Inside the crimson barrier, the air was compressed into a near-static state. Every sound was stretched thin and then crushed back, as if the entire battlefield had been dragged into a sinking architecture where change maintained a perilous equilibrium between stagnation and collapse.
Reverend Tianhe stood at the center of the blood shroud. His robes remained still, yet his presence blanketed the entire field. His existence was a form of stability—a stability so absolute that all resistance felt redundant. Any power nearing him was directly erased by a higher order of rules, like a drop of water falling into lava, vanished before it could even touch the surface.
The Silver-Haired Man and the Black-Haired Man stood on opposite sides.
The Silver-Haired Man's right arm was utterly shattered from the shoulder down, the wound sealed by frost. His left leg dragged, yet he continued to push forward. With every step, fine cracks webbed across the ground, and a frigid chill surged up from the fissures, causing the battlefield's temperature to plummet. His white robes were no longer recognizable, stained with blood—both his own and that of others. The dried blood had turned black; the fresh blood dripped from his hem, freezing the moment it hit the earth.
The Black-Haired Man did not move. He was watching. Not just looking at the enemy, but calculating. His lips moved, not in speech, but in a count: one, two, three, four. He was timing the frequency of Reverend Tianhe's rhythmic pulse of power. The frequency wasn't fixed; each contraction was half a breath shorter than the last, and each expansion pushed out another ten feet of pressure. He was looking for the gap—a gap thinner than a needle's point, shorter than a blink.
Lin Chuan was trapped in the crowd, forced to witness it all. He couldn't move, couldn't speak, couldn't even avert his eyes. But his consciousness was unnervingly sharp—sharp enough to capture the minute variances between every shift in the atmosphere. He didn't know why he was here or what this place was. He only knew his body no longer belonged to him; he was like a man tied to a chair, forced to watch a play whose ending was already written.
The Silver-Haired Man struck first.
Frost exploded beneath his feet. The ground caved in as ice surged from within, forming a spear that pierced through space, thrusting toward Reverend Tianhe at terminal velocity. But the strike vanished before it could reach its mark—it didn't deflect or shatter; it simply ceased to exist.
The Silver-Haired Man didn't stop. Using the rhythmic displacement caused by his mangled body, he constantly shifted his trajectory. Simultaneously, a burst of energy erupted from his stump, condensing into a dense flurry of ice blades that blanketed every possible path of evasion. These blades weren't just scattered; they were pressed forward in layers, as if someone had torn winter from the sky and slammed it onto the spot where Reverend Tianhe stood.
The Black-Haired Man still hadn't made his move. He spoke only one sentence.
"Hold for three more breaths."
His voice was low, yet exceptionally clear.
The Silver-Haired Man didn't respond. He already knew the answer. There was no fear on his face—it isn't normal for a dying man to lack fear. Lin Chuan stared at that face, unable to look away. He didn't know who this man was, but he memorized that face. The corners of the mouth were level—no grimace, no clenching. The brow was relaxed—no furrowing, no tension. The eyes were open—not glaring, just seeing. Looking at the opponent, looking at the sky, looking at the widening crack on the blood shroud. Like a man who had settled all his accounts and was simply watching how the final debt would be paid.
Before the third breath could pass, Reverend Tianhe raised his hand.
Space folded in that instant. The trajectories of every ice blade were rearranged, causing them to miss one another before they could even collide, rendering the entire offensive moot. The Silver-Haired Man's advance was utterly suppressed, like a bird hitting an invisible wall; wings still flapping, but the body frozen in place.
The Black-Haired Man finally moved. But not to attack—to retreat. He was withdrawing. Lin Chuan saw it clearly. He was pulling back.
The Silver-Haired Man understood. He didn't try again.
"I was waiting for that."
As the words fell, the frost reversed. He began to intentionally deconstruct himself—skin freezing, flesh disintegrating, bones shattering. Every piece that left his body transformed into ice, forcibly raising the ground itself. A glacier grew from beneath his feet, not through accumulation, but erupting from his very marrow.
This was the only way to touch that higher level of power: mutual destruction.
