The dynamics on the board changed, animated by the heat of Liang's victory. A new energy, fierce and hopeful, crackled through Gen's side.
Chubbs and the Stone Horse entered the final moments of their clash. The Horse charged, its lance a blur of focused power seeking to pierce him through. But Chubbs had learned its pattern. He stepped out of the way with incredible agility for his frame, wiped the blood from his mouth with the back of his hand, and unleashed the **Lightning Balloon**.
He applied his hard-won mastery of **Shidow** to its limit. His weight shifted. The air around his legs and hands thickened, forming circles of condensed mass that hummed with power. He flickered forward with a sonic boom, evading the lance's deadly thrust, and appeared above the horseman.
He struck downward. The horseman pivoted sideways, and the stone steed lifted a leg to defend. It was too late. Chubbs's blow, empowered by the Balloon's momentum, landed with a ***CRUNCH***. The force ripped the rider from its saddle and sent it spinning.
Chubbs landed on the now-riderless steed. He didn't hesitate. He propelled himself forward again, his fist—a hammer wrapped in swirling air—slamming into the horseman's head before it could recover.
The impact was a final, decisive ***CRACK***. The stone statue shattered into a cloud of grey dust and fragments.
Chubbs panted, his figure slowly settling as the Lightning Balloon dissipated. He smiled, a genuine, triumphant grin, and pulled a thumb up towards the sky. "My lady! You saw that!"
But above, Lorel had no time for Chubbs. Her clash with the White Queen demanded everything.
The alabaster King, its serene expression now touched by clear annoyance, gestured. A final rule of the game activated. The **Greedy Shark**, which had been slinking on the edges, was ordered into the clash. More than one piece could attack a single target.
Seeing this, Baili and Kang Mao moved as one, joining the fray, turning the duel into a chaotic, four-on-one melee.
Lorel stood at the center, unmoving. Her **Supremacy Swords** fanned out behind her in a blazing pink halo. They moved like guided lightning, lancing forward at the White Queen from all angles.
The Greedy Shark spun on its body, becoming a living shuriken of scale and tail. It shrieked across the board, its mass and speed striking the swords off their perfect courses.
The White Queen used its immense **Jingdao** to flick a nullifying pulse directly at Lorel, but Kang Mao intercepted. The **Ogre's Hammer** met the pulse head-on. The clash was titanic—a ***BOOM*** that cracked the very surface of the magical board, making everyone stumble.
At the same moment, Baili attacked the Queen from the side. He revealed his mastery of **Fendow** for the first time in this battle. The **Cloud Juggernaut**, now a flowing, liquid form of sky-blue, moved with furious intelligence. It didn't just smash; it struck in the form of binding laws, tendrils of cloud that pinned the Queen's movements downward.
The Queen unleashed its reinforcing Qi, but Baili applied **Fendow** through the cloud, *separating* the coalescing energy before it could fully form, leaving her momentarily vulnerable.
Lorel saw the opening. She didn't shout. She moved her hands.
The seven Supremacy Swords, scattered by the Shark, all pulled back. They grouped together, orbiting each other so fast they became a single, continuous ring of furious pink light. Then they merged. A thick, solid beam of pure supremacy, brighter than a forge, descended like a falling star.
It struck the pinned Queen with terrifying might.
Baili, close to the impact, was blasted back by the shockwave. He skidded several steps across the board before catching himself. He looked up at Lorel, who hovered amidst the fading pink radiance, and his eyes held a completely new expression.
Baili could not understand what he was seeing. This was the girl he had left behind a year and a half ago. Back then, all she knew was to cry and follow after Gen like an anxious shadow. She could hardly even speak if not spoken to. Now she stood at the highest point of the conflict, facing one of the most terrifying entities on the board, commanding power that demanded his respect. *What had she been through? What had they all been through?* The question burned in Baili's chest as he looked from Lorel to Gen and his battered friends.
