The air solidified. Not just chilled, but utterly, unnervingly still. Lou Hezheng, mid-leap towards Elder Kuang, felt a pressure akin to an entire mountain descending upon him. It wasn’t a physical force, but a spiritual one, twisting his Qi, threatening to crush his very will. Laughter sputtered out, replaced by a silent strain as his sinews locked. Beside the blazing crucible, Elder Kuang, who had been scrambling backwards in terror, now stood frozen, a grotesque mask of panic plastered on his face. Behind him, Ding Lihou, a nascent monarch of shadow and rage, found his demonic aura snuffed out like a guttering flame, his magnificent form forced back into human semblance, knees buckling. Even Bao Xiyue, her ice-veined sword half-drawn, was pinned, her cultivation struggling against the crushing spiritual tide. From the rent in the sky, the Pavilion Founder descended with the slow grace of a drifting feather, yet each movement carried the weight of settling rock. He was not a man, but a monument of cultivation, etched with the wisdom of eons. His robes, woven from starlight and shadow, billowed around him, though no wind stirred. His twin-sun pupils swept over the tableau, pausing briefly on the struggling Hezheng. A faint, almost imperceptible sigh escaped his lips, sounding like distant thunder. “A persistent gnat,” the Founder’s voice rumbled, not from his mouth, but from the very air around them, vibrating through bone and soul. “You amuse me, child. To think the Heaven-Piercing Loom, an instrument destined to redefine creation, would birth its core in such a… comical vessel. And to threaten its destruction with such a puny spark.” Hezheng couldn’t speak, couldn’t move. His perpetual smile, a mask he wore even in the face of death, finally cracked. The corners of his lips twitched, mirth bleeding away until his glare hardened into bare, furious iron. The mockery, the casual dismissal, the sheer overwhelming power that rendered his friends helpless and his vengeance impotent – it shattered the last vestiges of his facade. “Gnat?” Hezheng rasped, the word wrenched loose despite the immense pressure. Blood vessels ruptured in the whites of his eyes. “You… you call *me* a gnat? You, who let this rot fester? Who allowed innocents to be bled for your ‘redefinition’? My life, my very soul, stolen and twisted into your relic… and you call *me* a gnat?” His voice, hoarse and ragged, held a tremor that had nothing to do with fear and everything to do with a broken spirit refusing to yield. Deep within his mind, a faint, almost forgotten resonance stirred. Grandpa Tuo, silent since the rift opened, suddenly barked in his skull. *“Listen, you insolent whelp! This old geezer won’t let you die a gnat! He’s suppressing your Qi, but not your core! Remember the ultimate technique! The forbidden art! Thousand Years in a Breath! NOW, BOY! RIP IT OUT!”* Hezheng bared crimson-slicked teeth. The black bead, dormant against his chest, flared with a faint, obsidian glow. Time, which had been stretched thin and distorted by the Patriarch’s presence, suddenly buckled around Hezheng. It didn’t speed up or slow down; it *folded*. For an instant, a thousand futures and a thousand pasts converged in his perception. He saw the flicker of stars being born and dying, the slow erosion of mountains, the rise and fall of empires, all contained within the span of a single inhale. With a guttural scream that existed only in his internal time-stream, Hezheng’s hand shot to his chest. He didn’t just grab; he *tore*. His fingers plunged into his own flesh, ignoring the searing pain, ignoring the crimson blossoming across his robes. He ripped. The womb-curse, a pulsating, inky black orb, came free with a sickening squelch, tendrils of dark Qi still tethered to his heart. It was a vicious, self-inflicted vivisection, performed in a heartbeat that lasted a millennium. *“NOW! QUICK! MERGE MY ESSENCE!”* Grandpa Tuo bellowed, and a torrent of primordial Qi, distilled from forgotten epochs, surged from the black bead into Hezheng’s hand, wrapping around the squirming curse-core. The core shrieked, a sound unheard by anyone but Hezheng, as the two alien energies violently entwined, creating an unstable, volatile mass that pulsed with terrifying dark light. Hezheng’s face was a mask of agony, sweat plastering his hair to his forehead, but the rage in his eyes burned hotter than ever. “You want your relic, old man? *Here! Take it!*” With an explosive burst of his time-bending phantom steps, Hezheng defied the crushing gravity, flashing forward faster than the descending immortal could intercept. He appeared before Elder Kuang, who stood paralyzed, and rammed the violently unstable, merged core—a sphere of crackling dark flame—straight between the elder's gaping teeth. The elder retched around the sphere, black veins erupting across his neck like a demonic lattice. “And a messenger!” Hezheng roared, his voice raw but triumphant, pushing through the pain of his recent self-mutilation. He wound back his leg, putting every ounce of his time-distorted power into a single, devastating kick. The blow connected with Kuang’s chest, sending the bloated elder flying like a projectile. He hurtled through the air toward the descending sovereign, whose golden irises narrowed as an arm reached out to swat the projectile aside. But it was too late. Inside Elder Kuang’s body, the overloaded core went critical. It was no longer a dormant seed; it was a singularity. A massive, reality-tearing explosion of dark energy erupted, consuming Kuang in an instant and expanding outwards, threatening to swallow the entire mountain peak.

The Time-Bending Smite