"Ugh...!"

The palm descended.

Not falling, but arriving.

There was no wind in the Void, yet space groaned and screamed, cosmic radiance burst outward in fractal torrents, each ray splitting law, matter, and probability alike. Whatever existed between palm and Void did not shatter.

It was unwritten.

The Yang Faction Great Lord reacted first.

A vortex bloomed behind him, an emergency scar carved into pre-existence itself void, and he hurled himself into it without hesitation. Pride meant nothing when extinction threatened. The vortex sealed instantly, erased as if it had never dared exist.

The remaining three did not flee.

They caught the palm.

It buckled.

Three colossal figures braced themselves against impossible pressure, divine frames groaning as their authority shaking the heavens instinctively. Teeth ground, veins of law ignited beneath skin forged from epochs.

They exchanged glances.

Not confidence.... Shock!

[What…] the Yin Faction Great Lord hissed, dark red blood seeping from the corners of his eyes. [What did that lunatic Shi Tian do to that boy?]

The Samsara Great Lord said nothing at first. His face had gone pale, an expression not worn since before the first cycle of rebirth.

[This is wrong…] he finally murmured. [This transcends causality... He stepped into Great Lordhood.]

His gaze sharpened.

[He made through it! Unbelievable!]

Logic rebelled.

A being not yet fully severed from origin.

A soul that had not completed gestation in reality's womb.

And yet, he stood above them.

[Enough!] the Samsara Great Lord roared, fury masking fear. [I refuse to believe three Great Lords cannot suppress a thing that hasn't even been born!]

He inhaled, his form expanded.

What had once been humanoid stretched into a towering incarnation of Samsara itself, cycles of birth and death spinning beneath his feet, vortexes collapsing into nothingnes beneath his weight.

[Now!]

The Yin Faction Great Lord followed, authority erupting like an open wound.

Only the Obsidian Great Lord hesitated.

A moment, then a transmission, tight and controlled:

[I will cover you two.]

He withdrew, the instant he turned, his eyes widened, a chill ran behind his behind, for the first time since his ascension, terror surfaced.

Above them, behind the towering entity, something ignited.

WHOOOSH!

WHOOOSH!

Flames descended.

Not fire... Sky Flames!

A blue-luminescent inferno fell from nowhere, screaming as it burned, not sound, but will. The Void recoiled as entire universes caught within its fringe were reduced to ash in less than a heartbeat, their laws collapsing into incandescent cinders.

[Sky Flame…] the Obsidian Great Lord whispered hoarsely.

One of the Ten Deadly Existences.

Not because it could kill a Great Lord outright, but because it could actually injure them.

A naturally born consciousness of destruction, older than most gods, unaligned with law, faction, or cycle. Wherever it bonded, catastrophe followed. Transcendents spent eternities trying, and failing, to refine even a fragment.

It burned the bond between soul and body.

Millions of invisible blades grinding endlessly, peeling existence thread by thread.

Pain beyond madness, damage that took eons to heal, if it healed at all!

Below Transcendence, souls shattered so completely that reincarnation became impossible unless every fragment was retrieved by hand.

The entity in the Void watched with faint amusement.

The Sky Flame rose behind it like a throne, spiraling and coiling, responding not to command, but recognition.

Then... its eyes glowed.

Two orbs launched forward.

At first, they seemed small.

Then the Great Lords saw inside them.

Galaxies!

Entire universes compressed into unstable singularities, screaming as their internal laws tore themselves apart.

The Yin Great Lord's pupils shrank.

[He's...!]

[Lunatic! Throwing universes at us!] the Samsara Great Lord finished, voice breaking.

If those detonated, their souls would fracture.

Damage that would not heal for eras.

The Sky Flame surged forward in tandem, blue inferno twisting around collapsing cosmos like execution chains.

Above them, the entity finally spoke.

Its voice was not loud, it did not need to be.

The ripples alone were enough to shred reality, layers peeling like wet parchment as the Void convulsed around the sound.

"Surrender," it said calmly.

"Or face judgment."

"!!!"

The Samsara Great Lord snorted, disbelief burning hotter than fear.

He understood destruction.

Shattering a universe was crude but survivable, laws dispersed, causality unraveled, existence dissolved into drifting fragments. Like a soul crushed into mist, it scattered, thinned, and faded.

But detonation was different.

To collapse a universe inward and force it to explode outward deliberately... that was annihilation without drift.

No diffusion.

No escape.

Even the one who initiated it would be caught in the backlash.

Even Wang Xiao.

