Compared to the Emperor’s group, forced through trial after trial like passes in a storm-scarred range, Wilsar and Molor moved with lighter steps. Xiyue had handed them a crystal sphere, cold as a pocket moon, its core etched with coordinates to the deepest cells of the Soulless Sanctuary. With that spider-silk of numbers guiding them, they could slip into a shortcut and skirt the gauntlet.
Even so, a shortcut wasn’t a silk road; it was a thorn path under a wan sky. Undead stood watch like frost-bitten sentries, weaker than the trial wardens yet still hungry. Traps nested everywhere like iron fangs in the dark. Even Law Realm strength felt like a caged tiger forced to tiptoe.
So their “shortcut” crawled like a cart in mud, hardly faster at all. Being pushed around at every turn choked them like a tight collar. Outside, they wore crowns; here, those crowns crumbled like old paper.
On top of that, word reached them that the Mizumi Clan had entered the Sanctuary too, a shadow slipping into the same maze. If they ran into them, the thought alone blew across their spines like winter wind.
The trials here were cruel, but they would never stump the Mizumi Clan. Thinking of the battle on the Northern Abyss Continent with Yugong Sacred Sound and Saint Cole, despair rose like floodwater.
Yugong Sacred Sound alone could crush them, calm as a hammer of jade. She wielded the top-tier Semi Origin Artifact, the Allsaints Spirit Staff, while Wansheng and Wanling—spirits at the Zenith of Law Realm—stood by like twin blades. How do you even play that game, when the board’s already on fire?
Everything they’d met along the way snuffed Wilsar’s last ember of Inner World pride like rain on a wick.
Yes, the Inner World was ahead in development and headcount of top experts. But so what? One Mizumi Clan held resources like a single mountain overshadowing a forest.
There was another gulf. The Inner World was a weed-choked garden of tangled factions, feuding and scheming, even roots strangling roots. The Prime Realm revolved around the Mizumi Clan like stars around a fixed pole, its cohesion a braided cord the Inner World couldn’t match.
They slipped past a killing trap by a hair, like fish through a broken net, then stared at a crooked path that stretched like a snake into darkness. Molor wiped cold sweat, a bead like glass on his brow. “Wilsar, how far to the end? I’m about to drop.”
“Don’t rush it. We’re almost there.”
“You’ve said that a dozen times. How far is ‘almost’?”
That same answer had come at least ten times, and the finish still felt like a mirage over hot stone.
“What can I do? Who knows this place would coil like a dragon’s gut? Even with markers, we walked a lot of loops.”
Wilsar, usually rock-steady, looked worn, like a blade with the shine rubbed off. He sighed at the crystal sphere in his hand, its light a tired ember. He didn’t know if any of this mattered, when one shout from the Mizumi Clan could summon a storm of blades from the whole world.
There was still no whisper from the Worldgate, a sealed sky that wouldn’t open. That meant nothing big would change for a long while yet. It was lucky the Mizumi Clan hadn’t officially posted them as wanted; if they had, they’d snuff out like candles in a gust.
“So what do we do?”
Molor had lost the fire he’d had after returning from death; the more he tasted the current order, the more it tasted like iron. The Mizumi Clan’s supremacy had settled like a millennium of silt, and with Xinuo at their back like a mountain, not even the bark could be scratched.
“No choice. We finish the task Lord Xiyue gave us first, then talk.”
They reached a rare safe patch where the floor felt less like a mouth of traps. Wilsar suggested a rest, and his voice fell like a stone in a well.
“Overthrowing the Mizumi Clan? Pure fantasy,” he muttered, sitting, chewing dry rations that crumbled like sawdust.
“…I really don’t want to admit that,” Molor said, his hatred bitter as ink, yet the mirror of reality stayed cold.
“We can’t help it. This world is the Mizumi Clan’s alone, and there isn’t even a rivalling banner to lean on. What do we use to topple them? And there’s Sir Xino as their backing.”
Wilsar couldn’t help a burst of complaint, a spark in dead coals. The biggest problem was Xinuo—Pinnacle of Origin Realm, a summit among peaks—who also held the reins of the Prime Realm. Her word was a sky-edict; who dared defy it?
With Xinuo behind them, the Mizumi Clan could reign forever like an evergreen on a cliff, so long as they didn’t leap off by themselves.
And they handled alliances like a careful gardener. Aside from the unruly Divine and Demonic Races, the Elven Kind and Dragon Kin followed them with steady hearts. As for humans, most treated the Mizumi Clan like a shrine flame.
“To stand against the Mizumi Clan is to swing at the whole world,” Molor said, frowning. “What a strange world.”
Only Lord Xiyue’s true body descending would give hope of toppling them, Wilsar thought, and that hope still hung on the Worldgate opening like a tide behind a dam.
“…Is there really no way at all?” Molor asked, the question thin as smoke.
“No. We’re pawns on a board. Do our part, and let the Origin Realm lords play the high game.”
He fell silent, eyes sinking into the crystal’s glow, tracing the remaining route like stars on a faded chart.
Molor had no words. He sighed, leaned back against the rough wall like a spine of rock, and shut his eyes for a brief, shallow rest.
He was the strongest Demon King of his line, yet now he was a piece moved by a distant hand; life and death were strings he didn’t hold. It was bitter as ash. Looking back, those centuries of war had raged only because no Origin Realm beings had stepped in to clap thunder.
In the end, they pushed too far. Even Xinuo, unwilling to dirty her own blade, simply nurtured a Yugou Sage like a seed, and soon—by the scale of that long war—the war era ended like a candle pinched out.
Thinking of those years, Molor finally understood. That world-spanning struggle had been a child’s sandcastle to an Origin being, with the strongest power then capped at the Zenith of Law Realm and no Origin patrons behind any banner.
Only the Mizumi Clan had an Origin backer, and that backer was the strongest among them—Xinuo, a lone peak above clouds.
With Xinuo’s shadow there, the other Origin Realm lords didn’t need to think; they would stand in the Mizumi Clan’s shade like birds flocking to the tallest tree.
At that thought, Molor’s heart went cold, his sighs drifting like dying embers.
About an hour later, Wilsar stood and stretched, his joints crackling like dry twigs. “Molor, time to move. I’ve mapped the rest. We should reach the place before sunrise.”
“Let’s hope so.”
They nodded, stood, and spared no more words. Then they walked deeper into the dark, their figures swallowed like pebbles falling toward a bottomless abyss.
