The recoil of the Absolute Gnosis Array threw Rayn across the frozen mud. His eyes rolled back, and the battlefield went silent as he dropped.
Vespera's heart skipped — an emotion the ancient spatial demon hadn't felt in centuries.
"Rayn!" The arrogant calm was gone from her voice entirely.
She teleported to his side. The flesh over his stomach was necrotizing, turning a rotting, pitch-black. The rot was spreading fast, poisoning his meridians. If their team's genius died here, the formation collapsed with him.
"Retreat!" Vespera grabbed his blood-soaked robes, her spatial Gnosis wrapping his failing body in a silver void.
Seeing their leader unconscious, panic swept through the rest of the Executioners.
Behind his purple energy shield, the Supreme Leader lowered the Absolute Gnosis Array and let out a booming laugh that rolled across the bloody valley.
"Run, you Ashburg dogs! Take your dying leader and run! Enjoy your borrowed time — in three days, my Battalion marches on Ashburg, and we butcher every man, woman, and child in that pathetic town!"
Magnus — still wearing Peter's tanned, muscular disguise — felt killing intent tear loose from somewhere deep in his soul at the threat against his town.
His green eyes burned. He summoned fifty golden coins, ready to burn his own life essence and shatter the purple shield to reach the Supreme Leader himself.
A heavy, blood-soaked hand closed around his wrist.
Victus.
"Don't go, sir." Victus was bleeding badly, his Tier 6 armor in ruins, but his grip didn't waver — entirely unaware he was holding back his own adopted brother. "They're too strong right now. Charge that array alone and you die. We protect the Lord."
Magnus froze, looking down at the hand on his wrist, then up at the scarred, hulking face above it.
For a second the battlefield fell away. He saw an eight-year-old Victus in the Dawinton Palace courtyard, tugging his sleeve. Brother, can you please play with me?
Magnus swallowed the memory back down where it belonged.
"You're right," he said, and let the coins dissolve back into the void. "We retreat."
Freddy and Victus flanked Vespera. Her spatial energy tore a hole through reality, and the five Executioners vanished from the valley of the Treachery.
They landed on the summit of a mountain miles away, one so tall it made Everest look small. Wind howled across the rock. Vespera laid Rayn down carefully. Peter, Freddy, and Victus stood around him, watching their invincible leader turn pale and stop breathing, the black rot climbing from his stomach to his chest.
While the rest of them panicked in the physical world, Rayn's consciousness was pulled somewhere else entirely.
He opened his eyes on an endless black abyss.
"Welcome back to my domain, kid."
Rayn turned. Silas — the fragment of soul Yaowang Ming had split from himself five thousand years ago, the second voice living inside Rayn's reincarnated body — sat in a floating leather armchair, dressed in a tailored black suit that existed purely to mock Rayn's mortal sensibilities, tapping a walking stick against a floor that wasn't there.
"What the hell is happening, Silas?" Rayn's crimson eyes flashed. "Why am I in the spirit realm?"
"Don't blame me for your own greed, Conqueror." Silas waved the stick, and a massive glowing screen bloomed in the dark, playing a live scan of Rayn's body.
"How is there a television in my soul?"
"How many times do I have to explain this?" Silas sighed. "This is mental space. I manifest whatever makes the lesson easier for your mortal brain. Now be quiet and look."
The projected image of his stomach was solid black, his blood turning to dark, necrotic sludge in real time.
"What's happening to my body?" Rayn's voice went cold.
Silas rose, adjusting his tie like a professor about to lecture an unruly student. "This is the fundamental law of cultivation, Rayn. Might be a little complex for you. Empty your head and listen."
Rayn nodded.
Silas tapped the stick and a glowing model of Rayn's core appeared between them.
"Your arsenal, reviewed," Silas said. "When you first awakened, you inherited twenty-one powers — eighteen foundational mortal Daos, plus the Crimson Conqueror Gnosis. You assimilated the White Griffin artifact and became its host. You also woke a world power — the Void Scribe."
"I know my own arsenal," Rayn cut in. "Get to the point."
"Patience, you arrogant child." Silas's aura flared. "Because you were carrying so many conflicting powers, I had you merge them into a single matrix — the Collector. And that's where you ruined everything."
He zoomed in on the hologram.
"You fed five hundred bodies and seventy gallons of blood to the Gambler's Heart. It woke up. It tried to consume your core and take your body. But there are two ancient powers buried at the bottom of your soul — a primordial mix of black and white void energy, and a true Crimson power. Those cores scared the Gambler's Heart badly enough that it fled and fused itself into your Collector matrix instead, to survive. Now it's fighting your Void Scribe inside your meridians. That friction is what's rotting you."
"My powers can fight each other?"
Silas nodded. "Every ancient power has some degree of consciousness. When you were hurt before and didn't know how to heal yourself, the Conqueror Power acted on its own to save you."
"They're conscious?"
"They are. But it only wakes when your life is genuinely on the line." Silas went on. "That's why the Eighteen Mortal Powers never fight you — they have no will of their own, they just obey. Your other four are different. Conqueror. Black-and-White. Crimson. Void Scribe. All four think, react, decide for themselves."
"So they were fighting because they were protecting me."
"Exactly. The Gambler's Heart wanted your core. Those four sensed the threat and refused to let it happen. They weren't trying to kill each other — they were trying to be the one that saved you."
"But I never awakened the Black-and-White Power, or the Conqueror."
"You didn't need to," Silas said. "They felt the danger anyway. Not fully awake, but aware enough to manifest and attack the Gambler's Heart on instinct — enough to scare it back."
"So my powers are fighting the Gambler's Heart," Rayn said slowly. "Why can't my core handle it?"
"Because your core is weak." Silas didn't soften it. He waved the stick and five glowing tiers appeared in the dark. "Core cultivation has five stages. Origin Core. Blood Core. Astral Core. Eternal Core. Divine Core." He pointed at the lowest rung. "You're barely past Origin. The only reason your core hasn't detonated under the weight of twenty-plus powers is the dragon blood running dormant in your veins. Any ordinary cultivator holding what you're holding would already be dead."
"When you finally advance," he continued, "you'll break into the Blood Core stage — your core fuses with your bloodstream, your body gets stronger, your capacity expands. Until then, your Origin Core is a glass cup, and you're pouring an ocean into it."
Rayn's mind moved fast. "The container's full. I need to make room."
"Exactly." Silas smiled, and it wasn't a kind smile. "Your body is telling you to evict a tenant. You have two options."
The hologram split.
"One — you shatter the Collector matrix. You lose the ability to swap freely between your foundational powers, and you're locked to a single rigid path. But you buy yourself room to stabilize."
"Two — you sacrifice the White Griffin. Rip the beast spirit out of your core and let it go. What's left behind gives you enough space to absorb and suppress the Gambler's Heart."
Rayn's fists clenched. "Can't I just destroy the Gambler's Heart and keep everything?"
"No." Silas shook his head. "It's fused into the walls of your core now. Try to rip it out and your Origin Core shatters — and your body, up on that mountain, dies with it."
Silas leaned in on the walking stick, his smile stretching wider.
"The time for greed is over, Conqueror." His voice dropped low, echoing through the void. "Make the calculation. What's it going to be — the Griffin, or the Collector?"