622 Deception
[POV: Ding Cai]
“You must be He Xieren?” Ding Cai remarked casually.
The woman standing before her blinked, seemingly taken aback. He Xieren quickly composed herself and lowered her head. “Greetings, Lady Ding. I am indeed He Xieren, disciple of Tian Mei.” She raised her head again, her expression shifting into faint confusion. “And... hm. Where is Master Tian?”
He Xieren had barely finished speaking when the world behind them exploded. A massive detonation erupted from the distance. Light consumed everything. For a brief moment, the world became nothing but blinding white.
Ding Cai's eyes burned.
The pain lasted for only an instant before her divine vitality restored the damaged tissue. Her eyes healed almost as quickly as they had been injured, allowing her vision to return while the explosion continued to roar across the coast.
So Tian Mei had already done the deed.
There was no going back now.
Ding Cai stood patiently as the soul-fueled explosion continued to rage in the distance. She had been moved far away from the epicenter, yet the turbulence still reached them. The winds howled across the coast, stirring enormous clouds of sand and debris into the air.
Ding Cai raised a hand.
“Shield of Faith.”
A translucent silver barrier unfolded around them.
The shockwave crashed against it moments later.
The barrier trembled, its surface rippling as the turbulent wind and burning debris swept around them. Sand battered against the divine shield, but Ding Cai remained completely still.
Beside her, He Xieren stumbled backward.
“W-What was that?” she cried.
Her eyes had been damaged by the sudden flash, forcing her to cover them with both hands. Fear entered her voice as she turned toward the explosion.
“That was where Master Tian was!”
Ding Cai glanced at her and a soft divine light gathered around her hand.
“Cure.”
The spell descended upon He Xieren. Warm light flowed across the woman's face, repairing the damage done to her eyes. He Xieren slowly lowered her hands and blinked several times as her vision returned.
When she looked toward the distant explosion again, her expression froze.
Ding Cai followed her gaze. The light was beginning to fade. Smoke, fire, and distorted spiritual energy replaced the blinding whiteness that had consumed the horizon. Ding Cai's expression remained calm as she remarked. “It seems your master won't be able to join us.”
He Xieren went silent.
Ding Cai was still here. That fact alone told her everything she needed to know. Their side's victory had not been declared. It meant Tian Mei's gambit had fallen short. Ding Cai narrowed her eyes, thinking about what to do.
When she raised her hand toward the distant epicenter, a familiar power stirred within her soul.
“Divine Phantasm of Dreams.”
The world blurred.
A projection of Ding Cai emerged above the distant ruins, manifesting over the epicenter of the explosion. Through the dream projection, she attempted to observe what remained.
Her expression gradually became colder. Something was wrong. She had a bad feeling about this.
Behind her, He Xieren finally found her voice again.
“Lady Ding... we should retreat.”
Ding Cai did not turn around.
He Xieren swallowed.
There was grief in her voice now, though she forced herself to continue.
“Master Tian is...” She paused, slowly closing her fingers into a fist. “If she truly used her life for that attack, then remaining here will not bring her back. I mourn her loss. I will mourn her properly when this is over. But before we parted, Master Tian gave me an order. She told me to serve you, and that is what I intend to do.”
He Xieren turned and raised her hand toward the coast.
“Please. The ship is this way.”
Ding Cai looked in the direction she indicated.
A massive vessel floated above the coast.
It resembled one of the floating ships native to the Hollowed World, its construction and design clearly revealing the civilization from which it had drawn its inspiration. Spiritual formations glowed along its hull, allowing the enormous vessel to remain suspended above the ground.
Ding Cai studied it for several seconds.
Tian Mei's plan had been simple. Tian Mei had attempted to take Nongmin down with her at the cost of her own life. Before doing so, she had resurrected Ding Cai and moved her away from the battlefield as insurance.
If Tian Mei succeeded, then Ding Cai's survival would be irrelevant.
Their side would have won.
If Tian Mei failed, however, Ding Cai would still remain.
She could pick up the slack.
And since Ding Cai possessed the power of resurrection herself, she could bring the others back. She could restore their fallen forces and return the battle to where it had begun. Reset the board. Rebuild their numbers. Then overwhelm the enemy with the advantage of manpower.
It was a sound plan.
Perhaps even the most logical one.
However, Ding Cai did not like it.
She looked toward the distant battlefield again.
Resetting everything would only mean repeating the same battle with slightly different circumstances. While resurrecting their allies would restore their advantage in numbers, Ding Cai doubted their enemy would simply allow them to do so without consequence.
Nongmin was not the type to leave himself without contingencies. Knowing him, he probably had several.
If it were Ding Cai, she would rather end this here.
Ding Cai turned toward He Xieren. “Change of plans. Prepare for war.”
He Xieren's expression stiffened. “War?”
“Yes.”