The White Queen's figure stood up. Its stone form was webbed with deep cracks, one arm hanging useless. It was almost broken. It tried to move on but it's body could not follow and it crumble to dust.
The Greedy Shark seemed to sense something. It wasn't as strong as the Sky Demon had been. It understood it had to run. But on Master Yujin's board, there was no retreat.
The Cloud Juggernaut collapsed around it. The sky-blue mist didn't crush; it consumed, using **Fendow** to separate the beast's hardened scales from the energy binding them. Lightning from the cloud seeped into the gaps. The Shark had never faced a master of Separation like Baili. Its fate was sealed.
Now, the only fight still taking place was Gen's against the Wild Edge Sect Leader. Almost all the other pieces had been destroyed. Only these two remained, and their clash was reaching another, more desperate level.
The Wild Edge Sect Leader forced Gen back once more with a slash that drew a line of fire across his chest. Observing the ruined board around him, the Sect Leader spat a mouthful of blood. "Are you all just going to watch? Let him go, just like that?" He waved a ragged arm at the assembled cultivators and the silent King. "His father called himself 'Immortal' and brought all of this upon us! I am not the only one! We all lost someone when that Damocles fell! Don't you want revenge?!"
Gen rose from his knees, trembling inwardly, covered in his own blood. He shouted, "My father never asked for it!"
But his voice sounded weak, even to himself. He could not deny the cold, hard truth: it *was* because his father was crowned Immortal Jiang that the Divine Generals came. He hated that feeling, that seed of guilt. And the Wild Edge Sect Leader was digging into it now, watering it with spite.
Seeing Gen destabilized, the Sect Leader seized the opening. "The young are so easy to shake." He unleashed all his remaining Qi. The Wild Edge wind coiled around him completely, howling, until he became the **true embodiment of the Wild Edge**. This level of mastery was common only to those who had decided to give everything—to dissipate their very being into their signature skill. Even if he had to go, he would take Gen, Lorel, and all of them with him.
The Sect Leader laughed, a sound lost in the shrieking gale as his Qi spread like a self-destructive storm. Just as Gen was gathering himself to charge into that vortex of annihilation, he heard a voice from behind him.
It was Lorel, her voice clear and firm over the wind. "His father did bring this retribution upon us. But are we not the ones who gave him the name 'Immortal Jiang'? Are we not the ones who lavished praise on his strength? He gave our world of chaos order and peace!"
She wasn't the only one. Other cultivators, Pawns who had survived, joined in. One finally added, "Gen destroyed one of the Damocles! We are not doomed. We were given the chance to grow!"
Lorel spoke again, full conviction blazing in her eyes. "So beat the crap out of him, Gen!" she said, her emotions getting the best of her, the polite girl replaced by a fierce ally.
Gen bailed his fist. She was right. They could blame his father all they wanted. But without the pressure of the Damocles, would they have fought this hard? Would they have grasped the Wheels of Destiny this deeply, this fast?
No.
He couldn't erase what his father had set in motion. But he, Gen Jiang, could do something *now*.
He turned from the voices of support, from Lorel's fire, from Liang's light, from Chubbs's loyalty. He faced the screaming, grey tornado that was the Wild Edge Sect Leader.
Gen nodded, a sharp, final motion. Then he charged.
Gen, covered in the faint, shimmering smoke of the Eternal Body's Second Door, shot forward. He met the screaming vortex of the Wild Edge Sect Leader head-on.
Their clash was not a single blow. It was a **detonation**.
A shockwave of opposing forces—golden, condensed will against howling, grey severance—erupted from the point of impact. It swept outward in a visible ring, a concussive wall of air that washed over the remaining cultivators, forcing them back, making the very chessboard tremble.
Gen stepped out of the dissipating energy fog. He did not pause. He tapped his foot on the solid surface of his square. From the point of contact, the air behind the Wild Edge Sect Leader shimmered. The **Sword of Infinity** did not form in Gen's hand. It manifested *behind* his enemy, its complex pattern of light snapping into existence. A beam of annihilating black light lanced forward from it.
