"I possess all your memories and knowledge. It's a pity that the spiritual spark of our 'Reality' died too early, before it could accumulate enough knowledge. Otherwise, with the different abilities and knowledge that you two possessed, I should have been able to crush you with ease."
The Heart-Demon's eyes were a pure, inky black. A gray-white mist drifted from his body, giving him an ambiguous aura—neither demonic nor righteous, like a man who was both good and evil.
"But as it stands, I know all of your knowledge and skills. Because of this, without any unique abilities of my own, the techniques and skills we use are identical. The battle between us is destined to be one where a victor cannot be decided quickly."
Xin Yu's face remained devoid of a smile. His gaze was calm, his expression cold. He wasn't the type to use words to disrupt an enemy's state of mind in battle. He knew plenty of taunts and insults, but to actually say them, he would have to dredge them up from his memories. Rather than waste effort recalling such fragments and disrupting his own rhythm, he preferred to use that mental energy to deal with the fight at hand.
For instance, he knew exactly what his opponent was preparing for while stalling for time. So why was he still listening to this nonsense?
Naturally, it was because he, too, was preparing something.
The Heart-Demon was still spouting some nonsense when, halfway through his sentence, the gray mist around him vanished in an instant. When it reappeared, it was already beside Xin Yu, clinging to his entire body.
Every single mote of dust within this mist carried the properties of spacetime. Each mote's temporal quality was different; some accelerated time, while others slowed it.
A normal living being enveloped by this gray mist would be consumed and disintegrated into countless microscopic particles by the clashing and rejection phenomena of spacetime in less than a microsecond. Then, these particles would be flung into the distant past and future by the force of spacetime itself.
And so, after Xin Yu was entangled by this unstable gray mist, his body began to rapidly disintegrate and crumble. Finally, he was completely swallowed by the mist, his figure vanishing entirely within what seemed to be only a faint gray haze.
Across from him, the Heart-Demon saw Xin Yu being dealt with so easily, yet his face showed no hint of joy. Instead, his expression grew even more solemn as he began to scan his surroundings, searching for that figure.
Although his previous words had been garbage meant to interfere with Xin Yu's judgment and thoughts, one point was indeed accurate: there was no way a victor could be decided between them so quickly.
Just as the Heart-Demon was on high alert, a figure appeared abruptly right in front of him. The man held a longsword and swung it down in a vicious slash. The strike was so fierce that it caused the very fabric of spacetime to ripple.
Faced with such an assault, the Heart-Demon felt no fear, but rather a surge of relief. An open attack was far more acceptable than one from a hidden assailant.
As for sensing Xin Yu directly through his identity as the Heart-Demon—that might have been possible in their previous state of constant flux, but now they had entered the Heart-Demon Tribulation. This was not just Xin Yu's trial, but his own as well.
Only when this tribulation ended, when only one of them remained, would the survivor seize the entirety of the other's existence and become a complete being.
Of course, the Heart-Demon Tribulation could be resolved through more than just mortal combat. There were other methods, such as debate or even reconciliation, but all these paths inevitably required one party to abandon their own existence.
And generally speaking, a sapient life form that had awakened to self-awareness and possessed its own aspirations would rarely choose to voluntarily give up its existence for its rival—an individual whose dreams and pursuits were completely different—to have a future. Or rather, to let them effortlessly claim everything that was theirs.
Thus, this mortal combat had become an unavoidable battle.
Just as the Heart-Demon moved to counter the slash that could interfere with time and space, another figure suddenly appeared behind him, unleashing the exact same time-distorting sword technique.
The Heart-Demon was startled but did not descend into chaos. He prepared to use his power over spacetime to forcefully solidify his surroundings, momentarily blocking the attacks from both front and rear, and use that opening to dodge away.
However, as he manipulated spacetime to make it rigid, his own escape path became restricted. He could only dodge towards the one area not solidified by space, meaning that in that instant, he could not change the position he was dodging to.
And in that very instant, a third figure appeared at his side. He did not swing a sword; instead, he lifted his leg and delivered a brutally simple straight kick.
This seemingly ordinary kick bent the Heart-Demon's entire body into the shape of a bow. His figure shot backward, crashing directly into an asteroid of unknown origin that had been floating nearby. The impact shattered the celestial body, which appeared to be several kilometers in diameter, into fragments.
"Cough! How direct. Burning your own lifespan to interfere with your timeline and summon your past and future selves to the present, are you?"
The Heart-Demon had taken a small loss, but he had also figured out Xin Yu's strategy. His opponent had hidden himself in the seams of spacetime and then, by paying a heavy price in lifespan, summoned temporal illusions of himself from the past and future. Although these illusions were fleeting, they were enough to draw his attention for a single attack, creating an opening for the main body to strike.
Xin Yu remained silent. At the same time, several more figures appeared around him, all holding longswords, their faces expressionless, all bearing his exact same features.
"Burning your lifespan, eh? A true life-and-death battle for everything. But if you can do it, so can I!"
The Heart-Demon pulled himself free from the asteroid debris. A series of identical figures materialized around him as well. Then, the two groups of men with similar faces clashed in a chaotic melee.
Before long, the battle escalated. It eventually grew into a chaotic brawl between two hundred combatants in the vast emptiness of space. Two hundred beings, each possessing the ability to interfere with spacetime, fought to the death in this region. Their struggle twisted the surrounding spacetime into complete disarray, forming several visible spatial fractures and zones of aberrant, chaotic temporal flow.
Eventually, the surrounding spacetime was thrown into such chaos by the two that it was torn asunder completely. A massive rift in spacetime swallowed all of them, sending them into its chaotic torrent.
In a past timeline, the Herrscher of the Void raised her hand contemptuously, having defeated the mechs before her. Just as she was about to seize the gem from within Raiden Mei's body, a chaotic spatial field expanded in an instant, causing everyone present to feel a wave of dizziness wash over their minds. They then witnessed a blank-faced man deliver a simple, unadorned kick that sent a black-robed figure flying. The sheer force of that figure's flight tore open a series of chaotic spatial rifts.
In a future timeline, a young man named Adam watched with burning anxiety as his own captain fell into an enemy trap. Just as he was about to use his trump card to rescue her, a man in a black robe and a youth in white clothes appeared from nowhere, locked in combat. The black-robed figure's sword strike shattered the white-clothed youth, but the resulting shockwave tore apart everything in the vicinity. The so-called trap and the previously unbeatable enemy were instantly turned to dust, while his captain sat on the ground, safe but utterly bewildered, with no idea what had just happened.
In the past and the future, on Earth and in the cosmos.
The figures of the Heart-Demon and Xin Yu constantly flickered in and out of existence across all of spacetime, clashing, battling, locked in mortal combat.