The Primordial Nexus Sect's headquarters, the Nexus Cloud Peak, was not a single mountain, but a constellation of floating landmasses orbiting a core of pure, swirling chaos—a controlled fragment of the primordial source from which all laws were born. It was the heart of "Something" in the Immortal Realm, a place where the very air was thick with the ambition to comprehend and command all of creation.
Wei Feng guided Li Yao through the grand entrance, a archway of interwoven elemental light that hummed with a power that would vaporize a lesser immortal. Disciples and elders alike stopped to stare. The news of the "Void Immortal" had preceded them, amplified by the disastrous failure of the Blazing Heaven Sect's assassination attempt. They saw not a prisoner in chains, but a calm figure walking beside the respected Law-Seeker Wei Feng as an equal.
They were led to the Chamber of Converging Truth, the sanctum of the Law-Seeking Council. It was a spherical room, its walls a living tapestry of flowing law-essence, depicting the birth of stars, the flow of time, and the dance of elements. Seated in floating thrones around the room were seven elders, their auras so dense and complex they were like human-shaped constellations. These were the masters of multi-law cultivation, each a legend who had fused at least three major laws into their domain.
At the center sat the Council Head, a woman who appeared ageless, her eyes holding the calm of a billion years of stellar evolution. She was Elder Mei, and her aura was a perfect, silent harmony of five major laws.
"Wei Feng," Elder Mei's voice was like the turning of a galaxy, calm and immense. "You bring us the subject of much discussion."
"I bring a colleague, Elder Mei," Wei Feng corrected with a respectful bow. "Li Yao, who practices the Law of the Uncreating Balance."
A snort came from an elder whose throne crackled with barely contained Lightning and Fire energy. Elder Ko. "Uncreating Balance? A fancy name for destruction! He nullifies. He erases. He is a walking blight on the laws we uphold!"
Li Yao stood in the center of the chamber, the swirling laws on the walls reflecting in his deep, still eyes. He did not wait to be questioned.
"Destruction is a law of change, Elder Ko," Li Yao said, his voice a quiet counterpoint to the room's thrumming power. "It turns something into something else. I do not destroy. I de-activate. I return things to a state of potential."
"Semantics!" Elder Ko snapped. "The effect is the same! You make what is into what is not!"
"Is that so?" Li Yao asked. He looked at Elder Ko's crackling throne. "Your throne is a manifestation of fused Lightning and Fire law. It is a thing of great power and beauty. It is."
He focused, not on the throne, but on the space immediately around it. He enacted his Domain of Curated Reality, but on a microscopic, impossibly precise scale. He did not target the throne's energy. He targeted the relationship between the Lightning and Fire laws that gave it form.
The crackling energy of the throne didn't vanish. It simply... separated. The Lightning law and the Fire law, forced into harmony for centuries, suddenly remembered they were distinct. The throne flickered, its unified form breaking apart into a harmless shower of separate sparks and flames that then dissipated. The throne was gone, not destroyed, but disassembled into its component parts.
The chamber was utterly silent. The other elders stared, not at the space where the throne had been, but at Li Yao. He had not used force. He had not clashed with Elder Ko's power. He had simply... edited a senior elder's personal artifact out of existence with a thought.
"That," Li Yao said calmly, "is the difference between destruction and de-activation. I did not turn your throne into ash. I turned it back into the idea of a throne and the separate ideas of lightning and fire."
Elder Ko was pale, his rage replaced by a stunned, intellectual shock.
Elder Mei leaned forward, her harmonic aura pulsing with intense interest. "You manipulate the substrate. The connections between laws. This is not a power recorded in any of our annals, not even in the myths of the Primordial Chaos."
"It is the power of the canvas, Elder Mei," Li Yao explained. "You all spend your lives perfecting the painting. I have chosen to understand the surface upon which it is painted. The painting cannot exist without the canvas. But the canvas is indifferent to the painting."
"And what is your goal, Master of the Canvas?" Elder Mei asked, granting him the title without hesitation.
"Balance," Li Yao said. "Not stagnation. The painting must be allowed to change, to grow, to become more beautiful. But there must also be a limit to the chaos, a space for the paint to dry, a silence between the notes. I am that limit. I am that space. I am that silence. I am not your enemy unless you seek to paint over the entire world with a single, overwhelming color."
He looked at each elder in turn. "The Blazing Heaven Sect seeks to dominate with fire. Others with water, or earth, or their own fused laws. This creates conflict, instability. I offer an alternative. Not a new ruler, but a principle of harmony. A check on absolute power."
The council was silent, processing this. He was not proposing a new sect or a new technique. He was proposing a new cosmic function.
"We cannot allow an unaffiliated power of this magnitude to roam freely," another elder stated, her voice laced with Water and Mind law. "You must be bound to a purpose. To a structure."
"I am bound to my purpose," Li Yao replied. "The Uncreating Balance. I will not be bound to your political structure. But I am willing to be... a consultant. An arbiter. When conflicts between major laws threaten the stability of the realm, I can be the neutral party that enforces a ceasefire. When a new, unstable law is discovered, I can be the one to contain it until it is understood."
It was a bold proposal. To make himself the immortal realm's official mediator and guardian.
Elder Mei studied him for a long, long time. The fate of the Immortal Realm hung in the balance.
"Your power is real," she finally said. "Your philosophy is... sound. But trust is earned, not given. We will not chain you, Li Yao. But we will watch you. We will grant you the title of Warden of the Balance. You will have the freedom to move, but you will also have responsibilities. The first of which is to deal with the fallout you have already created."
She gestured, and an image appeared in the center of the room—a massive war-fleet of Blazing Heaven Sect sky-galleons, powered by eternal flames, amassing at the border of the Central Continent.
"The Blazing Heaven Sect, humiliated and enraged, is mobilizing for war against the Nexus Sect for harboring you. They believe we orchestrated their disgrace. Your first task as Warden is to stop this war. Without causing a greater catastrophe."
Li Yao looked at the image of the fiery armada. A conflict between two major sects would unleash untold destruction, unbalancing the realm for centuries.
He bowed to the council. "I accept the task."
He turned and walked from the chamber. He had walked in as a specimen, a threat. He was leaving as an officially recognized, if deeply distrusted, power. The void had been given a name and a purpose by the world of Something.
His first mission was to extinguish a war before it began. He would not do it with an army. He would do it with a conversation. And if that failed, he would do it by making the concept of "war" temporarily inconvenient.