The skies split.
Not from lightning.
Not from some cataclysmic art.
But from the sound of two eternal paths colliding.
Sun Wukong stood above the ruined edge of the Shelter, grinning with wild calm, his staff spinning in loops of golden illusion and mythic law.
Yi Zhen exhaled slowly, the veins of reincarnation cycling through his eyes, glowing with the rotation of the Great Wheel.
There was no more room for mercy.
> "I do not wish to fight."
> "Then die standing," Sun Wukong replied, as his staff lashed forward—
—and time froze.
No—time hesitated, confused.
---
Yi Zhen's foot touched the ground.
Then the air.
Then the sky.
Then the clouds.
Then above the firmament.
He kept walking.
And walking.
Until gravity itself bent.
---
He stood in silence… above the Shelter, the continent, the world…
And then—he grew.
Not as a technique.
Not as a projection.
His physical body grew.
First to the size of a mountain.
Then to the size of the planet.
And then…
> "He grew to a size so unfathomable," Sun Wukong muttered aloud with an odd chuckle,
"...that the universe blinked to make sure what it was seeing was real."
Because it wasn't just that Yi Zhen was tall.
He now stood beyond the borders of creation.
He had grown so massive, his body reached past the universe, touching its shell and pressing into the unseen.
Yi Zhen had become larger than the reality that birthed him.
---
Sun Wukong's staff extended infinitely to meet him.
Yi Zhen's palm came down like a slow-falling heaven.
The battle didn't erupt—it bent the layers of dimensional physics before the first blow landed.
When they clashed, it wasn't light or sound that exploded—
It was karma.
---
And far below, in mortal realms, cultivators could not see Yi Zhen or Sun Wukong…
But they could feel the tremor in their souls.
A tremor that whispered…
> "Two who walked beyond Samsara have begun to fight. And one of them… is larger than the world."
---
Author's Note: (explaining to ones that need a on how big Yi Zhen is.)
> "To understand the madness of Yi Zhen's size—consider this:
> This verse, this entire cultivation cosmos, is a microcosm.
> A sealed, layered universe forged by ancient Outer Heavens and enclosed within the Primordial Lotus Vessel.
> For Yi Zhen to grow beyond its boundaries…
> …means he temporarily existed outside the container—in the space where only Architects and Original Laws reside.