327 Wrath Between Stars

[POV: Aixin]

Outside the Hollowed World, in the endless ocean of the Greater Universe, the stars burned brighter than empires, and yet their immensity dimmed beside a single slumbering existence. It lay coiled within a planet, its body so vast that mountains were little more than scales upon its skin, and oceans trickled like sweat upon its form. Despite being wrapped in a crown of giant stars, the planet thrummed with rivers, forests, and civilizations, life flourishing upon the surface of a god who slept.

This was no ordinary being. This was the kind mortals and cultivators alike would never grasp, the ancient apex of existence before the age of the Supreme Beings: a Ruler of Laws.

In the quiet of its existence, Aixin then screamed.

Her voice shattered the planet from within. The crust split apart like fragile pottery, magma bleeding across the void. The life that thrived there shriveled in an instant, consumed as fuel. From the planet's innards, sinews, bone, and divine blood tore free, knitting themselves into the form of a woman. Her new flesh crackled with light, and flowing quintessence shaped into radiant golden-white robes that clung to her curves. Solar flares curled from her lips with each exhale, wreathing her beauty in destruction.

She stood in the void, majestic and furious.

"This is unacceptable!"

Her aura lanced through the cosmos. Distant galaxies quivered. Entire constellations warped under her outburst.

Her mind churned, spiraling between disbelief and humiliation.

"How!? How is that possible? An Immortal Art capable of slaying gods!? That's unheard of! That's… impossible!"

The memory seared her of her fragment, her consciousness nestled within Da Wei's stolen flesh, felled by the mongrel's claws and that cursed Immortal Art, bearing the mark of a failed god, had dared to sever her? The insult cut deeper than any blade.

She trembled. For a moment, the instinct to rush to her master filled her chest. To plead for forgiveness. To beg for his embrace.

But she stopped herself.

Her master, the Supreme Heart, the Maker of Love, the one who abandoned them, had exiled her and her sisters long ago. And now? Now none of them even knew where he had gone, only that he had stepped into the Unknown Universe in pursuit of something none dared to name. To appear before him empty-handed after failure? To show nothing but disgrace? She clenched her perfect teeth.

"I cannot… I will not crawl back like a failure. Not again."

Her hands clenched. Her voice cracked with fury, with despair, with yearning all tangled into madness.

"Damn it! Damn it all! Damn him! Damn that mongrel! Damn the Hollowed World!"

And with her tantrum, she unleashed ruin.

Divine pillars of light erupted from her fingertips, arcing across the void like lances of heaven. They struck distant planets, their surfaces blooming into firestorms. Entire biospheres evaporated. Civilizations were silenced in moments. A chain of worlds was reduced to cinders, each divine blast more violent than the last.

Yet even after the devastation, Aixin's scream echoed still, reverberating between galaxies, like a scar across the cosmos.

"HALT YOUR TANTRUM, HEART-BORN!"

Aixin froze only for a breath, startled more by the audacity than the command itself. Then she snarled, her beauty hidden under solar flares twisted with wrath.

"You dare!?"

She swung her massive arm, the back of her palm streaking across the void like a crescent of light to strike down whatever insect dared to bark at her.

But the "insect" raised one frail hand.

Her divine flesh blackened instantly. Veins ruptured, pus spilling as her skin rotted away. In a blink, the corruption raced up her arm, devouring bone and sinew. Pain like she had not felt in eons surged into her chest.

Aixin screamed, her voice shuddering galaxies. In desperation, she forged a dagger of pure quintessence and sliced through her shoulder. The severed arm floated briefly, then melted into a heap of oozing corruption before dispersing into dust.

Breathing heavily, she glared at the offender.

Before her stood a withered figure no larger than a mortal man. His bald head glistened under the starlight. His flesh sagged with necrosis, his teeth yellowed, his eyes bloodshot and sunken. He hacked violently, a wracking cough that sprayed sickness into the void. His robes were dark, smeared with filth and rot.

Yet, despite his miserable form, there was authority in his presence.

"How about we be civil, Heart-born? Reduce your size, for my neck aches from looking up at you."

