“Lagu, get out here!” The shout split the Demon World encampment like thunder cracking a storm wall.

Lagu—royal blood of the Night Clan—rose in everyone’s minds like a shadowed moon. Back in Nightfall Forest, he fought Ouyang and got hammered bloody by a falling castle, a mountain of stone from the sky.

They later woke in the imperial city, Canopy City, and those two bastards shoved the old king into a pool, ripples spreading like startled fish.

Call them old enemies, old friends with knives; a vow hung between them like a sheathed blade. Ouyang had promised a death duel in a year, and he came to cash that promise like iron.

“Foreign invader, I didn’t think you’d have the guts…” Lagu floated up from the earth like smoke. Black armor clung to him like night-forged iron. He stood on a black dragon as if riding a storm-tossed ship.

If Ouyang wasn’t wrong, that dragon was the Black Dragon Emperor, one of the three Dragon Emperors. In Dragon Gorge he saw only the Holy Dragon Emperor and the White Dragon Emperor, whisked away by Cataclysm and the Sword Demon like birds snatched by wind.

Now the Black Dragon Emperor knelt as a mount, a crown turned bridle. Chains bit into his skull like frostbitten thorns. In those blood-red eyes, Ouyang saw fury like wildfire and defiance like a dam against flood.

They called them Dragon Emperors, dragon gods even beyond this world, mountains with wings. To leash a dragon god was to break a sky and bend a spine.

Lagu had bolted a seat onto the black dragon’s back, an iron throne smeared with ash. He gripped the chain like reins, casual as a man on a horse.

“Heh. Leftover scum, and you look well-fed.” Ouyang’s smile was a knife under silk.

Not to be outdone, he flared his black wings like a night tide. Ghostly runes surfaced in the void behind him like stars surfacing through fog.

They traded cold smiles, frost over deep water. The feud between Night Clan and the Other Shore didn’t fade with time; it brewed like storm wine, ready to explode like a volcano under snow.

As they held the line, two dragon calls ripped the sky, one gold, one white, two comets spearing the battlefield like twin suns.

Elsewhere, these god‑level beings soared unopposed like eagles over prairie. Here, amid this killing field, they seemed small as birds in a hurricane.

The roaring dragons crossed the horizon in a blink, a gold thunderhead and a white glacier.

“Third Brother!” the gold dragon howled, voice breaking like surf. The black dragon was chained, and the white one lost control like a river in flood, exhaling a beam of fire at Lagu.

The breath could melt the hardest steel like candle wax, heat shimmering like a mirage. Lagu only tugged the chain, a casual flick like snapping a twig.

The black dragon screamed, pain cutting the air like torn silk, and he breathed, too—hellfire against sunfire. The two streams collided midair, sparks falling like iron rain.

The earth caught fire like dry grass in summer. Flames spread in a heartbeat, a red sea rolling over stone.

“Third Brother, what’s wrong? Wake up!” The gold dragon’s eyes ran like rain from a cliff, tears on a face too proud for rivers.

They were the same two Dragon Emperors Ouyang met in Dragon Gorge, old echoes rising like mist.

“What’s this, more mounts delivered to my door?” Lagu’s grin was a trap with teeth, easy as a cat above a mouse.

The two dragons roared, unwilling as chained storms. Claws swept for Lagu, a strike meant to rend him to mist. “Demon World bastard, give us back our third brother!”

Their massive bodies frightened the air like mountains falling, but power gaps are cliffs you can’t leap. Lagu was Upper God‑tier, a thunderhead among clouds. The gold and white were only Lower God‑tier, waves under a gale.

If Supreme God‑tier is the mountain peak of the divine, Upper God‑tier are the great ridges, high and cruel. Lower God‑tier are foothills, still stone, still small.

Lagu vanished and reappeared on the gold dragon’s spine like a shadow crossing snow. One punch, black light coiling like deep-sea currents. The gold dragon dropped like a fallen angel, straight down like a meteor.

The impact boomed, carving a crater like a wound in the earth, a dark bowl drinking firelight.

“Stupid dragon, see it? This is our gulf. Being my mount is your honor.” His voice was frost on iron.

The white dragon’s scream tore the clouds like cloth. Lagu ripped his wing off bare‑handed, sinew snapping like bowstrings. Dragon‑god blood fell like crimson rain, stars of red across the dirt.

Ouyang watched, still as winter rock. He didn’t move, old debts like sand in his teeth, and something deep in him brewing like thunder gathering.

“Third Brother! Wake up!” The gold dragon, beaten near ruin, called to the black one like a lighthouse in storm. At the edge of death, he wanted only his brother beside him.

“Third Brother, we said we’d migrate our whole clan to a world of our own. We said we’d seek the First Ancestor’s totem together…” His voice broke like driftwood.

“Third Brother!” he roared, hoarse as wind over bones.

Under the gold dragon’s ragged cry, the black one stayed bound, eyes empty as night glass, chains dragging him forward to crush the dying with a brother’s hands.

