Astral Plaza—portals are the only theme, the only view, like a forest of thresholds rising from a silver lake. From above, it’s a swarm of doors, a world of hinges, a sea of frames. Some look like plain wooden doors, like cottage gates in quiet rain. Some are double doors etched with ancient motifs, like old bark veined with time. Some are only frames, their grooves cut like thirsty riverbeds.

“These take energy crystals,” Ouyang said, voice steady like a drum under fog. He walked through the Astral Plaza, the Demon Kings pacing at his flanks like a pack before a hunt. “Slot a crystal, and a door of condensed energy blooms inside the frame, like frost forming on still water. The complete, openable ones lead to other regions of the Other Shore, a corridor like a reed path. The frames-only kind lead to other worlds, so every cross-world jump eats crystals. Internal portals don’t need fuel. Push the door and step through, like crossing a garden gate.”

The doors here are a discipline, not décor, a chessboard of routes laid under starlight. Astral Plaza is pure strategy; misread a door, and trouble flows in like a rising tide. Broadly, there are two kinds: world portals, and internal portals, two streams from the same spring.

World portals are only frames, bare bones like a cliff arch. Slot crystals into the grooves, and the frame births an energy door, a rippling skin you walk through and vanish like a fish under ice. Internal portals are simple as breath; push and pass, a doorway from dusk to dawn. Subtypes split like branches: single doors, double doors, wood, iron.

A single door means a remote destination, a path like a thin trail through reeds, light traffic and quiet dust. Double doors mean bustle on the other side, a market in full sun, footfall like rain. Wood versus iron marks danger: a low-risk side gets a wooden door, sap-smooth and warm; a high-risk side earns iron, cold as moonlight on steel. If monsters roam on that far side, a fragile wooden door would be torn down like paper in a storm. Wood and iron are warnings, the horizon painted on the hinge.

“For now, we don’t have the crystals to fire up cross-world portals,” Ouyang said, eyes dark as still water. “The Other Shore’s stock is long exhausted. We’ll go to the Divine Realm and make a haul. Dufei, Moqi—this one’s yours.”

Tenth Seat Moqi, Eleventh Seat Dufei. Moqi is a serpent, a ribbon of dusk; if Ouyang calls it the Heart of Space, then space is its native river. Its talent is transit, slipping through folds like a weaver’s needle. It tunnels like an earthworm for laughs, but also bores through space, a burrower in the night. In a fight it’s modest, a reed before wind; in retreat it’s unmatched, a hawk cutting cloud.

The instant danger whispers, it punches a spatial wormhole like a fist through silk and vanishes to who knows what world, a shadow diving under black ice.

Ouyang picked Dufei, the big eater, with a quiet grin like a cat in sun. Dufei’s survival sense is a second spine. Put them together and they’re a perfect match, two stones that lock, eyes meeting like sparks. Dufei doesn’t run; he feels. His sixth sense is sharper than most folks’ intuition, a needle that trembles before the quake.

With Dufei’s rabid, near-maniacal safety instinct, and Moqi’s escape as clean as a swallow’s turn, Ouyang could toss them into the Divine Realm to fetch crystals and sleep like a rock.

“Relax. The Divine Realm’s our backyard,” hissed the proud serpent, coiling like smoke and flicking its tongue like a cold pin. Dufei slapped his broad belly and gave his vow with a grin like a crescent. “Please. That lot? If they ever catch me, I swear I won’t eat for a hundred years.”

For a glutton who gets itchy after a single skipped meal, that oath was iron, a spear planted in sand.

“Not eat? Oh, big belly, playing word games?” Feges, the dark elf, lounged on the Titan’s shoulder like a raven on a stone. She was maybe one and a half meters tall, perched on Tangela’s five-to-six-meter frame, legs dangling like willow switches. She lived to ruin punchlines, a knife for other people’s stage. Among the Demon Kings, only Ouyang and Jue escaped her jabs; even Yulan, the plant fiend, got poked.

If a fight breaks like thunder, Tangela the Titan goes first, a boulder in motion. That a Titan of the god-blood serves as a dark elf’s enforcer left everyone baffled, a knot no one cut. Their past is a locked box, and no one pries at old scar tissue.

Knowing he couldn’t take a Titan plus dark elf, Dufei smoothed a hand over his oiled belly like a man petting a lazy cat. After years together, his ears learned to filter noise like river sand, only the nuggets slide through.

“Ouyang, boss—there’s something odd about that portal,” said Bartley the dwarf, pointing at a single door ahead. Single means low traffic. But the material made the hair lift: the whole door was built from crimson stone, bricks like blood under frost. Up close, you could see the patterns, carvings like old wounds stitched shut.

