Lies, deceit, threats, coercion, or enticement.
Casual maneuvering, relentlessly searching for weaknesses, or even engineering them—from the moment they manifested, the confrontation had already begun within their words and smiles.
So it was for Wen Sheng, and so it was for Ji Jue.
Now, the calculated probing was over. The instant Wen Sheng silently observed and assessed Ji Jue's condition and how troublesome he was, he went all out without hesitation!
Yet before that... Ji Jue had already made his move.
Back when the question mark rose above his head to draw Wen Sheng's attention, the seeds had already been planted. When the weight of the entire world descended from nothingness, crushing Ji Jue to dust, Wen Sheng's expression shifted slightly. His body involuntarily swelled.
Fierce light shone out from within his flesh.
Just like...
—An explosion!
Boom!
Amidst the deafening roar, that manifested body was instantly blown into dust.
It reformed, only to burst once more. Continuous explosions expanded in a flash, cascading like a chain reaction. Brilliant light flared wave after wave, engulfing all of Tiancheng. In the span of a finger snap, everything turned to ashes.
Until he noticed the source of the problem—the air!
No, more precisely, the countless specks of dust in the air. Minuscule though they were, the moment they detonated, they flared with a light that incinerated all things, unceasingly siphoning every scrap of spiritus to erupt time and time again without end.
Trifling parlor tricks!
In an instant, everything was erased under the revisions of Ascension. The chain reaction of detonations stopped dead, but right after, crimson spikes pierced outward one after another from his reforming flesh.
Pan Ying's spiritus?
When? Just now? Or even earlier?!
In the split second Wen Sheng was distracted, Ji Jue had already reemerged from the ashes of the flames on the other side. With a mocking smile, the Crown of the Lord of the Flies above his head flared with light, and the invisible vortex expanded again, overriding reality.
Effortlessly, he wiped away the endlessly mounting weight. He even erased gravity itself. The fractured Tiancheng jolted violently, suspended in midair like wreckage cast adrift in the cosmos.
The next instant, the Celestial Eye opened in the void of the night sky, bringing everything to a dead halt once more, frozen!
Countless stars converged, coalescing into a giant that lunged toward Ji Jue with an outstretched hand. Yet after crossing the vast distance, the colossal hand came to an abrupt stop. Strange mutations broke out across the star-forged giant in succession, twisting it as dull, dazed eyes surfaced from the celestial bodies, infested by worms.
Immediately after, myriad hands, myriad eyes, and myriad wings burst forth from the giant's torso. Ten thousand wings blotted out the sky, ten thousand eyes looked down upon all creation, and ten thousand hands held dominion over everything.
The silhouette of the Sage reappeared from the void!
And facing it was a rift abruptly torn open across the firmament. Behind the rift, a hazy figure seated in the half-lotus posture appeared, pointing a finger forward.
Big Rip!
Blinding light collided against blinding light. All things swayed like straw in a tempest. The world shifted ceaselessly; in the blink of an eye, everything was completely transformed.
It was just like a clash between deities before the Age of Chaos.
Wantonly rewriting the entire world.
Within this dreamscape, holding authority made one no different from a god.
There was no need for physical motion or spoken words. Merely conceiving a thought was enough to twist the world naturally. Yet the distortion of the world was nothing more than a superficial display.
What was truly fierce and chaotic lay beneath the surface—the relentless collision and conflict between the foundational rules at the bedrock of the dream.
A deity who created all things and a devil who remade all things vied against each other in authority, contesting ownership of the entire dream.
Yet even if Ji Jue had once taken control of everything, the foundation of this dream still rested in Wen Sheng's hands. The Dream of the Holy God, assembled from countless souls, was inherently on his side!
And in a certain sense, Ji Jue was naturally at a disadvantage in a contest of pure imagination... Asking an engineering drone who had spent over a decade memorizing laws and formulas just to pass the Level 2 Engineer exam to let his imagination run wild—asking a craftsman devoted to precise control to indulge in fantasy divorced from reality—was truly asking far too much!
Being suppressed was only natural; being at a disadvantage was completely expected.
The moment Ji Jue realized this, his strategy pivoted from offense to defense, while focusing the vast majority of his power into assaulting Wen Sheng's soul.
Unfortunately, that was also his opponent's greatest strength, and Wen Sheng outclassed Ji Jue by far too much in it.
Who could help that Embers was inherently at a disadvantage in this kind of spiritus environment? No matter how many tools one took to plunge into the ocean, one could never match the agility of a creature born of the deep.
Yet even so... Wen Sheng constantly felt like thorns were pricking his back!
Every time Ji Jue's eyes turned toward him, the sixth sense of Ascension, the déjà vu of Aether, and the intuition of Heart Pivot all sounded unceasing alarms!
This bastard is cooking up something nasty!
Why should I fight him head-on?
With a shift in thought, Wen Sheng's silhouette faded into the void, returning to the boundary between existence and nothingness. Like plunging into the sea, he revealed himself only for a fleeting instant amid the torrent of spiritus and the shifting of the world when it mattered most.
Just as Ji Jue was run ragged dealing with a black hole plummeting from the sky, Wen Sheng's silhouette silently materialized directly behind him, pressing a palm toward his soul.
The victor is decided!
Smack!
Ji Jue's body simply vanished into dust...
Yet Wen Sheng froze in place.
A strike aimed squarely at the soul had shattered nothing more than an empty shell?
Where was Ji Jue?!
Where had he gone?
"Why don't you look behind you?"
Amidst his momentary astonishment, a mocking whisper drifted past his ear. The Sword of Pan Ying thrust out from Wen Sheng's chest out of thin air. Crimson radiance flared as the karma of Swarm and Frenzied Slaughter intertwined, impaling his soul!
