The celestial's words were a death sentence. The Demon Lord is lost. His army is broken.
The poison from the hairpin was a fire in my veins, but it was a cold fire, a frost that burned away my strength, my hope, my very will to live. I collapsed onto the floor, my body convulsing, my mind a maelstrom of the celestial's venomous whispers.
You are nothing. A failure. A pawn. You led them all to their doom.
I saw Di Jun's face, not as he was, but as the celestial wanted me to see him: defeated, broken, his light extinguished. I saw the city in flames, the demons screaming as the celestial's power tore their world apart. I saw it all, and I believed it. The hairpin's magic was a perfect amplifier for despair, and I was drowning in it.
"You see?" the celestial's voice echoed in my mind, a symphony of cruel triumph. "This is the price of your arrogance. This is the price of a mortal playing with gods."
He raised his hand, and the very foundations of the castle groaned. Cracks of blinding white light appeared on the walls, spreading like a disease. The ancient, obsidian stone, which had stood for millennia, was beginning to crumble into dust.
This was it. This was how it ended. Not in a glorious battle, but in a pathetic heap on the floor, a victim of my own hubris.
I closed my eyes, waiting for the end.
But then, through the poison and the despair, I felt something else. A faint, familiar thrum. It was the black dagger tattoo on my chest. The Shadow-Stinger. It was a parasite, yes, but it was also a part of me now. And it was a creature of darkness, of Yin.
The celestial's power was pure, unadulterated Yang. And where there is extreme Yang, there is a weakness.
An idea, desperate and insane, sparked in the darkness of my mind. I couldn't fight his fire. But maybe I could… absorb it.
I focused all my remaining energy, all my will, not on pushing the poison out, but on drawing it in. I reached for the searing pain in my veins, the cold fire of the hairpin's magic, and I pulled it towards the tattoo on my chest.
The effect was instantaneous and agonizing.
The dagger tattoo flared to life, a black hole of pure Yin energy on my chest. It began to ravenously devour the celestial's poison, drinking it down like a man dying of thirst. The pain was beyond anything I had ever imagined. It felt like my soul was being torn apart and reassembled, atom by atom.
I screamed, a raw, agonized sound that was swallowed by the crumbling of the castle.
The celestial's eyes widened in surprise. "What? Impossible! A mortal vessel cannot contain that much celestial energy! You will be destroyed!"
He was right. I was being destroyed. But as the dagger devoured the poison, something else was happening. It was refining it. It was breaking down the pure, raw Yang energy into something I could use. It was feeding me.
The pain began to subside, replaced by a strange, buzzing power. My Yang core, which had been a raging sun, then a dying ember, was now stabilizing, becoming a controlled, focused core of pure, white-hot energy. The hairpin's poison hadn't killed me. It had… evolved me.
I slowly pushed myself to my feet, my body still trembling, but my mind was clear. The despair was gone, replaced by a cold, burning fury.
The celestial stared at me, his perfect composure finally cracking. "How…?"
"You made a mistake," I said, my voice a low, dangerous hiss. "You thought you were dealing with a mortal. You were not."
I raised my hand. But this time, I didn't unleash a wild explosion of light. I focused my new, refined energy into a single, razor-thin whip of pure Yang energy. It cracked in the air, a golden lightning bolt that hummed with a terrifying power.
"You wanted to clean the board?" I snarled. "Then let's play."
I lashed the whip out, not at the celestial, but at the floating pieces of the obsidian throne. They were his weapons, his tools. I was taking them from him.
The whip wrapped around the shards, and with a powerful tug, I pulled them towards me. They spun around me, a swirling, chaotic constellation of sharp, black shards, a shield of deadly obsidian.
The celestial roared in fury. "You insolent mortal!"
He unleashed a massive beam of pure white light, a column of destruction aimed directly at me. I raised my shield of obsidian. The light struck the shards, and the world exploded in a deafening roar of shattering stone and hissing energy.
The force of the blast threw me back, but the shield held. It was a desperate, chaotic defense, but it was working.
I was a healer. I knew how to find weaknesses. And I had just found his. He was a being of pure, focused power. He was arrogant. He was used to his attacks working. He wasn't used to a target that could absorb his energy and throw it back at him.
I dropped the shield, the obsidian shards clattering to the floor. I pointed my finger at him, a single, focused beam of golden light shooting out, aiming for his chest.
He swatted it away like an annoying fly, but the move was clumsy, undignified. I had rattled him.
"You are nothing!" he shrieked, his voice losing its celestial calm. "A temporary anomaly! A glitch in the grand design!"
"And you are a sore loser," I shot back, my confidence growing with every passing second.
I was still weak. I was still outmatched. But I was no longer afraid. He had tried to break me, and he had only made me stronger.
He let out a frustrated scream and unleashed a torrent of light, a flood of pure energy designed to overwhelm me. But I was ready. I didn't try to block it. I opened my arms and welcomed it.
I pulled the energy into me, my dagger tattoo feasting on the celestial power, refining it, and channeling it back out through my fingertips in a constant, controlled stream. I was a lightning rod, a conduit for his own power.
We were locked in a stalemate, a terrifying feedback loop of pure energy. The castle crumbled around us, the very air crackling with our combined power. It was a battle of wills, a test of endurance. And I knew, with a sudden, chilling certainty, that only one of us would walk out of this room alive.