Tongtian's rage did not fade.
If anything, it grew worse in the moments after the continents shattered. The four legendary swords, their power spent in that single catastrophic blow, fell from his hands and clattered against the broken earth. But Tongtian himself did not stop. Could not stop. The fury that had built over decades of helpless watching, of witnessing his beloved disciples slaughtered and harvested, had consumed him entirely.
He became a storm.
Not a metaphorical storm—a literal one. His form dissolved into a hurricane of divine swords and lightning that stretched across the broken sky, its winds carrying the screams of dying worlds, its lightning the color of fresh blood. Where it passed, the air itself seemed to tear. Reality frayed at the edges. The fundamental laws that held existence together began to loosen, to weaken, to fail.
Laozi and Yuanshi watched from their sanctuaries, their ancient faces carved from grief and horror. They had not intended this. They had only wanted to solve the problem of faith, to create order from chaos, to protect their world from the monsters that dark belief spawned. They had never imagined that their solution would lead to this—to their brother, their friend, their equal in all things, reduced to a mindless engine of destruction.
"We cannot reach him," Yuanshi said, his voice the sound of mountains weeping. "He is beyond reason. Beyond words. Beyond anything we can offer."
Laozi nodded slowly, his form dimmed with sorrow. "We must seek help."
"From whom? Who remains that can contain a Pure One's power?"
Laozi's ancient eyes turned westward. Toward a region that had, until now, been carefully avoided by both the immortal sects and the fading gods of another tradition.
"The Buddha."
Yuanshi's expression flickered—surprise, then understanding, then a grim acceptance. "The Western Regions. The ones who came from beyond the mountains, bearing teachings that mirror our own. We have rebuffed them for centuries."
"We have," Laozi agreed. "And now we must humble ourselves before them."
---
The journey was brief—a folding of space, a crossing of dimensions, a step from the shattered realm of the immortals into a region that existed in the spaces between. There, in a grove of golden light and silent meditation, they found those they sought.
Jieyin. Zhunti.
The Two Ancestor Buddhas.
The Western Religion was the tradition born from the place that would become known as India in the current time. There dwelled Brahma and his followers and gods, the system of Buddhism of their advancement was similar to that of Immortals they used suffering and meditation to strengthen their soul using visualizations to strengthen their soul. Thus they were incongruent with the religion based on faith, and were thus suppressed and excluded.
They had been trying to extend their reach into the Xia and Shang Dynasty but were unsuccessful due to the suppression of the Grand Immortals, as they saw them as foreign influence.
Their forms were not vast like the immortals. They did not loom or tower or fill the sky with terrible glory. They sat, simply sat, upon lotus thrones of pure radiance, their eyes closed, their expressions serene. And yet, in their stillness, there was power. Power that did not need to shout. Power that simply was.
Laozi and Yuanshi avatars approached with a humility they had not shown in millennia. They bowed before the Ancestor Buddhas—a gesture that would have been unthinkable weeks ago, days ago, moments ago. And they spoke.
"Our brother has fallen to madness," Laozi said, his voice stripped of all pretense, all pride, all authority. "He has shattered the world. He threatens to destroy everything. We cannot reach him. We cannot stop him. We request your aid in containing his power."
Jieyin opened his eyes.
The compassion in them was absolute. It was not pity—pity would have been condescension, a looking down upon those who had failed. It was understanding. Recognition. The acknowledgment of suffering shared, of pain that transcended boundaries.
"You loved your disciples," Jieyin said. "He loved his. The difference between you was not in the love, but in what you were willing to sacrifice for it."
Yuanshi's avatar flinched. "We only sought to—"
"You sought to solve a problem with the tools you had," Zhunti interrupted gently. "We do not judge you for that. We judge no one. But now you must set aside judgment entirely and focus only on what must be done."
They rose from their lotus thrones, and as they rose, their forms expanded. Not into the towering monstrosities of divine combat, but into something else—a presence that filled the space without dominating it, that touched everything without crushing anything merging into the world.
"Take us to your brother."
---
The storm that was Tongtian raged across the broken sky, and where it passed, reality bled.
The Ancestor Buddhas observed him for a long moment, their expressions unreadable. Then, without a word, they acted.
Jieyin raised his hand, and from his palm flowed a river of golden light. It was not an attack—it was an offering. An opening. A space into which Tongtian's fury could flow without destroying anything, without harming anyone, without continuing its terrible work.
Zhunti moved to the other side, and from his form emanated a field of perfect stillness. Not the stillness of death—the stillness of meditation, of peace, of the silence that exists at the center of all things.
Between them, Tongtian's storm began to... quiet, his influence on the world subsiding.
Not stop. Not fade. But slow. The hurricane of rage became a gale, then a wind, then a breeze. The blood-red lightning flickered and dimmed. The screams that had carried on those winds softened to whispers, then to silence.
Laozi and Yuanshi watched and then attacked, using their supernatural powers to form the Taichi Yin and Yang and in between the opposing forces of Yin and Yang, sat Tongtian, forever frozen in time.
But even as the storm subsided, the damage remained.
Below them, the world was dying.
The breaking of the continents had unleashed forces beyond measure. Oceans surged across newly formed coastlines, drowning millions in tidal waves that reached miles inland. Fire rained from the sky—not metaphorically, but literally—as volcanic eruptions, triggered by the shattering of tectonic plates, hurled molten stone into the atmosphere. The ozone layer, that fragile shield that protected all life from the sun's deadliest rays, had been torn to shreds. Unfiltered ultraviolet radiation poured down upon the Earth, burning everything it touched, turning the sky itself into a churning river of aurora lights—beautiful, terrible, and deadly.
Humanity was dying. All life was dying. The world that had existed for eons was ending in a matter of days.
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