Chapter 492: Death of Space


    Brock’s avnche of palm strikes neutralized Starhair’s momentum just as he charged past the halfway mark. He was then pushed back. The hands kept pping, a series of strikes so dense Starhair didn’t have time to teleport away. He tried regardless. A portal opened next to him, and just as he was halfway through it, a hand grabbed his robes and pulled him back out. There was no escaping this beating.


    Starhair roared again. He gathered his hair into a soft shield, absorbing all impacts and reflecting them back. Hundreds of arms exploded, but Brock had many more. They kept crashing down. Starhair was smashed into argeary fragment and pushed through it until the entire thing shattered in a shower of ice. He kept flying backward until he rammed into the’s hard core. This time, because his shield was neutralizing most of the impact, he didn’t have the momentum to break through. He was stuck against the core, slowly forming arger andrger crater as Brock pummeled him with palm strikes.


    “Check it out!” Sophie''s voice echoed. “Brock is going p-happy on Starhair!”


    Herment must have enraged the peak B-Grade. He detonated a good part of his energy, erupting with enough force to pulverize the core below him and send away all of Brock’s golden arms. When the smoke cleared, Starhair sported a new form. He was now a ten-foot-tall humanoid made of starry hair. Jack assumed he’d somehow split his hair strands and turned them into armor.


    “You fought well, but this ends now,” Starhair shouted. “Fall!” He charged at Brock, moving far faster than before, tearing up space wherever he passed. A few golden arms pped into him, achieving nothing. He disintegrated them by merely rushing past.


    His new set of armor gave him extreme defense, strength, and speed. He was vastly more powerful than before. It was clear he was going all-out, or at least close to it.


    Facing this charging form, Brock didn’t panic. He brought his hands together. The Bro Code flipped to a new page, too fast for anyone to see, then pped shut. “You are misbehaving,” Brock chanted slowly. “As your big bro, it is my duty to bring you back into line.”


    Somehow, despite his slow words and Starhair’s blinding assault, he hadn’t arrived yet. Golden light erupted once again from Brock’s body. The ten thousand arms dissipated. So intense was the new burst of light that space shattered behind him, framing his figure in the void. Everyone looked away.


    When they looked at Brock again, he was surrounded by the form of a golden brori. Jack knew it was a phantom because he’d seen this move before, but if he hadn’t, he would have certainly believed it was real. So lifelike and solid was the figure. It was a magnified version of Brock, shining golden from head to toe, radiating light like sort of brotherly buddha. His eyes held not anger, but love and strictness, as if Starhair was just a misbehaving child.Thatparison was apt size-wise, as well. Compared to Starhair’s ten-foot form, Brock was at least twice as tall.


    It was only after the phantom solidified fully that Starhair reached Brock. Stars erupted within his hair armor. He punched out, carrying the force of detonating strikes. “Begone!” he shouted.


    Brock brought his hands together, then raised an open palm. He brought it down on Starhair as one would p a fly.


    A colossal explosion shook the world. All the power Starhair had amassed was for naught. He was violently diverted from his course and flung away. His speed remained enough to sear space around him. A singlerge piece remained of the once-solid, and Starhair smashed right into it, once again showering the world in specks of ice and stone. He continued through, smashing through several smaller pieces of the before finallying to a stop mid-space.


    The projection zoomed in on him. He seemed enraged, in disbelief, and desperate. His hair-armored form remained whole. Then, suddenly, he reverted it. The hair fell away, turning back into the six strands attached to his head. Intense unwillingness covered his now visible face. He still seemed pissed as hell, but he forced himself to stand down.


    A line of blood flowed from his forehead. He had given first blood. Brock had won the duel.


    The audience cheered. “What a spectacr battle!” Sophie eximed. “An excellent demonstration from both fighters. Give it up for them, everyone!”


    Cheers and ps resounded through the void. Jack cheered too, though the Elders remained calm by his side.


    “That was a good fight,” Elder Soresightmented. “It was closer than it seemed.”


    “Yes…” Boatman replied. He smiled. “But Brock wasn’t goingpletely all-out, even at the end. He never used the power of his bros to enhance himself. Maybe he considered it cheating.”


    “Starhair didn’t go all-out either,” the other Elder said. “That boy has a very powerful but dangerous move. I’m d he had theposure not to use it.”


    Jack’s chest swelled with pride beside them. His little brother was so strong now. Once upon a time, he’d been small enough to ride on Jack’s shoulder, and all he did was throw poop at the people he disliked. Thinking back to those days, Jack couldn’t help feeling emotional. How far he’de. Both of them.


    “Well done, Brock,” he said, transmitting his voice directly to the brori.


    Brock looked over and smiled. He then turned towards Starhair and flew over. The peak B-Grade hovered in ce, steaming with rage, shame, and unwillingness. He looked angrily at Brock as he approached.


    “Good fight, bro,” Brock said, extending a hand.


    The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    Starhair looked at it. He hesitated. Then, finally, he controlled his emotions and shook it.


    “You won fair and square,” he admitted. “Good fight.”


    The audience cheered again.


    ***


    Jack’s clone covered distance rapidly. Their little starship, piloted by an Envoy called Druk-Druk, had already reached the Milky Way gxy. Finding Earth wouldn’t be difficult—Jack knew the rough location of Earth in the Systemless part of the gxy, and also its teleporter frequency.


    Before that, however, there was something else he needed to do.


    The starship hovered just outside System space. It was an invisible line Jack had brushed with his perception.


