"Sage, go back to your own timeline! If you keep getting in my way, we'll both die!" Du Yu shouted.
Sage gave a bitter smile. "Du Yu, I can't go back! There's no one in my timeline who can operate the equipment to recall me. I came here prepared to die to stop you. Won't you turn back even now?"
"This isn't turning back!" Du Yu roared. "I've been taking orders from you people all this time, scraping by under charges you invented out of thin air. I've already decided to kill the one responsible for all this. No one can stop me!"
"That's why I'm here!" Sage said. "I intend to stop you with my own life."
Du Yu pulled a pitch-black scroll from inside his clothes and said coldly, "You can't stop me."
Sage stared wide-eyed at the Eight Directions Ghost Record in Du Yu's hand, an ominous premonition flaring in his heart.
"Du Yu, what are you going to do?!"
Du Yu bit his finger and carefully wrote the word "Sage" in the only remaining slot in the Eight Directions Ghost Record: Southern Evil Ghost.
"You may be me, and I may be you, but my name isn't Sage."
The moment he finished speaking, Sage's body began shaking violently. His face drained of color, and he turned to flee, but an inexplicable pull forcibly sucked him into the Eight Directions Ghost Record.
"Du Yu! You scumbag!" Sage cursed. "Do you want history to repeat itself and all our efforts to come to nothing?!"
As Sage entered the scroll, Du Yu's strength returned.
Now Sage no longer existed in this timeline, only within Du Yu's heart.
"I don't want all our efforts to come to nothing. I just want this to reach a conclusion," Du Yu murmured to