Immortal Paladin

[POV: Da Wei]

I straightened my clothes, cupped my fist, and bowed to the Great Sage, Heaven’s Equal. Despite the beating we’d just received, I maintained the most respectful expression I could muster.

“Great Sage, Heaven’s Equal, I sincerely apologize for our rude behavior. However, I’ve come here to seek your aid in an important quest of mine. The Supreme Void is a threat to the entire Tower, and I believe that if we joined forces with you and a Floor Master of the Tower, we would stand a good chance of repelling him. With your strength and our combined efforts, we could put an end to his schemes.”

The Great Sage stopped laughing.

His eyes settled on me, and his expression became one of unmistakable judgment, as though he’d just discovered something particularly unpleasant stuck to the bottom of his shoe.

“I’ve never liked your ilk,” he said with a grimace. “Supreme Beings are a bunch of no-good, never-do-wells whom I’d be ashamed to even look at. Do you know how low the bar must be for me to feel that way? Huh? Supreme, my ass! They can’t even do the one thing they were supposedly made for!”

“And what’s that?” Ru Qiu asked.

“I can’t say.”

The Great Sage paused, looking momentarily bewildered by his own answer.

“Hmm... That’s weird. I can’t remember.” He scratched his head before waving dismissively at us. “Whatever. I’m not changing my mind. Go do your quest or whatever. I’ve got my own things to do, so don’t bother me.”

I stared at him, then I shouted, “Your balls are small!”

The Great Sage stopped in his tracks. He slowly turned around, looking at me as though he’d just heard the most ridiculous statement in the history of the universe.

“What did you just say? If you’re trying to be funny, you’re doing a terrible job.”

“Sun Wukong, you’re a coward, and you’ve got small balls.” I stared directly into his eyes, entirely unconcerned with the consequences of my words. “Actually, if we’re being more literal with our metaphors, I suppose it’s more accurate to say you’ve got no balls at all. Maybe you lost them during your imprisonment.”

I turned to Ru Qiu.

“Ru Qiu, go look around the mountain. Help me search for them. We might find them somewhere around here.”

Ru Qiu stared at me with an expression that practically screamed, ’Don’t you dare drag me into whatever the hell you’re doing.’

I ignored him.

Bending down, I picked up a stone about the size of my fist and held it out toward the Great Sage.

“Is this yours?”

“...”

I crouched down again and picked up another rock, this one roughly the size of a basketball.

“What about this one? Is this yours?”

“...”

I nodded thoughtfully, as though I’d just made an important scientific discovery.

“I see. So these aren’t your balls. If they were, I can understand why you’d be embarrassed. You’d probably walk funny if they weren’t symmetrical in weight and shape. Yes, that could be a serious problem. In a way, this represents an imbalance within you, Great Sage. But don’t worry. Even if your balls aren’t the same weight or shape, you’re still Heaven’s Equal. Nobody will judge or belittle you just because you’ve got no balls or because they’re unevenly distributed.”

Taunting someone with an ego the size of the universe was generally considered a good way to get yourself killed. Taunting Sun Wukong, who had a reputation for being one of the most unruly beings in existence, was probably several times worse.

Unfortunately, I needed him to pay attention to me. If there was even the slightest chance of convincing him to cooperate, I had to make sure he didn’t simply walk away.

And if there was one thing I knew about the Great Sage, it was that his pride wouldn’t let an insult go unanswered.

“You’re courting death!” he screamed, a wicked smile spreading across his face.

Then he disappeared.

My physical abilities weren’t sufficient to react to his speed. However, my Origin Art, Ophanim, allowed me to perceive what my body couldn’t follow. I saw the Great Sage approaching, his movements so fast that the world around him seemed frozen. I also saw the immediate future, in which my head was smashed apart in a gruesome display.

Well, that was unpleasant.

I projected the vision through Ophanim, sharing it with Ru Qiu.

The Great Sage might have manhandled my companion earlier, but that wasn’t because Ru Qiu lacked the strength to fight him. The problem was that he couldn’t mentally process the Great Sage’s movements quickly enough to respond. His body was powerful, but even the strongest muscles were useless if their owner couldn’t perceive the incoming attack.

Now, however, he had my precognition to compensate for that weakness.

