The vacuum created by their collision was so absolute that the silver "water" of the Sea of Souls was pushed back into mountain-sized walls of mist. In the center of this empty crater, Shen Yuan and Grandmaster Cang stood as the only two points of reality.
"Your Void is loud, Yuan," Cang said, his wooden staff vibrating with a soft, white light. "It screams of hunger and revenge. It is a shallow Void."
"And yours is a lie, Master," Shen Yuan replied. His hair drifted in the zero-gravity of the Seventh Heaven, half-starlight and half-ink. "You call it 'Balance,' but it is just a cage you built because you were afraid of what lies beyond the stars."
"[Grandmaster's Art: The White Nihility]"
Cang swung his staff. It didn't strike Shen Yuan's body; it struck the Space around him. The darkness of the Void began to turn into a blinding, sterile white. It wasn't light—it was a "Clean Slate." It was the power to erase an existence by making it "Never Have Been."
Shen Yuan felt his fingers beginning to dissolve into white mist. His memories of the mines, of his Generals, and even of his betrayal were being "washed" away.
"If you have no past, you have no power," Cang whispered.
"Then I will create a past in this very micro-second!" Shen Yuan roared.
"[Paradox Art: The Infinite Instant]"
Shen Yuan used the Chronos-Heart. He didn't go back in time; he compressed ten thousand years of "Will" into a single pulse of his heart. The white nihility hit his chest and shattered like glass against a diamond.
Shen Yuan lunged, his hand turning into a claw of obsidian energy. He grabbed the wooden staff, and the friction between the White Void and the Dark Void began to crack the foundations of the Seventh Heaven.
The Six Pagodas – The Ancestral Ritual
While the two masters were locked in a stalemate, the other six Ancestors atop their floating pagodas began to chant. Their voices hummed in a frequency that resonated with the silver sea.
"[Soul-Rewrite: The Mandate of Heaven]!"
Six beams of prismatic light shot from the pagodas, aiming not at Shen Yuan, but at the Sea of Souls itself. They weren't trying to kill him—they were trying to turn the billion souls in the sea into a "Mental Prison" to drown his consciousness.
"Master! Look out!" Frost-Weaver cried from the Obsidian Palace, but she was busy fending off the "Wraith-Tide" that was now attacking the ship with renewed fury.
Suddenly, the Sea of Souls beneath the Pagodas began to boil. But it wasn't the Ancestors' doing.
A massive, spectral hand made of silver chains erupted from the depths. It grabbed the base of the Third Pagoda and pulled.
CRASH.
The Pagoda tilted, the Ancestors' chant breaking into a discordant scream.
"Who dares?!" the lead Ancestor bellowed.
Out of the silver mist rose a figure that even Shen Yuan hadn't seen in ten thousand years. He was dressed in tattered rags, his body covered in more seals and chains than a demon-king. His eyes were missing, replaced by two burning violet flames.
"The Fourth General..." Zither-Soul gasped, his bone flute nearly falling from his hand. "The Jailer of the Damned... Ghost-Eye!"
"You left me in the dark for a long time, Sovereign," the blind giant spoke, his voice echoing from the bottom of the sea. He had been the one General who had stayed behind to "guard" the reincarnation cycle, only to be betrayed and imprisoned by the Ancestors. "I think it's time we let the prisoners out."
Ghost-Eye ripped the silver chains from his own body and lashed them toward the remaining Pagodas.
"Master!" Ghost-Eye roared toward Shen Yuan. "Finish the old man! I'll take the towers!"
Shen Yuan looked at Grandmaster Cang. The old man's face finally lost its calm. He looked at the rebelling sea, then at his student, whose Dual-Soul was now fully synchronized with the rage of the fallen.
"You see, Master?" Shen Yuan said, his hand tightening on the wooden staff until it snapped in half. "Even your 'Sea' wants to be free."
Shen Yuan drove his fist into Cang's chest, not with the power of the Void, but with the Weight of the Dual-Soul.
"[Final Verse: The Collapse of the Teacher's Law]"