Chapter 24: The Scourge and the Star
The roar of the Arena of Ascension was a tidal wave of sound and spirit pressure, crashing against the two figures at its center. On one side stood Ayush, a point of dense, silent gravity amid the storm. On the other, Ming Ye, whose very presence seemed to leach the vibrancy from the air, his Soul-Devouring Scourge coiling around him like a patient, hungry serpent.
The referee's hand fell.
Ming Ye moved first. His chain didn't lash out; it flowed, a river of dark metal that bypassed the physical world to target the spirit directly. It was a strike aimed at the core of Ayush's being, seeking to hook his soul and tear it loose.
Ayush's Spirit Eyes, enhanced by Gu Yuena's perceptual overlay, didn't see a chain. He saw a screaming, artificial vortex of soul-law, a blasphemy against the natural cycle. He didn't dodge. He Commanded.
A localized field of gravity, ten times normal, snapped into existence around the chain's leading links. The physical metal, reinforced by spirit power, shuddered and slowed, its ethereal seeking function disrupted by the sudden, brutal imposition of mass.
"A crude trick," Ming Ye sneered, his voice thin and cold. His second spirit ring flashed. The chain didn't struggle against the gravity; it dissipated, turning into a cloud of soul-numbing mist that seeped through the gravitational field, reforming behind Ayush to strike at his back.
Spatial Persuasion. Ayush made the space behind him a fraction of a step further. The reformed chain tip missed his spine by a hair's breadth. He pivoted, his Stellar Bone-forged fist already moving, carrying the condensed force of Dou Qi and his own immense density in a simple, devastating punch aimed at Ming Ye's center.
Ming Ye's eyes widened slightly. He crossed his arms, and a ghostly, wailing shield of compressed soul energy manifested. The punch connected.
BOOM-CRACK.
The sound was not of impact, but of something breaking. The soul shield shattered into fading phosphorescence. Ming Ye was hurled backward, skidding across the jade floor, his arms numb. The crowd's roar hit a fever pitch.
"His physical power… it's impossible!" a Sun Moon elder gasped.
In the VIP section, Elder Ming of the Body Sect leaned forward, his bronze-like fingers gripping the railing. "Not impossible. Refined. That boy's body… it's a treasure. It moves force like a mountain moves earth."
Ming Ye rose, a flicker of genuine irritation in his cold eyes. "You are an interesting pest," he said, brushing dust from his robe. "But pests are meant to be exterminated."
His third, purple spirit ring—a sign of a five-thousand-year spirit beast—blazed to life. The Soul-Devouring Scourge didn't just glow; it screamed. A psychic howl of pure hunger filled the arena, making weaker soul masters in the audience clutch their heads. The chain split into nine segments, each tip morphing into a ghostly, wailing maw. Nine Ghosts Devouring Soul.
This was no longer a test. This was the execution move Tang San had foreseen.
The nine maws shot forth, weaving through space, ignoring physical barriers, their target unwavering: Ayush's spiritual sea. They sought to bypass his formidable body entirely and feast on his soul.
"Now," Gu Yuena's voice was a clarion call in his mind. "Your anchor is not your spirit. It is your will. It is the cosmos you carry. Let the blasphemy grasp the void."
Ayush stood his ground. He didn't raise a spiritual defense. Instead, he reached for the principle the Black Book had just unlocked: 'Unyielding Will' from the Martial Universe. He forged his determination, his rage, his love for his mother, his pact with Wang Dong, into an immovable pillar within his soul.
At the same time, he performed the Counter-Script. He used Gravity Command, not on the chains, but on the space his soul occupied. He made the spiritual coordinates of his own existence impossibly heavy, tied not to his fragile spirit, but to the dense stellar remnant within his bones and the firm fabric of space itself, guided by Gu Yuena's authority.
The nine ghostly maws reached him… and slipped.
They tried to latch onto his soul, but found nothing to grasp. His spiritual presence was there, yet it was anchored to a conceptual weight they could not budge. It was like trying to pull a mountain by hooking a cloud. The chains writhed in confusion, their devouring function screeching into feedback.
To the audience, it looked like a miraculous, passive defense. A strange, silvery-gold aura flickered around Ayush as the soul-devouring attack simply dissipated against him. Ming Ye's flawless technique had failed spectacularly.
"What… what is he?" Lin Xi muttered from the Sun Moon booth, his scanners overloading with contradictory data.