Wounded!
Wen Sheng vanished in an instant, pulling back the distance. But the moment he reappeared, he found Ji Jue already waiting leisurely at his landing point, Pan Ying raised, waiting for him to deliver himself straight onto the blade!
There was no time left to dodge.
A flicker of rage surfaced in Wen Sheng's eyes, and he clashed with him head-on without hesitation!
It was a collision of soul against soul, authority against authority—like two fully loaded trucks crashing head-on on a highway. Unfortunately, Ji Jue's truck was at quite a deficit in tonnage... His vision went black, and his consciousness nearly shattered.
Yet Wen Sheng had no time to sneer.
He had actually stiffened!
At the moment he least should have stalled, he stopped. He had been a single step away from utterly crushing Ji Jue, yet he hesitated for a fraction of a second. And in that split second, Ji Jue had already clamped onto his wrist, locking him in a grip from which he could not break free.
In Ji Jue's other hand, the phantom of Chixiao remanifested. Tianmen swung wide open, the battlements of Tianyuan entwining with the Shadow of the Tower to form a cage.
Gripped tight, impossible to shake off.
Yet just as Wen Sheng attempted to resist with all his might, the circulation of spiritus stalled for another damned split second!
It was then that he finally noticed the foreign object inside his soul...
—A foreign entity?!
"Remember the first time we met?"
Ji Jue grinned, whispering softly beside his ear, "I gave you a gift."
Back then, in Ji Jue's workshop, when Wen Sheng had been caught unprepared—that unreserved strike of Chunjun!
It had not only heavily damaged Wen Sheng's split soul, but had also silently left his own spiritus within the wound. Through the mutation of spiritus, it disguised itself as part of Wen Sheng, ultimately returning to the main body alongside the split soul.
It was precisely because of this that Ji Jue had been so certain he could lock onto Wen Sheng's location, even when doing so within a dream.
And throughout all this vast span of time, the spiritus of Chunjun had hidden inside Wen Sheng's soul like a phantom wound. Tattered again and again by countless ruptures, it mingled with those minute motes of spiritus. In the end, that faint wisp of spiritus had almost entirely lost its own nature, yet it still remained within Wen Sheng's soul!
Even a sliver, even an insignificant trace, was enough to turn the tables at the crucial juncture!
In a brief flash, the Crown of the Lord of the Flies atop Ji Jue's head shifted, its silver light transforming as it fell into Ji Jue's grip, becoming a blade forged to pierce the soul, thrusting forward!
Then, it too was caught in a vice-like grip!
"Keep dreaming!" Wen Sheng said coldly.
The revision and negation of Ascension, combined with the alteration and distortion of Aether, overlapped upon that palm. It locked tightly onto the Lord of the Flies, refusing to let it advance another inch even as the blade cut deep into the flesh to the bone!
Then, inch by inch, it pushed it backward!
As the fingers tightened, the Lord of the Flies wailed, rapidly cracking.
Ji Jue remained unmoved, merely smiling as he looked at him. "Why don't you take a look behind you?"
"How old are you, playing childish tricks like that?"
Wen Sheng sneered, utterly unswayed.
"He who takes advice stays well fed."
Ji Jue could only shrug with regret. "A man's got to keep a bit of childlike wonder, doesn't he? Besides..."
—Why do you think I went through all the trouble to pin you down here?
Boom!
The instant he pulled back the curtain and stripped away the concealment, meteors and blazing light were already right before their eyes!
Ji Jue gave a silent sigh.
What a shame. You really should have looked back.
By the time Wen Sheng tried to turn around, it was already too late. A crystalline spear fell like thunder from the heavens, piercing through his body and pinning him completely to the ground. Immediately after, the essence of the Desolate Ruins spread, obliterating all soul and consciousness...
Death arrived right on schedule.
And behind Wen Sheng as he dissolved into dust, a familiar figure appeared before Ji Jue.
Wen Wen.
"..."
"..."
Amidst dead silence, they stared at each other without a word.
Hesitating to speak.
Until Ji Jue gave an awkward cough, averting his gaze. "Sister Wen, when did you get here?"
This exact moment was just like that other moment.
Everything was so familiar.
Familiar to death!
"Hmm, let me think..."
Wen Wen seemed to ponder, studying his appearance with a half-smile. "Probably around the time you said 'my own thing'?"
"Huh? When did I ever say something like that!"
Ji Jue was shocked, bewildered, unable to understand as he examined the perfectly lucid, wide-awake Wen Wen before him. "Besides, I remember I gave you more than enough of a dose..."
Before he even finished speaking, he couldn't resist slapping his own face, struck by sudden realization.
Damn it, drug tolerance!
How could he have forgotten? This woman, who drank like she was stacking Soulstealers, was also a seasoned regular at Hope Hospital... Even if he had increased the dosage specifically tailored for the physique and consciousness of the Desolate Ruins, it still wasn't enough to faze her!
"Not bad. The flavor was quite pure, too."
Wen Wen chuckled, as though offering praise. "Look at you now, Ji Jue. Drugging people, and doing it to someone who trusted you so much without the slightest hesitation.
Has working as a craftsman rotted your brain?
No matter. I can help set you straight later—"
Was that really the reason?!
Ji Jue opened his mouth to protest, but when he saw Wen Wen glare at him, he immediately choked back his words.
He sighed helplessly.
Beneath their conversation, neither of them had relaxed their guard or vigilance in the slightest. If anything, their caution continued to rise. The movements of Ji Jue's hands had never stopped for a second, continuously erasing the traces left behind by Wen Sheng and increasing the presence of the Sovereign Virtue system, bracing for battle.
Until an irritated sigh echoed from the void.
"Honestly... enough..."
Chapter 540