The final battlefield, atop the collapsed spires of Tianxu Summit, groaned beneath the weight of qi storms and smoldering debris. The great sects had come—thirty-two banners raised under a coalition of celestial clans and hidden lineages. The sky overhead pulsed with ruptured laws, torn open by divine tribulation and desperate techniques. Snow from the north met fire from the southern isles, and time itself fractured as ancient formations clashed. Yet at the center of it all, seated on a broken step of the ancestral pagoda, Johan merely watched. Robes unstained, his hands rested upon his knees, eyes half-lidded, as the Dao of the Silent Crown radiated outward—formless, thoughtless, absent.
Attacks crumbled before they touched him. Cultivators screamed in silence as their minds imploded, not by will but by exposure. One elder fell to his knees, laughing madly, while another turned blade on brother. Around Johan, the world resisted the truth he embodied—and shattered because of it.
Livid tendrils of energy lashed out, bright as falling stars and equally fleeting. Each desperate strike died to whispers, dissolving into wisps as they met Johan's placid aura. Sects that had waged centuries of war against one another now threw everything against him, unified by fear and hatred. The leaders of the grand coalition circled in formation, deploying arts and bloodlines thought lost to history. In the face of their legend, Johan remained as he was—unmoved, the calm at the heart of a breaking storm.
"Strike him down!" The voice belonged to an elder of the Black Sky Sect, his words amplified by the power that coursed around him. His command echoed, overtaken by the roar of collapsing techniques. "Nothing reaches him! Nothing!" cried another, his voice swallowed by despair.
Johan shifted his gaze, light blue eyes indifferent as gods and men converged upon him. Each soul was naked to him, stripped bare by the formless truth he embodied. Around him, reality fractured, splintered, rewove itself—then broke once more.
Snow fell in slow-motion gusts, mingling with embers that should have consumed it. Time crawled and snapped, dividing past from present, present from future, yet never settling on either. Beneath the smoldering ruin of Tianxu Summit, ancient dragon bones and newer corpses turned to ash, dust, nothing.
They came at him through twisted time and split space. A youth from the Ashen Spirit Clan hurled an immortal fire at Johan, watching as it snuffed out like a spent candle. He turned to ash himself, eyes wide in silent shock. Twin sisters of the Blooming Lotus rode upon gales of northern snow, petals swirling around them, spirits tied by soul. Madness severed them, the bond unraveling, as one turned to devour the other.
"Our hearts are the dao! Our hearts are the dao!" a girl chanted over and over, clutching her head, fingers stained with her own blood. "It isn't real!" shouted a man, wrestling a comrade to the ground, his disbelief feeding the lies he told himself.
Above them, eight grand elders from the elemental sects merged their techniques, forming a sun bright enough to cast shadows on the shuddering earth. Their light was darkness. Their heat was ice. Their sun consumed its own masters before Johan could open his eyes to witness it.
Orthodox and unorthodox, demonic and divine, cultivators tumbled from sky to earth, bodies limp, souls broken. Johan watched as brother turned against brother, sword against sword, their true loyalties laid bare by the void of meaning that surrounded him. Betrayal and devotion fused into a single thread, more fragile than any thread of steel. He barely noticed when a body landed near him, neck twisted, the crest of a once-noble clan falling from an outstretched hand.
His presence mocked the laws of men and nature. Yet nothingness, it seemed, was not enough to finish them. Again they regrouped. Again they struck. "It's only one child!" a master yelled, eyes wild with disbelief. "Kill him or die!"
Both seemed equal.
Johan allowed the hint of a smile to play at the corners of his lips. They were flies against an ocean. They were an ocean against a grain of sand. They were a coalition against themselves, against each other, against a monster without a name, without a cause, without a care. At the peak of Tianxu, where history would have named their deaths the climactic sacrifice, Johan waited, hands still upon his knees. Each soul was naked to him, each breath taken in terror, in defiance, in desperation—none lasting longer than he permitted it to. He watched the last push collapse upon itself, radiant qi dimming as exhaustion seeped into their bones. They turned inward, downward, outward—frantically searching for an escape, a release, a way to define the madness he had unleashed upon them. The faint whooshes of their spatial talismans punctuated the silence, ghostly reminders of their terror.
And in their absence, the Dao of the Silent Crown continued to spread, unopposed, leaving only shattering truths and scattered winds behind it.