“Our time’s noose is tightening. If we don’t find a way out of this time node fast, the correction of time will grind us like grain under a millstone. Even if it doesn’t, the coming cataclysm will sweep us up like a storm tide.”

Fia refused the village’s thanks; once she learned the exact date, her brows stayed knotted like a taut bowstring that wouldn’t relax.

In her memory, there are two ways to cross time. One pulls hard on causality, and travelers are shackled like ghosts behind glass. Like when Ouyang went back—aside from a few special beings, no one could see or touch him, and he couldn’t so much as nudge a pebble. Snapping a blade of grass would cost a mountain of price, like paying blood for a leaf.

The second kind is the one they’re in—no chains, able to mingle and stir the so-called “history” like a hand in a river. But time’s power is a tide that levels all footprints. Once it senses an error, it moves to mend that stretch of the stream, and Fia’s group will be erased like ink washed from stone, every trace scoured clean.

If they don’t disturb the weave too much, the correction moves slow, like frost creeping at night. As a quiet passerby, you might walk the shore for a long while before the tide notices your wrong-colored shell. But if you kill a king who should have swept the world and raised an empire, and he dies early because of guests from another stream, then the loom snaps threads, and the pattern screams.

Contradictions knot the causal chain like tangles in silk, and time’s scissors flash quick to trim and reset that piece of cloth.

They haven’t been spotted yet; they must slip away like foxes through reeds before time’s hounds catch the scent of this “error.”

After Fia’s careful map of words, Augustine and the others finally saw how steep the cliff was under their feet, the fog lifting to show a drop.

“So the bigger our splash in this world, the sooner time’s tide will notice us…” Caro bit her lip, heart thudding like a drum. In their own stream they’d ridden out storms, but back then Jue and Ouyang stood like mountains behind them.

Now, the anchors they relied on sit in a different sky, and their boat drifts without a line.

Rex thought for a long while, thoughts circling like hawks. “If we do everything we can to avoid nudging this node, then before we reach the Endless Plateau, time shouldn’t notice us, right?”

“In theory,” Fia said, voice flat as ice. “If we keep our causality thin, we have enough breath to make the Endless Plateau before time looks our way. But this node—you understand the taste in the air. The calamity might roll in on the next heartbeat like thunder over the ridge.”

She leaned against a tree, teeth worrying her left index finger, tension humming like a bow about to snap.

“What exactly is that calamity?” Jiangxue asked, her voice a ripple across still water. Every mention of it turned Rex and Fia’s faces dark, storm-shadowed. Rex is a god. Fia, from what they’d seen, stood even higher, like a peak above a peak.

Yet even two gods flinched at its name, like deer hearing a hunter’s horn.

Fia let out a long sigh, a wind leaving a cavern. “It swept the Divine Realm, touched the Abyss, and the Demon World and the Underworld didn’t escape. A road paved with endless souls, and paradise dyed red by the blood of gods—just to become a god above gods.”

“The Divine Continent we stand on is called, in later ages—Ancient Divine Realm,” she said, the name dropping like a stone into deep water.

Her words hit with too much weight, information pouring like a flood through a narrow gate; for a moment, everyone choked on it.

“I don’t know the exact time of the Twilight of the Gods,” Fia added, voice like frost. “The chronicles place it around Glory Year seventy thousand of the divine calendar. It could be tomorrow. It could be the day after.”

They hadn’t digested it all, but urgency pressed like a hand on the back, and the hourglass bled sand.

To return to the Endless Plateau, the first step was to leave the Divine Realm—the Divine Continent. Get out of this hot zone, this wasp nest, above all else. To leave, they needed a stable world-transit channel, a gate set like stone in the river. But even Fia didn’t know where such gates stood in that ancient age, her map blank where it mattered.

“Looks like we have to enter a Divine Kingdom,” she said, tone clipped, “and borrow the monarch’s portal to get out of here,” like asking for passage across a guarded bridge.

Overhead, giant islands drifted like whales in a bright sea. Shapes of life moved on their backs, flickers like fireflies. When those vast bodies slid by, the ground kept its light without a single shadow—things that should have blotted out the sky like storm veils somehow left the earth shining, bright as a mirror at noon.

Faced with sights that broke the rules like twigs, they let the questions die like sparks in rain, focusing instead on the word “Divine Kingdom” like sailors on a lighthouse. Fia offered no commentary. She walked at the tip of the spear, the natural place for the strongest. In her own words, if Augustine and the rest weren’t “people Father knows,” their lives wouldn’t even draw her gaze, leaves in another wind.

