Liang Feng remained motionless.
The clash of laws had not resumed, yet the pressure had not faded.
The Blue Star no longer screamed -- but it no longer healed either.
He could feel it.
The planet's spiritual circulation had reached a terminal state.
Not collapse.
Exhaustion.
One more exchange would not decide victory or defeat.
It would only decide what would remain.
Liang Feng slowly closed his eyes.
I cannot let him take this body.
Míng Jiǎo Zūn did not need it to destroy a world.
He already possessed that authority.
But this body --
this vessel bound to the Dao of Water and Ice --
would grant him something far worse than destruction.
Continuity.
Liang Feng's lips parted.
No sound emerged.
Yet his voice resonated --
not through space,
not through Dao,
but directly into the heart of the Spiritual Sea.
---
Wang Lin was still unconscious.
He drifted through fragmented dreams.
He was a child again, standing beneath a pale sky, holding his grandfather Wang's hand.
The warmth was familiar.
Comforting.
Then the hand tightened.
Too tight.
The smile on his grandfather's face did not change --
but the eyes hollowed, collapsing inward, becoming vast and empty.
The ground beneath them cracked, and the warmth decayed into suffocating cold.
Wang Lin screamed.
The scene shattered.
He was older now.
Walking beside Uncle Wang.
The streets were familiar.
The voice beside him was gentle.
Then it began to repeat the same sentence.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Each repetition stripped the words of meaning, until they became noise,
and the noise became accusation.
"You never belonged here."
The face twisted.
Not into a monster --
but into a stranger.
Then came his friend.
The one he trusted.
The one who smiled.
The smile remained --
but the eyes looked past him,
as if Wang Lin had never existed.
Lies layered upon lies,
collapsing inward
until nothing remained
but a void shaped like familiarity.
Wang Lin convulsed within the Spiritual Sea.
And through the nightmare, a voice reached him.
Calm.
Steady.
Broken.
"Wang Lin..."
The voice did not comfort him.
It anchored him.
"I'm sorry."
Silence followed.
Then Liang Feng's voice returned, lower, more distant --
as if it spoke from a place
that no longer fully belonged to this world.
"Listen carefully, Wang Lin."
<
The Spiritual Sea stabilized slightly around that voice.
"I won't be able to open the portal.
Not this time."
A pause.
"But the Blue Star is not empty."
Something, far beneath the surface of the world, stirred imperceptibly.
"There is another entity here.
It is not sealed… not truly.
But it cannot leave this planet.
It is bound to the Blue Star like a shadow to its source."
Wang Lin's dreams trembled.
"Decades ago, it was this very entity that helped me seal Míng Jiǎo Zūn.
Without it, it would have been impossible."
The voice grew heavier.
"It will not obey you.
It protects no one.
It acts according to its own logic."
A final warning, almost a legacy.
"If you survive… you will meet it."
Liang Feng's presence began to truly dissolve.
"Remember only one thing, Wang Lin."
A single beat.
"Never mistake it for an ally."
---
On the Blue Star, Liang Feng opened his eyes.
They no longer rested on Míng Jiǎo Zūn.
They withdrew.
As if, for the first time in centuries,
his gaze stopped searching for an answer in the outside world.
"This technique…" he finally said, his voice low, steady, almost detached,
"was never meant to be used twice."
Míng Jiǎo Zūn watched him closely.
He sensed no rising pressure.
No concentration of Dao.
No offensive intent.
And that, precisely, unsettled him.
"Do you still intend to struggle?" he asked, without irony.
Liang Feng did not answer.
He placed one hand over his dantian.
The other against his chest.
There was no summoning of energy.
No activation of law.
No violent reaction from the world.
Instead --
Something withdrew.
Not violently.
Not abruptly.
Like an ancient key being removed from a lock
that existence had relied on for far too long.
The laws around Liang Feng hesitated.
Gravity continued to exist, but lost its grip on him.
The local Dao continued to circulate, but refused to pass through him.
Even time seemed unable to determine his exact position.
Míng Jiǎo Zūn's eyes narrowed.
"This is not a technique," he said slowly.
"You are erasing your anchor."
Liang Feng exhaled.
"Exactly."
He briefly closed his eyes.
"A technique acts upon the world."
"This one acts on what still allows the world to recognize me."
