The palace lay as still as winter ash; a black‑robed figure drifted toward the throne like a ghost, robe pooling like night so deep his feet and even his shadow were gone.
He stopped short of the throne, hovering like a leaf caught on a windless pond.
“Your Majesty, the search party from that world sent word,” he said, voice flat as iron on stone. “No path found. They await your new orders.”
At his words, the air over the throne rippled like rain in a mirror, and a figure formed there. A noble violet robe hung wrinkled like withered petals; chestnut hair was a storm of tangles; black lines crawled on every patch of exposed skin like inked vines.
“Keep searching... the path is there,” she breathed, the sound thin as a dying wick, like someone with one foot already in a coffin. In his cold gaze, it was hard to bind this fading husk to the peerless beauty she had been.
“Why should the grudges of the ancestors wash onto me? Ugh...” The lines on her skin writhed like live worms, twisting like snakes in a thicket. He hovered in silence, as unmoved as a statue in shadow.
After a long silence, he exhaled two words, each one a falling stone. “As you command.”
He floated away; inside the empty robe there was no flesh, only a clean void like a hole punched in the night.
In Ancient Memory Town, Ouyang cradled a cup of tea beneath the old tree at the square’s heart, eyes closed, sipping now and then like rain tasting leaves. As the leader lazed, so did his shadows; Eunice and Bartley copied him, leaning under the same ancient boughs like three sparrows on one branch. Ruola stayed in the castle, sweeping dust piled like old snow; her wings, too striking to hide, hung open because her strength had fled and would not fold.
“Sir, aren’t we being unfair to Valiant, relaxing like this?” Bartley said, voice light as a breeze in tall grass. His face showed not a cloud of worry.
A certain Blood Kin who favored black tea also leaned by the tree, but he kept a safe distance like a cat avoiding a puddle—Devila, eyes cool as moonlight.
Hearing Bartley and seeing Ouyang’s trio drinking tea with faces calm as ponds, Devila decided to keep far from these carefree souls; one day he might bleed, and they might still be picnicking by the fire.
Wait. A picnic?
In Devila’s widened eyes, Ouyang pulled a slab of meat from his spatial ring, the cut glistening like marbled stone. “Minions, let’s have a cookout!”
Bartley whooped and chopped down a roadside landscaping tree, the trunk giving with a few sharp snaps like dry bones, and hauled back a heap of wood.
“Dwarf, that’s a landscaping tree! You’re wrecking the greenery—” Devila began, but Eunice’s hands flared like twin torches, her babyish face bright with sparks. “A cookout? I’ve never been to one. As expected of the boss!”
Devila was speechless; emotion rose like steam before thought. Eunice, aren’t you a goddess of water? How are your hands full of fire? And Ouyang—Devila even suspected the man could read minds, like a breeze riffling pages.
“With teammates like you, that guy will cry. He’ll cry from pure rage...” He said it, but hunger tugged like a fishhook; shameless or not, he drifted closer to mooch a few sizzling pieces.
Around the ancient tree lay a patch of green like a soft rug, fenced with wooden rails to keep brats out like sheep from a garden. Their makeshift grill smoked black as storm clouds within moments.
“Isn’t that the sacred spot for the ancient tree? Why’s there black smoke? Did some brats sneak in and light a fire?” Townsfolk busy with rebuilding glanced over, doubt rippling like wheat in wind. “Weren’t all the kids sent to the big cities?” an auntie murmured, voice as low as dusk.
By the tree, Ouyang and the others were laughing over charred edges and fat hissing like rain on coals when his face suddenly changed, shadow falling like an eclipse. “I can feel Valiant’s aura.”
He tossed his skewer aside like a spent twig. “Vice‑captain, open a portal. A brother’s in danger and you’re still grilling? He’ll be heartbroken!” His solemn face was a drawn blade; Devila’s face went dark as a thunderhead.
Anyone could say that, but not you—Devila’s anger boiled like a kettle, but calculation cooled first like frost on glass. He still needed Ouyang’s help.
Surrounded by jesters, he felt his IQ sink like a stone in a well; he needed an enemy to prove his mind still cut like a knife. As a noble, elegant Blood Kin, he could not allow otherwise.
