Sprawled across the trunk of a colossal banyan, Ouyang stretched like a cat dozing on a sun‑warmed wall.

A week had passed since the inn incident, yet he still lingered in Banyan City.

He hadn’t settled accounts with this giant banyan yet, the shadow under his pillow.

Banyan City worshiped banyans, incense like mist curling under their shade.

In the southwest stood one sky‑blotting giant, its crown like a green sea.

Its roots and canopy swallowed a fifth of the city like a tide.

“Tree demon, decide already. This envoy won’t waste sand in the hourglass.”

Black wings unfurled from Ouyang’s back like night spilling from a wound.

Black lightning crawled over him, snakes of storm tasting the air.

He was threatening the city’s true master, the spirit in the roots.

He’d never believe last week’s mess hadn’t brushed against this tree’s shadow.

The giant banyan gave no answer, a mountain holding its breath.

Inside, the banyan was speechless, sap running cold.

It had chosen Ouyang back when he fought like wet paper.

Then he walked out of the inn like someone flipped cheat codes.

His power surged like a storm tide, and the tree went silent.

“Fine. If you won’t talk, the Demon Kings will pry it out of your bark.”

He moved before the echo faded, black light twining the trunk like ivy.

In Nabelia and Eika’s eyes, the world‑tree‑sized banyan shrank like a sinking island.

Ouyang hung in the blue like a raven crown, black lightning wreathing him.

He looked down like a creator god watching clay wake.

“This—this is a Demon King’s stance,” Eika swallowed, throat dry as sand.

He’d known Ouyang only briefly, a lazy drifter, a background extra.

Now this gaze that looked down on all living things could make the Divine Realm ache.

After he merged the other Ouyang’s memories, doors opened like dawn.

He knew more, and the sky felt wider.

Before, any power beyond a mortal line drew the world’s will like a whip.

Now he used god’s weight with a careless hand, no backlash, no bruise.

Soon the giant banyan dwindled to a two‑meter sapling, a green candle in wind.

Ouyang’s hand, sparking black, wrapped the wrist‑thick trunk like an iron band.

He tugged it from the earth as if he were pulling a turnip from loam.

The banyan never fought back, a lamb on a cold slab.

Phantom black chains coiled it, links like shadows on water.

Ouyang tossed it toward Eika with a flick, like a stone skipping a pond.

“Watch this one. We’ll need it for interrogation.”

“Yes, Lord Demon King!” Eika answered crisp as steel.

Floating high, Ouyang stared at the blue like a man peering into a well.

“You two take it to the Nightfall Forest.

Hand it to the other Demon Kings.

I’ve got matters to handle.”

“Yes!”

Nabelia set her right hand to her chest and bowed like a swan.

After the Helicot siblings left, Ouyang folded his black wings, night into night.

The city bucked from losing a sky‑covering tree, a sea in storm.

He walked the streets as if under a quiet umbrella, rain hissing past his shoulders.

A thorn pricked his mind.

With the fall of the Void Watcher, the Guardian Angel had gone into the ground.

A Guardian Angel exists to guard a person; when that flame goes out, the lamp does too.

His link to the Ouyang who had a Guardian Angel was a knot of threads.

Guardian Angels are only born when the World Hymn rings, a bell across the sky.

But his case was a bug in the script.

He didn’t hold the “one thought shattering myriad worlds” power now.

The other Ouyang had, and the rules judged the whole as one river.

By the rules’ logic, he once played the Hymn.

He should have a Guardian Angel, yet he didn’t—an unheard‑of crack in ice.

So the Supreme Law let him forge one by hand, a key thrown to him in haste.

The Supreme Law was busy watching the Sealed Land, door‑shadows stirring like snakes.

It granted Ouyang permission and went back to keeping the hinges shut.

The privilege was unreal, a boast to share with comrades for centuries like old wine.

But what is a Guardian Angel?

A primordial angel, born in chaos like lightning in the void.

Could his crafted one stand with those born from storm and silence?

No.

Not a chance.

In truth, the Supreme Law was weakening him by another path, a sharp smile behind a veil.

He sighed at the sky again, a pain in the ass like a thorn in the boot.

To forge this so‑called acquired Guardian Angel, the first step was a vessel.

Turn the vessel into a Primordial Angel, a stone into a star.

The rites and contracts after that were just steps on a stair.

But finding the vessel was the hard climb.

First, taste.

Could you really pick someone who felt like a sworn enemy at first glance?

This was a share‑life bond, a boat for two on a long river.

You’d want the one that matched your heart’s mirror.

Second, even if you chose them, would they choose you?

