Chapter 3098 - 3098: The Final (1)
Yun Lintian lowered the sword, not in a threatening posture, but as a statement of readiness. “So, go ahead. Devour them. I will wait. Let us have our final battle when you are at your strongest.”
For the first time in eons, Yin felt a sensation so alien it took him a moment to recognize it. It was humiliation. Not the frustrated rage of Nian Shi, but a cold, sharp sting to his primordial pride.
This mortal-turned-god was not just challenging him; he was allowing him to power up. He was looking down on him, treating the great Uncreation as a pupil being given a chance to show his best work.
A cold snort, devoid of any amusement, escaped Yin’s lips. “Such arrogance. You will regret this charity.”
But he did not refuse. The logic was impeccable. To face Yun Lintian in his current, unified state, he needed every ounce of power he could muster. Pride was a luxury he could not afford if he wanted to survive, let alone win.
“Very well,” Yin said, his voice a low growl. “Since you are so eager to witness my true form.”
He turned his back on Yun Lintian, a gesture of utter contempt, and faced his remaining hunters and the space where his other selves resided.
“Your purpose is now,” Yin stated, his voice echoing with absolute command.
The eight Void Hunters, from Number Three to Ten, did not hesitate. They did not plead or protest. They were extensions of his will. As one, they dissolved, their forms unraveling into streams of concentrated void energy that shot towards Yin and poured into him.
Simultaneously, the space around him rippled. Two more figures emerged from hidden folds in reality. They were both Yin, identical to him, but their auras were slightly different—one felt ancient and weary, the other sharp and cunning. These were the other two quarters of his whole self that had been hiding and recovering.
They looked at the prime Yin, then at each other. There was no need for words. They understood the necessity.
As one, the two additional Yins also dissolved, transforming into torrents of pure, black Uncreation aura. The three streams—from the hunters and the two selves—converged on the prime Yin.
The process was silent and terrifyingly efficient. There was no screaming agony like with Nian Shi. This was a homecoming. The void welcomed the void.
Yin’s form absorbed the energy seamlessly. He did not grow in size, but his presence deepened, intensified, became more absolute. The wound on his chest closed completely, vanishing without a trace.
The cycles of creation and destruction within his eyes spun faster, becoming a dizzying, mesmerizing vortex. The aura he radiated was no longer just that of a powerful entity; it was the aura of the fundamental law of ending itself, fully realized and consolidated.
When the last wisp of energy was absorbed, Yin stood alone in the void. He was now complete. Four parts made whole. This was the true Chasm of Uncreation, as he was at the moment of his birth, equal and opposite to the Creator in her prime.
He turned back to face Yun Lintian, his expression one of cold, lethal serenity. The humiliation was gone, burned away by the absolute power now thrumming within him.
“Thank you for the time,” Yin said, his voice now a resonant hum that seemed to still the very quantum foam of existence. “I am now at my peak. Let us see if your confidence was justified, or merely the final foolishness before your end.”
There was no more banter, no more posturing. The moment Yin declared himself at his peak, Yun Lintian moved.
It was not a teleportation or a blur of speed. It was an erasure of the concept of distance. One moment he was across the void, the next, his God Slaying Sword was already descending towards Yin’s head, its pure, sharp light a silent promise of termination.
Yin’s reaction was instantaneous. The Sword of Nothingness materialized in his hand, a shard of absolute void, and he brought it up to parry. It was a perfect, instinctual defense, the embodiment of “no” meeting an attack head-on.
CLANG!
The sound was not of metal on metal, but of two absolute concepts colliding. Yet, the result was not a stalemate.
Yin’s eyes widened a fraction. He felt his sword, the very concept of negation, waver. It didn’t break or shatter, but for a microsecond, it failed to fully negate. A sliver of Yun Lintian’s power, a thread of that pure, unified energy, slipped through his defense and grazed his shoulder.
It didn’t cut him. It un-defined a tiny patch of his form. For that instant, his shoulder simply ceased to have the property of “being Yin’s shoulder.” It was a terrifying, fundamental violation.
Yin instantly disengaged, flowing backward like smoke. The initial shock was profound. In all his existence, since his birth alongside the Creator, nothing had ever bypassed the Sword of Nothingness’s negation. It was an absolute law.
He changed his tactics immediately. He abandoned direct defense. He became the void itself, shifting and flowing around Yun Lintian’s attacks. He would let a slash pass through where his torso had been a moment before, the space itself dissolving in the sword’s wake. He would redirect the force of a thrust into a distant, empty sector of space, unmaking a nebula light-years away.
Yun Lintian followed, his movements calm and relentless. He was a hunter of perfect patience and precision. He didn’t waste energy on grand, sweeping attacks. Each movement of his sword was minimal, efficient, and deadly. He was probing, testing, understanding the flow of Yin’s newfound completeness.
The battle that ensued was beyond anything ever witnessed. It dwarfed the primordial war between Yin and the Creator. That had been a conflict of two opposing forces.
This was a conflict between a perfect duality and its original, separated half. It was the universe fighting to understand if it was a unified whole or two eternally warring parts.
They moved through the cosmos, and reality itself was their canvas and their casualty. They didn’t destroy galaxies; they rewrote their histories. They didn’t extinguish stars; they changed the fundamental constants that allowed them to burn. The very laws of physics became suggestions that they alternately enforced and repealed.
Seeing that his pure swordsmanship and evasive tactics were only allowing him to barely keep pace, Yun Lintian shifted his approach.
He didn’t need to gather energy or chant. He simply willed it.
ROAR!