The empty hall answered with a steady thump-thump, like knuckles tapping a coffin lid in a cavern. Each time Ouyang drew close, an unseen tide snapped, flinging him back like driftwood.

Irritation burned hot, a coal lodged under the ribs. An intruder squatted on his own ground, and he couldn’t drag the thing out—stifling as a sealed jar under noon sun.

Even when he’d been sealed away back then, he hadn’t felt this raw, this needled, this caged.

Heard from the coffin came a haughty voice, cold as moonlight on ice. “How quaint… foolish human, you dare disturb our long sleep?” In Ouyang’s mind, a shameless vampire unfurled bat wings like black sails and circled the castle hall, looking down as if from a parapet.

You’ve got to be kidding me—this is my turf, my riverbank, my ancestral soil.

He still didn’t know why his castle had slipped here like a shadow at dusk, or why it had been seized like a nest by crows. But once his mind settled like a blade in the scabbard, the obsidian coffin rose, floating dark as starless water.

The lid parted. A blond man with bat wings hovered high, gaze sweeping Ouyang the way a hawk counts field mice. Twin fangs showed at his mouth, and Ouyang felt his own blood surge, tide tugged by a red moon.

At the same time, strange images rippled across that figure, like temple murals waking—ancient beings offering, kneeling, their prayers beating like drums.

“Foolish,” he snorted, contempt sharp as frost. The vampire spread his arms as if embracing a storm, and the air tightened. With that ripple, danger pricked Ouyang’s skin like sleet.

It was a force that could kill him, a river that ran beyond mortal banks.

“You’re the first human I’ve met since my slumber,” the vampire said, lips curling like a knife. “As a reward, you’ll become my blood kin.”

He flashed forward in a blur, a shadow crossing the moon; Ouyang barely moved before the man was on him. A soft rip, like silk tearing, and something keen scratched his neck.

The vampire jerked back as if scalded, hands clamped to his mouth, face flushing like wine in a glass.

Ouyang wiped his neck with a sleeve, smearing a crimson thread, and looked at him with the same contempt, cool as rain. “In bloodline, I’m leagues above you. You dare drink mine?”

He wanted to know why the castle was here and why a stranger nested inside his own hall, but the road had narrowed like a mountain pass. This was an open scheme, a trap laid in sunlight; he had to ram through or bleed out.

“Did you know? This castle may look bare-bones for safety, but a Creator God built it,” Ouyang said, voice steady as a bell. “Here, no fetter binds me.”

A faint blue halo bloomed from him like dawn over frost. Outside the castle, the night raged—thunder rolled, red lightning snarled, the sky a sea of fire-veins.

As expected, he thought, bitter as wormwood. Since the Eighth Epoch of the Chronicle of the End closed, this power’s been taboo to the Supreme Law. Show it, and the Will of the World stares like a watching eye.

He wouldn’t reach for that blade unless his back hit the cliff. But to bring down this vampire, bare fists wouldn’t do; he needed steel.

Win, and Heaven’s Punishment from the Will of the World would erase him. Lose, and the vampire would finish the job. A dead end, as neat as a noose.

He laughed at himself, dry as dust, and shook his head.

“Esoteric Rite—World’s Favor.”

A giant hexagram flared under his feet, unfolding like a lotus of light. Within the six points, a river of stars surfaced, as if the whole night sky had been poured there, and it reached past walls as if stone were fog.

When that hexagram draped the vault of heaven, the red clouds and lightning winked out like a candle pinched between fingers.

Seven-colored auspicious clouds hung above like silk banners; mist coiled, soft as breath.

“Damn it!” the vampire snarled, elegance shattered like a dropped goblet.

With a whoosh, his talons swept past Ouyang’s face, a gust like a passing hawk.

“W-why… why can’t I…” He had lunged to crush Ouyang’s skull like a ripe fruit, yet his strike refused to land, sliding away like rain off oiled paper.

A line that runs forever will veer wide if you nudge its start by a hair. A ray, set off by a whisper of angle, ends miles from its mark.

That’s what caught the vampire. His target was Ouyang’s head, but when he first swung, space kinked like heat haze. The twist was tiny at birth; by the time his hand reached Ouyang, the miss was a canyon. It felt as if the world itself had set its face against him.

Ouyang was furious, a storm caged in a teacup, and the vampire was no calmer. He’d been sleeping like a stone under snow, then someone kicked in the door. Their powers weren’t far apart; wouldn’t a talk be better than a brawl in a temple?

Ouyang didn’t leave room for talk. Before the vampire could shape words, Ouyang’s strike arrived like a summer squall.