He coughed again, wet and heavy, like sickness itself made flesh.

Aixin's lips curled into a scornful smile. She ignored the ache of her severed arm, her divine aura flaring brighter to mask her wound.

"How dare you… Pestilence. To show yourself before me? Your very presence displeases me."

The void was still trembling from Aixin's tantrum when the frail, necrotic being raised his hand and proclaimed,

"My name… is CONQUEST!"

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Arrows of inky black bled into existence, drawn from the ether. They writhed like worms, their color blending seamlessly into the fabric of the void. To lower lifeforms' eyes, they would have been invisible, but Aixin felt each arrow humming with ruin, each shaft carrying annihilation. Her pride burned.

How dare this little thing threaten her, here, in her domain?

"The Celestial Circle forbade the roaming of beings in our realm, as per the treaty. Even the Supreme Beings, quiet though they are, gave their acknowledgment to this rule."

Aixin gritted her teeth as she reined her temper in front of this being.

The pale being smirked, teeth yellow under cracked lips. "And yet, here you are… roaming, dancing along the skirts of the Hollowed World. Oh, I am so very curious… what were you doing there?"

Aixin's golden aura flared, robes of quintessence rippling. "You dare spy on me!?"

"So, you don't deny it then." His voice softened, almost persuasive. "We need not be hostile. Like you, I too am a child of a Supreme Being—"

"More like a servant."

His grin only widened, like a knife sliding across skin. "Yet I know what you tell yourself in the depths of your hearts of hearts. That you are not a mere servant but a child. That perhaps… you are beloved. Maybe as a lover? A caretaker? A friend? More than a tool. More than the functions you were made for. Am I right? Or am I right?"

Aixin's breath hitched. Her knuckles whitened.

"You dare!"

The words struck deeper than the black arrows could have. He was right, and she loathed him for it. Rage surged, but so too did caution. The Heart-born were many, but their power paled next to the horsemen, the children of Death's blood. She knew she had no chance of winning should battle truly be joined.

Yet, to her astonishment, Pestilence sighed and lowered his hand. The arrows withered, dissolving into the ether as if they had never been. He tapped his temple with one sickly finger.

"Ah, what am I thinking?" He struck his forehead lightly, a grotesque pantomime of self-reproach. "I got ahead of myself. I swear… I didn't come to pick a fight. I only wished to speak. Forgive any disrespect."

He coughed, hacking phlegm into the void, then shrugged pitifully.

"I'm not like my boorish siblings. War, all muscle and no subtlety. Famine, an emotionally stunted fool. And Death junior… oh, don't get me started. The boy despises me, truly. People often mistake my horse for his, so what does he do? Kills the poor beast! Petty! Ah, forgive me, I digress. What I meant to say…"

He leaned forward, bloodshot eyes glimmering.

"Can we try again?"

Aixin remained rigid, divine aura swirling around her like a storm. Her pride screamed at her to lash out, to tear him apart. But survival… demanded restraint.

Slowly, she let her vast frame contract, quintessence weaving tighter, her form condensing until she stood nearly equal in size to him. A golden light flickered across her eyes, still wary.

To the Greater Universe, Pestilence was a cautionary tale wrapped in flesh. He was the whisper in the dark, the dirty, lying, treacherous wretch who delighted in chaos wherever he went. Kingdoms toppled not always by swords, but by the unseen rot he left festering in their roots. Among the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, he was the one least trusted, yet the one most feared.

The horsemen were notorious children of ruin, united not by love but by rivalry. To harm one of them was to draw the ire of the others, and few in the cosmos dared to bear that burden. For behind their childish games and cruel competitions loomed the Supreme Death, who ruled the Underworld with absolute dominion.

There was no killing a horseman. No matter the power, no matter the resources, they would always return. Unlike Ascended Souls who wrapped themselves in layers of immortality, these Rulers of Law were born from the very fabric of the Dao. They were laws given form, and so long as existence persisted, their essence endured. As for the horsemen? They were the peak of their kind.