Lin Chuan watched from the crowd. He watched as the man's right arm shattered, then the left, then the shoulders, then the chest. With every piece that broke, the glacier rose higher. When it reached his chest, his expression was still visible—no pain, no fear, no relief. Just something Lin Chuan couldn't quite name, something like "completion." Like a craftsman laying the final brick, clapping his hands, and saying, "Done."
In the final moment, he glanced at Lin Chuan. It wasn't a plea for help, nor a farewell. It was like a confirmation that someone was watching.
Then, his face shattered.
An ice mountain grew where a man had died.
The Silver-Haired Man's consciousness dissipated entirely in that moment. There was no process; he was simply drained by the glacier—like water poured into sand, leaving nothing behind. Lin Chuan felt the space go empty. It wasn't that "someone had left," but that "no one had ever existed there."
Then, he was filled into that void.
Before the explosion could complete, Lin Chuan's consciousness was pulled into that disintegrating body. Not a replacement, but a filling of the gap—the Silver-Haired Man was gone, and he was here.
Pain. A pain so absolute the brain refused to process it; the concept of "hurting" couldn't even form. The right arm was gone; the stump felt like it had been scorched by fire and then sealed in ice, the two sensations twisting together. The left leg was useless. Sensation remained, but the leg no longer belonged to him. You tell it to move; it doesn't. You command it; it ignores you. It isn't yours. The chest was cracking; with every inch it split, he heard a snap, like ice breaking beneath his feet. Frigid air bored out from the cracks into his lungs; they felt frozen, unable to draw breath. It bored into his stomach, causing it to cramp. It bored into his heart; his heartbeat was fracturing—one heavy, one light, one there, then gone.
In that very moment—
Ding. System Awakened.
Lin Chuan's brain short-circuited for a second. A System? He was a bottom-tier laborer who spent his days delivering food and cursing security guards, and his nights being a security guard cursing delivery guys—someone who didn't even dare to dream of winning the lottery. And now, he had a System? Holy shit. It wasn't "Oh shit, I'm dead," it was "Holy shit, I'm rich."
Information began pouring into his mind—not sentence by sentence, but in massive blocks, as if someone were grinding up a book and funneling it straight in. But he had no time for that because his body was changing.
Bones reconstructed, meridians rearranged, flesh refilled. The fractures were repaired, the missing pieces overwritten. Power flowed back from the core, rapidly making the body whole. The right arm grew out from the stump—bone first, white and sharp, like a bamboo shoot piercing the soil. Then the meridians, red and winding, coiling around the bone like vines on a trellis. Then the blood vessels, dense and webbed like tree roots, branching off again and again until they were as thin as hair. Finally, the skin, rolling outward to cover everything beneath.
Sensation returned to his left leg. He moved a toe—it moved. It obeyed him. It was his.
The cracks in his Dantian were smoothed over; the walls thickened, turning from stone to jade, from jade to crystal. With every layer of reinforcement, his heartbeat grew heavier—not slower, but weightier, each thrum like a drum beating in his chest.
Power surged through his veins like molten mercury, heavy and hot, rushing from his heart to his fingertips, his toes, his scalp. His skin emitted a faint blue glow, identical to the eyes of the Silver-Haired Man before he turned to ice. It was the glow of the Ten-Extinction Physique—the System had rewritten the injuries, but not the constitution. The "Death-Extinction" body remained, now bolstered even further by the System.
The corners of his mouth curled upward. Not because he wanted to smile, but because he couldn't help it.
Damn, so this is a cheat code. He, Lin Chuan—delivery boy and gatekeeper—was finally going to turn the tables.
The progress bar climbed. 70%... 80%... 90%...
He opened his mouth, wanting to shout that breath of defiance out loud—
In that exact instant, the Black-Haired Man failed.
Reverend Tianhe's pressure descended. Space contracted, the glacier was forcibly suppressed, and the self-destruction was prevented from reaching its final loop. The Black-Haired Man, positioned within the disintegration zone, did not struggle or resist—he simply activated his ability.
Rebirth.
The world did not move backward. The result was overwritten.