The vampire felt it—familiar, a scent on the wind—Ouyang’s way of fighting brushed his memory like a moth’s wing. He couldn’t place it.

“Windscar, within the Crimson Night, the Arbiter of Order who swept the City of Time… Esoteric Rite, Dirge of the Crimson Night!”

The space turned crimson at once, a world washed in wine. Ceiling, table, wall—everything bled red, as if dusk had drowned the hall.

“Dirge of the Crimson Night?!” The vampire blanched, memory cracking open like old lacquer. In ancient inheritance, a mighty Blood Kin had used that Rite to slay a god. They said that Blood Kin was only a Demigod, yet with a Rite this fierce, he leapt the gulf between man and god.

That legendetched Blood Kin carved a god down with this blade, and the power gap between him and Ouyang wasn’t wide. Seeing a legend’s Rite aimed his way, the vampire only wanted to curse the heavens.

“W-wait—wait a sec—”

He suddenly remembered he didn’t have a blood feud with Ouyang, no burned houses, no dead fathers.

Ouyang ignored him. He only wanted to beat this vampire into the floorboards, then talk.

A crimson moon hung over the hall, blooming where the ceiling had been, and the ceiling itself became a red sky. In the vampire’s eyes, the full moon sprouted countless rays, like quills erupting from a scarlet sun.

Dense, merciless, enough to riddle a world and leave it a ruin.

“N-no… don’t—”

The swarming rays pierced the castle like needles through silk, slipped past Ouyang like wind through reeds, and hammered the vampire’s body like sleet on stone. When the red quieted, Ouyang stood panting, stepped in, and kicked the half-dead vampire a few times, boots thudding like mallets.

To end it fast without drawing the Supreme Law’s gaze, he’d used two barrier-type Rites back-to-back. Even so, he felt the Will of the World press against him, a chill, faint rejection, like winter at the door.

Outside, red lightning still rolled, a thunder-sea that refused to sleep.

“How?” Ouyang muttered, eyes dark as a storm front. “I used barrier Rites to smother the leak… unless—” A thought flashed. He rifled the vampire’s body, hands slick with blood, and pulled a page that escaped the soaking like a leaf waxed by rain. Symbols snarled on it, complex as roots.

“Final Rite—The Dead Everlive.”

Rites are a system apart from magic, a path that belongs to the Other Shore alone, like a river that runs behind the mountain. They say only those at the peak of the Third Tier, on the step of the Fourth, can glimpse their own Rite.

No one but the originator can draw out a Rite’s full edge; everyone else wields a shadow, a dulled blade. The two Rites Ouyang used didn’t bloom to true strength either, flowers plucked too soon.

Rites split four ways: Lesser, Greater, Final, and Legendary. In all the long ages, you could count the Legendary Rites on one hand, and the Finals numbered only two or three dozen. Anyone who skimmed the histories would know The Dead Everlive.

Put plain, this vampire had died long ago; the Rite kept him “alive,” a candle under a glass. Whether he beat Ouyang or not, The Dead Everlive would tickle the Supreme Law’s nerves and draw its gaze like thunder to a bell.

Ouyang knew it then—he’d been set up. Again. The pit was dug, and he’d stepped in with both feet.

Outside, endless red lightning poured at the castle like a river dam let loose. Staring at the window’s crimson wash, Ouyang felt despair rise, cold as floodwater.

“I… I… remember…” the vampire coughed, his voice a thread, body a smear of red on stone.

“None of that matters,” he rasped, eyes dull as ash. “Under the wrath of the Will of the World, we’ll be erased. Be glad it isn’t the Supreme Law descending in person, or we wouldn’t even have time to speak.”

From the first, Ouyang had known the castle’s arrival was wrong, like a bird singing at midnight. He hadn’t guessed the killing stroke lived inside the vampire’s bones.

When his castle was built, he’d asked a Realm God for help; its defenses matched a Realm God’s bulwark, granite under sky. The Will of the World matched that same height, so there was still a sliver of hope, like moonlight under cloud.

As he nursed that last sliver, thunder crashed louder, drums of the sky. Chains of order uncoiled from the heavens, iron serpents glinting.

“Screw your entire family!” Ouyang roared, leaping up like a firecracker. He’d just felt a breath pass by—that scent belonged to the Other Shore. So the Supreme Law had reached down, hand through the clouds.

What now? Sweat beaded his brow like rain on eaves, and his thoughts scattered like startled birds. No path showed.

“Boundless Sea…” the vampire whispered, as if naming a harbor in a storm, breath thin as smoke.

Those four words lit Ouyang’s eyes like dawn breaking between peaks.

Boundless Sea.