Chains upon chains unfurled—iron vines from every chest—shattered scenes floated up and streamed into the black‑clad man’s hand.

Their whole lives bared open, secrets spread like autumn leaves, laid out under his raven gaze.

From birth to death, every joy and grief—every road, every misstep—splintered into frames he dissected like ice under a scalpel.

They drifted, minds fogged, like sailors lost on a sea of time with no star to steer by.

When Augustine and the others finally surfaced, crimson Divine Blooms were snowing from the sky like late cherry blossoms.

Petals whirled between heaven and earth, scattering like embers in a quiet wind.

The street was gone; in its place lay blood‑washed ruins and bodies shattered like clay figures.

“Divine Kingdom… slaughtered?”

Augustine stared, and fear hit first—then he shook; a whole Divine Kingdom, gone.

Fia nodded, face pale as moonlight. Her voice fell to a reed‑thin whisper. “Yes. In my senses, only we are still alive.”

“How can it be? Even if he hated the Divine Kingdom’s ruler, why vent on the common folk?”

“Forget the gods—those mortals, they were rain‑washed clay, innocent. Why not spare even them?”

Caro bit her lip; in the blacksmith to the left, Puris had bought a greatsword.

The owner, always smiling like a warm hearth, refused coin and pressed the blade into Puris’s hands.

Beside it, the flower shop: the little girl at the counter called them big sisters in a sugar‑sweet voice.

So many faces—though their stay was brief, the city’s warmth clung like sunlight on skin. Why must such plain folk bleed?

Irina bristled first, justice flaring like a banner. “That bastard. Ouyang the Demon King looks cuter by comparison. At least he never butchered innocents.”

She kept her voice low, as if the black‑clad man might be listening from the wind. Augustine only smiled and said nothing.

After all, if a being like that wished to eavesdrop, every whisper was a leaf on his river.

Everyone turned to Fia; hope and dread rose before words. Their path would follow her choice.

Fia looked over the kingdom reduced to rubble, helplessness like frost on her lashes.

She thought, then said, “Even if the Divine Kingdom is gone, we can gamble. Maybe the teleport conduit survived.”

As she spoke, her confidence was thin as mist; why would he spare a corridor after crushing a world?

“Was the one who destroyed the earlier sky‑borne Divine Kingdom also that man?” Durak and Lain finally voiced it.

Fei quickly shook her head, clear as a sword ring. Bound to Amelie by contract, she’d learned some sword‑sense.

She had felt it: when the Divine Kingdom above the firmament shattered, a peerless sword intent brushed her skin like lightning.

“That earlier Divine Kingdom—someone split it in half with a single sword.”

Fei’s swordcraft was weak, but her eyes were windows to that mountain.

Belle drew a long breath, chest rising like a tide. Fia had said sky‑borne kingdoms had deep roots, their lords beyond a Realm God.

“Yet a single stroke cleaved one in two. What kind of existence could do that?”

All sank into the weight of Fei’s news, but Augustine’s thoughts flowed elsewhere.

He couldn’t shake the emblem on the black‑clad man’s coat; was he allied with the one who felled the sky kingdom?

What did that symbol mean? From Ouyang’s clues, that group had endured from this ancient era to the present day.

After a brief council, they chose the ruined heart of the Divine Kingdom, to test their luck.

If the black‑clad man truly hadn’t erased the teleport conduit, it might be a reed in a flood.

They moved through rubble, nerves tight as bowstrings.

From start to finish, they found no trace of resistance.

A vast Divine Kingdom, and not a single struggle mark. Either no one fought, or no one had time to raise a hand.

Among the intact corpses, faces were natural, almost gentle—expressions like mid‑market haggling, frozen between coin and cabbage.

“As a Divine Kingdom, not one person managed to resist?” Augustine’s awe hit first, then horror tightened his throat.

“Is the gap that vast?” Remembering the black‑clad man’s methods, he found the answer bitterly plausible.

“Fia, what is this so‑called Dusk?” Jiangxue asked. Respect came before curiosity, fear thrumming like wings.

Fia heard and stayed silent; the knot was too tangled for a few words.

Beyond Fia and Rex, no one here knew the marrow of those secrets.

She’d tried to sketch it before, but it left them wading through fog.

They crossed ruin after ruin. Just as Fia had said, in this Divine Kingdom no other living thing drew breath.

The forest lay deathly still; blood washed the earth red, and crimson petals drifted like a funeral rain.

Ancient trees, eerie divine flowers, and glow‑sheened vines—every plant was withering like a lamp in frost.

The ground was dead in truth—no seed stirring, no worm turning.

Even the sky carried no wingbeat; birds outside the Divine Kingdom veered wide like wary fish.

The hush made hearts shiver. The kingdom’s splendor was ash; walking the ruins felt like the world’s last evening, with them as its survivors.

“Fia… I’m starting to doubt there’s life left in this world,” Caro said, dread rising first like cold water.

Her senses had always been keen, but here the dead calm crawled under every skin.

Fia stopped and probed again, yet her mind‑force couldn’t spread far, like a lamp in heavy fog.

Then Augustine cried out; discovery flared before words. “Time. I feel time is wrong. I can’t fix the measure.

“But the breath of this hour doesn’t match the hour we came from.”

White Elf blood ran in his veins; their kind stood nearest to time’s river, and his sense was no idle fancy.

Fia knew it, and her face sank like a stormfront.

To test her dread, she led them on. At the kingdom’s center, they found the teleport conduit in ruins.

Whether by intent or neglect, it hadn’t fallen to ash; most of its frame remained like a broken arch.

Fia spared it a glance, then waved them onward into the wind.

After an unknown distance, by Fia’s gauge they reached the Divine Kingdom’s edge.

A step further and they’d leave it. Even outside, the drifting crimson blossoms did not cease.

They fell like cherry petals, flaring brightest at the instant of landing—gaudy and romantic as a firework.

But the sky beyond was wrong—torn open, the heavens cracked, black substance seeping like ink from a split gourd.

They walked and walked; time came unmoored. On this lifeless earth, without Rex and Fia’s godhood, none of them would last.

Let alone Jiangxue; even Augustine and the other mortals would have perished in this thin air.

After losing their grip on time, they finally hit an end—there was no road ahead, just a cliff of nothing.

“Just as I feared.” Fia’s certainty landed like iron. “The silver‑haired kid was right. We’ve left our original time point.

“The Divine Continent has been smashed apart. We’re standing on one shard among many.”

With Fia’s confirmation, Augustine’s guess found bedrock.

“If I’m not wrong, our time never changed. We just stayed in that city for many years,

“because inside it time was frozen. When our time resumed, the outside had already fought itself to pieces.”

They looked into the black ahead and swallowed; storms never come alone.

A blink ago they’d stepped into the far future, and worst of all, they were penned in with no way out.

At some point the cracks in the sky braided together, forming a vast black vortex, an eye without white.

“Is that… Lord Loyin?” Augustine squinted; shock came first, then dread bloomed cold.

He thought he saw Loyin’s silhouette, and that flicker carried madness—pure ruin in the shape of a man.

Heh‑heh… A childish laugh echoed across heaven and earth. From the black vortex poured countless black creatures, a sky‑dimming swarm.

“Fall back—now!” Fia didn’t hesitate; knowledge hit first, then her legs flew as she dragged everyone into a dead sprint.