After the appraisal settled like dust on a road, Ouyang decided the guy was a half-wit, a cracked bell in a quiet shrine.

“So, which one of you is taking him?” He tossed the question like a pebble into a still pond. “Vice-captain, you up?”

The proud vampire snorted like frost on glass, and the high, elegant progenitor of the Blood Kin, Devila, spoke cool as moonlight on steel. “Don’t kid me. I don’t bully half-witted children.”

Silence fell like snow, and no one knew what to say to Devila’s line, a cold wind across a field. “Yulan, your turn. Make that half-wit into flower fertilizer.” Ouyang swung to the Third Seat, the wish-fiend, his words a fan snapping open.

Yulan turned his face away like a closed lotus and said nothing, a still lake under night.

Dufei tugged his voice out like a bell rope. “Boss, the other side won’t talk to you, and they tossed you a dummy.”

“Tossed me a dummy?”

Ouyang glanced at Yulan, whose stillness was stone-still under rain. His mind flashed to that idiot angel, and he turned—when a spear of holy light, bright as dawn through fog, punched through his heart.

“Hmph. Heretic, accept the judgment of Holy Light, and pray before the Goddess,” the angel intoned, voice like a hymn over ice.

He hit once and felt smug, wings unfurling like snow-white sails, holy and clean as fresh frost. The beings of the Outer Domain gaped like fish in a cold river—had the fabled City Lord from the mysterious Inner Domain been skewered in one strike?

“Damn, idiot.” Ouyang spat thunder under a blue sky, even with the holy spear lodged in his chest. No blood spilled, just silence like a sealed jar. He yanked the light-spear free like a thorn from bark. “So, who’s going? Don’t waste daylight.”

He asked the gathered Demon Kings again, his voice a drumbeat over sand, and not one stepped up.

“Weaklings.” Amelie hugged her sword like a sleek cat and sneered like wind cutting reeds.

Wutong popped open her Oil Paper Umbrella with a rain-soft snap and rested it on her shoulder. “Fighting that trash would lower my stock,” she said, voice as light as drifting petals.

Excuses rose like mist, and no one moved, a forest frozen mid-breeze. The angel misread the sway, mistaking still water for fear. He thought the flock of “noobs” feared the great Angel Daniel, warmth spreading in his chest like sunrise over marble. Floating high, he noticed Ouyang wasn’t dead and blinked like a startled owl, then forced himself a reason, a patch of paint on cracked stone.

Seeing Ouyang’s side passing the buck like hot coal, he was happy to watch the play, a hawk circling a barn.

“In that case, send the weakest.” The dark elf sat, as always, on a Titan’s shoulder, like a raven on a granite cliff. Unwittingly, the Titan had become not just her enforcer, but her personal mount, a mountain under a sparrow.

“The weakest...” Valiant, tiger head on a human frame, cut a glance like a blade toward the dwarf at the back, Bartley. Bartley loved the forge like a hearth in winter. He was a god-tier smith, but among Demon Kings his fighting force was a guttering candle.

Everyone looked at Bartley in unison, a field of sunflowers turning.

“Me? I’m not much for fighting,” Bartley rumbled, voice like gravel in a stream. “But making me brawl a little kid? Don’t joke. If you’re not ashamed, I’m ashamed for you.”

He wasn’t wrong. His combat rank among these oddballs was low, a lantern under noon sun, yet he could still pound a two-winged angel flat. Angels were born with godlike wattage, stars in a cradle, but they lacked tempering. Bartley, Valiant, Eunice—gods who climbed one step at a time, footprints carved in granite.

Angels had power without mileage, thunder without rain. With equal rank, Bartley thrashing an angel wasn’t just talk; it was an axe through soft pine.

“Even the old smith looks down on the idiot. I can almost feel that angel’s life being lonely as snow,” Ouyang murmured, drawing the spear of light free like silk through a ring. His chest was smooth as unbroken ice, as if nothing had happened. Even a dim angel could tell the sky was wrong. That was a god-level strike, a bolt from a cloudless sky. A peak Demigod couldn’t shrug that off. Only a god could.

“Grand Commander, blood-sacrifice that angel,” Ouyang said, hands clasped behind him, the wind lifting his black coat like a night tide, runes glimmering like stars. “Take the throne of god while the iron’s hot.” His shout rolled across the Outer Domain like thunder over plains, and the angel felt a bad moon rise.

Grand Commander? Did Miracle City have a Grand Commander? Creatures scoured horizons like hunters, itching to spot Ouyang’s named storm.

A blinding blue light burst from the Realm Spire, a lone tower like a spear through the clouds. No one knew its true height, a cliff lost in mist, since no mortal had reached the top.

Behind the glare came a blue orb, a moonlet streaking from the Spire, arrowing toward the angel like a comet.

“Who goes there? Another heretic?” The angel stiffened, gripping his lance as if clutching a bolt of sunlight.

