Yun Lintian's muscles swelled slightly, veins pulsing with raw power. Every movement became sharper, deadlier. His sword strokes carried the weight of battle itself—each slash resonating with the echoes of countless wars.
Lu Xingzhi blocked, but the force sent him skidding back.
"Mountain God's Stability."
Yun Lintian's footing became unshakable. The ground beneath him solidified, his stance immovable as a peak.
Lu Xingzhi snarled and raised both hands.
The space around Yun Lintian imploded, trying to crush him into nothingness.
But Yun Lintian simply stood there, unaffected.
His body became like water—fluid, untouchable. The collapsing space passed through him harmlessly.
Lu Xingzhi's skeletal jaw tightened. "Three primordial authorities… at once?!"
Yun Lintian smiled faintly. "You're not the only one who can bend rules."
Lu Xingzhi's patience snapped.
His skeletal form expanded, his bones glowing with ancient runes. The air itself screamed as time fractured around him.
"I am the Watcher of the Origin! The First Guardian of the Primordial Era! You dare mock me?!"
He raised a hand—and the entire battlefield twisted.
Pillars reversed their collapse, floating back into place. The shattered ground repaired itself. Even the fallen cultivators—some already dead—gasped as their wounds vanished, their bodies rewound to an earlier state.
"I control time itself," Lu Xingzhi declared. "In this hall, I am—"
Yun Lintian appeared in front of him.
"Told you. You're not the only who can do it."
His fist, infused with the War God's might, the Mountain God's weight, and the River God's fluidity, smashed into Lu Xingzhi's chest.
The skeleton god exploded into a storm of bone fragments.
The survivors stared, slack-jawed.
"Did… did he just…?" Jian Feng whispered.
But Yun Lintian didn't relax.
His eyes scanned the air.
"You're not done yet, are you?"
"Heh." A dry chuckle echoed.
The bone fragments hovered, trembling.
"No," Lu Xingzhi's voice whispered from everywhere at once. "I am not."
The fragments reassembled, his body reforging itself in midair.
Lu Xingzhi's reassembled bones glowed with an eerie, primordial light. The cracks in his skeletal frame sealed themselves, the black flames in his eyes intensifying until they burned like twin abyssal suns.
"Interesting," he mused, his voice no longer dry but resonant, carrying the weight of epochs. "Very interesting."
His skeletal fingers flexed, and the very fabric of reality around him trembled. The air distorted, light bending unnaturally as if space itself was bowing to his will.
"To wield not one, not two, but three Primordial Authorities at once…" Lu Xingzhi's gaze locked onto Yun Lintian. "And so effortlessly. You are no mere inheritor. You are something else entirely."
A ripple of shock spread through the hall.
Lan Huiqian's breath hitched. "Three… Primordial Authorities?"
Jian Kun's eyes widened, his mind racing. "No wonder… No wonder he's so strong!"
Even the Blood Tyrant Meng Xuan, still kneeling, felt a chill crawl down his spine. "This… this is beyond a True God's power…"
Only Yun Lintian's group remained unfazed. Long Qingxuan watched with calm confidence, Linlin's tail flicked lazily, and Qingqing pouted, still annoyed she couldn't join the fight.
Yun Lintian tilted his head. "You talk too much."
Lu Xingzhi chuckled, the sound deep and ancient, like the grinding of tectonic plates. "Oh, but I am just getting started."
He raised a hand—and the world changed.
In its place, an endless void stretched in all directions—a realm of swirling starlight and fractured time. Rivers of golden sand flowed upward, defying gravity. Mountains of crystallized seconds floated like islands in the sky. The very laws of existence here were fluid, bending to Lu Xingzhi's will.
"Welcome," Lu Xingzhi's voice echoed, "to my domain."
His skeletal form shifted. Flesh and sinew wove themselves around his bones, his tattered robes reforming into majestic, celestial garb. A crown of frozen time materialized upon his brow, its spikes like jagged shards of eternity.
This was no mere skeleton.
This was Lu Xingzhi, the First Guardian, in his true form.
"Here, I am not bound by the constraints of your world," he declared. "Here, I am the law. The beginning. The end."
Yun Lintian glanced around, unimpressed. "Neat trick."
Lu Xingzhi smiled—a chilling sight on his now-fleshed face. "Let us see how long that arrogance lasts."
He snapped his fingers.
Yun Lintian felt the world freeze around him. The floating sands halted mid-air. The light itself ceased to move. Even his own breath stilled in his lungs.
Absolute temporal stasis.
Lu Xingzhi stepped forward, leisurely circling Yun Lintian. "You are strong. But in this realm, even a Primordial's heir is nothing more than a statue."
He reached out, his fingers brushing Yun Lintian's cheek—
A hairline fracture split the frozen time around Yun Lintian's face.
Lu Xingzhi's eyes widened.
"Did you really think," Yun Lintian's voice cut through the stillness, "that would work on me?"
The frozen time shattered like glass.
Yun Lintian's fist blurred, striking Lu Xingzhi's chest with the force of a collapsing star. The True God hurtled backward, his body carving a trench through the void.
But before he could crash, he vanished, reappearing high above.
"Impressive," Lu Xingzhi admitted, wiping golden blood from his lips. "But this is my world. You cannot win."
He raised both hands—and the void answered.
The space where Yun Lintian stood unmade itself, folding inward like a dying star. Reality itself deleted that point of existence.
But Yun Lintian was already gone, his form flickering like a mirage.
"River God's Flow," his voice echoed. "I am everywhere. Nowhere."
Lu Xingzhi snarled and clenched his fist.
"Then drown in time itself!"
The golden sand rivers erupted, transforming into a tsunami of epochs—each grain a fragment of a dead era, a forgotten age. The weight of millennia crashed down, seeking to bury Yun Lintian under the sands of time.
"Mountain God's Stability."
He stood, unmovable, as the tidal wave of time slammed into him—and split apart, flowing harmlessly around his unshakable form.
His next step shattered the void beneath him. His fist ignited with the fury of a thousand battlefields, striking Lu Xingzhi's jaw with enough force to snap his head back.
The True God's teeth splintered, his body spinning through the abyss.
But Lu Xingzhi laughed, his voice booming across the domain.
His wounds reversed, his flesh knitting back together as if the punch had never landed.
"But can you keep this up?"
He snapped his fingers again—and a thousand copies of himself materialized, each one radiating the same overwhelming aura.
"Let us see how many Primordial Authorities you truly hold, little heir."