Everything went exactly as Ouyang’s script demanded. The peacemakers kept dying to “accidents.” Someone even saw soldiers stab a commoner, while a commoner lunged like a rabid dog and bit a guard to death.

A breath named death thickened like fog; a fever named madness spread like wildfire. Maybe life is a stage built for delirium.

Civilians, city lord’s men—no one was spared. Restraint snapped like a frayed bowstring. Even the top brass sensed something wrong, yet hatred drove them like a tide.

War flames rolled out like a stormfront.

The City Lord’s manor had mages and arcanists, guests who could crush unrest like ants. Then, in one convulsing night, they vanished. No footprints, no ash—evaporated like dew at dawn. Those were beings with power beyond men. Evil warlocks, noble mages, mysterious arcanists—if they surged together, they could level Qiuya City. Without the Empire’s pull, a mere city lord couldn’t have hired them at all.

But that terrifying circle of guests evaporated in a single night.

Inside the manor, a middle‑aged man paced the courtyard, brow creased like folded steel.

“City Lord, the Astrologer has arrived.”

A figure draped in silver walked in, holding a crystal sphere the size of a grown man’s head.

The City Lord—himself that middle‑aged man—bowed, respect like a blade held low. “Master, please.”

The Astrologer said little. He nodded, a token gesture, then set the crystal in a basin filled with water. Powder scattered like frost upon a pond; the clear water slowly turned blue.

Blue water cradled the crystal like a moon in a lake.

He took a small knife from a servant. He cut his hand. Blood fell onto the crystal. His lips murmured strange syllables, like wind in old branches.

The crystal drank the blood like a thirsty ghost and exhaled a ghost‑blue halo.

“Master, can you see the root of Qiuya’s unrest?”

The Astrologer’s eyes stayed shut, long and longer, silence heavy as snow. Usually no one spoke during a divination; you waited until the seer broke the quiet. But the city had collapsed. The City Lord broke the ritual, voice taut as wire. The Astrologer kept his eyes closed.

He did not speak for a very long time.

Then his eyes snapped open. A crack rang out—sharp as ice breaking—and the crystal shattered. Thick blood slid from the corners of his eyes, then from his nostrils, his ears, his mouth.

The blood poured, viscous as syrup.

“I… saw the future… Night has begun to fall… This world… has no dawn…”

He finished, and his lids folded like doors. He stood there, upright as a statue, eyes closed. The City Lord reached to his nose—no breath. In that instant, the City Lord felt a heavy cloud smother Qiuya’s sky, a pall that would spread across the world—the Eastern Empire, the Western Empire, all under the same shadow.

The fighting raged for seven days and seven nights. Smoke. Fire. Blood. Like a drumbeat that never stopped.

When the ragged survivors finally came to, clarity cut like a cold blade. It was eerie, dreamlike. Awake, how could they have done such stupid things?

Creak… creak…

A red skull crunched down a corpse. Strange—only a head, yet nothing fell out the jaw after it chewed. Beside the red skull hovered a white mask, blank as a void, and a black coat that swallowed light.

“You’re… the Demon King?!”

Inside the manor, half‑dead Daphne and Overson recognized the figure who never showed his true face—Ouyang. Behind him stretched a press of bodies in black, torches burning like a field of embers.

Unlike before, every black‑clad carried a number on their clothes, one through twelve.

In a heartbeat, Overson, Daphne, and the City Lord understood. They had found the hand behind the curtain. Too late. Everything was too late.

“Hahaha… Night… has fallen… This world… has no dawn…”

He spoke, and Gluttony swallowed him whole.

“The ending of this world was set at the start. In the night, there is no dawn,” Ouyang murmured, voice like frost on stone.

“Secret Art: Dance of Ghosts and Gods!”

Wind roared up like wolves. On the horizon, clouds heaved like a black sea. Lightning hammered the earth.

Outside Qiuya City, a pale barrier had swaddled the walls. Seven days ago it rose; since then no one could enter, no one could leave.