[He wouldn't dare]

…would he?

But were they willing to test that assumption today?

Before another word could be exchanged.

"Escaping already…"

Wang Xiao's gaze flicked sideways, momentarily surprised.

The Obsidian Great Lord had acted.

Beneath his feet, a strange mist ozzed, dense, viscous, layered with seals older than recorded cycles. In an instant, it condensed into a singularity of terrifying purity, an energy mass equivalent to billions of collapsing black holes compressed into a single point.

The Void screamed as everything nearby was dragged inward.

Then... nothing.

The singularity vanished.

So did the Obsidian Great Lord.

No explosion.

No residue.

No trail.

Wang Xiao exhaled slowly.

"These old bastards…" he muttered.

Too many forbidden techniques.

Too many life-saving treasures.

Extorting them properly would take time.

His gaze shifted to the remaining two.

The Yin Faction Great Lord and the Samsara Great Lord stiffened.

They felt it, the pressure suddenly vanished.

Gone!

The crushing authority pinning their souls dissolved as Wang Xiao withdrew his presence entirely, the Void relaxing as if released from strangulation.

They froze.

That, more than the attack, unsettled them.

Wang Xiao wasn't posturing.

He was thinking.

Unlike Shi Tian, whose bloodline hatred ran too deep for negotiation, these two had no true life-and-death enmity with him.

The Yin Faction had lost territory, but territory could be rebuilt. Most of its people had already been resurrected. The remainder were… expendable.

The Samsara Great Lord had come for one reason only:

To crush a bug before it grew fangs.

He was simply late.

Very late.

They understood the situation instantly.

This was not a fight to the death.

And truce was not defeat.

Without exchanging another word, the two Great Lords withdrew, their forms dissolving into layered exits, sealing behind them without daring to leave scars behind.

Wang Xiao watched them go.

He was not arrogant enough to believe that even as a newly transcended Great Lord, he could face all four alone.

Shi Tian had been wounded only because grief had blinded him.

Under normal circumstances, even survival would have been uncertain.

His gaze shifted.

Far away, not far in distance, but far in definition.

His universe.... Infinity!

The Void between them distorted like heat haze, spacetime rippling as his perception reached across something that should not be measurable.

Then... clarity.

Wang Xiao raised his hand.

With a single, effortless wave, entire spacetime folded outward, like a sheet.

Infinity was sealed.

A cocoon formed, layer upon layer of compressed causality, law, and temporal lock. Inside, time froze, motion ceased. Cause and effect were suspended mid-thought.

Entry and exit were forbidden.

A universe wrapped and frozen.

Hidden in plain sight.

____

Back in the Netherworld.

BANG!

Yang Shi Tian obliterated his throne with a single punch.

The obsidian dais shattered into dust as his regenerated arm trembled with fury, divine blood steaming as it evaporated into the air.

Subordinates knelt, faces pale.

Their invincible lord had returned... damaged.

That alone terrified them beyond words.

But elsewhere, the reaction was different.

For countless eras, the Netherworld had remained in equilibrium.

Four Great Lords.

Four factions.

A balance maintained through mutual deterrence.

And now.... a fifth had appeared.

Uninvited?

Unplanned?

Unprecedented!

Panic brewed quietly, until Wang Xiao's will descended upon the Netherworld. Not as pressure, but as declaration, a transmission echoed across the skies, carried by law itself.

A temporary truce.

No encroachment on territories.

No interference.

His dominion would be recognized.

His territory named.

"Infinity."

The name of his universe.

The moment the Netherworld had crashed into it, cracks and fissures spreading like spiderwebs across spacetime, Infinity had swallowed it whole, merging, stabilizing, claiming it.

Thus was born the fifth faction of the Netherworld:

The Wuxian Dynasty, "The land of Infinity".

The cocoon sealing it ensured silence, frozen time ensured ignorance, no one within Wuxian Dynasty yet knew what had changed.

For now.

The proclamation rippled outward.

The people doubted.

Rumors of a fifth Great Lord sounded like heresy.

Then the Obsidian Faction did not refute it.

The Samsara Faction confirmed it, formally announcing that delegations would be sent for official communication.

The greatest surprise came from the Yin Faction.

Despite suffering loss, despite humiliation, its Great Lord agreed.

His true intentions hidden behind a smile that did not reach his eyes.

A cunning light flickered.

Only the Yang Faction responded differently, recruitment surged, armies expanding... Forges burned without rest.

Under the calm surface of the Netherworld... a storm began to gather.