Would they give up freedom and braid their life with yours?

In the rite, a flicker of doubt was a dropped torch, and the circle failed.

A person only gets one Guardian Angel.

Ouyang was a bug, sure, but if he failed the rite, he’d have none forever.

The Supreme Law gave him one year.

He wanted to curse the sky, voice like thunder under a lid.

You’re giving me only a year?

But the Supreme Law ticked on like a cold clock, blind to pleas.

“Can I find the destined one in this world?”

He let the question hang like a lantern.

“They say Guardian Angels have no gender.

If I’m crafting one… heh.”

For a lifetime companion, he’d pick a gentle, caring girl, soft as spring rain.

His eyes lit like a hungry wolf catching the scent of meat.

“But for something this big, searching only here?

No way.”

He smiled like a thief.

“Looks like I’ll have to smuggle between worlds.

The plan to rule the continent can wait.

Let those Demon Kings step out now and then and scare the mortals.

When their hearts crack like thin ice, they’ll be easy to win.”

He suddenly remembered a quest, a pebble in his shoe.

Right—he still had to find Kanofia and wake her soul completely.

“Can’t this damned world let me catch a breath?”

He bent at the waist, shoulders drooping like a tired old tree.

To be honest, he didn’t want that Kanofia quest at all.

Before, he hadn’t known.

After merging memories, he saw it clear—the cursed diary was setting him up.

Back in the First Era, vampires were a dying breed, twilight on a cliff.

Dream Chaser kept dragging him to prank them, spark to dry tinder.

The vampire castle roared every day, thunder beating stone.

The mastermind was that damned Dream Chaser.

The accomplice was Ouyang—the Ouyang who was the Void Watcher.

So he could picture it: once that tsundere vampire woke in full, she’d pounce like a night cat and drain him to a husk.

The other Ouyang’s memory ended at the Third Era, a wave breaking.

After that, how the tsundere vampire fell, he didn’t know.

By then, the other Ouyang had become void, leaving a single thread of obsession drifting in the dark.

“You ran up the debt, and now I’m the one paying,” he muttered, voice like wind through reeds.

Just then, a monkey bounded over the rooftops, sleeves fluttering, human clothes flapping.

It clutched a wooden staff and chased a flying sword, a silver fish in air.

Up front, a half‑meter stone man pelted along, heavy as an anvil.

The roofs caved wherever it ran, tiles falling like rain.

Ouyang narrowed his eyes; black wings opened with a whoosh, night taking flight.

He shot after the three oddballs, a hawk over fields.

“Stop! You three troublemakers, stop right there!”

Monkey, sword, and stone man glanced back together, like sparrows startled by a clap.

Then they turned as one and bolted, dust smoking behind them.

The stone man vanished ahead, swallowed by distance.

The sword was small and fast, a darting swallow.

Ouyang fixed on the monkey and gave chase, two shadows racing out of the city.

Seeing it couldn’t shake him, the monkey skidded to a stop on gravel.

It set its stance, staff leveled like a spear at dusk.

“Kid, you killed one monkey, but there are thousands more.

Monkeys will never go extinct!”

It finished, then rapped its own skull with the staff, a dull crack.

It toppled like a felled tree and went still, breath gone like smoke.

Dead, just like that—one strange line, then a curtain drop.

Ouyang chuckled, low and mean, a blade under silk.

The monkey was dead, but he wouldn’t waste a good corpse‑stomp.

As his boot thudded the body like a drum, he caught a shape peeking.

A stone man crouched behind a tree, eyes round as pebbles.

“Francis, what are you running for?” Ouyang shouted, voice rolling like thunder.

The stone man fled without a backward glance, feet pounding like hammers.

The Francis he named wasn’t his mentor; same surname, different beast.

This stone man was another story entirely.

Ouyang scanned the trees, leaves whispering like gossip.

No sign of the sword.

It must’ve slipped off when he shouted.

Truth was, the moment he saw those three, he knew they were cooking something big.

Most of their storms ended in slapstick rainbows.

A few left real craters.

He even suspected the locals calling his Void Church a cult was their handiwork.

Doing “good deeds” and never signing a name—who else but those three rascals?

Most days, each one looked proper, polished as jade on a tray.

Put them together, and chemistry sparked into wildfire.

If they didn’t team up and break something, their hands itched.

“Hmph. Let those three go bother the Divine Realm.

The water there runs deep, but in front of the Dark Trio of Scoundrels, the gods will only have tears.”

At that thought, Ouyang’s gloom burned off like fog in sunlight.

He grinned up at the sky, already seeing the Divine Realm in uproar, feathers and fur everywhere.