Nian Shi fell into a profound silence. Yin’s mocking words, "The God of Ti has finally run out of ti," echoed in his mind, not as an insult, but as a chillingly accurate assessnt of his predicant.
His silver eyes, usually swirling with the patterns of countless tilines, were now still, deep pools of cold calculation.
His mind raced, faster than any mortal could comprehend, weighing every possible variable, every shred of possibility. He ran through millions of potential futures, searching for a branch where he could still seize victory. Attacking the barrier directly was futile.
Persuading Yin was off the table; the embodint of Uncreation was now content to watch him fail. Waiting was not an option; every second brought Yun Lintian closer to a completion that would spell his own end.
He was trapped. Cornered. And a cornered Ti God was at his most dangerous.
Yin, anwhile, watched him with languid amusent, his hands tucked into the sleeves of his black robes. He had no concerns here. The standoff was, for him, the most entertaining spectacle in eons. He had all the ti in the world, and he was enjoying watching the master of ti squirm without it.
During this tense silence, a figure approached Nian Shi. Tantai Lanling, having disengaged from her stalemate with Long Chen and Qian Jinglei now that the imdiate crisis had shifted, ca to his side. Her expression was tight with concern and unresolved tension.
"My Lord," she said, her voice low. "The barrier... do you have another way to break it?"
She could feel his raging frustration and simring desperation.
Nian Shi didn’t even look at her.
"Shut up," he snapped, his voice a whip-crack of cold fury. His focus was entirely inward, on the desperate calculus of his next move.
Tantai Lanling’s brow furrowed, a flash of hurt and anger in her eyes, but she swallowed it. She said nothing more, stepping back slightly to stand guard, her own power coiled and ready.
Across the way, Long Chen and Qian Jinglei, seeing the lull, swiftly returned to Yin’s side. They dropped to one knee, bowing their heads in respect and sha.
Yin glanced down at them, his expression one of utter disdain.
"Pathetic," he stated, the single word carrying the weight of imnse disappointnt. "You couldn’t even subdue one woman. All the knowledge you gained, all the power I bestowed upon you, and you are still so... inadequate."
Long Chen and Qian Jinglei trembled, keeping their heads low.
"We have failed you, Lord Yin," they murmured in unison, their voices filled with sha. They dared not offer excuses.
Yin simply waved a dismissive hand, his attention already returning to the silently seething Nian Shi. Their failure was insignificant in the grand sche of his amusent.
Ti stretched. The only sounds were the low hum of the impregnable barrier and the faint crackle of dying energies in the wasteland.
Then, Nian Shi’s eyes snapped open. A decision had been made. A dangerous, costly decision.
With a sharp, decisive wave of his hand, the space around him fractured.
It wasn’t a simple spatial tear. It was a rending of tilines themselves. From these rips in reality, figures stepped forth. Each one was Nian Shi.
They wore different variations of his silver robes, their auras bearing slight variations—so felt older, more weathered; so felt sharper, more aggressive; so radiated specialized temporal energies. But they all shared the sa cold, silver eyes and the sa overwhelming pressure of primordial ti.
There were a hundred of them. A hundred Nian Shis, gathered from across the myriad branches of ti, their combined presence making the very flow of causality stutter and groan.
Yin, who had been leaning back in amusent, let out a derisive scoff. "Really? This is your grand move? Summoning more of yourself? How utterly... unimaginative. Do you think numbers matter against quality? Against ?"
He shook his head as if disappointed by a child’s simple-minded solution.
Then, with a lazy, almost bored wave of his own hand, Yin gestured beside him. The void tore open, not with the silver light of ti, but with absolute blackness.
From the void, two figures erged.
The first was a man, his form seemingly carved from solid shadow and ink. He was tall and lean, and in his hand, he held a long sword that was not a physical object but a solidified line of nothingness, an edge that promised absolute severance.
His aura was exceptionally sharp, so much so that it seed to cut the very space around him.
This was Number One.
The second was a woman, equally dark and epheral. She cradled a Guqin, an ancient zither, made of the sa void-stuff as her companion’s sword.
Her aura, in stark contrast, was surprisingly gentle, almost soothing, but it humd with a latent, terrifying power that spoke of lodies that could unravel souls and shatter realities.
This was Number Two.
Yin didn’t even look at them as he issued his command, his gaze still fixed on the hundred Nian Shis with contempt.
"Number One, Number Two," he said, his voice flat. "Deal with the copies. Clean up this ss."
The two void-born hunters bowed their heads slightly in acknowledgnt. Then, they moved.
Number One beca a blur, his void sword lashing out without a sound. Where it passed, ti itself was severed, creating dead zones where causality ceased to exist.
Number Two simply plucked a single string on her Guqin.
Zheng!
The note was soft, yet it propagated through all tilines simultaneously. It wasn’t a sound to be heard, but a vibration to be felt in the soul—a frequency of absolute Uncreation that sought to dissolve the connections between the hundred Nian Shis, to unmake the temporal cohesion that bound them together.
Nian Shi glanced at Number One and Number Two and said. "Keep them busy."
Instantly, a few of his other selves flew out, eting with Number One and Number Two.
Then, he turned. His gaze, and the gaze of the twenty Nian Shi copies he had held in reserve, locked onto the true objective: the shimring, multi-layered barrier protecting Yun Lintian.
Buzz—
As one, they raised their hands. The air crackled with the concentration of imnse power. In each of their grips, the Blade of Eternity materialized, not as a single weapon, but as a focused concept of ending.
Twenty-one Blades humd in unison, their combined frequency a promise of absolute temporal annihilation...
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