Gen's gaze locked onto the whirlwind of grey and silver that was the Wild Edge Sect Leader. "Last time," Gen said, the words ground out like gravel, "I didn't have time to tell you. Now I do. Shut up. And die."
The **Eternal Body's Second Door** erupted. Golden light did not flash outwards. It surged inward, collapsing into a dense, metallic shell the color of hammered dawn across his skin. The air around him thickened, crystallizing into a humming, transparent carapace that vibrated with contained power. He launched forward, a living bolt of sun-forged metal.
The Wild Edge Sect Leader's laugh was the rasp of a whetstone. "I have corrected arrogant disciples like you for over a hundred years. My pleasure will be cutting you apart, then taking everything you cherish. That girl especially. I will keep her."
Gen's fist, a comet of condensed force, hammered the square where the Sect Leader stood. The impact ***CRACKED*** the air, a sonic boom that rippled across the board like a stone dropped in water.
The Sect Leader was already gone, a blur of motion to the side, the cutting winds of his aura whipping around him. He didn't block. He unleashed the **Wild Edge**.
A phantom gale materialized—a shrieking, swirling vortex of grey filaments. It didn't strike Gen's shell head-on. It flowed around it, a river of razors seeking the seam between his will and his technique. The filaments slid against the crystalline carapace with a sound like grinding glass, then pierced inward, cold and sharp.
Gen bit down, the coppery tang of blood filling his mouth. A deep, internal coldness spread through his ribs, followed by the searing fire of severed qi channels. He ignored it. He planted his good leg and summoned the **Sword of Infinity**. The complex, interlocking pattern of light unfolded before him. From its heart, a beam of annihilating black light lanced sideways. At the same moment, he drove his other fist forward in a straight punch, aiming to crush the Sect Leader's center.
The Sect Leader's eyes, chips of frozen malice, tracked both attacks. He moved with the eerie grace of a leaf on the wind. A slight pivot of his hips, a shift of his shoulder, and the black beam grazed the edge of his robe, tearing a silent void in the fabric. His hand snapped up and caught Gen's punching wrist. He didn't clash with the force. His fingers tightened, and using **Fendow** layered with his cutting intent, he unraveled the punch. The golden power dissipated from Gen's fist like smoke snatched by a gale.
Gen's eyes widened. "Impossible."
"Younger generation," the Sect Leader sneered, his grip a vice of ice. "You presume to know the Wheels better than your elders? Naive."
He yanked Gen forward, using the boy's own momentum. His other hand rose, sheathed in a roaring gauntlet of the Wild Edge, and thrust straight for Gen's heart—a killing blow meant to sever his core.
Gen didn't pull back. He lunged forward with the pull.
He used Shidow to thin the air behind him and Jingdao to explode from his legs. He didn't just flip over the incoming palm—he used the Sect Leader's grip on his wrist as a pivot. He twisted his captured arm in a brutal, sacrificing spiral. A sickening CRACK echoed from his shoulder joint. He rode the pain, using it to spin his body over the Sect Leader's head.
He landed not on the board behind the man, but with both feet planted squarely on the Wild Edge Sect Leader's upper back and shoulders.
"Speak too much, old man."
Gen pushed down through his legs, through his spine, through his will. He drove the Sect Leader down like a nail.
The force that erupted from Gen's stance was a silent, sun-bright shockwave. It THUMPED through the Sect Leader's body and into the magical board below. The man's head and torso snapped forward, slammed down by the weight of Gen's vengeful will. His face smashed into the hard surface. The sound was a wet, final crunch. Blood and fragments of teeth sprayed from his lips in a dark mist.
The recoil from the stomp hurled Gen back up into the air. He spun, a golden top against the void, and pointed his good hand down. The air around his index finger darkened, sucking in light, condensing into a point of pure black annihilation. End of the World Finger.
The Sect Leader pushed himself up from the board, his face a mask of blood and shattered bone, his eyes burning with pure, undiluted hate. He looked at the descending black comet and smiled a red ruin of a smile. "Jiang Gen was exactly like this. You will die like him."
He raised both hands, palms facing the sky. From them, two concentrated, drilling spirals of grey oblivion erupted—the core of the Wild Edge. They met the descending black finger in a head-on collision.
---
***Elsewhere on the board, poison met fear.***
The Three-Tailed Sky Demon manifested on the square beside Liang. Its exoskeleton clicked, plates contracting into a denser, smoother armor. "My poison left you alive," it rasped, the sound like dry scales. "An incomplete hunt. I hate loose ends. You are a stain on my record."
