"I told you, there’s nothing a single Fireball can’t beat! Take this hit, compressed from nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine fireballs!"

Truth be told, Augustine had lost count; nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine just sounded heroic, like a banner snapping in storm-wind. He stopped compressing because Heavenheart Locks the Moon was slipping, like a knotted rope fraying under a beast’s thrash. If he delayed, the fiend would break free and stop being a target dummy, like a boar bolting from a snare. Compressed fire was mighty, but only if it landed, like an arrow that actually finds the mark.

He stared at the warped fireball cupped between his hands, sweat beading like rain on his brow. "Go. There’s nothing a Fireball can’t beat!"

The burning sphere twisted the air like heat over desert stone. As it flew, the fiend thrashed like a netted shark. Heavenheart Locks the Moon pinned it in the crater like iron chains sunk in wet earth. Before it broke free, the fireball would hit, like lightning finding a grounded spear.

After throwing it, Augustine bolted, heels flashing like a kid after lighting a firecracker. He ran hard, as if the blast were a hungry wave. He sprinted from the trouble behind him like a deer fleeing a brushfire.

Boom thundered, and a mushroom cloud rose, several times larger than before, like a black pine erupting. The shockwave blasted the ruins skyward, like autumn leaves. Even Augustine felt the roar strike him like a tide of hammers. He wiped his sweat; extreme compression magic wasn’t a joke, like steel wrapped around a comet.

A shrill scream ripped from behind, thin as torn silk. That fiend was cooked even if not dead, like meat on a spit.

After more than ten minutes, Augustine headed back, steps cautious like a hunter in ash. From afar, he smelled meat, a roasted scent curling like smoke. "So that guy got cooked?" He came closer and saw the fiend browned through, like char on bark.

Seeing it, Augustine knew it wasn’t dead; if dead, it would turn to black mist like snow into fog. The body still held shape; that meant life hung on like a stubborn ember.

Sure enough, the fiend saw Augustine and struggled, roaring like a dying bull. To him, it looked weak, a lamb bleating on a block. No number of howls could make it fierce, like thunder grumbling after the storm.

Its eyes glared knives, and it bared its teeth like broken glass. Augustine snorted, and his hand became a blade, stabbing its heart like a spear through clay. Black vapors poured out in streams, then vanished like smoke in wind. Only then was it dead, like a candle pinched to dark.

"Whew... finally took it down," he exhaled, breath light like fog. He looked at the crimson sky, where drifting crimson petals fell like slow fire. The scene felt dreamlike, a romance painted in dusk colors.

Time kept flowing like sand through an endless glass. After many life-and-death battles, Augustine had to use the Void Art he learned from Ouyang, like drawing a knife from emptiness. He slew a fiend with god-tier power, and he took the divine seat, like a summit claimed after a blizzard. He stood beneath the stars and looked down on all things like a hawk above fields.

His success heartened everyone, like a beacon flaring in fog. From then on, they trained in real battle, honing themselves like blades on whetstone. Even gentle Jiangxue reached the Sun Ring Level, like winter plum finally blooming.

Time kept sliding past; the tally cuts on their base wall reached 3,650, like rings in old wood. Ten years had passed, and Fei, the fragile one, became a dark horse and the second to claim godhood beneath the stars, like a moon rising after cloud.

In the years after, they each claimed godhood beneath the stars in turn, like lamps lighting one by one. As their strength swelled, fiends in the Divine Kingdom were almost swept clean, like dust from a shrine. They raked through places they’d missed, searching for useful clues like pearls in silt.

In some places, they found truly strange things, like silver bones in black soil. Twelve silver stone pillars stood along the Divine Kingdom’s border, cold as frost. The circle they ringed marked the Kingdom’s bounds, like a chalked line in night.

What meaning sat in those twelve silver pillars, like an old riddle on jade? After Augustine claimed godhood beneath the stars, he sensed time’s power breathing from them, like a clock hidden in stone. The twelve were linked, and the veil over the Divine Kingdom seemed to come from them, like a net cast over a sea.

