Kaelan drives the Holy Spirit forward and sweeps its claws toward one of the Divine Mind cultivators, the arc of storm-dark energy tearing space apart as it descends.
At the same instant, attacks from the other cultivators crash into the Holy Spirit's body.
Fire spears pierce its ribs, sword intent carves glowing scars across its chest, thunder shatters an entire wing, and blood law gnaws at its legs like corrosive acid.
The Holy Spirit's form ruptures, dark feathers exploding outward, storm currents destabilising violently.
Yet none of the attacks reach Kaelan.
Inside the Holy Spirit, he remains untouched.
Magic energy surges from the Wizard Towers across Chen Kingdom, flowing through invisible channels and pouring into the fractured Holy Spirit.
Cracks seal.
Feathers reform.
Storm law stabilises.
Darkness condenses again.
The damage vanishes as if it never existed.
Kaelan abandons caution completely.
He pushes the Holy Spirit into reckless offence, sacrificing structural integrity for speed and pressure.
A claw crashes down and smashes a Divine Mind cultivator directly out of the sky, sending him spiralling into the earth below.
Kaelan twists midair, ignoring three attacks that tear through the Holy Spirit's back, and drives a wing blade through a metal cultivator's defensive field, snapping ribs and shattering internal circulation.
Storm surges wildly now, not restrained, not refined, but brutally unleashed.
Dark law spreads outward, suppressing elemental resonance and dragging enemy techniques half a breath out of alignment.
The eleven Divine Mind cultivators fight desperately, rotating constantly, preventing Kaelan from locking onto a single target for long.
They understand now.
If Kaelan breaks through them, the formation behind will be destroyed before it completes.
At the edge of the battlefield, the six Divine Mind cultivators of the Tianren Sect stand unmoving.
Their formation expands.
Even under the bright daylight sky, starlight begins to appear.
Points of pale radiance ignite above them, faint at first, then steadily growing brighter.
The stars are wrong.
They do not belong to this sky.
Kaelan senses it immediately.
A pressure presses against his soul, ancient, vast, and absolute.
His gaze snaps toward the forming array.
Danger.
Real danger.
Without hesitation, Kaelan forces the Holy Spirit to pivot.
Storm law compresses.
Darkness condenses.
He charges straight toward the six cultivators.
The Holy Spirit roars, wings beating hard enough to tear clouds apart, claws extended to annihilate the formation before it can stabilise.
The eleven Divine Mind cultivators react instantly.
They abandon coordinated offence and throw themselves directly into Kaelan's path.
A wall of sword intent slams into the Holy Spirit's chest.
Fire and wind fuse into a spiralling furnace that wraps around its arms.
Earth law manifests as colossal chains rising from below, locking onto its legs.
Kaelan does not slow.
He rips free of the chains, tearing storm and darkness together until the earth's techniques shatter.
A lightning cultivator strikes his core with a focused bolt meant to pierce directly through the Holy Spirit.
The bolt breaks against the layered darkness of the law, dispersing harmlessly.
Kaelan forces his way forward, closing the distance meter by meter.
The starlight intensifies.
Constellation lines begin to form between the six Tianren cultivators.
Each line locks onto heaven and earth simultaneously, anchoring the formation beyond ordinary disruption.
Kaelan senses it clearly now.
This array is not meant to kill him directly.
It is meant to bind, suppress, and judge.
A formation that borrows authority from the stars themselves.
Kaelan accelerates.
The Holy Spirit sheds fragments of its body as attacks tear through it, reforming just as quickly through tower-fed magic.
A Divine Mind cultivator sacrifices defence and charges directly at Kaelan's face.
Kaelan meets him head-on.
One claw closes.
The cultivator's protective domain collapses, and his body is crushed into a cloud of blood and shattered bones before being flung aside.
Still, Kaelan is slowed.
Another cultivator detonates his own blood law technique, sacrificing part of his cultivation to halt Kaelan's advance for a single breath.
That single breath is enough.
Above the six Tianren cultivators, a full star map ignites in the sky.
