“If I could, I’d trade my whole life for your sudden smile.” Ouyang couldn’t recall who said it or when, yet Leticia’s bright grin rose like dawn and the line returned.

Every heart keeps a pure patch of earth, a hidden garden. For Ouyang, maybe Leticia was that quiet snowfield untouched by storms.

Someday I might become everyone’s enemy. Better we cut the red thread now before it knots us tight.

This road stays bitter as winter and thorny as a mountain trail, but I’ll still walk it. They lay dormant for millions of years; I’ll wait tens of millions more.

Even if it’s me and solitude forever, even if the vast stars hold no room for me. I’ll end the phantom Ninth Epoch and usher in the real era.

He smiled and patted Leticia’s head, like a breeze through bamboo leaves. Thoughts rose and fell like waves, and in that beat he felt himself grow up.

No longer the rookie clinging to elders’ shadows, he stood like a sapling hardening into wood.

A voice came from outside, worried like rain tapping a window. “Leticia, are you there? I came to see you!”

Leticia glanced toward the door, shock fluttering like a sparrow. The heir of the Glachidor Clan had come to this humble place?

Under Ouyang’s encouraging gaze, warm as a lantern, she opened the door.

“Ouyang… why are you here?” The moment the door swung, Xi’s focus slid past Leticia like a drifting cloud and fixed on Ouyang sitting nearby.

Ouyang smiled, teeth white as fresh snow. “Of course I’m waiting for your decision.” He looked like a husband waiting by a hearth, gentle to an eerie degree.

“Xi Glachidor, make your choice.”

He stopped that unsettling stare and walked to the window, eyes on wind and rooftops as his thoughts churned like storm clouds.

Leticia was lost, a deer in fog. Xi waved her off, then drew breath and found courage. “What do I do?”

A moment later, she warned him, red lightning coiling in her palm like a serpent. “Don’t lie to me.”

“Heh. It’s simple. Just don’t resist.” His voice was a still lake with cold undercurrents.

Xi felt Ouyang off today, winter under spring grass. Her gut said he was scheming again, but she had no other road.

To solve Leticia’s problem, maybe only the Demon King’s storm would help.

Ouyang bared his grin and raised his right palm, opening it toward Xi like a black gate. In a heartbeat, her soul tugged like a startled bird trying to fly free.

She fought on instinct, then remembered his words and let the struggle fall away like loose rope.

It was strange, mist clouding judgment. He was a Demon King who had once spread carnage like wildfire, yet she believed him.

She couldn’t explain why; the reason slid away like rain through fingers.

Clank—like a chain snapping in a dark cellar. Before she could think, her mind went out, and night took her.

Ouyang closed his eyes and felt power pour through him like a river in flood. It crowned him with the illusion of invincibility, a helm of thunder.

In truth, by mana reserves, he was only about third-tier Epic.

“The first seal gave me freedom; the second restored my mana to Tier One. Breaking three in a row only reaches Epic. Still weak, but enough.”

“At Tier Three, I can use the Ultimate Art and crack this stalemate.”

“Mana used to be useless to me, a pouch of dry sand. Now I don’t dare touch that other power. They counted every step like nets hidden in fog. This familiar chill…”

He tightened his fists; the smile and warmth fell away like leaves. Only heaviness remained, iron-gray.

He looked down at Xi on the floor with a tangle of feelings, then shook his head. He wouldn’t use this opening to break the remaining seals; something smelled off, iron in rain.

Xi was a girl he treated with high caution. Their meeting was woven with lies, thread over thread. The so-called contract never existed; it was a fake he forged.

Yet Xi used that false contract to influence him, a breeze shifting stone. That alone made him wary.

In his eyes, the girl still didn’t know how frightening she was.

And the seals on him were tied to Xi, knots sharing one cord. That kept him thinking deep, like a well with no bottom.

He walked into the courtyard. Leticia hopped over like a sparrow, bright-eyed and happy. “Mr. Ouyang, what’s your relationship with the lady? You two were whispering, right?”

“Close enough. We were making a deal.” His tone was a straight road under noon sun. “Leticia, let me check you. Maybe I can fix the bloodline trouble in you.”

“Ah?” Leticia startled, a doe in tall grass. But she thought it through; a lie here gained him nothing.

She was alone, and she already held a quiet fondness for him, a warm ember.

“I… okay. Please, Mr. Ouyang.” She bowed like a willow in wind.

Ouyang took her hand and shut his eyes, sensing demon power curled in her like coals under ash. Sudden shock widened his eyes, then a wry smile bent his mouth.

“Are you alright, Mr. Ouyang? If it’s too hard, don’t force it. I don’t want you hurt because of me.” Her voice was rain on paper, afraid to break his thought.

“It’s fine.” He tightened his grip on her small hand and drew a steady breath, like a bell tone.

“Xiaoyang, remember. As a man, if you promise, you deliver. No breaking your word.” Elders’ words echoed like drums, and he bit down and decided.

Black lightning bloomed on Leticia’s skin, green flames weaving like vines. In the flicker, Ouyang glimpsed a horned skull in rust-stained armor, bone wings folded like night.

Black lightning danced on those wings, and twin green fires burned in hollow eyes.

“Just like the tales—Demon Lord Safix.” He had thought her blood tied to a common demon, at most an upper demon. He hadn’t expected a thread to a Demon Lord.

He knew enemies at that level were mountains he couldn’t climb now. If that one wished to kill him, a finger stretched from the Abyss could erase him—and likely the world—in a breath.

But he had promised Xi to help Leticia with her burden. That set him against Demon Lord Safix, a path like a cliff edge in fog.

“No. If I hadn’t gifted that umbrella to Wutong, maybe there was a sliver of dawn.” That supreme artifact was ninety-nine parts broken, yet could still block one strike from a Demon Lord.

If the Lord matched the strength recorded in the pages in his mind.

While Ouyang struggled, the world around him flipped like a page in wind.

A sea of bones, boundless and pale. No blue sky above, only pitch-black like ink poured over the heavens.

The ground was nothing but endless bone piled into waves, a bone ocean without shores.

There was no sun here, yet sight stayed clear as noon, as if the place had been granted the very idea of light.

Ahead, a skeleton in armor stood still, gazing upward like a statue. Since Ouyang arrived, it hadn’t stirred.

If not for the twin green fires flickering in its sockets, he’d have thought it stone-dead.

“You… you’re the key to their return, aren’t you?” Time crawled like a cold worm; facing a being like a Demon Lord, every heartbeat was a grindstone.

At last, the figure spoke.

It was only a skeleton, no vocal cords, yet it talked like a living man under the sun.

“Yes. Kill me, and they may never return. And you will gain quiet.” Ouyang stayed calm, a blade set on an anvil. He couldn’t back down.

In power, he was an ant; the other, a lofted god. Yet in this moment, he carried an unyielding honor.

Safix spread those black bone wings with a slow sweep, then folded them like a raven settling.

“As you said, it’s only ‘maybe.’ Time means nothing to us. He left, yet to me it feels like yesterday. I may slumber and wake to find they’ve opened the Gate again.”

Green flames flickered like cold will-o’-wisps, and black lightning crackled like dry thunder.

“I’m curious. With such an absolute gap, why do you still choose this? Do you mean to parade their glory before me?”

“I…” Ouyang shaped one word, then silence fell like snow. Against such a gap, he was a moth rushing a candle.

It was foolish. Even for a promise, he should wait until he could stand tall.

But he had to do it. Only then could he break the deadlock and let himself fade like dusk.