Now the barrier dissolved like breath on glass. What appeared was a ghost city—streets slick with blood, air thick with smoke, fires still gnawing—yet not a single intact corpse, only tatters of cloth and scattered meat.

For seven days crowds massed outside. The front packed tight; the rear pushed like a breaking wave. A stampede slammed through them.

Clouds surged. Wind clawed. Thunder never once went silent.

From the houses, rotten bodies walked out. Some shed chunks of face like wet plaster. Some tried to run, their intestines spilling like ropes.

Terror rose. Screams shredded the air.

When the dust settled, quiet fell like ash. The monsters turned back, one by one, went home, shut their doors. As if nothing had happened at all. If not for the blood on the street, someone might have believed the lie.

Those swallowed by Gluttony were only common wraiths. Too far from Gluttony’s hunger, they couldn’t even touch the living world. But the Dance of Ghosts and Gods was different.

Under that art’s power, dead bodies twist into corpses; souls harden into fierce ghosts.

Ouyang had Gluttony devour exactly three thousand bodies. He filled Mapleleaf’s FFF Brotherhood to a round three thousand. The rest—every last one—became thousand‑year revenants under the dance.

The city turned into an underworld city, much like the City of the Dead. But in the City of the Dead, the dead think clearly. Here, the fierce ghosts have no reason at all. Let a living breath touch these streets, and they rush out. Even within a certain distance of Qiuya, they spill like wolves. When the living scent fades, they shuffle back, return to the houses of their former lives, shut the doors, and wait in the dark for the smell of life.

In Qiuya now, the clouds above never break. Thunder rumbles on like a heartbeat.

“They’re here… drawn by the scent of death.” Ouyang stood on the wall, cloaked forever, gaze thrown to the distance. A small black dot grew, swelling like a storm.

A chill skated the air. A wild crow flying overhead folded like a stone and plunged.

“Hm? I am the master of Death, keeper of life and death. Why do you shackle souls here?”

A black cloak covered the newcomer. Ouyang couldn’t see her face, only the voice, and the legs flashed by a teasing wind.

“Yo‑ho, found a wild loli!” Mapleleaf’s playful drawl dropped, and a colossal violet hexagram rose from the ground, caging them in light.

The cloaked figure didn’t flinch. She floated, pale hands stroking the curve of a scythe like a lover.

Wind lifted the hood. Her face finally showed. Raven hair spilled like ink.

“Heh. Interesting.”

In those black eyes lived poise. A faint smile cut a perfect line. Mapleleaf smacked his own forehead. He’d misread—she wasn’t any wild loli at all. Sixteen, maybe seventeen. A world away from loli. Mapleleaf had seen countless women, yet here he’d botched the call.

“You lot… what do you intend?” Her scythe fell once—one clean arc—and the hexagram shattered like brittle glass. The slash angled for Ouyang. Maybe Mapleleaf’s strength felt too unreadable, so she struck the one who looked weaker. Or maybe Ouyang’s getup just begged for a beating.

One strike broke Ouyang’s white mask, and split the hexagram like firewood.

“Whoa—this ain’t scientific… Beauty, what rank of god are you?”

Mapleleaf slid back in a blur.

“I… am the god who governs Death.”

“Ha… a Death God… damn. A‑Yang, this one’s nasty.”

Death lives in every heart, from livestock to beasts. The idea of death, fear of death—every mind holds it like a shadow.

A faith god’s power runs on rank, fame, and believers. Death is top‑tier. Fame? Universal. Any thinking creature carries the concept of death.

As for believers—fear itself counts as worship. In a way, a Death God needs no congregation at all.

In short, this faith god wasn’t some stray cat. Ouyang’s strength was bound by this world’s rules set by the Moon Sage. Mapleleaf too. He had power, but here he couldn’t pull god‑level might.

Even if their combat power could match an ordinary god, could it match Death?

No way. Mapleleaf and Ouyang swapped a look. Message clear as lightning: can’t win—grease the soles and run.