Stars burn clearly now, even brighter than the sun.
Their light descends in pillars, connecting to the formation below.
Kaelan roars in fury.
He pushes everything he has into one final charge.
Dark Dragon manifests again, not as a separate spell, but fused into the Holy Spirit itself.
Storm coils around its claws, and darkness compresses until space screams.
Kaelan swings toward the formation.
The eleven Divine Mind cultivators intercept him completely.
Every remaining technique is unleashed at once.
Firestorms.
Thunder seas.
Sword rivers.
Light lances.
Blood curses.
Metal annihilation fields.
The sky collapses into blinding chaos.
The Holy Spirit is torn apart.
Its wings disintegrate.
Its torso fractures.
Its head shatters into storm fragments.
Yet Kaelan remains.
Within the collapsing Holy Spirit, he stands encased in layered dark armour, fed endlessly by the Wizard Towers.
He keeps moving forward, step by step, forcing his way through annihilation.
The distance is close to a few hundred meters.
A hundred.
Fifty.
Kaelan's warning sense screams as he sees even more starlight pouring into the array, the constellation above rotating faster, heavier, as if heaven itself is leaning closer.
"I need to stop them from forming the array…"
Inside the Holy Spirit, Kaelan moves without hesitation.
He abandons restraint.
He abandons efficiency.
He begins to perform the prototype of the eight-tier spell he has been constructing, but never completed.
Dark Starfall.
The moment the spell structure takes shape, the battlefield changes.
A tangible pressure descends, not hostile, not killing, but vast, as if the sky itself is being weighed and measured.
Even the Divine Mind cultivators feel it, their breathing slowing, instincts screaming at them to flee.
The Holy Spirit reacts immediately.
Storm energy drains violently, darkness thins, and its colossal body shrinks as mana is ripped away and fed into the forming spell.
Kaelan reinforces himself with Dark Armour, layer upon layer condensing tightly around his body.
At the same time, the eleven Divine Mind cultivators sense the danger and abandon all subtlety.
They attack with everything.
Sword intent tears open space.
Lightning pierces downward like judgment.
Fire and metal combine into annihilation arcs.
Blood law corrodes through layers of dark energy.
Wood law binds, earth law crushes, light law burns directly at the soul.
For a few heartbeats, Kaelan holds.
Then the defences break.
Dark Armour fractures.
Holy Spirit remnants are shredded completely.
Attacks punch through and strike Kaelan's true body.
Bones crack.
Organs rupture.
Blood sprays into the air and evaporates under violent energy currents.
Kaelan is injured in seconds, repeatedly, brutally.
He does not react.
He does not retreat.
He does not even slow the spell.
His eyes remain fixed on the forming structure of Dark Starfall.
The spell completes.
At noon, darkness falls.
Not shadow.
Not illusion.
True darkness.
The sky dims unnaturally, as if something enormous has blocked the world's light.
Everyone looks up.
The clouds split apart.
From the edge of the world, a colossal dark rock breaks through the sky itself, its surface etched with dense spell-runes, gravity distorted around it, space warping as it descends.
It is not fast.
It is inevitable.
The eleven Divine Mind cultivators realise at once.
The spell's target is not Kaelan.
It is the six members of the Tianren Sect.
For a single instant, hesitation appears.
Then it vanishes.
They understand clearly.
If Kaelan survives today, none of them will ever be safe.
Not their lives.
Not their families.
Not their sects.
Not their legacies.
A being capable of this cannot be allowed to live.
Even if they die here, Kaelan must die with them.
The eleven Divine Mind cultivators regroup instantly, retreating and forming a protective perimeter around the six Tianren cultivators.
Their figures blur as starlight thickens, the six bodies gradually fading into a dense sphere of rotating radiance.
Energy flares wildly as the Divine Mind cultivators pour everything they have into defence.
Shields overlap.
The air screams under the pressure.
Above them, Dark Starfall continues its descent.
Slow.
Absolute.
Unstoppable.