“What’s that?” Kooson stepped in to study. Then he jerked back, pale as paper, a starling startled off a branch. “The pattern moved a second ago. It came alive.”

His face was too white to fake; everyone gave the door space, a circle like wolves wary of fire. A broken-winged angel, a dragon mid-roar, a damaged sun and moon, a sky in eclipse.

“That’s a portal to the Halls of the Gods,” Ouyang said, tone low as midnight. “The seat of the Imperial Court.”

“The Imperial Court?!”

Few had heard of the Halls of the Gods, but “Imperial Court” cracked in their minds like thunder. The Court’s master is the God Emperor. The Unbeaten God Emperor, the Unbeaten Court—a name and a banner, known across the Other Shore like a summer storm.

“The carvings depict the Second Era’s Twilight of the Gods,” Ouyang added, voice steady as stone. “They hold the laws of a Taboo Deity. Don’t stare. Don’t study. Let sleeping fire sleep.”

At that, Wutong, all itchy ambition, finally stilled, biting her lip like a girl eyeing a locked birdcage. Primordial Deities come in heights and shades, but a Taboo Deity stands at the summit of ‘god,’ a peak under cold stars. The ones who sound the hymn—those called ‘gods above gods’—aren’t counted in that ladder, so a Taboo Deity is the crown of the mountain.

“There are plenty of special doors in Astral Plaza,” Ouyang warned, words like rain on hot stone. “Don’t go peeking. The inscriptions carry weight you can’t bear yet.” He knew their nature—give them a glimmer, and they’d try to wrench ‘inheritance’ from a hinge like robins prying thunder.

Yulan, the plant fiend who wore silence like moss, spoke at last. “Can we open that door?”

Open?

Did this one plan to walk straight into the Halls of the Gods? Ouyang glanced around; even Jue, usually frost and dusk, looked expectant, eyes like quiet stars. Loyin tugged his sleeve, cheeks puffed like a peach. “Brother, can we go play?”

Play?

Ouyang’s mind skittered, like ink spilled across a map. That’s the Halls of the Gods, the Imperial Court’s seat, the God Emperor’s residence—more like a thunderhead than a theme park. Even if the old kings are gone, that place isn’t a meadow you wander into.

“You lot… go splash some cold water and wake up,” he said, scooping Loyin up and pinching her cheeks like dough. Even Ouyang didn’t have free pass there. The Other Shore, wrought across eras, hides its secrets in vaulted halls, not on street corners, watched by third-tier Tiered Beings like hawks over ravines.

Even if they’re gone, the aura left by out-of-category third-tier beings would make a Primordial Deity struggle to linger, a candle before storm. Tiered Beings have the means to explore those depths, but who courts that kind of karma? That’s a third-tier weight, a millstone tied to breath.

“Ahem. Calm down. Go get familiar with the plaza,” Ouyang said, voice like a hand on a shoulder. “Don’t step into portals yet. Don’t startle the snakes in the grass. We’ll learn the terrain, then go back and finish business there.”

The Demon Kings scattered like birds, eager eyes drinking in the Astral Plaza like light through leaves. Other than the Kings, Ouyang had brought only Loyin. When he went to the City of the Dead, he’d left her in the castle, and the little loli had sulked like rain for days. Now she clung to him like ivy.

“Brother… wanna hear a secret?” Loyin whispered, breath warm as tea on his ear. “I know the way to Father’s palace.”

Father? If Ouyang’s guess was right, her “Father” was… hold on. If that’s true—wasn’t this a windfall, a gold vein under his boot?

“You sure? Is that place accessible now?” Ouyang didn’t doubt Loyin’s heart; he doubted the storm. That palace, like the Halls of the Gods, is the lair of third-tier beings—a den under a black mountain. If it’s their nest, wouldn’t walking in mean instant ash?

Their lingering aura breaks even a Primordial Deity, a frost that cracks stone. What about Ouyang, right now, a lamp in wind?

“Mhm!” Loyin nodded, eyes flashing sly like a fox in reeds. Ouyang caught it and pinched her soft cheek, a playful reproach like a tap on a drum. “Hey, what are we? And you still wanna set me up?”

“Mm~ you left me and ran off!”

“So this is revenge?”

He was grateful he kept his head cool, like a cup under snow. If he’d believed her on the spot, Loyin wouldn’t have let him die; she’d just have twisted him into knots for fun, a kite tugged hard.

“Good thing I’m clever.”