Myth Beyond Heaven

BOOM!

The collision of the two weapons was not loud. It was a profound, soul-shuddering silence that erupted from the point of impact, a void where sound itself died. Silver moonlight clashed against gray entropy, each force trying to cancel out the other.

The shockwave that followed was physical and spiritual, washing over the battlefield and making even the distant combatants stagger.

The profound silence following the clash gave way to a new kind of battle—one not of raw fury, but of absolute, chilling mastery.

The air itself seemed to still, charged with the weight of two fundamental laws of the universe vying for dominance.

Nian Shi did not lose his composure. His initial surprise at the sword's resistance faded into cold analysis. His silver eyes, deep pools of temporal knowledge, tracked Yue Bingyao's every move. He was not angry; he was intrigued, then meticulously focused.

Yue Bingyao was equally calm. Her expression was one of serene detachment, her movements an economy of precision. There was no rage, no fear—only the execution of her duty as the guardian of the night and the enforcer of divine retribution.

Their battle became a terrifyingly beautiful dance of concepts.

Nian Shi wielded the Blade of Eternity not as a blunt instrument, but as a painter uses a brush.

A subtle flick of his wrist would send a wave of accelerated time towards her, not to age her, but to disrupt the rhythm of her lunar energy, to make the phases of her power stutter and skip.

He would thrust, and a needle-thin beam of temporal stagnation would shoot forth, aiming to freeze the very flow of power within her God Slaying Sword.

Yue Bingyao responded with the immutable certainty of the moon. The God Slaying Sword, sheathed in her silvery light, became a conductor of cosmic law.

Where Nian Shi tried to disrupt rhythm, she enforced a steady, eternal pulse. The sword would hum, and the disrupted lunar energy would smooth out, returning to its natural, inexorable cycle.

When stagnation threatened, the moonlight flared, its cold, constant light burning away the temporal freeze, asserting that some things—like the moon's journey across the sky—were constant and could not be halted.

Nian Shi tried to fracture the space around her, creating pockets of fast and slow time to disorient her. She answered by making her presence a fixed point, her lunar aura creating a domain of perfect, unchanging stillness where his temporal tricks held no sway.

It was a contest of domains—the relentless, changing flow of Time against the constant, cyclical certainty of the Moon.

And they were equal.

This was the fact that truly began to gnaw at the edges of Nian Shi's calm focus. His analytical mind ran through the variables, and it didn't compute.

She should not be this strong, he thought, even as he seamlessly parried a slash that could have severed his connection to a minor timeline.

The true core of Yue Bingyao's power was shattered. It was split, diminished. Most of it resides with Lin Xinyao and Hongyue, who are gone. This... this is a reconstruction. A powerful one, fueled by sacrifice and will, but it should be a faded copy. A echo. Not this... this perfect parity.

Every time their blades met, the silent shockwave of nullified power confirmed it. The God Slaying Sword in her hand wasn't just a tool for her; it was functioning at its peak, its god-ending property perfectly harmonized with a complete lunar authority.

A flicker of cold decision passed through Nian Shi's silver eyes. Analysis was over. This anomaly needed to be crushed through overwhelming force. Parity was unacceptable.

"Enough of this farce," he stated, his voice flat and devoid of emotion. He disengaged from their blade-lock with a smooth step back, creating distance.

He raised his free hand. The space above his palm shimmered, and an ancient, ornate hourglass materialized. It was not made of glass and sand, but of woven timelines and crystallized moments—the Hourglass of Beginnings. The sands within were not sand, but shimmering particles of primordial time itself.

Unlike the other hourglasses his other selves had displayed, this one was entirely different. It was the true Hourglass of Beginnings.

"Since you insist on embodying constancy," Nian Shi said, his tone icy, "let us see how you fare against the weight of all beginnings. Every start must eventually bow to an end."

He channeled his power into the hourglass. It began to glow with an intense silver light, and the flow of sands within reversed, then accelerated violently.

The air around him warped, heavy with the pressure of countless origins pressing down on the present.

"To me!" he commanded, his voice echoing across the battlefield to his other selves.

Instantly, a dozen of the temporal copies still battling Number One and Number Two disengaged. They ignored the void hunters' attacks, some taking grievous wounds as they teleported, forming a circle around Yue Bingyao. Their Blades of Eternity gleamed, pointed inward.

Nian Shi, the prime, retreated further back, holding the glowing Hourglass aloft. "Erase her."

The command was simple. The twelve copies moved as one, a symphony of temporal annihilation. They didn't attack randomly; they coordinated their assaults to exploit the pressure from the Hourglass.

One copy slashed horizontally, a wave of time meant to decay her defenses. Another thrust from above with a needle of absolute stagnation. A third attacked from below with accelerated entropy. They came from all angles, their attacks layered and interwoven, a net of endings designed to overwhelm her constant moon.

Yue Bingyao's serene expression did not change. She did not panic. She simply adjusted her stance, the God Slaying Sword held poised before her.

"The moon waxes and wanes," she murmured, her voice calm amidst the storm, "but its essence is eternal. You cannot erase what is fundamental."

As the first wave of attacks reached her, she moved. It was not a flurry of blocks, but a series of precise, minimal movements. The God Slaying Sword became a blur of moon-wreathed obsidian.

Swish! Clang!

She met the horizontal decay wave with a vertical cut, the lunar energy on her blade neutralizing the temporal decay before it could touch her.

She deflected the stagnation needle with the flat of her blade, a spark of silver light canceling out the gray energy.

She sidestepped the accelerated entropy, her footwork leaving afterimages of moonlight that the attack passed through harmlessly.

Yue Bingyao had become a fortress of motionless defense in the eye of a temporal hurricane and she held firm to her ground…