In the Boundless Sea, the sprite and Ouyang squared off, glare for glare, like two rainclouds colliding over a drowned horizon. The sprite finally snapped, flicked a palm like a sudden gust, and said, "Go back."
Ouyang’s soul slammed back into his body, like a wave slapping a cliff. His flesh hadn’t fully knitted; he pressed his fingers to the hollow under his ribs—his heart still hadn’t grown back, a cold well in his chest.
"You little runt, just you wait. When I get the Dark Trinity Artifacts, you’re first on my list. And that half-dragon—curse your whole brood—he tricked me twice. I’ll remember that."
He staggered forward with his right hand clamped over that bleeding void, each step a ripple in mud. Perhaps returning early had slowed the heart’s self-repair; to him, hours felt like drifting fog, and still the chest gaped. Without god-tier mana and a mind like iron, he would’ve crumpled like wet paper.
Humiliation burned, as raw as wind on an open wound.
This run to Dragon Gorge? No treasure, no mount—nothing but empty echoes. He even lost a heart and the Divine Sword. If he hadn’t sensed the link between his soul and the Boundless Sea, broken two seals by sheer accident, and clawed up to sub-divine strength, he’d have been weeping into the dust.
Yeah. Lesson carved in bone. Don’t be too vile, or the tide turns and drowns you.
Limping through a dark corridor like a tunnel of roots, he dredged up shredded memories about the origin of the Dark Trinity Artifacts.
Back in the enigmatic First Epoch, that trio was born like three eclipses. The black halo was called the Godforsaken Halo—also known as the Brain-Dead Halo. Stand under its light, and you’ll do things only a head full of fog would do.
Two squads clash. In the heat, you suddenly hate the guy in front of you. Then you turn and slash your own teammate, like a blade lost in a sandstorm.
The Godforsaken Halo’s wielder? Ouyang’s broken memories couldn’t name him; all he recalled was a mane of gold shining like a cruel sunrise. The black cloak was the Calamity Cloak; under its span, every creature trips on fate. You choke drinking water, you gag on rice, and once in a rare while, a pebble of a meteor drops out of a bruised sky.
The Calamity Cloak’s master was that bastard called Dream Chaser.
The last was the Curse Ring. In those scraps, someone named Fallen Leaves used it to swap the sizes of Titans and rats. Titans shrank to mice; rats ballooned to titans, turning fields into nightmares.
In short, three scoundrels with the Dark Trinity Artifacts flipped the continent like a table. Chickens and dogs knew no peace; doors stayed barred; folks feared finding three jerks crouched in the grass like shadows with knives.
But like Ouyang’s own mess, you can’t be vile all day. Once in a while, betray a buddy and you’re still a man. Those Three Bastards piled up sins like tombstones. So the great powers rallied, drawing across the land a net of heroes and oddities.
At the call of the First Moon Goddess, a united host marched under the slogan: “Beat the Three Bastards and give the world a clean sky.” In the end, the trio got crushed. The Dark Trinity Artifacts were seized and sealed, meant to sleep forever.
After that beating, the three seemed to finally learn the cost of being vile. They washed their hands, fled into deep forests like rain vanishing into moss, and vowed to start over.
Then a thunderclap of bad news: the Dark Trinity Artifacts, suppressed by the united host, disappeared like stars behind stormclouds.
Turns out, while most cursed those three, a fraction worshiped them. They took the trio’s twisted creeds as scripture and founded the continent’s First Cult. The stolen Dark Trinity Artifacts became their sacred treasure, a black sun over their altar.
Unlike the Three Bastards, the Cult fixed harm as a career. And so, in that riddled epoch, the continent sank into a dark era, ruled by the Artifacts and by the First Cult’s cold knives.
Still, something gnawed at him. Why were those memory shards so crisp about the First Cult’s deeds, like frost on glass? Could it be… that guy—the Ouyang of the Void—had been First Cult?
The business about the Three Bastards was foggy, but the Cult’s operations were razor-clear—how they poisoned the land, step by step. Ouyang couldn’t help suspecting the Ouyang of the Void had worn their colors once.
Whatever their endings, whatever tale hid behind the trio’s retreat, one truth rang like bronze: the Dark Trinity Artifacts were terrifying. Such world-corrupting tools had to be in his hand. The Divine Sword was supreme, sure, but the Artifacts? They were the most fun—mischief forged into law.