Bang—the blue orb slammed into him like surf against rocks. Clouds shredded apart, and above Miracle City the sky went truly, perfectly clear, a lake with no ripples. “Yiyue Qianliu. You may call me the Heir of the Eternal,” came a voice like frost-fire on steel.

Blue armor like deep sea. Blue lance like lightning bottled. A steed wreathed in ghostly blue flames, stamping like a storm. He was the last blood of the Eternal Empire’s royal line, Yiyue Qianliu, a peak Demigod stuck on the cusp like an eagle in a headwind.

He once told Ouyang, unless power rivaled the Creator God, the Nightfall Clan would keep skulking in a Prison of Shadows, a winter burrow under a dead moon. After Ouyang had Kooson send word, Qianliu chose to move the clan here, though counting himself they were just three embers in a dying ash.

“Angel?” Yiyue Qianliu stepped off his blue-flame mount, feet on the void like stepping stones over water. The horse dissolved into a streak of blue and poured into his lance like river into sea.

“Hell yeah, lancer versus lancer,” Ouyang crowed, producing a table from nowhere like a street magician pulling out clouds. “What’s your pick? Odds are open. I’m putting a million on the Grand Commander.” His grin glittered like a fox under starlight.

The Demon Kings were used to Ouyang’s antics, a rain they no longer noticed, but others from the Outer Domain gawked. So the legendary City Lord was…like this? Yet the image of him casually pulling a holy spear from his heart, leaving no mark, hung in their minds like a sunspot. On that alone, many onlookers turned fan, grass bending toward a steady wind.

“Please, that angel’s a noob. City Lord can’t be bothered to bully him,” muttered someone near the front, words fluttering like sparrows. The gripes Ouyang traded with the Demon Kings were overheard, seed thrown to pigeons. By the time the crowd spread it, versions multiplied like fish, but the core was a nail—Angel Daniel was trash.

“Noob angel, go home and drink your milk,” a blunt dwarf hollered, booze on his breath like fire, and the angel’s aggro snapped to him like iron to a magnet.

“Mortals! If you forsake the light, then I, Daniel, will judge you,” the angel roared, right hand on his lance like a mast, left hand gathering a golden orb like a small sun.

“To hell with your judgment, noob!” The elf girl who once tried to snipe him drew her bow like a crescent moon. Whoosh—the arrow flew, a fishbone of wind.

An angel wouldn’t miss that kind of shot, a hawk with sharp eyes. He readied to swat it aside like a gnat. In that breath, Yiyue Qianliu moved, saying nothing, his blue-lightning lance thrusting for the angel’s weak point like rain for dry earth. Angels at equal rank were rookies, factory-made cannon fodder, stars stamped from a mold. Without numbers, Qianliu could try to reap this “god” like wheat.

He knew the trick. Break the Angelic Heart, and the body-and-spirit both vanish like smoke in rain.

“Damn you, mere mortal—” the angel snarled, but he didn’t dare sneer at that lance. On the metal he smelled gods’ blood, copper-sweet and old as a storm—this was a god-slaying weapon, a wolf’s tooth in night grass.

His focus tunneled to Qianliu, like a tunnel through a mountain. He ignored the elf’s arrow, a gnat in summer.

Pfft.

The arrow sank into the angel’s backdoor, ridiculous and lethal like a thorn in a rose.

“The chrysanthemum withers… petals fall in pain…” Ouyang provided BGM, crooning like a midnight cat. No one understood the lyrics, falling like strange leaves, but they all heard his golden pipes—and suffered.

The crowd winced as his devil’s song drilled their ears like icy needles. Even Jue, graven as tombstone moss, clapped his hands over his ears, a reflex under thunder. The angel wobbled in midair like a kite in a crosswind, whether from the arrow, the song, or both, looking ready to crash.

“Hey now, don’t crash, keep it up!” Ouyang whipped out a white handkerchief like a gull, waving it high to cheer. “Hello, 911? A big shot’s bullying a newbie. A dirty backroom deal’s going down. The newbie’s backdoor is not secure.”

They didn’t get the slang, words like fireflies from another forest, but no one thought it was a compliment, a sour taste on the tongue.

The bystanders burst into laughter like rain on drums, whether they understood or not, as long as they knew Ouyang was roasting the angel over open flame. Among the Demon Kings, Kooson had practiced Ouyang’s style, a mirror catching sunlight, so he caught the gist fast.

Kooson cupped his hands and yelled skyward, voice like a horn. “Backdoor’s doomed!”

The crowd seemed to understand the picture, a field catching spark. One by one, they shouted up at the angel, voices layering like waves:

“Backdoor’s doomed!”

“Backdoor’s doomed!”

“Backdoor’s doomed!”

Each cry rose higher, a tide hammering a cliff, and the angel, still not grasping the words, almost crashed from rage alone, a storm tearing its own sails. He ripped the arrow out with a hiss like tearing silk and bellowed like a warhorn.

“Mortals, you forced me. Accept the judgment of Holy Light!”