“Jing’er!”

The white‑haired elder’s scream tore like wet paper in a storm. Chiba Jing was their only heir, the ember of their line, and now rain like funeral veils washed even that ember cold.

In the last blast of thunder, nine of ten Chiba elders fell like trees in a gale, and Ouyang culled the rest one by one. Helplessness flooded the old man like black tide. Not because Ouyang was invincible, but because Ouyang could not be killed; any stratagem cracked like ice, any technique blew away like ash.

He cut Ouyang in half, and the body knit itself together like a seam closing under water.

The Chiba manor was a crimson field, rain drumming like sticks on a war drum. Blood ran like a red sea under the downpour. A crimson skull gnawed tireless at scattered corpses, jaw clacking like bone wind chimes. Aside from the white‑haired elder, no one from the Chiba clan still drew breath.

“It’s useless. Void and solid are a chasm you can’t cross,” the cold voice fell like sleet, without a grain of warmth. “You, born of ‘void,’ can’t kill me, born of ‘solid.’ Not just you—any hurt this illusory world gives me dies like mist at dawn.”

The old man heard only frost. He didn’t grasp “void” and “solid.” He only knew he could not kill the masked man. Slice the body to joints, pound flesh to powder, lace blades with poison—every blow passed through Ouyang like smoke through fingers.

The rain kept falling, like the world itself wept and keened.

Barren world, sky cracked like old porcelain. A single sword hung in the fractured firmament like a shard of night. Near it, nine jade‑green crescents spun into a ring, and within that ring everything blurred like breath on glass.

“That illusory world served its turn,” the sword murmured, voice like iron underdeep. “It’s time to wake the Azure Bird.” Ahead, the nine crescents rotated like a slow wheel.

Farther off, a giant turtle squinted that way like a mountain with eyes, then shut its lids and let the matter sink like a stone.

From the heart of the jade ring came a voice clear as spring water through rock.

“Forgive me… that world can’t end that way. I swore a vow; unless it dies on its own, I won’t let anyone break it.”

Sword and crescents faced each other like two storms about to meet. Runes braided into laws circled that patch of sky like migrating birds.

“Litian, you’re not my match now. Let it go.”

“Heh. Moon, your confidence is evergreen,” the sword’s tone was a thin smile, the edge wrapped in silk. “You have your cause to guard, and I have my reason to end it. That world was only a trial or two. The result’s in. Azure Bird can’t sleep here without meaning. Only if she wakes can the Other Shore truly live.”

While sword and crescents held, a creature called Mapleleaf slipped a crack open like peeling bark and slid through.

The woman within the crescents felt helpless as tide against a cliff. With Litian blocking, she couldn’t chase Mapleleaf. But that didn’t mean she would yield like fallen leaves.

“Then we lay a rule,” she said, voice cool as moonlight on snow. “In that world, no god‑level force. If they can still destroy the world, I’ll turn a blind eye.”

“A good proposal…” The sword swayed like a reed, agreeing. “Truth is, that oath’s been chaining you. From the Temple of the Moon Goddess to every Moon Goddess since, people think their saintly hearts came from you. To me, you sound… forced by the current.”

“Saintly? Hah. Anyone who survived the First Epoch has no leisure to play saint,” her voice cut like a thin blade. “Back then I got tricked by three bastards, so I crossed them at every turn. As for guarding that world—I owe a native there a favor. I didn’t expect time that long to make my old promise a yoke.”

All the while, misted moonlight shrouded the figure inside the nine crescents, hiding her like a face behind gauze.

“But, Litian, there’s a traitor in that world. You won’t clean your own house?”

Litian didn’t answer. He just chuckled, low and strange, like a saw through green wood. After a while the crescent ring breathed out a sigh of sound. “So that’s it. I think… I see.”

One month later, a small city in the Western Empire.

The rain had just wept itself dry. Sunlight poured like warm honey, and a rainbow lifted like a silk ribbon. By a pond, a man and a woman leaned into each other, mist floating like breath, rainbow faint as a promise. The scene was a painting.

Then a voice came in like a boot through paper screens.

“Damn, heretics! You dare flaunt love in front of me? Taste my Explosive Blaze!”

