You Dropped Something

In an instant, the cramped confines of Limbo seemed to stretch infinitely high and far. It was as though the moment that colossal eye opened, the entire world expanded along with it, leaving one feeling unimaginably tiny, like a speck of dust. In that upward "gaze," the figures of Ji Jue and Wen Wen were already reflected in the pitch-black pupil. Yet reflected alongside them was another figure that should not have existed here—a lean man with loose, unkempt hair sitting on the ground with his hands resting on his knees, having appeared before them without anyone knowing when. A youth, a middle-aged man, or an elder? Silhouettes of varying ages overlapped upon him, constantly shifting and flickering, refusing to stabilize, yet giving the impression of being deliberately arranged that way. Pinching several black and white stones between his fingers, he stared downward at the board before him, amusing himself in solitary play. Now, along with the giant eye, he lifted his face and looked toward them. Scrutinizing them. No words or introductions were needed. The moment that giant eye opened, Ji Jue already understood what had appeared before him. The so-called Holy God! Wen Sheng. Ji Jue merely furrowed his brow, slightly disappointed. "Not his true body, huh?" Ji Jue was not in the least surprised by the Holy God's appearance. After all, judging others by his own narrow-minded, malicious standards, such a glaring vulnerability would inevitably warrant precautions. The countless legions within Limbo, the defense of Saint Chengwei, and even the sheer cliff forged of time inside the Well of Lost Light... Flawless as it seemed, it was still not enough. *If I were the enemy, I would definitely post an ambush here, waiting until the foe was exhausted at the critical moment to strike like lightning and score a miraculous victory!* Harboring such thoughts, Ji Jue had long prepared himself for some sly old bastard camping behind the door, waiting for an opponent to walk into the trap before delivering a thunderous blow. Yet he had not expected that once the seal came undone, only a faint phantom remained. A single thought left behind here by Wen Sheng in days past. An avatar shaped after cleaving off a portion of his thoughts and spiritus—something worthy of being called the Shadow of the Holy God! Now, in the deepest reaches of Limbo, the divine phantom showed no intention of trading pleasantries. He simply pointed straight at Ji Jue. An inexplicable force surged from thin air. Distinct from divine power, it resembled some mechanism or law rooted deeply in the Huangliang dreamscape, dropping onto Ji Jue from nothingness. From the foundational layer, it began erasing every trace left behind by the person known as Ji Jue. Including his very existence. Expunction! *Snap!* Ji Jue waved his hand. Following a crisp crack, a piercing friction erupted, and the erasure mechanism originating from the dreamscape's bottom layer was deflected by his palm. No, rather than calling it deflected, it was an unreserved collision between administrative privileges! It corroborated the suspicion Ji Jue had held all along. Why had the other party gone to such lengths to isolate him outside the dreamscape, encasing him in isolated bubbles, layer upon layer, dreams within dreams within dreams, tirelessly—yet never killed or expelled him? Because he couldn't! Then why deploy such countermeasures? *I see. When this seal was laid and this thought was severed, it was before I even entered! From the very beginning, I wasn't the intended target of Limbo's trap.* It had merely been an insurance policy. Then why hadn't it been updated since? Was he incapable, or simply short on time? "Deleting my account right off the bat?" Ji Jue chuckled. "Pretty poor sportsmanship. Giving up already?" A phantom-like insignia materialized in Ji Jue's palm, crystal clear. *Sorry, but I have admin privileges too.* He splayed his fingers and closed them again, playfully displaying the emblem in his palm. "Want it?" He said, "Here—take it!" He clenched his hand into a fist and drove it forward. *Boom!* The moment his middle finger flicked outward, the iron hand abruptly detached, jetting trail flames as it blasted out! Rocket punch! The Shadow of the Holy God froze in brief shock, then sneered with cold indifference. Without even the motion of flicking a finger, he moved to erase the rocket punch as well! In a flash, the iron hand turned rocket vanished into thin air. Yet once the outer shell was expunged, the pitch-black lightning contained within was laid bare before the eyes of the Holy God's shadow. In an observation where accelerated perception bordered on frozen time, the black lightning bound inside the iron suddenly expanded. Like a gigantic tree, it branched and stretched, hurtling toward the reflection with a roar. The moment he sensed it, divine power surged to block it, yet divine power was useless—it was torn through like bamboo and penetrated step by step— *Snap!