Aixin knew this. And she feared it.

Once, when she had died, she felt herself carried toward the Underworld, and in that descent, one fear eclipsed all others: that Pestilence might find her first, drag her into his games, and turn her into a toy for eternity.

That was why she chose now to be cautious, as her common sense finally prevailed in her mind. To amuse him was to survive.

"Please," Pestilence said, voice ragged as ever. His sunken eyes wandered toward the stump where her right arm had been. "Heal your arm. Don't tell me you expect me to return it for you. You know… my every touch… conquers."

His thin smile was rotten, yet unwavering.

Aixin's glare sharpened like a blade. Quintessence surged through her veins, reknitting sinew and bone, until her arm blossomed anew in radiant perfection. "Done." Her voice dripped with disdain. "Now speak plainly. What do you want?"

Pestilence coughed into his sleeve, a fit that shook his decrepit frame, though his eyes never left her. "The Hollowed World. What did you find there? I want to know."

Her heart lurched, though her face betrayed nothing. Da Wei… His name flickered through her thoughts like forbidden fire. The prize she had risked everything for, the one thing that could earn her way back into the graces of the Supreme Heart. If she told Pestilence, she would lose it. If she shared, she would become nothing but another pawn in his endless games.

No. She would not yield her quarry to him.

"You presume too much," she replied smoothly, folding her arms as though she had already dismissed the question. "What I did there is no concern of yours. You don't know… and you never will."

Pestilence leaned forward with his crooked spine, his ruined breath rattling like broken glass in a storm. "Be at ease, sister… I seek no desire to harm you or rob you of your chance to win the heart of your master. I only crave a place to conquer. A dominion of my own, where I may revel and boast to my siblings of my might!"

The words were honeyed, false in texture yet strangely earnest. To any lesser being, the contradiction would be maddening, but Aixin understood him well. The horseman thrived in duplicity. That was his nature, corruption wrapped in courtesy.

Still, a scheme stirred within her mind. The mission her master, the Supreme Heart, had entrusted to her was clear: retrieve the existence known as Da Wei. Nothing else mattered.

The Heavenly Temple had merely been a means to an end. With her angels and her lore, they had struck bargains with her. They whispered of ways to break the seals Da Wei had shackled her with. They fed her scraps of knowledge, bartering in their arrogance, not realizing how much more she gleaned than she gave.

The Hollowed World. Most of what she knew had been pieced together from fragments, gossip from her sisters, and secrets teased from mortal lips. Yet in her dealings with the Heavenly Temple, a clearer picture had emerged.

It was her suggestion that they establish a faith, one designed to tarnish Da Wei's name, to erode his chances at ascension. The irony of mortals dragging a would-be god into the mire of slander amused her endlessly. And in exchange? The Temple had yielded truths hidden for eras. Truths she now held close.

She tilted her chin, golden light catching on her skin, a calculated gesture of allure and command. "Tell me, Pestilence," she purred, "do you know the true nature of the Hollowed World?"

The horseman's jaundiced eyes widened, and for a moment his rotted features seemed almost childlike in their eagerness. "Please, please tell me!" His fingers twitched, black arrows coiling and dissipating in his wake, forgotten in his excitement.

Aixin smiled, relishing the control. "I went there not merely to observe, but to peel back veils. I have always delighted in uncovering treasures… glittering secrets to lay before my master's feet. And in my exchanges with mortals and lesser life, I pieced together what that realm truly is."

Pestilence leaned forward, his foul breath carrying across the void, impatient. "What is it? Do not keep me in suspense, woman!"

Her lips curved into something between a sneer and a smile. "The Hollowed World is no sanctuary, no mere fragment cast adrift. It is a prison. A lock upon a sibling of the Supreme Beings themselves. Not of life, nor of heart, nor even of death… but of something older. Something colder. The void given form."

Her words lingered, cryptic and heavy, their meaning sinking into Pestilence like a sickness.

And though she did not say it aloud, her thoughts burned with possession: "Da Wei is mine. My master will see, and he will praise me. I will not share this quarry with you, Pestilence."

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