A fireball smacked the pond like a meteor into a lake. Steam whooshed up in ghostly sheets. The fireball missed the couple, but fear struck them like a whip. They glanced around, faces drained, and ran.

“Ahahaha… Ouyang, see that? I scared those lovebirds off,” Mapleleaf crowed, white sword‑uniform bright as bleached bone. He held a wooden cross carved with a man and woman tied together, cheek to cheek like carved swallows.

Mapleleaf raised the cross high like a banner and hefted a fireball in his other hand like a burning apple. He shouted, “Burn the heretics! Long live the FFF Brotherhood!”

In the gauzy mist, a cluster of figures in black cloaks lifted torches like stars on sticks and roared, “Burn the heretics! Long live the FFF Brotherhood!”

So went things a month after Ouyang entered the Western Empire. A month earlier, he’d erased the Chiba clan like chalk in rain. At first, the powers in the Eastern Empire watched like theatergoers with melon seeds in hand. The next day, when the rain let up, their faces went stone—shock rolled through them like a twelve‑point quake.

They only meant to disgust the Chiba a bit, rattle a saber, maybe. No one thought the Chiba would be finished.

Word spread like wildfire through dry grass.

By the time anyone realized the smell was wrong, the Chiba estate had been looted by curious onlookers like a carcass stripped by crows. What could be carried, was carried. What couldn’t, was smashed. If not for that night’s rain drowning sparks, someone would’ve lit a torch.

The Chiba were all dead—so the rumor flew like a bat in daylight. They had an Earth‑rank warrior, after all; that isn’t a house you snuff like a candle. Yet that Earth‑rank fighter vanished like a stone into a pond. So did the upper ranks—no bodies, no survivors. Well—some bodies were chewed by something that left no trace.

While everyone stewed, someone picked a diary out of the rubble like a bottle from surf. Analysis said it logged a soldier’s death march. Not long ago, a border zone between Eastern and Western Empires had turned weird, like fog growing teeth. The imperial military sent in a special squad. They went in like a knife. They never came out.

From the diary’s pages, the weird zone smelled like the Western Empire’s handiwork, smoke with fingerprints. The soldiers met strange creatures there, like alchemists’ mistakes—mutations with eyes in the wrong places.

The diary pointed west again and again, yet every line wore “suspected” like a fig leaf. If it had named the Western Empire too loudly, the East would’ve doubted. Because it only said “suspected,” without foam‑spitting hatred, the tone felt cool as a clerk’s note, just “suspected”…

So the Eastern Empire read “suspected” as “certain.” No need to think. The West did it.

What the East did next, Ouyang didn’t care to know. As for Youyun, she was with her teacher, Master Sweet, safe as a candle under a lantern. With an Earth‑rank warrior there, no one would bully her. But with her parents dead and her brother missing, could she carry that weight? Ouyang’s third persona would’ve loved for Youyun to snap under blow after blow and let the world shatter like glass.

After that, Ouyang left the Eastern Empire like a shadow slipping between trees.

Once he grasped the world’s bones, the third persona didn’t inherit the prime persona’s full power, but he still stood at god‑tier like a mountain above the clouds. Then the world’s laws shifted like tides in a tight bay, and his strength got hammered down to Demigod.

Soon after, Mapleleaf found him like a fox sniffing smoke. He invited him to destroy the world together. Mapleleaf saw Ouyang wasn’t whole, yet his zeal to end everything burned like dry pine.

A month later—now—the torchbearers in the mist weren’t normal folk at all. Days ago, Mapleleaf borrowed a hundred wraith squads from Ouyang like a lender with a grin. Those wraiths each slid into a human body like knives into sheaths. At Mapleleaf’s word, they became members of the FFF Brotherhood.

“Ouyang, what’s with that face?” Mapleleaf clapped his shoulder, grin bright as a bonfire. “If you want to end the world, go for the roots. Split every straight couple under heaven, and people can’t breed. No children, no future. Humanity dries up like a riverbed. See? No need to hack and slash. We end the world while having a laugh.”

Ouyang stared, words lost like leaves in wind. So that’s also a way to end a world?

Mapleleaf patted him again, confidence tall as a lance. “So—lend me three thousand wraiths. I’ll forge three thousand FFF brothers. Old tales boast that three thousand city enforcers conquered the world. I want three thousand brothers to burn it down.”