Buqu exploded out of the Titan's grip. The air screamed around him. He shot upward, and with a grasping motion of his spread hand, he *called*.
**Forged Destiny**, still planted in the soil far below, vibrated violently. With a shriek of sundered earth, it tore free from its crater and shot upward in a spinning, murderous arc, its iron-grey blade aimed to bisect the space between Juxian and Gen.
The two were forced into a sharp, desperate turn, their momentum broken, diverted away from Buqu's direct line of assault.
The Titan Ape recovered, its mountain-sized arm swinging in a backhanded blow that would pulverize a lesser peak. This time, Buqu was ready. He straightened his stance in mid-air, facing the incoming limb, and clasped **Forged Destiny** with both hands. He did not swing to meet it.
He brought the axe down in a vertical chop aimed at empty space.
What followed was not a slash, but a *tear*. A beam of pure, concentrated negation—a black light that held no warmth, only an end—descended from the axe's edge onto the Titan's swinging forearm.
At the same exact moment, the ape's titanic palm slammed into Buqu.
***CRACK-THOOM!***
Buqu was launched like a cannonball, flying several hundred meters backward through the air, blood misting from his mouth. But the Titan Ape let out a deafening, pained groan that shook the mountain. It stumbled, its colossal frame lurching, but it did not step back. Its arm, where the black light had struck, now bore a deep, smoking furrow that wept streams of liquid, golden light instead of blood. Its back arched slightly, a posture of profound, wounded fury.
Gen, watching from a distance, understood instantly. Getting close to Buqu was suicide. **Forged Destiny** was an absolute law; to touch it was to accept its verdict. They had to lure him, pressure him, without ever letting that axe land cleanly. But what did he have in his arsenal that could hit from such a range and deal serious damage to a being who had just shrugged off a Titan's blow?
His eyes blinked twice. Then, he knew.
"Juxian!" Gen called out, his voice cutting through the rumbling aftermath. "I will need your help on this!"
Juxian, already stabilizing his flight, gave a single, sharp nod. He understood without words. He took a stance a few meters to Gen's side and slightly in front, becoming a living bulwark, his **Jingdao** solidifying the air around him into a shimmering, golden shield.
Gen closed his eyes. He did not summon a weapon. He summoned a *concept*.
**The Sword of Infinity.**
A massive, silent drain spread out from their position, not sucking in Qi, but stretching it, thinning the very fabric of energy across the sky. It felt as if reality itself was being drawn taut.
The Divine General, wiping a fresh trickle of blood from his nose with a contemptuous flick, tilted his head. He sighted Gen's position. Then, he felt something shift.
Gen's aura… changed. It became sharp. Not in one place, but in *every* place. It was as if he occupied every possible position in the surrounding space simultaneously, a thousand phantom Gens all aiming at Buqu, while his true body never moved from its spot far away. It was a paradox given pressure.
Buqu suddenly felt a beam of pure, white light attack from his left. It wasn't fast; it was *already there*. He huffed, a dismissive sound, and waved **Forged Destiny** sideways to parry.
***PING—OOOOOM…***
The contact produced a sound like a struck planetary bell. A miniature star, white and silent, bloomed at the point of impact. The vibration traveled up the haft of the divine axe, through Buqu's arms, and slammed into his chest with a deep, internal *thud*.
He grunted, his eyes widening a fraction as he took a serious look at Gen. *What was that?* It seemed to contain an infinite amount of power, condensed into a single, finite point.
"It's Infinity," Gen said, his voice calm as he spread his arms outward. Back at the Sky Ocean, he had mastered a greater depth of the skill, but creating true Infinity had been impossible for a finite being. He had trained for years, refining it, failing, trying again. Only after learning **Fendow**, after understanding how to separate a part of his own finite existence from his core self, had he found the key. He did not create Infinity from a place of finiteness. He *revealed* it, tapping into a sliver of the infinite energy that underpinned all Wheels, all creation.
He waved a hand.
"This is for all my friends."
A beam of white light lanced out. It moved in a straight line, but its nature defied evasion. It was not traveling; it was *being* along its path.
Buqu had no time to escape. He raised **Forged Destiny**, bracing it before him like a tower shield.
***THUD. THUD. THUD-THUD-THUD!***
The beams of Infinity hammered into the axe, into him. They did not explode. They *persisted*, a relentless, grinding pressure that carved serious, glowing scars across his torso and limbs, each impact a tiny, eternal universe of force collapsing against his will.
But instead of retreating like any sane being, Buqu did the opposite. He laughed, a raw, bloody sound. He pressed forward, step by agonizing step, using the aura of **Forged Destiny** around his body as a battering ram against the endless tide. He was going to test it. He was going to see if this "Infinity" could break the destiny he had forged for himself.
