Xian cracked his neck, stretching against the deep, numbing pain that radiated from his core. He looked down, not at Wushia, but at Liang.
Liang observed the fight with an impassive face, but his eyes were volcanoes of thought. Beside him, Lia murmured something urgent into his ear, but Liang didn't bother to hear. His focus was absolute, locked onto his new master and the celestial being trying to erase him.
For Liang, this fight held more meaning than for anyone else present.
He wasn't like them. He wasn't naturally strong. He had clawed and scraped his way to this level from the very bottom. The Dark Wheels represented the **path of choice**—the brutal, empowering choice to seize the power to protect what he valued, no matter the stain. It was *his* choice, and he was watching its ultimate validation.
On the opposite side of the ruined arena, Gen kept his eyes on Xian, a reluctant thread of admiration weaving through his hatred. Xian wasn't fighting for their world. He was standing alone against a force of heaven. The sheer, insane conviction required for that… it was the same conviction Gen respected in Liang. He had seen countless powerful cultivators, but rarely one that made him feel the way Xian did at this moment: a terrifying, awe-inspiring monument to a single, all-consuming will.
Lorel's thoughts were clearer, analytical. She understood the power of emotion as it pertained to the Wheels. Could it be that, amidst the corrosive Dark System, the same principle held? Could Xian's profound, twisted will alone rewrite fate? The thought drilled into every mind watching.
But they could not see what Juo Si saw.
The King observed Xian with a cold, knowing smile. His eyes, sharper than any present in matters of corruption and cost, saw the truth. Xian's body wasn't just injured; it was **rotting from the inside**. As the one closest in understanding to Xian's methods, Juo Si knew perfectly how the Dark Wheels functioned. They granted immense power, but to wield it, one had to willingly **poison their own Acupoints**, modifying the very essence of their connection to the Wheels.
The real danger was cumulative. The more one used a Dark Wheel, the more the associated Acupoint festered, making it harder and harder to ever use the pure Wheel again. By the time this fight was over, Xian would likely never be able to wield a pure Wheel of Destiny again. And if he didn't survive, it wouldn't just be Wushia that killed him—it would be the accelerating destruction and corruption of his own foundation. Despite this clear knowledge, Juo Si felt a sharp pang of envy for the raw, world-defying power Xian displayed. He was not alone.
This envy was the new air the world breathed. The Damocles had forced a desperate calculus: power, at any cost, was the only currency of survival. This desperation was the soil where revolutions bloomed and the Bliss Palace grew. Many had witnessed the devastation of the Jiang Capital, an event contained by the Pillars. If one of those Damocles fell without a barrier… it wouldn't matter who you were or where you hid. Obliteration was absolute. Hence, the *kind* of power ceased to matter. They wanted the Dark Wheels. They wanted to be like Xian.
In the void, Xian could feel this shift in perspective. His senses, honed by years as a puppeteer, told him he was infinitely close to his goal. He didn't need to win. He just needed to plant the seed. Proof of concept. It would spread on the wind of their desperation to every corner of the world.
Wushia's sole interest was his target. After the death of two of his kin, he understood this human had potential. He would not be careless like them. He would crush Xian before that potential could fully blossom.
Wushia raised both arms. The liquid-blue field of the **World Nova** shimmered back into existence around them, humming with lethal intent. His eyes illuminated with the cold light of a deity passing judgment.
Xian's figure flickered, using **Zhadao** to dominate speed and vanish. This time, he flashed several precise steps back, putting distance between them. "Too slow with that," he said, voice confident despite the blood on his lips.
Wushia simply smirked and waved a hand forward.
The World Nova *compressed*.
Orbs of white light, born from the solidified law of the domain, condensed just in front of Xian's face and behind his back. There was no travel time. They simply were, and then they **were upon him**.
***CRUMPH. CRUMPH.***
The impacts were sickening explosions of finalized energy that charred Xian's robes and seared his skin. He stumbled in the air, spitting another gout of dark blood. *How can he attack so fast?* With his ability to dominate speed, Xian was no slower than Wushia was within this realm. It had to be something else—something completely divorced from speed itself.
