Chapter 159: Vixen’s Resolve (2)
"Two."
The voice came from inside a place with no doors.
For a moment, nothing followed it. The sealed oval of absence hung above the ruined stage, silent and total, a wound in the world with a man filed away inside it, and sixty thousand people stared at it without blinking.
Then a line of light split down its face.
It started small, a hair-thin seam of evening sky showing through the nothing, and then four fingers pushed through the seam from the inside.
Then four more.
Vixen stared in disbelief as she saw Tianzun.
He held the edges of the spatial rift in his bare hands, and he was ripping them open.
’How is this possible?’
Not just Vixen. Everyone in the colosseum had that singular thought echoing through their minds at the same moment. The arena grew quiet, quieter than it had been all day, quieter than it had been for Furry’s terror or Mercury’s fall, because what they were watching now was not a stronger fighter or a better technique.
It was something impossible.
Space was not a thing. It had no edges. It had no texture. It was the stage every ability performed on, the one absolute in a world full of powers, and the monk in saffron had his fingers curled into it like wet paper, tearing the seam wider with the unhurried strength of a man opening curtains in the morning.
Vixen’s hands trembled at her sides.
She had thought this skill would take him by surprise. She had never used it before, not in an outbreak, not in a war zone, not even in their previous battles for the emblem. It was a technique so dangerous, so absolute, that she had judged it safest to never use at all. A power you filed away and prayed you’d never need.
Today she had finally used it.
And she had watched a man... no.
Not a man.
She had watched a god rip through it like a thin sheet of paper.
Tianzun stepped out of the bent space with the same calm he’d carried all day, robes undisturbed, smile in place, and behind him the ruined fold sighed shut, the absence knitting closed as though embarrassed to have been seen.
The silence in the colosseum stretched so long that Julie’s whisper carried to the last row.
"...He tore it open," she said. "With his hands. Folks, I don’t have anything for you. There is no analysis coming. He tore open SPACE with his HANDS."
[Opalion: I’m not processing this. my brain has declined the request]
[Marypaz13: the classified technique. the FORBIDDEN one. and he opened it like a bag of chips]
[ThePathOfTheHunt: what ability DOES that. someone name ONE ability that does that. I’ll wait]
[SirAnime_lord: three years undefeated and we finally understand why we never understood]
In the American alcove, Nicholas’ brows furrowed deep.
’I’ve tried understanding his ability all day. Every fight, every movement, every strange thing that’s happened around him.’ His teeth ground slowly as he watched the scene below. ’And even now, I can’t tell what it is. Not even the shape of it.’
"It’s the same thing as always," Selena said at his side, her arms folded tight, her eyes never leaving the stage. "Aside from knowing his ability has some very strict rule, which is probably why he never attacks during the first three trials, there’s nothing else I can tell."
"Do you have any clue at all?" Nicholas asked, glancing at her. "Even a bad one."
"Tsk. If I did, you think I wouldn’t have said something by now?" She clicked her tongue, but there was no bite in it, only frustration worn smooth by years. "His ability is even more of a headache than yours. How does someone rip open space with his bare hands? Even you can’t do that. At this point he might as well be a god."
Nicholas went still.
’...Well. She’s not wrong.’
Ripping space open with his bare hands. A body nothing in three years had marked. Animals refusing to face him. Spatial techniques bending around him like stream water around a stone.
’He’d have to be a god.’
The thought sat there for a moment, casual, sarcastic, the kind of thing people said every day.
Then it turned over, and stopped being casual.
’...A god?’
’What if that’s it?!’
The memory rose behind his one good eye whether he wanted it or not. The thing he had seen for less than a heartbeat behind Tianzun. The form with no beginning and no end, stretching past the sky into a darkness his eyes couldn’t measure. The thousand faces that crumbled into each other, some smiling with unbearable serenity, some screaming in silence. The fractured rings revolving around its head in impossible directions, bending space as though reality had forgotten its own rules.
Bending space.
’That thing couldn’t possibly be human. I knew that the moment I saw it. I just never finished the thought, because the end of the thought is...’ His hand closed slowly on the rail. ’Is that his ability isn’t an ability at all. The trials, the conditions, the mercy, the rules. You don’t bargain with a power. You bargain with something that has a will.’
Cold spread through his chest in the warm evening air.
’But if that’s truly the case... how are we meant to win against a god?!’
Down on the stage, Vixen stood in the settling dust, just as shocked as everyone else, her greatest secret hanging torn and closed behind the man it had failed to hold.
Tianzun regarded her kindly.
"You have one more try," he urged her, the way a teacher nudges a promising student toward the last question on a test.
And that gentleness, more than anything else all day, lit the fire.
Vixen gritted her teeth as she looked at him. Her hands stopped trembling. Something old and stubborn climbed up through the shock and planted its feet, and a smirk cut across her face.
"You managed to stop that," she said, her voice ringing clear across the silent arena. "But don’t get cocky! I’ve never even tested this before... but right now, I want nothing more than to defeat you!"
Her eyes were bright with the flames of resolve as she rose into the air, the wind of her ascent scattering the dust below.
’Phantom said I should do my best.’ Her gaze locked onto the smiling monk, and everything else, the crowd, the cameras, the fear, fell away. ’And I’ll do just that! I’ll beat you, Tianzun! Here and now!’
Vixen’s eyes lit up as she stretched both hands out.
A thick dark miasma began seeping out of her, pouring off her arms and shoulders in slow heavy ribbons, and the space around her started bending and twisting violently, warping the evening light into smears, as she prepared to unleash her most powerful technique yet.
[A/N: It’s a New Month! Happy new month everyone. I’m so so grateful that you all have my book a chance and have continued to support me in more ways than I can imagine! We held off strong last month, and I really want us to continue with the same momentum. Whatever Goldentickets you can offer, please help! Powerstones and gifts as well! Have a wonderful month! Thank you 💜💕]