Primal sin clotted like tar; endless black fog smothered the stars; soot-black flames ate the void inch by inch. Under Sinfire’s sear, nothing could flee.

“Sinfire? Damn it—how could these bastards raise another Original Sin? And one that commands Sinfire, the ultimate Original Sin!”

Shattered starlight drifted like broken glass; black mist and fire spread like flood. Not just Dongze; even Wuhen’s stone face tightened as he scanned the void.

Merk, rabid and blood-soaked, charged straight at Wuhen. His frenzy was a red tide; his eyes burned like coals.

Under Sword God Wuhen’s single cut, only the Tiered Beings still stood. Years of schemes, legions of elites—one sword turned them to dust on the wind.

“Haha… countless epochs of work, erased in an instant. I lost—but you won’t enjoy it. Let Sinfire cling. Let Original Sin devour this cosmos!”

His energy swell kept mounting like a storm surge, while his soul thinned to a flicker. It was self-immolation—power without a tomorrow.

But he dreamed too sweet. Sinfire coiled around Wuhen; Original Sin gnawed at him. Even so, Merk’s suicide-flare couldn’t scratch him.

Wuhen raised his greatsword. The blade traced a strange scar in space, then came down. The black mist of Original Sin and the tide of Sinfire split cleanly in two.

Where the sword qi passed, it carved a bright, unsullied line through a space stained by Original Sin.

Suddenly, everyone woke with a chill. They had forgotten something—no, something had been excised. Judging by the field, someone had been killed by Wuhen at the level of concept. But who? No one could recall, because that person did not exist.

Even Wuhen’s own mind emptied after that swing; “Merk” was gone. In this universe’s weave of ideas, “Merk” was no more. The missing history, the Supreme Law would blur over and fill.

Facing that annihilating power, both the traitors of the Other Shore and the Tiered Beings they’d recruited trembled. A Tiered Being can echo the World Hymn; even if slain, time’s long river can bring them back—after an era’s churn, into a strange new age.

Now it was different. A strike that erases concept leaves no seed to revive. The cycle freezes; the song falls silent.

Sinfire roared, Original Sin rampaged, yet Wuhen feared nothing. One man, one sword, he walked forward through fire and fog like night cutting dawn.

“Just as Dream Chaser said—no one’s entirely right or wrong. In the end, it’s only opposing stances.”

Cold Wuhen rarely spoke; to Eugensen and Ten-Star Sand Mist, it sounded like an elegy before the end.

Battle broke again, and this time Dongze moved. Sinfire and Original Sin forced Wuhen to spend most of his strength holding the tide. He could still kill a First Tier alone under that burn, but it wasn’t worth it. The Ancient Turtle waited—alive since who knows when. Wuhen touched the truth in the Ninth Epoch and stepped into Third Tier. The Ancient Turtle, by a cautious guess, had been Third Tier since the previous cosmic epoch.

It had survived the war among the Administrators. That kind of Third Tier wasn’t something Wuhen, as he was now, could face head-on. Wasting the main force to smash a bunch of First Tiers and get Wuhen hurt would be foolish.

Dongze’s strike shocked them. His power didn’t match the files. He punched through Eugensen’s heart with one blow—that was Second Tier. But records from the Eighth Epoch said the Four Heavenly Kings were all First Tier.

“Idiots. I’m the Chief. Me having Second Tier power surprises you?” His grin was wicked, his tone obvious. He’d lived since ancient ages. Still at the Realm God stage then, he watched the Night King’s tiered might during the war at the epoch’s end. In the blood-dyed dusk of the Second Epoch, he saw the World Hymn played with his own eyes.

Epoch after epoch, he drifted like a shard of time. A born genius reaching this height wasn’t an accident.

The field warped into a strange pattern. Maybe it was his First Cult title; Dongze seemed to attract hate like a torch attracts moths. Many saw Wuhen and fled; then they sprinted for Dongze.

“You’re looking down on me way too hard!” Watching them bully the “soft” target, Dongze fumed, itching to teach manners. Too bad too many Tiered Beings piled on. One-on-one, he’d give any of them a “beautiful” memory—First Cult has methods worse than death.

