At the instant she closed in on the three Nascent Soul puppets,
Something changed.
Without warning, two faint ripples of distorted space bloomed on either side of the puppets bound by the Liuyun Ribbon!
Swish! Swish!
Two figures emerged from the void, each exuding an aura no weaker than those enemy Nascent Soul puppets.
They were the two Nascent Soul general puppets from Xie Zhaolin's side, the ones that had supposedly been fighting on distant battlefields to pin down the enemy's forces!
What?!
For the first time, disbelief flashed in the icy eyes of the enemy puppets. They realized too late—those "puppets" that had been clashing with their troops earlier weren't real at all!
They were illusions, or perhaps cleverly disguised decoys!
From the very beginning, Xie Zhaolin had hidden her strongest trump cards using some kind of spatial technique they couldn't comprehend.
She'd concealed them right here, in the final battlefield, waiting for this exact moment. Her daring charge, her reckless risk of getting close, and even binding them with the Liuyun Ribbon—it wasn't about dying together.
It was to drag all three of these enemy Nascent Soul puppets into the blast zone!
Only at this final moment did they understand why Xie Zhaolin had repeated that "failed" third simulation almost exactly in the last battle.
It wasn't because she'd run out of ideas.
It wasn't because she was gambling on luck.
It was to deceive them.
She'd made them believe her only chance of victory lay in that "almost successful" tactic. That desperate charge, that fingertip's regret as she'd fallen half an inch short of the banner—
All of it had been an act.
That near miss wasn't to prove the path was impossible, but to make them believe that was the only path she could take!
So she'd repeated the same route in the final battle on purpose.
That intense psychological trick had completely shifted their focus.
They poured all their defenses into protecting the banner, adjusting their formation, reinforcing the surroundings, and preparing specifically for her to launch another suicidal sprint. They thought they'd seen through her. They thought they'd shut off every possible escape. But they never realized her real target had never been the banner, it had been them. And now, it was far too late to realize it.
"Explode!"
Without hesitation, at the exact moment her two hidden Nascent Soul puppets appeared, Xie Zhaolin sent her final command through her Primordial Soul link.
The energy cores inside both puppets ignited instantly.
"No—!"
The enemy Nascent Soul puppets roared in fury and panic, struggling with everything they had to break free from the Liuyun Ribbon's bindings.
Too late.
The ribbon's restraint was brief, but perfectly timed.
Boom! Boom!!
The explosions shook the entire starry sky. The self-detonation of two Nascent Soul puppets unleashed enough destructive force to obliterate everything within several miles.
Blinding light swallowed everything in an instant, and a violent shockwave swept out in all directions.
The three enemy Nascent Soul puppets, still bound by the Liuyun Ribbon, took the full impact. They didn't even have time to scream before their bodies were vaporized at the heart of the blast.
Next came the banner behind them.
Under a blast that could rival the full-force strike of a late-stage Nascent Soul cultivator, the banner's defensive barrier shattered like paper.
Crack… boom!
In a flash, the banner was gone.
As it broke apart, every remaining enemy puppet on the battlefield froze mid-motion. Then, like sand sculptures blown apart by wind, they silently disintegrated into nothing.
When the explosion finally faded, only chaotic space currents and a vast vacuum remained at the center of the battlefield.
Xie Zhaolin's figure was gone. She'd been too close to the explosion.
The combined detonation of two Nascent Soul puppets far exceeded what any Foundation Establishment cultivator could survive.
Every layer of her defense melted away the instant it touched that destructive force. Her body, her Primordial Soul—both annihilated completely.
Mutual destruction.
But this time, it was a victorious one.
She'd traded her life and two of her own puppets to annihilate the enemy's core forces and destroy the banner.
She'd won the entire battle.
Silence filled the starry void.
A long, long silence.
Then, that old, emotionless voice finally spoke again. This time, its tone carried deep shock, complexity, and something else—a quiet respect.
"The final battle… passed. Feigning openness while hiding the blade… luring the enemy with your own life…
In hopelessness, you created victory from the impossible…
Your mind sees through hearts. This isn't just command… it's the game of the soul. You… have passed every trial. You Ji Inheritance… is yours."
As those words, filled with reverence, echoed through the void, the chaotic energy and spatial rifts slowly began to calm, as if time itself was rewinding.
Tiny lights appeared across the void, gathering toward the place where Xie Zhaolin had vanished.
The lights grew brighter and brighter, slowly outlining a human form.
A few breaths later, the light faded, and Xie Zhaolin stood once again at the starting point of the battlefield, completely intact. Her face was pale, drained of all color, like someone who'd barely recovered from a grave illness.
Her Primordial Soul still ached, her consciousness weak and stinging from death and rebirth, but her eyes shone brilliantly.
She'd been right!
That final battle might've looked real, but like the previous three, it was a simulated trial created by the inheritance mechanism.
The logic was simple.
First, this was the final test. You Ji Shàngrén left this inheritance to find a successor, not to kill one. If the last battle was truly unwinnable, what would be the point? To watch the challenger die?
Second, she'd noticed the enemy puppets' energy fluctuations, the way they fought, even the details of their destruction—all identical to the earlier simulations. Nothing had changed, meaning the battlefield itself hadn't been fundamentally altered.
And third, the most crucial point—she'd revived every time after "dying" in the previous simulations.
That proved this space's rules protected her consciousness and Primordial Soul. If that protection existed before, it made no sense for it to vanish at the very end.
Those three conclusions gave her the confidence to take the ultimate gamble, using her own "death" as the price for victory.
Of course, the self-destruction tactic hadn't been her first plan.
Each simulation was precious.
If she'd used it too early, even if it worked, the enemy would've adapted, making the trick useless in the final run. It had to wait until this last battle, when the enemy was utterly convinced they understood her, when their guard was lowest. Only then could it hit with fatal precision.
And thankfully, it did.
All her planning, patience, and risks hadn't been in vain.