Ding Cai looked across the coast. “This place will become the final battlefield.”
The casualness in her voice disappeared.
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Ding Cai had already been caught up on what had happened while she was dead. She knew enough now to understand the situation, and more importantly, she understood the significance of the woman standing before her.
He Xieren was no ordinary disciple. She was a queen. A woman with considerable influence in this world.
With Tian Mei's support, the backing of several immortal masters, and the authority He Xieren possessed over the people of the Hollowed World, they might actually be capable of gathering enough strength.
Enough to turn the world itself against those who had invaded it.
Ding Cai stared directly into He Xieren's eyes. “Can you do that? Can you bring the weight of this world down upon the invaders who sullied your land? Can you gather its people, its armies, and its cultivators?”
The wind swept between them.
Ding Cai pointed toward the battlefield. “And can you help me end this once and for all?”
He Xieren stared at her and said nothing. The grief in her expression changed. The sorrow remained. It would not disappear simply because the battle demanded otherwise. But beneath it, something else emerged.
It was resolve.
He Xieren lowered her head and then she clenched her fist. “I can. I will do exactly that.”
Ding Cai nodded. “Good.”
Her dream projection continued hovering over the distant epicenter, and then it vanished. Ding Cai's expression immediately changed. There had been no warning and her dream projection was suddenly eliminated.
Ding Cai stared into the fading smoke for another moment before turning toward He Xieren. “I’ll be going ahead,” she remarked. “You should immediately get to work.”
He Xieren blinked. “Understood.”
…
..
.
[POV: Nongmin]
Earlier, during the explosion, Nongmin had suddenly found himself trapped in a dilemma.
It should have been the ideal situation. It was, in fact, the objective he had been aiming for from the beginning. Mutual destruction meant a tie, and if both sides were eliminated, neither Supreme Heart nor Supreme Bearer would be able to claim victory. The contest between them would end without a winner.
So why was he uncomfortable?
The explosion had begun from the mountain and expanded with terrifying speed, destructive energy devouring everything in its path and leaving Nongmin with almost no room to react. His objective was right before him. All he had to do was embrace the light and allow the explosion to consume him alongside Tian Mei.
Yet a bad feeling stopped him.
So, what exactly was the problem?
What were the chances that this was an elaborate ruse meant to make him willingly embrace his own death? What if Ding Cai had already been resurrected, and he had simply been led to believe otherwise?
Nongmin had always considered himself a firm believer in facts. Evidence. Logic. Things that could be observed and proven. In the past, it would have been unthinkable for him to rely on something as unreliable as a hunch.
Yet he had been growing.
Not merely in power, but as a person.
And with that growth had come the realization that instincts were not always meaningless. Sometimes the mind noticed things before it consciously understood them. Sometimes the body recognized danger before logic had the opportunity to explain why.
The old Nongmin would never have entertained such a thought.
This Nongmin trusted the discomfort in his chest.
He shot into the sky, soaring upward as quickly as he could while the floating ships he had brought with him moved between him and the expanding destruction. Their defensive formations activated in succession, but their warps were still cooling down, preventing him from using them to escape. If he could access his pocket dimension, he would have been able to retrieve one of his artifacts and escape the trap entirely, but even that option had been taken away.
Then a familiar figure appeared before him.
It was a projection of the Supreme Heart.
“Give up, Nongmin,” the projection said calmly. “It is over.”
Nongmin narrowed his eyes.
He refused to believe him.
In fact, the appearance of Heart's projection only further emboldened him to survive. Something was wrong with the situation, and the more his 'enemy' attempted to convince him that it was over, the less willing Nongmin became to surrender himself to the explosion.
“You wish,” Nongmin muttered.
He raised his hands and cast Shield of Faith, forming a silver barrier around himself, before immediately reinforcing it with Shield of the Eternal. The explosion reached him moments later. His barriers groaned beneath the pressure as he continued ascending, desperately trying to outrun the expanding destruction, but the first shield shattered and the second soon cracked beneath the overwhelming force.
Nongmin spat blood as his skin began to sizzle and his flesh burned beneath the violent spiritual energy surrounding him. Worse still, his soul trembled as dragon veins beneath the mountain exploded one after another, releasing unimaginable quantities of destructive energy into the world.
His expression twisted.
It had to be Tian Mei's work.
She had expended her soul, and with the help of her ocular abilities, she had somehow maximized the destructive potential of the dragon veins until the explosion became something far greater than a simple act of self-destruction.
Even while his body was being torn apart, Nongmin continued calculating. Distances, the density of the spiritual energy, the number of dragon veins beneath the mountain, and the speed at which the destruction was spreading all passed through his mind.
Then his expression changed.
“This woman...”
The calculation continued, and the result was not good.
The destruction was too enormous and too indiscriminate. If it continued spreading, countless lives would be consumed, not merely cultivators and immortals, but ordinary people as well.
