That was the first thought that surfaced through the pain, arriving with a clarity that felt incongruous with the state of his mind in that moment.
The Great Dao. Absolutism itself…
The corrective force of existence that operated without intention, without malice, without any quality that could be appealed to or reasoned with. It simply was what it was and did what it did. And in the face of something that fundamental, the question of how much power one possessed became entirely beside the point.
He could only fight through the pain and trust that the process of returning he had already initiated would complete itself before the nullification killed him. That was the only rational thing to hold onto. That, and one other thing — the certainty that Arros was experiencing the exact same thing he was, right now, in whatever form his soul mass took.