* The Shadow of the Holy God seized the pitch-black lightning and crushed it, realizing the truth instantly. Was this the Thunder of Heavenly Punishment? No, the privilege bestowed upon the Saint had been thoroughly reverse-engineered. On top of that, deeper Profound techniques had been incorporated, completely inverting its properties. What was once an instrument designed to maximize the destructive power of divine force had become a weapon specifically tailored against divine force! Laughable! The Shadow of the Holy God clenched his fist and pulverized it with casual ease. Divine power stemmed from faith, and faith stemmed from self-nature; at best, it was merely a byproduct born of rituals. In that case... A phantom glow of the Corrupting Stain swirled within that gigantic eye, reading all records, instantly penetrating all of Ji Jue's past deeds, down to every single stain of wrongdoing— His numerous sins of slaughter! As phenomena flowed and karmic ties intertwined, the deaths Ji Jue had once inflicted upon others resurfaced in the form of karma. Wails rang out from the void. All around Ji Jue, phantoms he had slain within the dreamscape swarmed back into existence, transforming into writhing flames that surged toward him. Everything they had felt before dying was amplified hundreds, thousands of times, crashing back into Ji Jue's consciousness to tear his soul apart. All manner of evil karma, rebounding upon the self! The iron frame instantly dissolved, and the petrified skull and spine turned to ash. Yet within the darkness behind the rift, amidst a flash of phantom light, everything that had been destroyed rematerialized. The Chunjun crystal buried within his frame absorbed the brunt of it on Ji Jue's behalf, completely unshaken and unharmed. To a soul reflection, a spirit of self-nature, mere sensations of pain and experiences of death were nothing more than a gift package delivered straight to his door. At the same time, the Crown of the Lord of the Flies flared with light. Within the colossal vortex forged of anguish and despair, purification began. In an instant, conscious thoughts of malice and madness were extracted millions of times, flowing from Ji Jue's hand to coalesce into a small red orb. "Buddy, you dropped something." Ji Jue crooked his finger and flicked. The little red orb shot straight up like a bird in flight, gracefully descending toward the Holy God's face—more precisely, his nose. It floated lightly, returning to where it had originated. Ethereal as an illusion, fragile as a dream bubble. Yet it caused the pupils of the Holy God's shadow to contract violently. Chilling dread! The sixth sense of the Ascension branch throbbed with stabbing pain; the perception of the Heart Pivot branch read bottomless malice; the foresight of the Aether branch projected fleeting visions of the future before his eyes, including scenes of himself unraveling and losing control completely. When he instinctively tried to erase it, he found that expunction had lost its effect. He had used it, but to no avail! The mechanism had been deciphered! Saying "the same trick won't work twice on me" was usually nonsense, but if one encountered the same problem a second time without knowing how to solve it, their attainment as an artisan could be written off as mediocre at best. An artisan's floor depended on knowledge and esoteric heritage, while their ceiling lay in pushing the boundaries of "possibility" based on that foundation. The instant the issue was noticed, available countermeasures flooded his mind. It was a problem-solving instinct bred into the bone! Given the premise—expunction could not act on Ji Jue himself—one merely had to choose the most convenient method among attacking the soul, turning the self into a weapon, expanding the boundaries of what belonged to oneself, and so on. Tearing off an inconsequential portion of one's soul and kneading a pinch of it—like dead skin or dandruff—into the construct's makeup naturally rendered it immune to expunction. It was nothing more than an off-the-cuff countermeasure. Under the giant eye's observation, the inner structure of the "little red orb" was deciphered in an instant—once again, it utilized deconstruction, replication, and reverse application derived from a Saint's privileges! This bastard wouldn't waste a single drop of effort or brain cell on nonessentials. Whatever he could leech, he leeched; whatever he