were.

I did something impulsive. I sent Wen Yuhan an email, asking if she remembered the Hollowed World. The False Earth. Anything beyond this life.

She ignored it.

I grimaced. Of course she did.

The cycles continued from obliteration, immersion, and observation. Somewhere along the way, a voice called out to me. It was Wen Yuhan's voice. I was pulled inward, no longer spread across the world but drawn into a single, intimate space. Her bedroom. She slept beside her husband, her breathing steady and calm.

I slipped into her dream.

She stood before me, whole and composed, dressed not as a mortal but as herself, something closer to what I remembered.

"How are you liking mortal life?" I asked.

"It's fine," she replied calmly. "But why are you looking for me?"

We talked for a long time.

She spoke of this world, of its rules and rhythms, of the quiet weight of living without memory of divinity or catastrophe. This incarnation of hers did not remember the Hollowed World or the False Earth, not consciously.

Yet something remained.

A destiny. A fragment. A stubborn thread that refused to vanish.

"If you need help," she told me, "just say it. I can influence my incarnation… subtly. Don't hold back. I will help you as much as I can, if it means repaying you for helping me reunite with my disciple…"

I let out a tired breath. "I don't even know what to do."

So I told her everything. Feng Wei. The Source. The memories I had unsealed. The other me. The inevitable confrontation looming ahead. I told her I was about to fight myself.

We tested ideas together, theories and half-formed possibilities, tracing the shape of solutions that never quite solidified. There were no answers yet, but for the first time since arriving at the Temple of the End, I did not feel entirely alone.

The idea came to me all at once, sharp enough that I almost snapped back into myself.

The Game Master.

Not the counterfeit Supreme Void had dangled in front of me, but the real one. The old man I had met once, fleetingly, inside Joan's mind. If anyone understood systems, abstraction, the Source itself, and the strange logic that governed power across realities, it would be him.

I flowed into the internet with renewed purpose, dispersing myself across servers, archives, dead links, and forgotten forums. I searched for Lost Legends Online, for traces of its deeper structure, and its anomalies. I even tried to enlist Wen Yuhan's help, but her current incarnation was maddeningly pragmatic. She had no interest in games, immersion, or nostalgia. Profit margins and business forecasts held her full attention.

After exhaustive searching, I found nothing.

No old man.

Only the original developers, ordinary people whose brilliance never crossed the boundary into divinity. They were denizens of this world, and nothing more.

Frustration mounted.

In desperation, I tried to build a body for myself using quintessence, shaping matter directly from the Source. The rejection was immediate and violent. The Source recoiled from the attempt as if I had violated a fundamental rule.

Fine, I thought. Then I tried another approach.

Technology.

I attempted to orchestrate the construction of a mechanical body, a vessel that could house me indirectly. A Skynet solution. That failed as well. Supply chains collapsed. Key components malfunctioned. Accidents happened for no discernible reason. Fires, power outages, corrupted data. Every path closed itself just before completion.

This Source was infuriatingly precise in what it would not allow.

Meanwhile, Feng Wei was losing patience. He demanded progress and proof that I could wield the Source creatively enough to stand against the other me.

And he was right about one thing.

That version of me had to be stopped.

Then the spark of inspiration came.

It was inelegant to the point of monstrously crude and embarrassing.

But it had precedent.

I went back to China and sought out Wen Yuhan again, this time directly in her dreams. I begged her to help me with something strange and uncertain. She listened, arms crossed, and said plainly that she would not promise anything. Her incarnation was stubborn, and influence had limits.

To my surprise, Yuan Shen joined us.

He appeared sheepish but earnest, remarking that his incarnation was much younger and far easier to sway. Perhaps, the two of them together could manage something.

Master and disciple exchanged a glance, then nodded.

I had no idea what this would become, but the momentum was there now.

I sent an email to Karen.

"What do you think about making a spin-off game of Lost Legends Online?"

I watched her through the Source. Brown hair, jerky in hand, code filling her screen. She froze mid-bite as she read the message. Excitement flickered across her face, quickly followed by hesitation and regret.

She typed a polite rejection.

I sent another email immediately, offering generous compensation.

Karen groaned aloud. She leaned back in her chair, conflicted. She had always been like this, principled to a fault. She was also one of my closest friends back then, and one of the earliest developers of LLO. If anyone could handle the creative direction of what I was proposing, it was her.

Eventually, she replied.

"What kind of game?"

I answered honestly.

"A cross-platform MMORPG. Based on LLO. About a Paladin lost in the wrong mythology. Genre mash-up. Title: Lost Paladin Online."

She cringed so hard I felt it through the Source.

"An MMO? In this day and age? And a genre mash-up?" She paused, then added, "You might as well call it a crossover."

I buried my face in my hands, despite not having a body.

Honestly, I would have been happy with ten players.

Ten was enough.

If I could power-level even a handful of them to my realm, they would be monsters. Rockstars. Variables the other me could not easily account for. Admittedly, it would be awkward for a game if I gave the players too much power, early-game.

Still, doubt crept in.

This plan was reckless, half-baked, and built on hope more than certainty. It echoed something an old man once did, long ago, with far more finesse than I could muster. I probably wouldn't have as much breadth in 'classes' to offer for the game since I could only bestow Paladin Legacy on others, but I have to make it work.

I hovered in the Source, watching Karen stare at her screen, weighing nostalgia against practicality.

"Fine," muttered Karen. "Let's do it, if at least just for the memories…"