But now they bolted at a glimpse of Wuhen and lit up when they saw him. It felt like an insult.

You couldn’t even call it cowardice. Fighting Wuhen meant being erased at concept. Dongze, at Second Tier, couldn’t do that. Circumstance forced their hands.

The Chief Heavenly King—just a moment ago he’d watched from above with a theatergoer’s calm—now looked ragged under a dogpile. Wuhen didn’t plan to save him. Even he felt the strain handling so many First Tiers at once. With a perfect aggro magnet drawing eyes, he only needed to pick off the strays, one by one. By the time the mob noticed, most of their buddies were already gone.

He even understood why the First Cult ended up wanted worldwide. They came with built-in taunt. Look at Dongze—he didn’t even toggle taunt and still got focused. Worthy of a Chief Heavenly King.

Dongze was near tears, beyond words. He’d finally returned from unknown spacetime, power unrecovered, and boom—hard focus. Idiots, he snarled inside. Your carry got deleted, your nexus got taken—why are you still chasing me? Go defend your base!

Of course, he only shouted that in his head. He wasn’t dumb enough to say it out loud. Fine, chase me like you’re high on it. When you realize your teammates keep “vanishing,” one after another, you’ll choke on regret.

The fight looked odd for two reasons: they wanted to burst the “weak” Dongze; and anyone slain by Wuhen got erased at concept. Even as their numbers thinned, it was hard to feel wrongness—because the dead did not exist.

In their memory, they had fifteen. Wuhen instantly killed one; memory shifted to fourteen. Kill another; it became thirteen. No matter how the headcount fell, memory kept saying the number was right. With enough calm, they could sense that something got wiped at concept. Match that to the field, and they’d deduce allies were being erased.

Clearly, they were too busy tunneling the “weak” Dongze. They hadn’t noticed that their fifteen Tiered Beings were already down to eight.

Worse, their memory said: we have eight, zero losses. Kill Dongze before Wuhen gets here!

Playing the aggro pole, Dongze pulled out a sheet of paper. Fifteen circles were drawn; six had crosses; nine remained. He glanced back mid-escape. Eight chased him. The paper still showed nine circles. That meant one more poor soul had just been erased at concept. He calmly crossed out another circle.

“You trash, stop chasing me! Keep it up and something big’s gonna blow!”

The blood-eyed few ignored him, minds locked on the hunt.

“You—dammit, I said disaster’s coming! Still chasing? Are you sick in the head? You had fifteen. You’ve got only five now. Still chasing? Want to keep at it till the last one drops?”

Five kept ignoring. Lose the teamfight if you must; the cultist must die.

Dongze ran and marked another cross, then another, the paper rustling like dry leaves.

Until—until, in this space of surging Sinfire and raging Original Sin, only one enemy remained.

“Ha. Ten-Star, I told you not to chase. You wouldn’t listen. Feel something off yet? Don’t tell me you believe you’re the only one left in your alliance. You alone, against us?”

Facing the lone Ten-Star Sand Mist, Dongze stopped running. One-on-one, even half-recovered Second Tier was more than enough for a First Tier.

Ten-Star Sand Mist snapped awake at Dongze’s words. If he were truly alone, where would the courage to “rebel” come from? He stilled his heart and sensed the truth. He wasn’t alone; he had teammates.

Concept erasure leaves scars in spacetime. Ten-Star felt fourteen beings erased in the recent stretch—that fourteen were his teammates.

“End it… end your dull rebellion.”

Sword light flashed like a falling star, and the last one vanished from this space. Dongze took out the paper and crossed the final circle. Wuhen slung the greatsword across his back and looked at Dongze.

“Is it over?”

A conceptual kill is a blank even to him; the target “doesn’t exist,” so the act also “doesn’t exist.”

“Yeah. Over. According to the paper, there were fifteen. Now it’s a full wipe.” Dongze checked the sheet and answered with certainty.

They were about to withdraw when, in the Sinfire-scorched void, a pair of scarlet eyes opened inside the black fog.