I watched as Ru Qiu moved in response to the information I’d shared with him.

His foot connected with the Great Sage’s cheek.

The impact sent the Monkey King flying, crashing into the flipped mountain with enough force to send debris scattering in every direction.

Ru Qiu limped as he withdrew his leg, clearly injured by the effort of landing that single blow. Yet he wore a wide grin, as though the pain was a small price to pay for the satisfaction of kicking the Great Sage in the face.

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I cast an empowered Blessed Regeneration on him, restoring his injured leg.

Then I saw my own head exploding.

Apparently, the Great Sage wasn’t done yet.

I immediately relayed the next vision to Ru Qiu. He raised his hand and blocked the incoming kick with his palm. The impact snapped his arm, but his regeneration quickly restored the broken bones before the damage could cripple him.

I used Castling to swap places with Ru Qiu, suddenly aware of another impending death.

The Great Sage’s kick struck Ru Qiu’s neck instead.

I heard a sickening snap.

Under normal circumstances, that would’ve been enough to kill Ru Qiu. It certainly would’ve killed me if I hadn’t reacted in time. I cast Great Cure at the exact moment of impact, repairing the damage before it could become fatal and giving Ru Qiu the opening he needed to counterattack.

He gestured with his uninjured hand and manifested his Supremacy Trait.

”Fallen.”

The Great Sage suddenly dropped to his knees as an immense gravitational force bore down on him, pinning him against the ground.

“Immortal Art: Defying the Heaven’s Decree.”

An eclipse appeared overhead.

Dark flames surged from Ru Qiu’s body, gathering into the shape of a saber in his hand. Without the slightest hesitation, he raised the weapon and attempted to behead the Great Sage.

I stared at him in disbelief.

’This idiot really knows how to get carried away.’

We had come here to recruit allies, not to start a war with one of the strongest beings on the Tower. I’d expected the Great Sage to be difficult to persuade, but I hadn’t intended to antagonize him to the point where Ru Qiu would try to cut off his head.

Before I could stop him, however, the Great Sage vanished in a somersault.

A golden cloud appeared beneath his feet, carrying him into the air. He stopped above us, looking down with an expression of delighted fury.

“You want a piece of me?!”

He reached into his ear and pulled out a tiny, needle-like object.

“Ruyi Jingu Bang, grow!”

The needle expanded in an instant, growing into a massive pillar that crashed down upon us with such brutality that it tore through the earth.

Ru Qiu grabbed me by the back of my clothes.

The world suddenly turned upside down under the effects of Ru Qiu’s Supremacy Trait.

Or perhaps it was the heavens and earth themselves that had been reversed. I couldn’t tell anymore. One moment, we were standing on solid ground, and the next, we were falling through the air while looking down at the devastation unfolding beneath us.

The Great Sage’s attack had carved a deep, slanted chasm through the land where the mountain had once stood. The enormous pillar vanished as suddenly as it had appeared, leaving behind a gaping wound in the landscape.

Before I could fully process the destruction, the Great Sage reappeared.

He plucked a fistful of hair from his head and tossed it into the air.

The hairs transformed into copies of himself.

One became ten. Ten became a hundred. In moments, hundreds of Great Sages surrounded us, each wielding his own Ruyi Jingu Bang as they converged on our position.

However, instead of striking us, the copies began colliding with one another.

I had used Divine Phantasm of Dreams to interfere with their aim, distorting their perceptions and making them mistake their fellow clones for their targets. It was a temporary solution, at best. When I examined the subsequent futures through Ophanim, I saw that the Great Sage wouldn’t fall for the same trick twice.

I had expected him to be powerful, especially considering that his level appeared as nothing but a series of question marks. He was a Floor Master, after all. Still, seeing his strength firsthand was something else entirely.

“Isn’t this a little excessive?” Ru Qiu asked as he fled, carrying me on his back. “And this guy is supposed to be an ’echo’ of the real thing?”

I nodded. “No. This is entirely in line with my expectations.”

My firsthand experience with Wendell, the Supreme Death, had taught me just how powerful a Floor Master could be. There were supposed to be five of these monsters for every twenty floors, and if this was the standard, I could understand why would the Supreme Void treated them as such formidable obstacles.

