Seeing the angel about to unleash something vast, Ouyang raised a barrier in time, like a glass bell separating the sky-duel from the earth below.

The barrier had barely set when the angel’s furious strike crashed down, burning like a sun, blinding like the first light of creation. A god’s full blow could turn an empire to rubble, like waves grinding a cliff to chalk. Long ago, some bored souls in the Other Shore tallied that even the weakest god could wreck a normal planet’s ecosystem in seven days and nights, like locusts stripping a field bare.

A Realm God could ignite a planet’s core and make it burst from within, like a seed exploding into dust. As for Ancient Gods, rumor said a peak strike could pulp a planet from skin to marrow, like a fruit crushed to pulp.

So even if Daniel was soft as a fledgling, he was still a god; without that barrier, nine in ten under the sky would’ve died like candles in a gale.

When the angel grandly ignored him and turned his fury toward mortals on the ground, Yiyue Qianliu felt his pride cut open, like frost biting bone. “Ignore me? I’m heir to the Eternal. The blood in me once hunted Primordial Deities like wolves stalking titans. A mere scrap of god-stuff...”

His spear seemed to taste its master’s rage. Blue lightning streamed from the shaft, pouring upward like a river of stars until the high air drowned in azure glare.

The blue lance shot for the angel, and at last the angel felt death brush his throat like a cold blade. “Mortal, you really think a god’s majesty is yours to profane?”

Gripping his holy light lance, the angel chose to meet force with force, like iron ringing on iron. His life-order was higher than Qianliu’s; if he flinched now, he’d be a fool trembling before a breeze.

When blue lightning slammed into golden radiance, cracks spidered through the sky like ice on a winter lake. A shockwave blasted out of Nightfall Forest, rolling across the land like a storm-front. Even far-off Canopy City felt the tremor, a shiver through stone like a heartbeat in sleep.

When the glare faded, everyone drew breath like drowning men tasting air. The blue vault was webbed with hair-thin fractures, like a shattered mirror, and Yiyue Qianliu and the angel still hung in the windswept height. By the look of them, Qianliu’s armor was in shards, his body laced with blood, like a banner torn by arrows. The angel was pale as chalk; his war-plate was cracked, but he wasn’t blood-soaked like Qianliu.

Decided, at a glance?

“This is a god’s power... it’s strong, as fire is strong. But the honor of the Nightfall Clan won’t fade in my hands!” The wind moved like fingers through Qianliu’s black short hair, tugging his ragged sleeves like reeds by a river.

“Truth is, I don’t touch the world much. Right, wrong... none of it matters to me like stars to birds. I live for one thing—to carry that honor on, to shout across the myriad skies: we of the Nightfall Clan, heirs of the Eternal, have returned!”

Without anyone noticing, storm-clouds rolled like ink across the heavens. Lightning flickered and roared like dragons in mist. Qianliu’s pupils had turned pitch-black; the black ate the whites, leaving eyes like pools of ink.

“Ink-dyed eyes...” Ouyang had seen them once in Loyin. When she first awakened that power, she almost stole his body, like a tide stealing sand underfoot. Only the so-called Eternal Palace, “outside of time,” plucked him away like a hand out of a dream.

He watched Qianliu climbing like a comet through the storm and knew the end had set like a seal. Gods and mortals stand worlds apart, as mountains to grass. Yet across the ages, there are those who, with a mortal body, slay a god, like flint striking lightning. Borrowed power or borrowed blade, they still carve the deed into the night.

“So, Qianliu—let the world look up,” Ouyang murmured, calm as deep water, his eyes bright as dawn. “Show them what the Other Shore’s favored can do. Your honor is ours.”

That is the Other Shore. From a single kin-line, a mortal godslayer can be born, like fire from a single spark catching a forest.

Above, the angel squirmed under those ink-black eyes, like prey under a leviathan’s gaze. Born as a symbol of light, an angel had never known fear, as noon never knows dusk. Yet now, fear crawled up his spine like ice.

“Ultimate Art: Shared Grave!”

In that beat, Yiyue Qianliu cast aside life and death like old robes. He had one aim—to drag the god down to the pit, to bury the enemy with his own bones, like twin coffins under one mound. It was a mutual-destruction strike.

“If I can’t carve a god-slaying on the sky, my honor dims like coals in ash. Living would mean nothing but winter.”

Crackle, crackle—the blue lightning wrapped Qianliu’s body like a storm-cloak. Through his ink eyes, the world turned crisp as frost. Angel Daniel’s movements and power stood laid bare like script on white paper.

A pair of vast wings of wind unfurled behind him, silent as a shroud. The air carried mourning, a scent like rain at a grave—sorrow, weeping, a hush before thunder.