Tian Mei probably had not foreseen the full scale of the destruction. If she had truly understood how many lives could be lost, Nongmin doubted she would have gone to such lengths.
He coughed blood and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“You really needed to study more.”
Blood covered his gums and his body was being burned alive, yet Nongmin's expression gradually hardened. He suddenly turned around and dove directly toward the mountain.
It was something Da Wei would have done.
It was reckless.
But Nongmin had realized that Tian Mei was the source. If he wanted to stop the explosion before it reached more dragon veins and caused an even greater chain reaction, he needed to take her down.
Every instinct screamed at him to escape, but he ignored it as destructive energy tore at his body during the descent. He raised what remained of his arms and cast Heavenly Punishment. The world answered. A pillar of divine power descended from above, and Nongmin forced it into the mountain, using the spell to carve a path against the outward flow of destruction.
The explosion fought him every step of the way.
His skin ruptured. His bones cracked. His soul shook violently.
Still, Nongmin continued descending.
Eventually, he pierced through the veil of destruction.
Tian Mei stood within the collapsing remains of the mountain, surrounded by the remnants of her own soul power. Nongmin did not hesitate. Golden light gathered within his hand and condensed into a sword, simple in appearance but carrying enough divine power to make the unstable world around them tremble.
He stepped forward and thrust the sword through Tian Mei's chest.
Her body froze.
Then the divine blade erupted.
Golden light consumed her corporeal form, reducing it to ash that scattered through the collapsing mountain. Tian Mei did not even have the opportunity to feel what had happened. The moment Nongmin destroyed her corporeal shape, the force sustaining her soul collapsed as well, releasing it from the battlefield and sending it into the Circle of Transmigration.
The explosion continued for another forty-seven seconds.
Without Tian Mei sustaining the process, the chain reaction gradually collapsed. Nongmin remained within the fading destruction and stared at the ruined mountain. If the explosion had continued for much longer, it would have reached other dragon veins, causing one reaction after another until the destruction spread far beyond the battlefield. Half the continent could have been consumed.
Nongmin finally fell to one knee.
His body was ruined. Both arms had been destroyed, burns covered nearly every part of him, and entire sections of flesh had been stripped away to expose bone beneath. Even his robes, made from esoteric materials capable of enduring attacks that would destroy ordinary artifacts, had failed him. The remains had melted into slag and fused with his burned flesh.
He coughed.
Bloody phlegm spilled from his mouth, carrying pieces of his own flesh with it.
The damage was so severe that even his immortality had been affected.
Nongmin closed his eyes and began casting healing spells. Divine power flowed through his ruined body, slowly restoring flesh and mending bone. The process was slower than it should have been, but even in such a state, he could feel his damaged immortality gradually repairing itself.
The divine powers of the Holy Emperor were truly formidable.
Nongmin slowly stood.
Then he felt a presence watching him.
He immediately cast Judgment Severance toward it. A rift in the shape of a massive golden cross appeared in the sky, splitting through the distorted heavens and dispelling the projection observing him. The sudden expenditure of power slowed his healing slightly, but Nongmin ignored it as he reached for the storage ring he had hastily brought with him.
Thankfully, it managed to survive. He'd prioritized protecting it, since it was his only source of spirit stones with his pocket dimension sealed. Spirit stones appeared around him. Their spiritual energy flowed into his body as Nongmin rapidly replenished his depleted qi.
Then he looked toward the coast with his Qi Sense.
It seemed Ding Cai had already been resurrected.
The final battle was now upon them.
Taking on Ding Cai would be more challenging than fighting Tian Mei, but in many ways, it was ideal. After all, he didn't fall for Tian Mei's trap. The thought had barely formed in Nongmin's mind when a sword erupted from his chest.
His body froze.
The sudden development left him completely speechless. He looked down at the blade protruding from his chest as blood slowly ran down its golden edge. Someone had stabbed him from behind.
Shock gave way to rage.
Nongmin immediately swung behind him, his attack tearing through the air with enough force to destroy whatever stood at his back.
There was no one there.
His eyes widened.
The sword withdrew.
Nongmin fell to his knees and coughed blood as he felt something far worse happening inside his body. His layers of immortality were being stripped away one after another, consumed by something attached to the wound.
Then the culprit appeared before him.
Nongmin slowly raised his head.
A figure stood several meters away, holding the very sword that had pierced him from behind.
Nongmin stared at him.
He had no idea who this existence was.
“Who are you?” Nongmin asked.
The stranger's lips curled into a smile.
“As introductions go, I suppose I could have chosen something less dramatic.”
He spread his arms theatrically before giving Nongmin a small bow.
“But where would be the fun in that?”
The stranger raised his head again, his smile widening.
“Loki.”
A brief silence followed.
“God of Mischief.”