Liang's blood ran cold. The memory was a phantom pain in his veins—the helplessness, the creeping chill, Gen's desperate, echoing shouts. This was it. Him. Alone. Back then, Gen had to touch the Third Door just to survive. Back then, Liang was already trailing behind. Could he stand now?
Doubt was a luxury. It was also a chain.
It thickened his Qi, made his breaths shallow. It slowed his thoughts to syrup.
The Sky Demon's fist, a knot of polished chitin, landed on Liang's chest. The impact was a deep ***THUMP*** that drove the air from his lungs in a voiceless gasp. He lifted off his square, hurled backward as a ring of distorted air bloomed behind him.
The Sky Demon spun, a blur of articulated black. Its three tails hammered down in a relentless sequence.
*CRACK.* A tail met his raised forearm. The bone held, but the nerves went dead.
*CRACK.* Another smashed into his ribs. He felt them bend.
*CRACK.* The third piston-driven strike buried itself in his stomach. He folded around it.
"You are weak." The statement was flat, absolute.
Liang skidded across the board, a broken doll smearing a trail of crimson. Consciousness flickered. The tails were harder than stone, harder than steel, harder than any technique he'd ever felt. *Liang could never win.* The thought wasn't a strategy. It was a dark, cold truth that echoed in the hollows of his mind, over and over. *Never. Never. Never.*
---
***Chubbs held the line, a golden rock in a storm.***
He was managing, but only just, against the Stone Horse. He held the **Lightning Balloon** in reserve, waiting for the single, clear angle he needed. The Horse possessed terrifying mobility, and the focused momentum of its lance-charge was a tide of force. *No wonder they fear the cavalry,* he thought, the clarity absurd amidst the jarring impacts.
He fought a defensive, grinding battle. He used his instinctive understanding of the Fool—he was the trick, the unexpected. He didn't meet the charges. He angled his body, let the lance-tip scream off his reinforced golden sheen, redirecting the force into the board. Each impact shuddered through his bones, a deep, resonant *GONG* that threatened to shake him apart. But his feet remained planted. He was the anchor. He watched Gen's fight from the corner of his eye, his own worry a hard knot in his gut, but his duty was here. To hold.
---
***Above, a silent war of supremacy unfolded.***
Lorel forced the white Queen back a single, hard-won step. Another **Supremacy Sword**, a sliver of furious pink conviction, stabbed down and struck the Queen's shoulder. The sound was a high, clear *PING*, like a bell struck once.
Despite the Queen's immense, stone-like **Jingdao**, Lorel's sword carried an intent that demanded dominance. This was supremacy given form. Her control was so precise, her will so focused, that even the alabaster King watched, its stone face tilted in silent observation.
But Lorel was reaching her limit. She was human. Each sword, each pulse of the Lantern's light, drew from a well that was not bottomless. A fine, constant tremor had begun in her hands. The edge of her advantage was slowly, inexorably, wearing away.
The white Queen flickered forward. It flowed around the next falling pink meteor that cratered the board. It reappeared behind Lorel in a blur of silent white. Its stone fist, radiating a chilling null-energy, punched straight for the space between Lorel's shoulders.
Lorel bit her lip. She didn't look. She used **Shidow** on the air at her back, shoving herself sideways in a sharp, short translocation. The fist grazed past her shoulder. The null-energy seared her robe and skin, leaving a streak of painful numbness.
As she spun in the air, she opened her hands. The **Unbound Lantern** above her pulsed. A wave of soft, defining pink light washed over the white Queen, not to attack, but to impose a law of stillness. The Queen's advance halted, its movements slowing to a dreamlike crawl.
---
The alabaster King observed the four duels—the clashes of vengeance, fear, resilience, and will. A thread of profound confusion, alien and deep, stirred within its ancient stone mind.
*Master Yujin, is this the vision you left for us? The Wheels hold the power to craft miracles beyond imagining. But the miracle of faith in them… was that your final lesson?*
Its gaze turned inward, to an older memory
*The Damocles… could they be the same? Did you foresee this, the fall and the rise of the shadows, all those years ago? Is it unfolding now, just as you guessed?*
A cold, ancient apprehension touched the King's spirit. If that was true, then what of the bright star Master Yujin had spoken of in his final riddles, the one who would tip the final scale?
Who was it?
Was it one of these struggling souls on the board before him?