Like Ouyang, Devila dropped his meat to the dirt and sketched a magic circle, fingers flying like swallows tracing loops.
“Beautiful work!” Ouyang stepped in close, patted Devila’s shoulder, then even rubbed it, and strode into the portal with a righteous air like a banner in sun. Bartley hustled over; too short, he had to float to meet Devila’s height, bobbing like a cork. “As expected of Lord Devila! A portal in seconds!”
He patted that same shoulder and slipped into the glow like a fish through reeds. Last came Eunice; about five feet tall, she giggled like a silver bell, tugged his hem, and said nothing as she ducked into the circle like a swallow into dusk.
When they were gone, Devila stood baffled, thoughts whirling like leaves. What wind was in those three? The blond beauty smoothed his lapel and felt something slick and greasy, like oil on a pond—where Eunice had tugged. He touched his shoulder where Ouyang and Bartley had patted; understanding hit like cold water.
They’d eaten till oil ran down their wrists, and they hadn’t washed their hands.
Despair turned him to stone; he stepped into the portal like a body without a soul, moving by habit like a puppet on a string.
When the four were gone, the array faded like dew. Their grill kept dripping fat into the fire, each drop a spark growing; soon the meat burned, then the rack, and flames roared like a red tide, leaping to the tender grass.
By the time the townsfolk arrived, the towering ancient tree stood inside a sea of fire like a burning pillar.
Ouyang knew none of it; he faced Devila’s roar, the Blood Kin’s fury blowing like a winter gale. As a noble Blood Kin, Devila’s cleanliness was a creed; the grease had lit his temper like a match to tinder.
Worse, while he blasted the three scoundrels, a pack of priests attacked, their chants buzzing like wasps. As a god‑tier Blood Kin, he feared no mortal clerics, but their audacity stung like nettles. Being set up by those three he could swallow like bitter tea—they were teammates, and he was wary of Ouyang—but mortals daring to provoke him?
Unforgivable. This could not be swallowed.
“Foolish mortals...” His catchphrase fell like a curse, and Devila blew apart into a storm of little bats, a black cloud swooping at the priests like nightfall with teeth.
“Go, Bat Spirit! Show the style of the Ouyang Adventuring Team!” Ouyang pulled a flag from his ring, white cloth snapping like a gull’s wing, painted with a red skull like a fresh wound. “Mortals, tremble! Bow before the Pope of the Ouyang Demon God Church!”
The “Pope” was, of course, Devila.
Bartley raised his hammer high like a mountain sun and shouted, “Long live Pope Devila!”
The swarm of bats clearly stalled midair for a beat, anger twitching like a taut string at Ouyang’s antics.
Set the bats aside; Ouyang’s face tightened, calm hard as a blade. A great cross stood in the wide square like a withered tree, and Valiant, tiger‑headed and man‑bodied, hung upon it like prey in a hunter’s snare. Beside it stood a figure in a black cloak.
The cloak bore intricate patterns that, up close, resolved into scenes: blood‑soaked dragons, headless men, demons in flight—pictures stitched like nightmares.
Ouyang knew that cloak like a scar. “Cataclysm... can you give me an explanation?” he asked, smiling like sun, while beside him Bartley and Eunice felt a chill from the Nine Nether curl like fog.
“Lord Void... do I owe you an explanation?” Cataclysm’s hood hid his face like a moon behind cloud. “You... will ruin everything.”
“So you do know something,” Ouyang said, the brightness of his grin like ice under noon. “That gives me a reason to erase you.” To outsiders their words were wind in a foreign forest; only the two of them heard the meaning like a blade under silk.
“Who’d think the Second Seat would be the deepest mole,” Ouyang mused, voice light as drifting ash. “Miscalculated. Are you that sure about standing against me?”
Cataclysm’s black cloak shook like a slow tide—he was shaking his head.
“How could I? You’ve got an enemy you must face, and it isn’t me,” he said, voice steady as a tolling bell. “Here’s a truth. The Demon Emperor of the Demon World is a remnant of the Night Clan. The feud between the Other Shore and the Night Clan needs no sermon from me. You’ll choose that war first, as surely as fire seeks dry wood.”