And Lin Chuan's System, in that moment, was snapped in two.
It wasn't that the Black-Haired Man targeted him; rather, the Silver-Haired Man's karma had been tied to the Black-Haired Man. The "Yin" half of the Yin-Yang Reversal Gu was inside the Silver-Haired Man's body. When the Black-Haired Man was reborn, the Silver-Haired Man was pulled back with him, and Lin Chuan was dragged back along for the ride.
Error. Interruption.
All loading stopped; the structure froze. His body was stuck in a half-finished state. His right arm was two-thirds grown, bone and meridians exposed, skin unfinished. The meridians in his left leg were only half-replaced—the new ones were thicker than the old, the two sets twisting together, grinding against each other with every movement. His Dantian wall had only upgraded halfway—the top half was crystal, the bottom half jade, with a horizontal line dividing them where cracks had already begun to spread.
Lin Chuan stood there, stunned.
His cheat code had been cut off.
The System hadn't vanished. It had recorded everything, but it couldn't be read. The storage module remained, but the retrieval module was shattered. The data was there, but it couldn't be opened. Like a closed book—the words were on the pages, but the cover wouldn't budge.
Meanwhile, the Black-Haired Man had already left this cycle with his full memories intact.
Lin Chuan stood once again at the edge of the blood shroud. Everything had returned to the starting point. The Silver-Haired Man wasn't dead yet, the glacier hadn't risen, and Reverend Tianhe was still there. It was exactly the same as "before." The crack on the barrier was in the same spot, the crowd was still screaming, the wind was still blowing.
But he didn't know that. He just felt that something was wrong.
When the Silver-Haired Man dragged his left leg toward the edge of the shroud, Lin Chuan's body moved on its own—not a step, just a lean. He tilted an inch to the left, for no reason and without thought. A second later, a shockwave tore through the space where he had just been standing, flipping a man behind him to the ground. That man lay there with a hole in his chest, blood gushing out, eyes still open, not yet realizing he was dead.
Lin Chuan looked at him, then at where he was standing. He didn't know why he had dodged. He just felt—like he was supposed to be standing right here.
The Silver-Haired Man began to walk again. A drag of the left leg, a step with the right. Exactly as Lin Chuan remembered. But the Black-Haired Man was different. He was already moving—he was already standing in the perfect spot. He stood in the gaps of Reverend Tianhe's breathing, in the blind spots of every attack, in every "just right" location. It wasn't reaction; it was precognition. He knew exactly which breath Reverend Tianhe would contract on, where the Silver-Haired Man's ice blades would explode, when to retreat, and when to advance. Every step landed on the timeline perfectly, like a man walking a path he had already traveled.
Lin Chuan didn't understand it, but it felt familiar. Like he'd seen it before.
He stared at the Black-Haired Man's back, and something began to surge in his mind—not images or sounds, but a blurry sense of "maybe." Maybe he had seen this man stand like this. Maybe he'd seen this white light strike like this. Maybe he knew what would happen in the next second. But he couldn't grasp it. It was like a dream you remember slightly upon waking, but the moment you reach for it, it dissolves.
The System was in his head, but it wouldn't open. Like a closed book, the words were there, but he couldn't turn the page. Like a computer with a hard drive full of data, but the screen was black.
But he wasn't in a hurry. The stones were shifting; the water was leaking. One day, that crack would be wide enough for him to reach his hand inside.
The battle reached its critical junction. The Silver-Haired Man couldn't hold on any longer, and the Black-Haired Man was retreating. Lin Chuan knew what was coming next—the Silver-Haired Man would say "I can't win," the Black-Haired Man would nod, and the Silver-Haired Man would blow himself up. It wasn't his consciousness judging; his body reacted first. His muscles tensed, his breathing changed, his heart sank—like a man standing at a cliff's edge, knowing he had to jump, even though his legs were already weak.
The Silver-Haired Man spoke. "I can't win." The Black-Haired Man nodded. It was exactly as Lin Chuan "felt" it would be.