*Jiang could never have given breath to a weakling,* he thought, exultant even in the pain. *I was right. This boy… he can make my heart beat!*
He sped up, becoming a cannonball of defiance amidst the raining bullets of eternity.
Juxian moved at the exact moment Buqu's focus narrowed on Gen.
The **Jingdao of the Agile Mountain** allowed Juxian a paradoxical grace—he was as heavy and immovable as a mountain peak, yet as agile as the wind scouring its slopes. He flowed out, not with a telegraphed punch, but with a direct, uncompromising fist aimed at Buqu's center of mass.
Buqu smirked amidst the pain, his free left hand snapping out. He caught Juxian's punch head-on this time, his fingers closing around the fist with a sound of crushing stone. He began to swing Juxian sideways, intending to use him as a bludgeon to clear his path to Gen.
But Juxian pivoted in mid-air. He did not resist the swing; he *reinforced it*, using Buqu's own momentum as a pivot. He became a weight on the end of Buqu's arm, then flowed around it in a liquid, impossible U-turn, appearing not behind Buqu, but on the *opposite side* of his own swing. It was like making a U-turn behind his target to strike from the opposite side he'd just left.
His foot, sheathed in crushing mountain **Jingdao**, connected with Buqu's temple in a vicious kick.
***CRUNCH.***
The blow, coupled with the relentless barrage of Infinity from Gen, finally forced Buqu back. Not a step. Several steps. He skidded through the air, shaking his head, blood now freely flowing from his nose and a cut above his eye. He was basking in his own blood, and his smile was wider than ever.
At the same time, the Titan Ape recovered. It lowered its massive head, and from its eyes, beams of condensed, primordial Qi rained down—not as a focused attack, but as a localized downpour of annihilating light, drenching the area where Buqu stood.
Despite it all—the Infinity, the mountain's kick, the Titan's wrath—Buqu never panicked. He never begged. He could not lose. Not while he held his destiny in hand.
With a roar that split the sky, he swung **Forged Destiny** upward.
Lightning—not of this world, but the crackling, divine discharge of imposed fate—spread out from the axe in a storm. The beams of light from the Titan were volatilized into nothingness. The storm of Qi spread further, a shockwave of negation that caught both Gen and Juxian in its wake.
There was no heat. Only a cold, erasing force.
It turned their reinforced bodies into charred, numb matter and hurled them down from the sky like discarded puppets. They struck the earth miles apart, each impact carving a new, smoldering crater into the sacred mountain.
Buqu, breathing heavily, smoke rising from his scorched skin, descended. He looked first at Gen's crater, then at Juxian's. He hefted **Forged Destiny**, its grey blade now gleaming with a sickly, spent light. He shot toward Gen's impact site, his steps measured, final. The Titan Ape reached for him from the side, but its movements were too slow, too ponderous. Buqu had already vanished, reappearing at the rim of Gen's crater.
Gen lay at the bottom, struggling to push himself up on arms that felt like cooked clay. Juxian was too far to help.
Buqu raised **Forged Destiny** high for the final, cleaving blow. "You fought well, little seedling," he rasped. "But the forge is closed."
He descended into the crater like a falling star, the axe aimed to pierce Gen's heart.
Just as he committed to the strike, a beam of fire pierced the heavens.
It was not ordinary fire. It was **Miracle Fire**—vibrant, impossible, and alive with furious purpose.
A figure galloped across the sky on a flaming steed woven from the same impossible blaze. He moved with a speed that stole time.
Liang unleashed the fire. It condensed into a bullet, then into the shape of a falling dragon, all jaws and claws of incandescent wrath. The flaming dragon intercepted Buqu's dive, its maw biting into the Divine General's side with a sound like tearing metal and screaming light.
The impact was colossal. It diverted Buqu violently out of his path, sending him cratering into the earth a hundred meters away, skidding and carving a deep, burning trench before he could halt his momentum.
Buqu roared, not in pain, but in sheer, outraged fury. He swung **Forged Destiny** into the ground, using it as an anchor to stop himself, the earth shattering around the blade.
In the middle of the sky, the flaming steed dissolved. Liang stood there, hovering on wings of pure Miracle Fire, burning brighter than the sun. His expression was cold, focused, utterly changed.
Buqu pushed himself up. His entire left arm, where the Miracle Fire had bitten him, was engulfed in flames of brilliant, searing gold. They had no intention of ever extinguishing, eating relentlessly at his divine flesh and the fading remnants of his will.
The battlefield, for a heartbeat, was frozen. The wounded Titan. The fallen Gen and Juxian. The burning, defiant Buqu. And in the sky between them all, Liang, returned not as a friend, but as a storm of fire and unresolved history.