The Sect Leader did the impossible. His figure dissolved into a swirling blur of cutting wind. He didn't dodge; he *flowed*, sidestepping the beam by becoming insubstantial. He reappeared five meters to the side, already in motion.
Gen cursed and jumped, not straight at him, but at an angle. He landed and immediately skidded, using the momentum to carry himself sideways across the board's smooth surface. The Sect Leader, recovering from his evasion, did the same, moving parallel to Gen.
For a heartbeat, the two slid sideways in the same direction, their bodies low, their eyes locked across the short distance. One gaze was pure, seething resentment. The other was focused, vengeful clarity.
The Wild Edge Sect Leader waved his arm. Not a grand technique, but a sharp, efficient flick. A dozen bolts of condensed, grey Qi—each like a bullet of solidified cutting intent—burst forth in a tight spread.
Gen sent his hand forward. He did not form a shield. He used **Jingdao** to harden his fingertips and **Shidow** to sense the air's disruption. He *parried*. His hands became a blur, precise, short deflections—*ping, ping, ping*—knocking the grey bullets off course with his bare hands. The deflected shots screamed past him and tore into the spectator area of the board, blowing craters in the magical floor.
At the same moment, the Sect Leader condensed his power. A massive, swirling ball of destructive grey light formed in each of his hands. He dove toward Gen, his intent clear: to trap Gen between the two orbs and crush him.
Gen did not retreat. He leaned *forward*, his body becoming a line. He beamed toward his opponent with pure, accelerated speed.
The Sect Leader laughed, a raw, ragged sound. "Crazy fool!" He prepared to slam the orbs together with Gen in the middle.
Gen's hand came up. He didn't strike. He tapped the empty air in front of him, palm flat. He used **Shidow** to violently *compress* the air in that single spot. The compressed pocket acted like a solid wall for an instant. Gen pushed off it with his hand, his body rocketing *upward*.
The two grey orbs of the Wild Edge slammed together in the empty space beneath his rising feet, erupting in a silent, devouring sphere that consumed itself.
Still airborne, Gen compressed the air *beneath* his foot with another sharp Shidow pulse and propelled himself *downward* in a sharp, angled arc. He landed not in front of the Sect Leader, but **beside** him, in a low, coiled crouch—the final position of a falling predator.
From the corner of his eye, his opponent saw the movement. His frown was one of pure, bewildered disbelief. *How does he move like this?*
It was too late.
Gen's good hand was already rising, his index finger a dark hole in the world. He did not shout. He spoke three words, calm and final.
"**End of the World.**"
The **End of the World Finger** did not fire as a beam. At this range, it was a point-blank eruption of silent, black annihilation. It struck the Wild Edge Sect Leader squarely in the center of his back.
"You can keep blaming me or my father," Gen said, his voice barely a whisper lost in the roar. "In hell."
There was no sound. There was a flash of devouring darkness, followed by a secondary explosion of released, unformed Qi as the Sect Leader's technique shattered from within. The force consumed both of them in a dome of shuddering light and violent wind, forcing everyone on the board to shield their faces.
When the light faded and the wind died, they saw the result.
The Wild Edge Sect Leader fell from the sky. He did not tumble. He dropped like a stone, landing on the board with a heavy, final *thud*, his body still, the vicious grey aura around him gone.
Above him, Gen descended. He landed on his feet, but his knees buckled slightly. He was covered in blood—his own, from a dozen shallow cuts and the deep wound in his shoulder, and the Sect Leader's, which speckled his skin and clothes. He breathed hard, the shimmering vapor of the Eternal Body flickering and fading from his skin.
But on his face was a neutral smile. Not of joy, not of gloating. It was the smile of a task completed.
He had not just won a fight. It was a statement.
He was Gen Jiang. They would have to reckon with him, every single time they tried to harm his loved ones