For the first time, he spoke its true name.
魂解·逆道终灭
Hún Jiě · Nì Dào Zhōng Miè
Dissolution of the Soul -- Final Annihilation of the Inverted Dao
The forbidden art summoned no power.
It generated none.
It emptied.
Liang Feng's soul began to separate.
Not torn away.
Not expelled.
But methodically unbound.
Thread by thread.
Each severed link was neither wound nor loss,
but a conscious payment,
an irreversible renunciation offered to something ancient,
something deeply buried within the Blue Star --
an entity that had observed this world long before Míng Jiǎo Zūn's descent.
His body remained standing.
Motionless.
But its circulation reversed.
Deprived of a guiding soul,
the Dao of Water and Ice entered a terminal state of reversion.
It did not seek to explode outward.
It folded inward.
It bit into itself.
It began collapsing from within,
turning the body into a structure of wild annulment,
programmed to attack, destroy, and erase any hostile authority nearby --
before disappearing itself.
Not as an attack.
But as absolute negation.
So that nothing remained to be possessed.
Nothing to be transmitted.
Nothing to be reincarnated.
Míng Jiǎo Zūn took a step forward.
This time, his expression truly changed.
Not anger.
Lucidity.
"So you deny even the vessel," he said.
"You accept vanishing on both sides."
Liang Feng's gaze, already distant, met his one last time.
"I deny continuity."
The silence did not last.
Míng Jiǎo Zūn did not retreat.
He did not shout.
He did not attempt to interrupt the soul's dissociation --
for he immediately understood that it was impossible.
But he acted.
The axes orbiting his Avatar ceased their rotation.
They froze in space.
Then, one by one,
they dissolved,
not into energy,
but into fragments of conceptual lines,
as if their forms were no longer required.
Míng Jiǎo Zūn slowly raised his hand.
This time, the world perceived it.
Not as an attack.
As a claim.
"Very well," he said calmly.
"If you refuse continuity… then I will claim the instant."
He spoke an ancient name, devoid of emphasis.
断序·万灭归一
Duàn Xù · Wàn Miè Guī Yī
-> Sequence Severance -- Convergence of Ten Thousand Extinctions
It was not a technique of destruction.
It was a temporary rewriting of priority.
Space around Liang Feng attempted to freeze.
Time sought to close in on him.
Cause and effect were briefly reorganized,
forcing all existing things to acknowledge an immediate end.
The Blue Star groaned.
For the first time since the beginning of the final act,
the world tried to kill Liang Feng.
But nothing happened.
Not because the technique was weak.
But because it no longer had a valid target.
Míng Jiǎo Zūn's Dao sought Liang Feng's soul --
and found only a payment already consumed.
It sought the body --
and encountered a structure of self-negation, already beyond possession.
It sought causality --
and discovered it had been rendered null.
Míng Jiǎo Zūn frowned slightly.
A minute detail.
But real.
"...So that's how it is," he murmured.
The convergence of extinctions dissipated, unable to anchor.
Not because it had been countered.
But because the sacrifice had preceded it.
Liang Feng had not evaded the attack.
He had rendered it meaningless.
Míng Jiǎo Zūn slowly lowered his hand.
"Your technique is detestable," he said without anger.
"It does not win. It simply refuses to play."
No answer came.
At that precise moment, Liang Feng's body entered its final phase.
Not as an explosion.
But as a blind hunt.
The soulless Dao attacked instinctively,
rending, inverting, annihilating
anything that carried foreign authority upon the Blue Star.
The battle was no longer a duel.
It was an uncontrollable consequence.
And for the first time since his awakening,
Míng Jiǎo Zūn understood a simple truth:
He had not been defeated.
He had been delayed
by something willing to disappear
to prevent him from fully existing.
---
At that precise instant, the space around Liang Feng trembled.
Not under pressure --
But under recognized absence.
As if something buried deep within the Blue Star
had finally accepted the price it was owed.
Within the Spiritual Sea, Wang Lin suddenly gasped.
His eyes flew open.
What he felt was neither pain nor fear.
It was displacement.
Something was leaving this world.
Liang Feng was not dying.
He was being ceded.
The soul was already in transit.
And the payment had been accepted.
The Blue Star fell into a silence deeper
than anything that had come before.
And the final act began.