Time and space in Artifact Valley froze beneath the indifferent gaze of Ultra-Dimensional's divine thought projection.
Yet it also seemed to have accelerated to the end of the world, where all things disintegrated.
Evil Sword had glanced at the divine thought projection out of curiosity, only to plunge into an abyss of madness, his cognition collapsing and his sense of self lost.
The indistinct projection formed of golden dust now focused its gaze on Evil Sword.
Crack!
The invisible power of Universal Extraction descended with a crash.
The first thing to collapse was the power of the Divine Artifact Rule that Evil Sword took such pride in.
The dark red patterns symbolizing the Divine Artifact Rule melted visibly beneath that focused gaze, like snowflakes dropped into boiling water, vaporizing into wisps of rising smoke.
Next came the Sword of Unity, which spanned the sky, condensed from the remains of countless clanspeople and baleful qi.
The blade let out an unending lament, like the wails of billions of living beings, as its immense structure disintegrated at its tiniest rule connections.
Countless tiny streaks of sword light broke away from the main body like stars freed from gravity, bursting into even smaller points of light. Then those points, too, dimmed into nothingness beneath the gaze of Ultra-Dimensional's divine thought projection.
Next were Evil Sword and his host.
"N-no-don't look."
Amid his bewildering swings between madness and lucidity, Evil Sword barely managed a roar.
But it was already too late.
The burly, muscular body of his host, Tao, peeled away and crumbled layer by layer, from skin to muscle to bone-from outside to inside-like stone weathered for billions of years.
There was no blood splashing or flesh flying in this process.
Only the disintegration of the purest structures of matter and energy.
Knotted