Rex saw that and began explaining from the rear, his voice laying stones like a path. “In the Divine Realm, to found a Divine Kingdom, the bare minimum is a Realm God. The powerful ones… are terrifying,” he said, leaving the cliff edge unseen. “A Divine Kingdom does two things. One, it forms an alliance, with the monarch governing many gods like a shepherd over stars. Two, only Divine Kingdoms have the right to administer subordinate worlds.”

“In other words,” he went on, words crisp as iron, “if a god wants to manage a world, he must join a Divine Kingdom and receive the monarch’s order. Otherwise, it’s illegal, a trespass on sacred ground. The number of worlds a kingdom holds depends on its size and strength—a weak kingdom guards only one world, while a strong one can manage dozens, even hundreds,” like constellations under one banner.

Rex’s lesson unfolded a map in Augustine’s minds, lines and borders suddenly clear. It also let them guess at Fia’s weight; to borrow a path from a monarch, her height couldn’t be too far below theirs. A mortal asking passage from a Divine Kingdom’s lord? Before a loan, even an audience was a mountain to climb.

On the road, they ran into several fierce creatures, fangs like knives. With Fia walking ahead, each danger melted like frost under a rising sun.

Then, far up in the blue vault, seven-colored light spilled like a river of rainbows. Look closer, and it was a whole continent, a landmass floating in air. It hung so far above that, from the ground, it looked like cloud, just many times larger, a white whale among smaller fish.

“That… is a Divine Kingdom!” Fia said, and her words rang like a bell; everyone stiffened, eyes wide.

Most gods built their kingdoms on the ground, roots in soil; a few raised them on the sky vault, like the one above, a palace among clouds. Rex kept explaining, voice steady as oars. Fia spoke little, face set, racing time like a runner with fire at her heels.

They thought Fia would choose that skyborne kingdom, but she shook her head, a blade cutting that thought. “Those who build in the sky have fearsome origins,” she said, gaze wary as a hunted cat. In the Divine Realm, anyone bold enough to raise a kingdom above the clouds was usually beyond a Realm God, a peak above peaks. Fia couldn’t contend with that mountain; with such a gulf, the chance of borrowing a path was a single drop in an ocean.

Time slid by like a river. The sky kingdom grew small, drifting off like a ship on the far horizon. With no night to mark the days, Augustine and the rest had no idea what day it was. They only felt danger thicken like fog as the hours flowed.

Suddenly, a thunderous crash ripped the sky like a torn drum. They turned. The skyborne Divine Kingdom burst into a violent bloom, fire like a blood-red flower. It split in two and fell toward the earth like broken cliffs. At the same time, the whole region lifted into a drift of crimson Divine Bloom, petals like embers in the wind.

“Move. We have to leave this region!” Fia’s cry snapped their trance like a whip crack. With Fia and Rex pouring power into their steps, they fled like arrows loosed from a bow. They ran until the crimson flowers vanished from sight like a sunset fading, and only then did they stop, lungs burning like bellows.

“Ahead lies a city,” Fia said, eyes like blades. “We’ve stepped into a Divine Kingdom’s domain. That blast was likely just the opening of dusk. We have to leave the Divine Continent fast,” like riders beating a storm to the pass.

The sight of walls let their taut hearts loosen, knots untied like ropes soaking in rain. A city meant a Divine Kingdom’s ground, and with the monarch’s portal they could escape this storm-bent land. But Fia went still, rooted like a statue. She stared, stunned, as if she’d seen something the world shouldn’t hold.

Everyone followed her gaze—and turned to stone.

Ouyang.

The man before them looked exactly like Ouyang, a face copied like a reflection on still water. But only the shell matched; the spirit didn’t. A cold aura spilled off him like winter frost, and they felt a fire named hatred roaring in his chest like a furnace.

He sensed them and swept them with a glance, a blade of winter wind. In that instant, they felt as if they had been killed a thousand times, lives cut like wheat. One look, and even Fia started gasping, her legs trembling like reeds in a storm.

Ice-cold pupils. A cutting killing intent like a honed edge. “Ouyang” gripped a Reaper’s scythe, its curve like a moon in a black sky. He raised it slowly, like night rising. A breath named death rushed at them like a tide.

No way to resist; the road ran out like a cliff edge. Neither Rex nor Fia saw a path to live, no trail in the snow. That power stood stronger than anything they’d faced; the aura alone pressed like a mountain on a candle, snuffing strength and the will to fight.