With a wet rip, Lagu turned his hand to a blade and drove it into the white dragon’s skull, clean as lightning. He pulled a rhomboid crystal from the brain, a prism blazing like a caught rainbow.

A godhead. The crystal in his palm was a god’s godhead, an heirloom ember. A mortal could inherit it and climb like ivy, reaching godhood in a short span.

The tier sets the climb. A Supreme God‑tier godhead takes a mortal a hundred years to digest, a century like a wintering forest.

A Lower God‑tier godhead takes about ten years, seasons spinning like prayer wheels. It’s a rule carved in stone; no genius leaps it like a chasm.

Realm Gods are beyond godheads, horizons without bottles. They create all things like spring itself—being, to them, is the godhead.

“Second Brother!” The gold dragon saw the White Dragon Emperor’s godhead ripped free and keened like ice snapping on a river. The chained black dragon wept blood, tears like rubies falling from a night statue.

“Ouyang, can I beg something of you?” The voice bloomed in Ouyang’s mind like a bell under water.

Bitterness pricked first, sharp as frost; he listened anyway, breath steady as a held bow. “We’ve had our quarrels, so I don’t expect your help. Just… be kind to our people.”

“They’re young, seedlings after a fire. They don’t know the old sins. Please, treat them gently, for they’re part of the Origin World…”

He finished, and despair drained from him like color from dawn. Light surged off the gold dragon, bright as a newborn sun.

“Self‑detonate? In front of me?” Lagu’s laugh was a knife in velvet. Black chains wrapped the gold dragon like serpents, the light muffled like a lantern in tar. No blast came; the chains cut the fuse like rain.

Rip—

As Lagu basked, two beams lanced from the gold and black skulls, gold and black twining like eclipse.

“Burning their souls…” Ouyang knew at once, a cold stone dropping in his gut. The gold dragon and the chained black had given up everything, soul and godhead set ablaze like oil on a sea. They charged Lagu with a grief that marched like soldiers to a cliff.

Misstep. Lagu hadn’t foreseen dying dragons would keep one last fang, a thorn in the paw.

The southern Rift Wasteland erupted, the blast a blooming sun under a torn sky. Cracks webbed the heavens like broken glass. Thunder rolled in pitch clouds like drums in a war temple.

At the same time, crimson Divine Bloom petals drifted again, dreamlike and unreal, a rain of memory over ash.

“Dead… another god has fallen…” Across the continent, creatures of every race shivered like leaves in winter. In the black world, the roaring lightning looked ready to smash the world like a clay jar.

From the Rift Wasteland, polychrome light surged like auroras. Even far away, you could picture that battle, fierce as two worlds grinding.

In the Rift Wasteland, Ouyang stared at the black clouds like ink above him, eyes narrowed like blades.

Cold clarity rose first, steady as a north wind. “The World Will… its death would starve beasts and wither forests, but without it, we can forge another,” he thought, voice iron under snow.

In a world without a Creator God, a dead World Will means life ends like a river running to sand. Forests turn desert, seas dry to salt, and a planet hardens into a dead star.

The World Will is an operating system, a hidden engine. If it crashes, the world seizes like gears clogged with grit. But a Creator God is a coder under heaven; they can craft a new Will like a new dawn.

While a new Will gestates, a Creator’s presence keeps the world from collapse, a hand holding the sky like a pillar.

“Night Clan, our two lineages’ feud of millions of years should drop the curtain,” he breathed, resolve crystalizing like rime. Behind him, a phantom surfaced like moonlight through gauze.

It was Bai. Eyes closed, silver hair drifting like waterfall threads. Behind her, not dragon wings but silver pinions, feathers like winter light. Her hands were clasped in prayer, a temple bell in a storm.

“Lagu, farewell.” The words fell soft as snow.

Blindsided by the gold and black dragons’ last gambit, Lagu hadn’t recovered when the end slid in like a silent blade. Bai’s phantom opened her eyes, twin moons cutting mist. In her arms lay a sword, its ancient scabbard sealing dust and centuries.

Ouyang drew it slow as sunrise, the Divine Sword singing like a winter river under ice. He felt the wounds in the blade, scars deep as canyon shadows.

Even hurt so badly, the sword could still butcher gods and demons, a reaper in silver.

“Nine Hells, Eighth Sword!” His swing fell like a guillotine of lightning. Gods and devils dropped like grain beneath a storm, the only theme left in the Rift Wasteland a rain of divine blood.

For a moment, in that fall of godflesh, he felt cast back to the mythic epoch, the twilight of the pantheon, sunset bleeding like wine.

Emperor Luo—did he once look down like this, reaping everything like harvest in frost? The thought flickered like a distant star.

But Ouyang knew the gap, a ravine under mist. The God Emperor slew the pantheon, Ancient Gods and Primordial Deities, mountains among clouds.

Ouyang was cutting down trash not even at Realm God level, weeds under a dull sun.