Ru Qiu continued dodging the Great Sage’s relentless assault, relying on the information I fed him through Ophanim. Each time an attack threatened to hit us, he adjusted his movements accordingly, narrowly avoiding the blows that could have reduced us to paste.

Even so, we couldn’t keep this up forever.

The Great Sage’s attacks were tearing apart the surrounding landscape. If we continued fighting at this rate, we might end up destroying the entire floor, and I doubted the consequences would be pleasant.

“What exactly is your plan here?” Ru Qiu demanded as he leaped over another crater. “You’ve pissed him off so badly that I think he’ll stop at nothing to kill you!”

“Let him vent,” I answered confidently. “Besides, we need to make a commotion.”

Ru Qiu twisted his head to look at me. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

I wasn’t.

I’d known from the beginning that the Great Sage wouldn’t cooperate willingly. I’d tried the diplomatic approach, but once it became clear that persuasion wasn’t going to work, I resorted to rage-baiting him into a fight.

Sun Wukong was an existence who, even in Earth’s mythology, had been infamous for his arrogance and unruly behavior. He had challenged Heaven itself and dared to call himself the Equal of Heaven. Expecting someone like him to quietly listen to a stranger’s request was wishful thinking.

So, I decided to appeal to the one thing that might keep his attention.

His pride.

Besides, there was another reason I was willing to let this fight continue. The Great Sage’s strength was extraordinary, and the commotion we were creating would be difficult to ignore. If everything went according to plan, we wouldn’t have to seek out the next person we needed to meet.

They would come to us instead.

Soon, the skies darkened.

I looked up as the light faded from the heavens, a familiar and oppressive presence descending upon the battlefield.

The Supreme Void was finally making his move.

“It’s time to bail,” I told Ru Qiu.

The eclipse summoned by his Immortal Art vanished, and the oppressive power of the Supreme Void seeped into the floor. The moment I’d been waiting for had finally arrived.

This was precisely why I’d sought out the Great Sage.

Through Ophanim, I could perceive the Supreme Void’s presence more clearly now that he was so close. Despite his overwhelming power, he wasn’t strong enough to incarnate directly within the Tower. That was why he’d resorted to sending aspects of himself to represent his interests and carry out his will. However, those aspects were more than sufficient to allow him to intervene in the Tower, and his arrival was bound to shake things up.

I immediately activated Divine Phantasm of Dreams, concealing our presence while Ru Qiu began his retreat.

The Great Sage’s golden eyes followed us for a moment, but he soon turned his attention toward the more threatening presences emerging around him.

Space tore open.

Humanoid figures emerged from the darkness beyond the rifts, each radiating an oppressive aura of its own. Among them, I recognized the octopus-headed entity Ru Qiu had previously described to our companions.

Ru Qiu watched the newcomers with interest.

“Let’s stay.”

I nearly choked.

“Are you out of your goddamn mind?” I grabbed him by the shoulder. “For the love of God, Ru Qiu, can we please just bail? Look at what’s happening! The Supreme Void is finally making his move, and we’ve accomplished what we came here to do. We got the Great Sage’s attention, and now the Supreme Void has shown up to deal with him. This is our chance to get out of here!”

Ru Qiu frowned. “But wouldn’t it be better to watch how this plays out? We might learn something useful.”

“Learn something useful? We can learn plenty by surviving long enough to reach the next floor!” I hissed. “While the Supreme Void is busy dealing with the Great Sage and those other monsters, we can make our own earnest attempt to climb higher. We don’t have time to waste standing around watching a fight that could get us killed!”

”But, I want to watch...”

Seriously, this guy!? I snapped at him. “The sooner we reconnect with our allies on the other side of the Tower, the better our situation will be. We need to reunite our forces, gather our strength, and figure out how we’re going to deal with the Supreme Heart. We can’t afford to get distracted by every interesting fight that comes our way!”

Ru Qiu looked back at the gathering enemies, clearly reluctant to leave.

I tightened my grip on his shoulder.

“Please, for once in your life, listen to reason. I am begging you. We can come back and watch the fireworks after we’re strong enough to survive them!”

He sighed, looking as though I’d personally deprived him of the greatest entertainment he’d ever encountered.

“Fine. Let’s go.”

Finally!