“Heh-heh, hello there.” The old man rose from his chair, hands trembling like winter reeds, his eyes crinkling like sunlight on ripples.

“Hey. Drop the act, old man. You’re the one who called me here.” Akenachel pointed, finger straight as a spear of ice.

Edlyn scanned the room, gaze prowling like a cat in twilight, then rubbed her chin. “Huh, grandpa, how’d you pull this off?”

The old man tilted his head like a curious sparrow. “Young friend? What do you mean?”

Arms crossed like a locked gate, Edlyn’s voice stayed cool as moonlight. “Even I can’t seal my fiendish aura that tight. Heroes and others can sense a leak like smoke. But yours… if I weren’t standing here, and if my body weren’t a high-density source of fiendish aura, I wouldn’t have noticed at all.”

He blinked, then snorted a laugh like a cork popping in a quiet cellar. “Alright, alright. You got me. I wanted a bit of suspense, a thread of fog over the lake. You’re cruel—won’t give an old man any face?”

Edlyn’s killing intent snapped onto him like frost on glass. “Who are you, really?” Her voice dropped like a blade into snow.

He breathed out, a thin cloud in cold air, tucked his cane close, and shuffled toward his tidy bed like dry leaves crossing a path.

“I’m the headmaster here. I trained many students and sent them into the world,” he said, smiling like a lantern behind paper.

“Ha. Still trying to fool me?” Edlyn’s fiendish aura closed on his body like iron hands from the depths.

“Hey now, Demonic Lord, learn to stay calm, and to trust.” His tone stayed placid as a stone in tide. “I truly am the headmaster.”

“You stole this old man’s face and his life?” Edlyn’s gaze was a cold needle.

“No.” He shook his head, a willow in mild wind. “I said I truly am the headmaster.”

“A pureblood Fiend?”

“Yes, a pureblood Fiend.” His smile was a thin crescent, like a sickle moon.

Edlyn drew her power back like a tide leaving wet sand, and lifted a hand to ease the others behind her.

“Relax. He’s one of my father’s pieces on the board,” she said, voice steady as a taut bowstring.

Everyone froze. “Your father???”

Edlyn blinked once. “Uh. Right. I never told you.” She shrugged, loose as drifting cloud. “You know I’m the Demon King, right?”

“Mm!”

“Then of course I was born somewhere. I didn’t fall from thin air like a leaf without a tree. Why can I be Demon King? I’m the Abyss’s most perfect replicant. Got it?” She shrugged again, a feather on a breeze.

Yiyi lifted her right hand, small as a tender shoot reaching sun.

Edlyn glanced over and nodded. “What do you want to ask?”

“Doesn’t your Demon Race just… sprout from trees?” Yiyi’s voice was a whisper like dew.

“...Little brat, you don’t need to know that much.” Edlyn’s sigh drifted like smoke.

“Oh… right.” Yiyi shrank back like a snail to its shell.

Li Gongxuan hugged his long sword like a sleeping hound and smiled. “What makes you so sure?”

Edlyn studied the old man’s face, gaze weighing him like a scale of wind and water. Only then did she speak, slow as dusk. “Pureblood Fiends are purer than my Demon Race in blood and gift. My father forged them by hand, like lightning in a bottle. Without his permission, they don’t step a foot outside the Inferno.”

The old man sighed, a wind through hollow reed, then let his smile return like dawn through fog. He measured them with a glance. “Demonic Lord, no need to be modest. We’re your failures. In some key conditions, we couldn’t inherit the Abyss’s force perfectly. So we could only become Fiends.”

“Fine. Then what’s with all this?” Edlyn’s doubt flickered like a candle in draft.

A Fiend running an orphanage? And those who leave become pillars of the Empire? The motive stank like sweet wine gone sour.

“Demonic Lord, I’m George Ugillian. Call me the Old Headmaster, George, or Ugillian.” He lifted a cup and drank, the water plain as river snowmelt.

Edlyn’s soul-sense swept out like a tide in moonlight. It was only the most ordinary water of the human world.

“I’m the Abyss’s last chess piece on the board,” the Old Headmaster said, smile warm as a hearth.

“What’s your situation now?” Her words fell like stones in a clear pond.

“Don’t rush. Hear me out.” He stroked his beard, soft as moss, then beckoned. Several chairs dropped from the sky like autumn leaves, and thudded before them.

“The story’s long. Sit and listen,” he said, gentle as spring rain.

Edlyn glanced over the chairs, her gaze a flint spark. No tricks. Just plain wooden chairs, cheap as roadside crates, the kind any village carpenter could make.

A sly glint crossed the old man’s eye, a fox peeking from brush. “First, a question. How long do you think I’ve lived?”

Heads shook, a field of grass in wind.

Edlyn couldn’t be bothered; her silence lay flat as slate.

He shrugged, a bird ruffling feathers. “Alright, alright, tough audience.”

“I’ve lived for three hundred million years.” His smile hung in the air like a comet’s tail.

Faces tightened, disbelief rising like a wall of surf.

Edlyn frowned, a crease like a storm line. “That’s… beyond epochs. You—what’s your deal?”