In that First Epoch, so many laughs and tears were threads in a shroud the Artifacts wove.
"Yo. Morning, you two. What’s the haul?"
Ahead, he caught Little Gold and Little Silver shoving glittering loot into a spatial tunnel, like magpies at dawn. He grinned. "All that gold, just for me? I’m embarrassed."
The gold-haired man and the silver-haired man froze, like deer in lantern-light. Talk about turning a corner and bumping into fate—Ouyang turned one and met two Dragon Emperors mid-heist.
"Spotted. Kill him!" The hot-tempered gold-haired one spat a beam of gold like a sun-lance. Rumble, rumble—Ouyang got shot out of the sky and slammed the earth. Thud.
"Heh… you think it’s cool to bully the disabled?" His chest lacked a heart; calling himself disabled wasn’t wrong. He hadn’t even managed a single threat, and Little Gold had already blasted him with a mouth-cannon.
"You think I’m a sick cat? Today I erase you both from the world. If I fail, I’ll read my name backward."
He clawed up from the ground. The chest void had stitched a little, like frost forming, but the next golden beam razed that newborn heart to nothing.
"Wind of then, hear the world’s voices. Let the listener’s oath run the river of time… Mourn, wings of wind."
A stray wind moved through the gorge like an old ghost crossing centuries. Desolation seeped out like dusk. Frost-hard ground and rock fractured into chips, then spiraled upward on the gust, like ash from a funeral pyre.
From Ouyang’s back unfurled visible wings shaped of wind, feathers woven from currents. He hung in the air and looked down like a hawk over fields. With each slow beat, an elegy drifted through the gorge, a sound more secret than archaic rites, more shaking than temple drums—a dirge born from the soul’s deepest chamber.
Arcane Truth: Elegy of the Wind.
It didn’t just strip matter. It scraped souls, like a gale tearing lantern-flame from its wick.
In the gorge, stones bled color and turned to powder, a brittle age collapsing. Towering trees and hulking drakes went still, like statues. At a glance, you knew—they had no souls.
"Damn you, Ouyang! You slaughter my Dragon Gorge’s living things!" A gold dragon uncoiled in the air like a river of coins, while a silver dragon hovered nearby, eyes like winter blades.
"Back then your seven Dragon Emperors made us bleed time. Without your kind’s ‘dragon riders,’ our vassal tribes would’ve ruled the continent long ago. I haven’t even settled that old debt. And you dare howl over a few dead drakes?"
The wind-wings kept beating, tireless as tides. The already-sung hymn circled his ears like cirrus. He drifted into a strange state—listening to the wind’s whisper, he glimpsed history like reflections on deep water. Hear the wind, and you learn the world’s story, as if you were a creator looking down on a world you’d forged.
The elegy, heavy with grief and despair, praised the dead and the lost, a pale moon over ruins.
Dragon roars rolled through Dragon Gorge, across Nightfall Forest, and faint echoes reached the capital of the Karosen Kingdom like thunder under the horizon.
"Seven Dragon Emperors? You killed them, and now you aim to wipe out our race? You invaders!"
That gold dragon’s roar sent terror climbing up every spine in the Gorge and the Forest, like frost creeping over glass.
"Heh… invaders? No—you’re the invaders. This place belongs to the Other Shore." At some point, an old, yellowed Oil Paper Umbrella spun in the air like a drifting leaf. Wutong stepped into the standoff like a breeze entering a hall.
Unlike usual, he wasn’t in his androgynous garb. He wore a green skirt, and hair that had grown long brushed his back like willow strands.
"This world was made by us—by those ancient ones. These riches were left for us descendants. And you dare squat in another’s parents’ house, loud as thunder, and brand the heirs invaders?"
Wutong’s words gathered heat like summer cicadas, but the shifting scene left Ouyang blinking. Wutong popping up was one thing—gender was always a riddle with that one—but Cataclysm and Sword Demon standing with the dragons? That was a slap of cold rain.
Watching those two traitors at the dragons’ flank, Ouyang’s fingers itched to hurl the Elegy of the Wind—Final Song—and bury them all in silence.