    “Can you hold them for a moment?” he asked Druk-Druk, motioning to the desk-sized, opaque space bubble hovering inside the starship. The captain rolled her eyes and epted. This bubble housed the Church cultivators Jack had released from the Green Dragon Realm. Once they made it to Earth, the Bare Fist Brotherhood would give Druk-Druk arger starship so she could carry everyone back to the New Cathedral.


    As she took over maintaining the space bubble, Jack teleported outside the starship. He hovered before the border of System space, taking a deep breath. Then, he flew in.


    <strong>You have returned to the New World. Wee!</strong>


    He grinned at the System notification. Quickly pushing it aside, he looked into his ss, trying to summon his newest Dao Vision, the entire reason he’d riskeding here.


    His Paragon of Cultivation ss offered him a top-tier Dao Vision at every minor realm, including the early B-Grade. However, as Jack was outside System space, the Dao Visions couldn’t be “downloaded.” He hoped that would happen automatically as soon as the clone entered System space. After all, they shared the ss.


    Nothing happened for a few moments. Jack only felt a strange emptiness. <em>Are they onto me? </em>he wondered. <em>Should we run?</em>


    And then, the Dao Vision arrived. It struck his mind like a sledgehammer. He shook from the shock. His body escaped his control, as he was already drawn into the vision, but that was fine. They expected it. Druk-Druk would pull him back to the ship and step on the gas to get as far away from this ce as possible.


    Therefore, Jack focused on perceiving the Dao Vision. And what a vision it was.


    ***


    The universe was silent. Stars glittered in the far distance like inconsequential dots. But not everywhere. Arge part of Jack’s vision was covered by absolute darkness.


    He realized he was facing a ck hole. A real one, not the imitation that was the Animal Abyss. He could sense spacetime going haywire, absolutely demolished by a far superior power. It was pulled apart the same way a machine would dismantle a stuffed toy. Slowly, but surely. Inevitably.


    Jack had studied ck holes before. He knew some principles from Earth science, had read about them in Archon Green Dragon’s inheritance, had seen one from a distance at the Cathedral, and had experienced a faint version of the real thing in the Animal Abyss. However, those experiences all paledpared to the real thing. He couldn’t wrap his mind around it. Despite his recent power-ups, he was like an ant before this anomaly. Even the Arch Priestess, whom he’d met recently, would seem weak here.


    Jack knew, without the shadow of a doubt, that ck holes existed on a higher realm than cultivators. Even Gods. That’s why Enas, the most powerful Old God and arguably most powerful entity in the universe, had been unable to escape after falling into one.


    <em>Wait. What exactly is this vision about? </em>Jack wondered.


    Every Dao Vision he’d seen so far was based on a cultivator. It showed them doing something. However, he’d floated before the ck hole for a few moments now without anything happening. Was there no other cultivator here? Was the vision just about meditating on the ck hole?


    He wouldn’tin if it was.


    As he looked around, however, he discovered that was not the case. There <em>was </em>someone here. A single man, dark of skin and hair, barely visible in the darkness. His aurabeled him as marginally weaker than the Arch Priestess, but he was also an Archon.


    It was not Archon ck Hole, as Jack had initially suspected. He’d never seen this person before.


    The man hovered in space a couple miles away from Jack, unaffected by the terrible spacetime flows surrounding the ck hole. No, not exactly unaffected; as Jack took a closer look, he noticed the man was riding what resembled a silver surfboard made of extremely dense material. It could have been fashioned out of an actual neutron star. This surf board alone warped space around it, and the man was using his Dao to enhance that influence, anchoring himself and the surfboard against the pull of the ck hole. They weren’t immobile, either; just surfing around the event horizon.


    Jack would be lying if he said he expected to see someone surfing a ck hole. Then again, this was probably easier than outright resisting its gravitational pull.


    Jack himself was just a projection here. The gravity didn’t affect him. If it did, he would have been powerless to resist.


    The dark-skinned man muttered something. Jack didn’t quite catch it. He tried to float closer but found himself unable to move. All he could do was strain his ears and try to catch the words, instinctively spread outward by the man’s powerful Dao.


    “The death of space…” the man muttered. “A downward spiral. A universal end. Everything ends here, but where does it begin?”


    He seemed to be in the middle of his meditation. Jack knew Archons could detect the System recording them to make Dao Visions, but this one was apparently too focused on his ruminations and resisting the ck hole to notice. Below his surfboard, a torrent of dark energy shot out for endless miles, the aftereffect of the friction between him and the ck hole.


    Before Jack could consider those words, the man spread his hands. Space bent and shattered around him. The void appeared; and out of it crawled death. Not the death of living creatures, but the death of space and time, of the Dao itself. The true end.


    Jack shivered at the sight. What emerged from the void manifested as ck foam in the physical world, but on a spiritual level, it was beyond his understanding. He had the irrational fear that this encroaching darkness was so deadly it could harm him through the Dao Vision. Thankfully, it didn’t approach him. It merged with the flow, angling towards the ck hole. It seeped in gradually, disappearing behind the event horizon.


    Jack couldn’t sense what happened afterwards, but he could see it clearly. This true death energy was simr to the ck hole’s. They merged together, not fighting because of their different sources, just agreeing on total death. The event horizon weed this energy, and the ck hole grew a tiny bitrger.


    Theirpatibility wasn’t absolute, however. Though simr energies, the ck hole’s was purer. A small part of the man’s foam dissipated as it was purified. That didn’t disappoint him; instead, he smiled, pearly white teeth shining in the darkness. He seemed satisfied.


    “Death born of space,” he muttered. “All bes one.”