Below, Kaelan hangs in the air, broken body held aloft by sheer will, dark energy still circulating faintly around him.
His breathing is uneven.
His injuries are severe.
Yet his eyes are calm.
Cold.
Focused.
The dark meteor grows larger, eclipsing the sky, casting the battlefield into unnatural twilight.
The eleven Divine Mind cultivators move without hesitation.
They know running is meaningless.
Layer after layer of shield spells rise around them, overlapping and interlocking into a composite defence.
Metal domains crystallise into rotating plates.
Earth law condenses into mountain-like barriers.
Blood shields pulse thick and viscous, reinforcing cracks instantly.
Light law spreads into radiant membranes meant to resist corruption.
Sword intent weaves between layers, forming cutting currents that deflect force.
Thunder wraps everything, stabilising and reinforcing the whole structure.
At the same time, they attack.
Fire lances roar upward.
Sword rivers slash through the sky.
Lightning spears pierce space.
Light beams burn straight toward the core of the falling meteor.
Wind laws twist violently, attempting to alter its trajectory.
Everything crashes into Dark Starfall.
It does nothing.
The meteor does not shatter.
It does not deviate.
It absorbs.
Then something changes.
The spell shudders.
The surface of the dark meteor ripples, no longer smooth, no longer descending.
It stops.
The moment it halts, a deep, silent pressure spreads across the battlefield.
Then the meteor begins to compress.
Not inward gently, but violently, as if an invisible fist is crushing it.
Dark Starfall's nature shifts.
The prototype reacts to the overwhelming external interference.
Mana floods into it.
Magic energy streams from the Wizard Towers like rivers torn from their beds.
Free magic energy in the air is ripped away instantly.
Even the starlight feeding the Tianren array bends, twisting unnaturally, drawn toward the compressing mass.
The attraction intensifies every second.
The air distorts.
Space folds.
The eleven Divine Mind cultivators feel their bodies pulled forward.
Their shields creak.
Their domains destabilise.
Several are dragged half a step forward despite anchoring techniques and desperate resistance.
The six Tianren cultivators pale as starlight thins around them, their formation screaming in protest.
Kaelan feels it too.
From a distance, even with multiple layers of Dark Armour, Dark Cage, and Dark Pulse cycling constantly, his body is tugged forward.
Every instinct screams danger.
Not death.
Erasure.
This is no longer a spell meant to strike.
It is becoming a singular point of destruction.
The dark meteor continues to shrink.
From mountain-sized.
To hill-sized.
To a boulder.
To a fist.
To something no larger than a human head.
Yet the pressure multiplies instead of fading.
The battlefield begins to collapse inward.
Clouds vanish.
Light bends.
Sound disappears entirely.
Even laws begin to strain, threads of reality pulling tight toward the compressed core.
The Divine Mind cultivators shout in panic now.
Some attempt to flee.
They fail.
The pull is absolute.
Kaelan reinforces himself again and again, blood running freely as his injured body fights against forces meant to crush worlds.
The compressed mass reaches its limit.
For a single, terrifying instant, everything becomes perfectly still.
Then it detonates.
There is no sound.
There is no light.
There is only annihilation.
The compressed core explodes, releasing everything it consumed in a fraction of a moment.
The laws of the world tear.
Space fractures like glass.
Storm, darkness, starlight, magic, spiritual energy, and pure void erupt outward together.
The sky is ripped open.
The ground below ceases to exist.
Within kilometres, everything vanishes.
Mountains are erased.
Lakes are wiped away.
Air itself is torn apart and remade.
Divine Mind domains collapse instantly.
Shield spells disintegrate as if they never existed.
The battlefield becomes a void of violent energy where existence itself fails to hold shape.
Wizard Towers across Chen Kingdom dim abruptly, their channels burned empty.
At the centre of the devastation, nothing remains intact.
No victor.
No corpse.
No answer.
Only a vast scar carved into the fabric of the world, where heaven, earth, and law have been torn apart by a spell that should never have existed.
The explosion fades slowly.
What comes after… remains unknown.