He smiled. “I was the first creation of the Abyss. Three hundred million years ago, I led the Fiend legions to assault the Celestial Realm.” His voice walked old battlefields like wind over scorched earth.

“...” Edlyn’s face dimmed like a lamp under ash. Thoughts whirled in her head like a flock of crows.

“So from then till now, you’ve lived outside?” Her question was a stone skipping water.

“Yes.” He nodded, steady as a pendulum. “But I’m stuck at the threshold of godhood, a moth tapping glass. With time, the Abyss’s power pushes out of me like sap out of split bark.”

“I’ll soon be nothing but a frail human elder, and die like a guttering candle.”

“Luckily, centuries ago, the Abyss found me again, and gave me a final mission—a last ember to burn.”

“Here, I polish my heart. We Fiends are the Abyss’s emotions made flesh, storm and tide in one body. Our thoughts run wild like a river in flood. To calm myself, I founded this welfare home, and helped pitiful children of many races, like planting willows along a torn bank.”

“Impossible! The Church and the Celestial Realm would never allow you!” Akenachel’s fury flared like a struck match. “You’re a lowly Fiend!”

He smiled without heat, a pebble in a stream. “Little girl, the Celestial Realm was once cleansed by my Inferno, washed top to bottom by fire. Their high seats were wiped clean like a table after a storm. There’s much you don’t know. Don’t overthink. Just listen to the tale.”

“You—!”

“And haven’t humans said it? An Angel can abandon you for the world, while a Fiend will abandon the world for you.” His gentle smile spread like tea warmth.

Akenachel blushed, a rose struck by sun, and ground her teeth. “Twisted logic! And how does that connect to— I…”

“Don’t cut in.” Edlyn’s glance was a cold knife through silk.

Edlyn looked at the old man, thoughts rippling like fish under ice. True—the Celestial Realm’s top strength was thin air; when Birand invaded, resistance was paper-thin. But wasn’t the Inferno the same?

She’d just left the Inferno not long ago. Fiends there… honestly, she’d barely seen any, like embers in wet ash.

“Damn it.” Akenachel bit down and sat, motion tight as a drawn bow.

The old man nodded and went on, voice steady as a drum. “Seven hundred years ago, the Abyss found me and gave me a last task. Wait for the future, and help you.”

Li Gongxuan chuckled, light as dust on steel. “Grandpa, look at you now. Your combat power’s probably not great. What can you even help with?”

The old man smiled and waited, patient as a heron. Only when Li Gongxuan sat again did he speak. “I can’t promise much else. But the Hero—I can help you get him back.”

“Birand?” Edlyn’s brows knit like crossed branches. The want in her chest twisted like a thorn.

He watched her, gaze steady as a lighthouse, then said, “Eli.”

“!” Gasps broke out like sparks from flint.

Edlyn, rare as sunrise, let a smile bloom like peach blossom. “But didn’t Birand devour him? What do I need to do?”

“Don’t worry.” He pointed skyward, finger a white crane. “It’s not that simple.”

Edlyn followed his finger, eyes combing the air like nets on empty sea, and saw nothing.

“Don’t you want to know what a Hero really is?” he asked, voice soft as a bell in mist.

Edlyn paused, a hand to her lip like a dam before flood. “Will that delay bringing Eli back?”

He blinked, then smiled. “It won’t.”

Silence held her like snowfall. She bit her lip, the taste iron-cold, thoughts circling like hawks.

Yiyi and the others watched her, waiting like trees before rain.

“Then I’d rather know what happened three hundred million years ago,” Edlyn said at last, voice a midnight ember.

“That history’s drowned in the long river of time, buried like bones under silt. Telling you now won’t help. Wait till you’re stronger, and let the Abyss tell you itself,” the old man said, slow as a turning wheel.

“Can’t you give me a simple version?” Edlyn’s words drifted, thin as smoke.

“I’m not obliged.” His warmth snapped shut like a fan, a spark of anger in his eye.

Edlyn studied him and smiled, a winter sun that sees through frost. Three hundred million years, and the fire still smolders.

“Then tell me what a Hero is. The one I love and the one I hate…” Her cheeks flushed like sunset, yet she stood unashamed.

“They’re the same person,” he said, gentle again, voice like a lantern relit.

“How?”

“The Birand who went to the Celestial Realm for revenge came back from the Netherworld. That much you know,” the old man said, each word a stone.

Edlyn nodded, brief as a nodding reed.

“The Netherworld isn’t so kind. It lets no soul slip its fingers, like a black tide clutching shore.”

“Oh?” Her curiosity tilted like a crescent moon.

“When Birand crawled from the Netherworld, he sought the Abyss as ally. But the Abyss and the Netherworld guard their own domains like rival peaks. So they traded a secret no one knows—not even me.”

“Then what are you even saying?” Edlyn’s annoyance snapped like a twig.

“Easy. Hear me out.” His smile spread like butter on warm bread.

“I don’t know the secret itself. But I know its consequence.”

“…”

“The Great Hero Birand was split in two.”

“One half is love, and one half is hate. As for which your Eli is—I don’t need to say, do I?” His gaze rested on her like a hand on a shoulder.