While he reeled, more orbs began to condense around him.
He made a desperate guess. If he couldn't evade at a distance, perhaps closer was better for maneuvering. He dominated speed once more, a streak of black lightning pushing him *toward* Wushia. In a thought, he was on the Divine General's left flank, swinging **Gentle Lethality** in a powerful, dark arc.
As the blade descended, Xian activated **Wudao**.
A roaring halo of nullification enveloped the void-black sword. The blade could now slice through the very fabric of the World Nova itself, dispelling the thick, river-like feeling of the domain around its edge. The Nova recoiled, then reconstructed itself instantly behind the passing cut. But the blade was fast enough. It drove straight for Wushia's head.
Xian's intention was clear: repeat the blow that had cracked the armor.
But this time, the blade never touched him.
It was an impossibility. The sword moved with dominated speed, yet it seemed to travel an infinite distance within a single foot of space. It was constantly moving, never slowing, yet never arriving. For over a full second, the tip hovered a hair's breadth from Wushia's temple, screaming with nullifying energy, and could advance no further.
Wushia smirked and lifted an arm.
The World Nova moved again. Needles of blinding, white light formed a prismatic cage around Xian and shot inward from all possible angles.
***THWIP-THWIP-THWIP-THWIP!***
What was left was a sickening spectacle. Xian was pinned in the air like a grotesque trophy, impaled by dozens of spears of solidified conclusion. His dark blood trickled in slow, defiant streams down the shimmering white light.
Wushia walked closer, stopping inches from the imprisoned man. "By now," he said, his voice calm, almost instructing, "you must have understood why you cannot win. Now that the World Nova is active."
On the ground, Gen and Lorel felt the understanding click into place simultaneously.
"How do we defeat something we cannot touch?" Gen muttered, a headache blooming at the sheer illogic of it.
Lorel's frown deepened. "There has to be a trick. It's not about speed or slowing the opponent. It's as if Wushia exists in a space *outside* this world within his domain. He manipulates the very concept of distance."
Gen nodded. With Xian's speed, he should have connected before Wushia could counter. But whether Xian was close or far, he had no way to attack or evade. The moment the World Nova appeared, the game's rules had been set against him.
On the battlefield, Wushia raised a palm. He condensed the power of the World Nova along his forearm. This time, he took his time. A storm gathered around him, causing the blue domain to tremble and *cry out* like a river about to burst its banks. His forearm turned blinding. His intention was clear: finish it with one blow. A strike that could shatter a lesser world.
Xian, pinned and bleeding, spat more blood. But he couldn't give up. Not this close.
"Only a fool gives up on his goal at the doorstep of victory!" Xian shouted, a laugh cracking through his pain. "No—that's what I call **insanity**!"
His Qi burst out in a blazing, black explosion, shattering the prism of light that held him. He used his dominance over speed to flash away, repositioning instantly.
Wushia was not worried. He continued gathering his final blow. Whether Xian was close or far, escape was impossible. That was the law of the World Nova.
Xian, however, had never given up on anything in his life.
Wushia unleashed the **World Nova** toward him. A beam of pure conclusion moved forward, coiling and forming into a massive, spectral being with two arms. The arms spread wide, then swept in to seal Xian at the epicenter of an annihilating implosion.
But just as they were about to close, Xian noticed something.
At *this* specific distance, the pressure of the World Nova felt… different. Less absolute.
Acting on razor-sharp instinct, he didn't go forward or back. He dominated speed in a **lateral zip**, not away from Wushia, but *around* him, orbiting at a fixed radius within the blue field.
A collective gasp echoed from below. The sharpest cultivators felt their understanding ignite.
Xian had evaded the World Nova.
Wushia blinked twice, a genuine flash of astonishment on his face. *Impossible. He couldn't have found it.*
Xian coughed more blood, a savage grin splitting his features. "No wonder you were so careful, Wushia. I get it now." He wiped his mouth. "The World Nova appears invincible. But it's not."
