The sun had long dipped below the horizon when the two stepped into the quiet restaurant on the edge of the mortal city. Lanterns flickered softly, casting a warm glow over the wooden tables. Ye Zai sat with one leg crossed over the other, his expression unreadable beneath eyes that held the void of entire realities. Across from him, the immortal cultivator nursed a cup of tea with trembling fingers, though his face remained calm.
"You've walked a long path," Ye Zai said, voice smooth like drifting smoke. "But it ends here."
The immortal cultivator chuckled, setting his cup down gently. "I've seen realms collapse and rise again. You're not the first monster dressed like a man."
Ye Zai leaned forward, a subtle ripple pulsing from his presence, warping the wooden grain of the table. "No," he said, almost kindly. "I'm the last one you'll ever see."
The restaurant shattered before the first blow was even thrown. Space folded in on itself as the two figures clashed, their power too vast for the mortal plane to contain. The immortal cultivator moved like thunder given form, wielding celestial flames that razed the skyline, but Ye Zai answered with silence pure annihilation masked in black wind.
They fought across four cities, leveling towers, temples, and entire mountain ranges in the wake of their fury. The fifth city never stood a chance. A single sweep of Ye Zai's hand reduced it to a crater of frozen time, where nothing aged, moved, or existed beyond the concept of ruin.
The old man once the immortal cultivator staggered, bloodless and pale. His cultivation trembled, cracked, then unraveled like thread soaked in voidfire.
"Why… why are you…?" the old man whispered, falling to his knees.
Ye Zai stepped forward, eyes dim with inevitability. "Because I am what waits at the end of stories."
And with a final, quiet gesture, the old man vanished erased from every thread of existence.
As the dust settled and silence reclaimed the scarred land, Ye Zai stood alone at the edge of the fifth city's ruins. The wind whispered through crumbled stone and twisted steel, carrying the ghost of a once-bustling world. He did not look back at the ashes of the old man. There was nothing left to see.
Then, it came.
A sharp chime echoed in the still air mechanical, unnatural, like the turning of celestial gears. A screen of pure light cracked into existence before Ye Zai's eyes, hovering without source or shadow. The interface was smooth, curved like it had grown from thought rather than code.
SYSTEM NOTIFICATION
Host has fulfilled Hidden Condition: [Eradication of Temporal Anomaly - Immortal Cultivator]
Rewarding Unique Authority: "Reverie Construct"
Ye Zai raised an eyebrow, faint curiosity flickering across his face.
Reverie Construct – A Reality-Bending Authority.
Grants the wielder the ability to manifest any concept that has ever been imagined, regardless of physical law, temporal flow, or logical constraint.
Manifestations are real, but require clarity of thought and focus of will.
The user may reshape environments, rewrite cause and effect, and alter truths by grounding them in belief.
Limitations: Cannot affect entities of equal or higher Authority level. Constructs drain mental cohesion if overused.
Note: Reverie Constructs persist until the user consciously dispels them or forgets them.
Ye Zai's eyes shimmered slightly, a void-like gleam threading through his gaze. "So thought becomes law," he murmured. "And imagination becomes reality."
He raised his hand, and in the space above his palm, a single silver flower bloomed its petals etched with runes that had never existed before. He closed his fingers slowly, and the flower vanished, yet the sky above him bent as if reality was bowing.
Far off, the clouds cracked, splitting into perfect geometries before folding into blooming trees of lightning. The world was no longer bound by what had been, only by what Ye Zai allowed it to be.
He didn't smile. He didn't need to. With Reverie Construct, he had become something more than a wielder of power he had become the architect of meaning.
And the world would have to adjust for a new Deity stage cultivator had emerged in the world and would break through to the Supreme Deity stage soon.