could get for free, he took; if it could be used, why shouldn't he use it? As long as it worked, that was all that mattered! Right now, the mechanism inside the little red orb had been swiped by Ji Jue straight from Chengwei! The reverse application of *One Source, Ten Thousand Streams; One Mind, Ten Thousand Multitudes*. If Chengwei achieved group aggregation and broke numerical limits for near-infinite growth by endlessly replicating his own consciousness and obsession, then the construct forged now was the exact opposite. The premise of aggregation had been denied, driving everything toward division instead! By transmuting and purifying the massive volume of motley self-nature gathered in Limbo, a poison of division was distilled from spiritus. Applied to the whole, the flow of spiritus agitated collisions between every single thought and idea, severing the connections between consciousnesses and ultimately achieving infinite mental schism! Something Ji Jue could never have accomplished in the outside world was effortlessly executed here through privileges and theory! In a brief fraction of a second, he had seized upon the greatest weakness of the current Shadow of the Holy God—incompleteness. No matter how fully formed he seemed, he was ultimately just a splintered fraction of a soul. Like an egg with a crack, once a fly stung it, the cracks would only multiply. Once plunged into division, there was no longer any possibility of recombining. After splitting into a hundred thousand fragments, he would simply be erased one by one by Ji Jue—no, Ji Jue might even collect them to use as weapons against the Holy God! From the moment he appeared until now, not even half a minute—no, less than ten seconds had elapsed, yet the foundational threat alert had already been triggered! The opponent understood him far better than expected. Just how much intelligence had been carelessly leaked to this adversary?! No, at this stage... He could not afford to get entangled any longer. He began tugging at the hidden connections within Limbo, amplifying their resonance with the divine paradise to descend the true Holy God into this place, using his own existence as the foundation! Yet the moment the thought crossed his mind, he found that Limbo gave no response. In fact, it was growing increasingly shut off. The entire domain had solidified completely; under the effects of an unknown alchemy, the entire second layer had already been coated in a substance that continuously absorbed all spiritus, locking the interior off from the outside. If that was the case, he would detonate Limbo entirely. At this cost, he would bury the opponent before him once and for all! Before that, however, he had to deal with the red orb Ji Jue had thrown. In a frozen world of infinitely accelerated personal perception, the Shadow of the Holy God stared at the approaching sphere, decisively pulling back all his power before letting it erupt once more! Perception contracted, acting upon it. The revision of Ascension, complemented by the "Decipher" and "Inscribe" of the Aether branch, began altering reality yet again. Within endlessly halted time, did he not have more than enough time to handle all of this? At that very instant, in frozen time, he saw a sudden smile emerge on Ji Jue's face—his eyes nimble, showing not the slightest hint of sluggishness. He could actually keep pace with his accelerated perception! Was this fellow an artisan, or Heaven's Choice in Ascension? No, that shouldn't be. He could clearly feel that the other was still a step behind him in the dao of Ascension or the Abyssal Depths. Which meant there was an external factor— Looking down with the giant eye, he finally noticed the trickles of "darkness" slipping from the Crown of the Lord of the Flies! Residuals from the Well of Lost Light! He had actually diluted it and used it on himself?! The Shadow of the Holy God barely had time to despair before feeling the sharp sting of shooting himself in the foot. With all his might, he revised, guarded, wrestled, and clashed. Across that accelerated stretch of time, after uncounted exchanges, it ended with a cold sneer from the Shadow of the Holy God! An artisan in the end. *Snap!* The little red orb landed in his grasp, turning into flying ash. It took no effect whatsoever. A deadlock in Ascension was hard to resolve quickly, but in the contest of Heart Pivot and Aether, he was vastly superior! In those aspects, no matter how clever or deceptive Ji Jue was, he possessed only superficial knowledge at best, and his mastery was slipshod, patched together haphazardly! Unfortunately, just as Ji Jue did not truly understand Heart Pivot and Aether... He did not understand Ji Jue either.