In the God Realm, Tang San's divine composure finally cracked. His hand clenched, crushing the armrest of his throne. How? The tool was perfect. The variable should have been erased or exposed. Instead, it had made his chosen weapon look… broken.
Down in the arena, Ming Ye stared at his faltering chains, then at Ayush, who met his gaze with calm, ancient-looking eyes. For the first time, doubt—and a spark of fear—entered the prodigy's heart.
Ayush spoke, his voice carrying on a thread of spiritual energy, for Ming Ye alone. "Your chain eats souls. But you have never fed it a star."
He took a step forward. Then another. Each footfall cracked the jade, not from brute force, but from the concentrated gravity he willed into his steps. He was the calamity walking.
Ming Ye, desperate, poured all his spirit power into the Scourge, forcing the nine maws to coalesce into one gigantic, roaring spectral dragon head of soul-devouring energy. He launched it in a final, all-or-nothing blast.
Ayush stopped. He raised his right hand, palm open. In his spiritual sea, the Black Book approved. The synthesis was ready.
Stellar Crush.
He didn't punch. He pushed. He focused his Unyielding Will, channeled a surge of explosive Dou Qi, and wrapped it all in a gravitational command of monumental density—a simulation of a collapsing star's core—into the space just before his palm.
The oncoming soul-dragon didn't hit him. It hit a point of invisible, ultimate weight. There was no sound, only a terrifying visual warp as space itself bent. The magnificent, terrifying dragon head of soul energy imploded, compressed into a pinprick of blinding light before vanishing with a faint pop.
The backlash was instantaneous. The Soul-Devouring Scourge, its connection to the annihilated energy severed, recoiled like a whipped snake. A crack ran down its length. Ming Ye screamed, not in pain, but in spiritual agony, as his own tool's feedback ripped through his soul. He collapsed to his knees, clutching his head, his spirit power in chaotic disarray.
The arena was silent.
Then, the referee's stunned voice echoed. "Victory… to Shrek Academy's Huo Yuhao."
The silence shattered into uproar. Wang Dong was over the barrier in an instant, catching Ayush as he swayed, the immense mental and spiritual cost of the Stellar Crush finally hitting him.
"You did it," Wang Dong whispered, his own body trembling with adrenaline and relief.
But Ayush's attention was inward. The Black Book was humming, its pages fluttering wildly.
COUNTER-SCRIPT EXECUTION: SUCCESSFUL.
PUBLIC REACTION: SHOCK, AWE, CONFUSION. HERESY NOT DETECTED.
DIVINE REACTION: FURY. ACTIVE ERADICATION PROTOCOL ESCALATING.
ASSIMILATION UPDATE: CONFLICT RESOLUTION THROUGH 'UNYIELDING WILL' AND CONCEPTUAL ANCHORING PROVIDES HIGH-YIELD DATA.
SYNTHESIZING PRINCIPLES FROM CONFLICT…
REALM UNLOCK PROGRESS: [MARTIAL UNIVERSE]: 52%. [SHROUDING THE HEAVENS]: 15%. [ETERNAL LIFE]: 8%.
WARNING: MULTIVERSAL RESONANCE DETECTED. THE 'VICTORY' HAS DRAWN ATTENTION FROM OTHER LOCKED REALMS.
As Wang Dong helped him from the arena, Ayush felt new, distant gazes. They were not the furious, focused stare of Tang San. They were curious, ancient, and vast. In the depths of the Black Book, for a fleeting moment, he sensed phantoms—a young man in black refining a flame, a determined youth with a stone talisman, a sly survivor from Earth, a slave climbing toward eternity. They were echoes from the locked pages, briefly stirred by his defiance.
He had survived the god's trap. He had won using the laws of other worlds, hidden in plain sight.
But the victory had made him visible on a much larger, more dangerous stage. The Black Book's hunger was returning, and its next feast would not be on a single world's laws, but on the legends and heroes of countless universes.
The tournament finals were still to come. But Ayush knew the real battle had just expanded beyond the heavens.
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In the aftermath, the Body Sect Elder Ming formally approaches Ayush, expressing intense interest in his "body refinement method." The Black Book, sensing opportunity, begins assimilating the Body Sect's ultimate principles of physical cultivation. Meanwhile, Tang San, thwarted and furious, decides to accelerate his final move: he will personally empower the chosen champion of the tournament finals—a mysterious, god-touched contender—granting them a fragment of divine authority to ensure Ayush's public erasure. The final match becomes a proxy war between a reader armed with stolen multiversal laws and a god's direct avatar.