Yet even he couldn’t parse their secrets, like knots in the dark. He dared not touch them; if the veil vanished, endless fiends would flood in like locusts. If that happened, they would die, quick as sparks in rain.

So Augustine told Fia and had her go to the edge to look, like sending a falcon to scout. Even Fia couldn’t read it; the secrets weren’t hers to grasp, like scripture for another temple.

Time went on, and the portal Fia was fixing neared completion, like a bridge finished over mist. Then a bizarre sight rose from the border, like ink spilled on silk. Pitch-black matter wrapped the outer rim of the Divine Kingdom, as if to swallow it like a whale. Monster howls reached the center like wolves across snow. The situation turned dire, like a storm closing a harbor.

"If this keeps up, the powers in the Divine Kingdom won’t hold," Fia said, voice tight as a bowstring. "We’ll be besieged and buried inside, like fish in a drying pond. We must leave this broken continent, like birds fleeing a burning forest." She felt a terrible force eroding the edge, like salt eating iron. The Kingdom’s mystery kept draining, while the outside fiends multiplied and grew like mold. With gain and loss trading places, this Divine Kingdom would fall, like a dam under flood.

Soon after, Fia finally repaired the portal, their last hope gleaming like a dying star. It shone with a faint light, thin as breath.

"Let’s go. This portal likely works once. After we cross, we won’t come back," Fia said, helpless as rain. The Divine Kingdom held no good materials for repair, like a barren mine. Other Divine Kingdoms outside were swarmed by endless fiends like ants. She didn’t dare wander out, like a candle shunning wind.

"Live or die, we’ll see next," Augustine said, calm as a lake. He guessed the man in black had frozen their time and only now let it flow, like a hand on an hourglass. That steered them to this juncture, which held his intent like a sealed letter. After so long, the only hint was this portal, like a lone road in snow.

In the lord’s palace of the Divine Kingdom, there wasn’t just one portal, like doors in a maze. Only this one wasn’t utterly ruined; the rest were wrecked beyond repair like shattered pottery. The man in black did that for a reason, like chess set long in advance. What lay on the other side, like a horizon behind fog?

They stood on the teleport array with uneasy hearts, like sparrows before thunder. The crimson sky of the Divine Kingdom tore open, ripping like silk. A blinding white light burst from the depths of the stars, like dawn through stone. A strange sound echoed through the starry gulf, carving into the soul like a brand. It screamed, unwilling, resentful, furious, like a storm of voices.

Primal feelings surged, and their hearts answered with unwilling roars, like wolves under a red moon. As the array engaged, they saw someone step out of a black vortex, like a shadow birthed by night. She looked very much like Loyin, a mirror under ripples. She yanked a lump of blackness from the starry deep like a hook catching ink, then stuffed it into her mouth like swallowing night.

The vision cut off there, and the world reeled like a ship in whirlpools. They didn’t know where the teleport flung them, like leaves in wind.

Waves slapped a beach with hollow rhythm, like drums on wet stone. They seemed to appear beside a vast sea, a mirror of dusk. The first to wake was Fia; she glanced around, eyes sharp like stars. They were on a beach, white and wide like bone. Strangely, even as a Realm God, she couldn’t sense an end past the sand, like a road erased. It felt like an endless beach, a ribbon without knots.

The ocean was the same, horizonless like poured ink. From its depths, countless star pillars rose, climbing toward an eternal night like trees of light. The sky—no, that night—held no stars and no moon, only boundless starlight drifting like mist. The same pillars also sank from the sky into the sea, like spears returning to sheaths. The sea’s skin and the night above both swam with starlight, like twin rivers.

Eerie. For this place, Fia felt a deep strangeness, like frost underfoot in summer. "Here... time seems to have lost meaning," Augustine drew a breath, steady as stone. The White Elf blood in him sensed no trace of time, like a clock with no hands.

Everyone woke from fainting one after another, blinking at the strange scene like children in a dream. Curiosity rose in them like the tide.