Within the World Nova was a **sweet spot**. A thin, stable band situated at a precise distance—not too close, where the law of ending was instant, nor too far, where Wushia could write conclusions from range. A space where the domain was **malleable**. Xian had figured it out, not entirely by luck, but because his earlier Wudao-nullified strike had momentarily pierced the domain's layers, giving him a glimpse of its structure.
Now that he knew, he could navigate. And a new, wild guess crystallized in his mind. A satisfied, terrifying smile pricked his lips.
He spread both arms outward.
His Qi burst out like a waking nightmare, a storm crackling with black lightning. His eyes illuminated with obsidian-red light. The skin on the left side of his body began to change, cracking and shifting as if turning alien. It hardened into a scaly, golden-grey hide, and from his shoulder blade, a single, tattered wing of the same color spread through his robes. On his right side, the skin darkened further than obsidian, into a void-like black, and a matching black bat-wings bursted forth.
In each of his extended palms, an orb condensed: one golden-grey, one void-black.
"**Happy Disaster,**" Xian murmured, crushing the golden-grey orb in his left hand.
What followed was not an explosion of force, but an **eruption of chaotic genesis**. A sphere of seething, grey-gold energy spread over the battlefield. But as it spread, Xian's body began to *heal*. The cracks on his lips sealed. His bones restructured with audible snaps. The energy wasn't attacking; it was **un-making the damage done to him by forcibly rewriting a moment of his own past**—a horrific, creative application of corrupted Zhadao to dominate his body forcing insane healing.
Before the sphere of healing chaos had even finished expanding, Xian pressed the void-black orb in his right hand.
"**Melancholic Disaster.**"
This orb shot forth, not as a projectile, but as a **command of dominated stillness**. It reached Wushia before the Divine General could even react, not with speed, but by negating the intervening time.
On his chest.
Wushia quickly raised his forearms in a cross-block. The impact was not a sound, but a **silent, localized termination of kinetic energy**.
The force did not push Wushia back. It **deleted his forward momentum** and imposed a violent retrograde motion. The Divine General was flung backward through his own domain like a doll, skidding through the air with a shocked expression, the first true blow landed.
Xian smiled, the twin wings on his back flexing. "This," he declared, his voice carrying to every soul below, "is the greatest creation of the Dark Wheels. The **Twin Disasters**."
For all observers, the scene was surreal. Xian hadn't just made a Divine General retreat. He had **knocked one flying**.
A torrent of emotions roiled in ten thousand chests. *Could the Dark Wheels really be this powerful?*
In the Li Family pavilion, Li Zhi bit his lip until it bled. *That.* That was the power he wanted. At any cost.
Wushia controlled his tumble mid-air and straightened. He wiped a trace of silvery blood from the corner of his mouth. With a thought, he dismissed the remnants of his divine armor. At this point, it was useless. The **Wudao**—the Wheel of Nullification Xian had used—had rendered its defensive principles inert.
*Just like with the pure Wheels,* Wushia deduced, *the Dark Wheels are strongest when used in synthesis.* This was how Xian had become so formidable.
He could see the mechanics. **Twin Disasters** used **Miedao** not for raw destruction, but built upon a perverse foundation. Xian had first used the original version of **Zhidow (Creation)** to fabricate the "Happy Disaster"—a chaotic, self-healing genesis. By applying **Miedao (Destruction)** to that *creation itself*, he allowed the spell to reach a conceptual potential beyond normal limits. Real disaster, born from corrupted creation.
This was the true power of Miedao. Alone, it was a blunt, wasteful tool. In Xian's hands, it was an invisible, foundational weapon.
"Even if you have found a way to counter the World Nova," Wushia said, his voice losing its melodic quality, gaining the edge of grinding continents, "you shall never win against me. Not here. Not today."
Wushia's figure dissolved into a beam of pure, white light as he moved. This time, it was not a stroll, nor a probing attack. It was the motion of a closing chapter.