“Wings of Mourning... Even with Shared Grave, pulling a god down isn’t certain,” Ouyang weighed, his thoughts steady as stone. “But with the Ink-dyed Eyes amplifying, the Wings of Mourning can clash head-on with a god.” In that wind, he’d already judged the angel dead, like a candle under a wave.

The wind carried an ancient call, like a dirge and a hymn. The Ink-dyed Eyes and the Wings of Mourning came from the same hand; together, their power rose like tide under a full moon.

“No... impossible. A mere mortal...” The angel saw Qianliu closing, his face twisting like wood under flame, horror warping the features of a saint. “Mortal—if I die, you won’t live to laugh!”

Another violent explosion rolled the heavens like thunder tearing a mountain. Shards fell from the fracture-laced sky, slabs peeling like bark; black holes yawned like wells. Then, as silence settled, the dark rifts knit shut like wounds, and countless petals drifted down, red as blood, lonely as the last light of sunset.

“The Divine Bloom... it’s dancing,” Ouyang said, lifting a hand. A petal passed through his palm like mist, fell to the earth, and vanished like dew.

“City Lord big-brother, why can’t we touch these flowers?” Grover asked, eyes wide as ponds.

“These petals are watered by a god’s blood. The wither of the Divine Bloom marks a god’s fall, and the world’s will sends him off, like bells over the sea. Mortals can’t touch them. When you can, it means you’re dead. Only the dead can hold the send-off flower.”

He looked up. A body thudded onto the high barrier and slid, stopped by invisible glass; without it, the corpse would have fallen like a stone through water.

“Yiyue Qianliu... worthy of the Eternal Empire’s royal blood,” Ouyang said, praise bright as steel. Just then, a little girl and a little boy ran up, breath hitching like sparrows. Both had black hair. Their matching azure robes were stitched with constellations, star-rivers flowing across silk.

“Ouyang-gege, can you take us to our big brother?” their voices trembled like reeds in wind.

The boy and girl stared at the body on the barrier, anxiety rising like a tide. These two were Qianliu’s younger siblings and the last of the Nightfall Clan—Yiyue Qianling and Yiyue Qianxue. Their robes were royal wear of the Eternal Empire, and the crowd felt it like heat; people stepped aside on instinct, opening a path like water parting for a prow.

“Save him? No rush,” Ouyang said, calm as a mountain. “He’s wading the line between life and death, and I can’t touch that thread now. If he dies, I’ll fetch him back from the City of the Dead, like calling a name in fog. Sigh. Young folk these days—too rash, like fire in dry grass.”

Ouyang’s composure made Qianliu’s siblings stamp their feet, their worry drumming like rain. But they held back, trusting he had his reasons, like sailors trusting the stars.

——

“The Divine Bloom... it’s falling.”

Those blood-red petals didn’t just haunt the Nightfall Forest. They drifted across the continent like crimson snow. To those who didn’t know, the scene was beautiful, as lanterns on a river. To those who did, it chilled the spine like ice. Each fall of the Divine Bloom marked a god’s fall in the human world.

“What could bring down a god?”

On a sea coast, an old man with white hair lifted his eyes to the tender rain of petals, and he sighed long, like wind through pines. His sigh drew a glance from the girl at his side. “Grandpa, the flowers are so pretty. Why sigh?” Barefoot in a summer dress, she left footprints on wet sand, her violet hair lifting in the sea breeze, the Divine Bloom drifting around her like a painting.

“Yes, Father. The ‘Source’ world is more interesting than I thought,” a middle-aged man said, sprawled in a chair under the sun, lazy as a cat. “At least our world doesn’t have this.”

They were from another world. The old man, a great archmage, had traveled here before, like a gull crossing bays. He’d wanted to bring his son and granddaughter to sightsee, but the world-gate sealed, and the plan idled a year like a ship becalmed.

Recently, he sensed the gate open, so he brought his family through, met old friends like stars after cloud, then chose this coast to relax. It should’ve been a lovely day, like wine in late light. But the wither of the Divine Bloom chilled him to the marrow.

“A god... fell. Fell here, among mortals,” the old man whispered, face pale as foam. He’d brought his family because this world had ancient ruins like bones in earth, and because the Goddess of Light ruled here, which should’ve meant safety, like traveling under a bright moon. And he, a great archmage—a Demigod—rarely met trouble among mortals, as a wolf rarely fears mice.

Who’d have thought a walking god would fall in this world, like a star drowning at noon?

“Go. We’re going back, now. This world’s too dangerous,” he said, voice tight as a drawn bow.

Evil or good, a fallen god means gods are fighting, like thunderheads colliding. A god-war isn’t for mortals to watch. With bad luck, you won’t even know how you died, like a boat swallowed by a rogue wave.