The Silver-Haired Man turned and walked toward the edge of the shroud. Frigid air poured out, ice mist drifted, and his skin began to turn white. Lin Chuan watched his back, and something in his brain sparked—familiarity. It was as if he had seen this back before. As if in another place, another time, he had watched this person walk just like this. Dragging a left leg, right arm empty, white robes soaked in blood. But that memory wasn't his; he didn't know why he had it.
The Silver-Haired Man transformed. The glacier rose. Exactly as Lin Chuan "felt" it would be.
But this time was different. The Black-Haired Man didn't wait. He entered the structural layer before the self-destruction point and implanted the power of the Yin-Yang Reversal Gu. The Yin Gu struck the Silver-Haired Man's body and "locked" death in place—this wasn't resurrection, but rather stopping "death" at the very moment it occurred, neither moving forward nor backward. Like a blade halfway through a neck, stopped mid-swing—not cutting through, but not pulling out either. The man was dead, but the corpse remained alive.
The ice stopped growing, and it stopped receding. The Silver-Haired Man froze there, caught in the state of "having died, but not yet finished dying."
The Yang Gu supplemented this. Again, not a resurrection, but a reconnection of "death" and "life." But the price of this connection was a karmic bond—the Silver-Haired Man's "life" was now partitioned from the Black-Haired Man's "fate." His lifeline was like a thin thread, the other end tied to the Black-Haired Man's karma. If the Black-Haired Man died, he died. He could do nothing that might lead to the Black-Haired Man's death.
Reverend Tianhe was finally touched. Not by ice, not by blades—but by "Yin and Yang." Life and death collided at the same point, and his rules didn't know whether to erase life or erase death. The two commands crashed into each other, creating a rift.
The Black-Haired Man had been waiting for this rift. Not to attack Reverend Tianhe, but to push Reverend Tianhe's own rules into that rift. The rules jammed themselves.
Reverend Tianhe retreated. Not beaten back, but forced back by his own laws.
This was the only opening the Black-Haired Man had found after countless resets.
The battle was over.
The Black-Haired Man stood still, turned around, and looked at the body frozen in the ice.
He walked over. The Silver-Haired Man's body was shattered, but the pieces were held together by the Yin Gu like a jigsaw puzzle—the cracks remained, but they didn't fall apart. The Black-Haired Man reached out, and the Yang Gu returned to his palm, its white light fading and then dying out.
The Silver-Haired Man opened his eyes. Blue, transparent, exactly as they were before the explosion. He looked at his hand, then at the Black-Haired Man.
"Why did you save me?"
The Black-Haired Man didn't answer immediately. He brushed the dust off his clothes.
"It was convenient."
The Silver-Haired Man remained silent.
The Black-Haired Man glanced at him.
"There aren't many like you."
The Silver-Haired Man frowned. "What?"
"Tough to kill. And... willing to die."
The Silver-Haired Man fell silent.
The Black-Haired Man turned to look at the distant wind and snow.
"Dying is too easy. Living... that's where the interest lies."
He paused, then added: "Your current state is just right."
The Silver-Haired Man stared at him. "What do you mean?"
The Black-Haired Man smiled slightly. "You're still useful."
The Silver-Haired Man was silent for a long time. The glacier remained, the ice making faint, snapping sounds in the wind.
"I will go with you."
The Black-Haired Man turned away. He didn't say "thank you," or "you won't regret this." He just turned and walked into the blizzard.
The Silver-Haired Man followed. One in front, one behind.
The Black-Haired Man didn't know that there was another person inside that body.
Lin Chuan said in his mind: Fine, I'll follow. But you just wait.
He was in that body. He couldn't move, he couldn't speak, but he knew many things. He knew how the Black-Haired Man fought, he knew Reverend Tianhe's weakness, he knew where the white light would come from. All the answers were in his head.
But he couldn't read them.
Those memories were locked in an iron chest; the key was inside the chest, but the chest wouldn't open.
He didn't know that he was the key inside his own head. But the readers knew.
The snow swept past them, never stopping.
Lin Chuan was in that body, following a man he didn't know toward a place he didn't know.
But he was no longer in a hurry. The stones were shifting; the water was leaking. One day.