A rain of filth fell like brown meteors, and hot piles hopped down the avenues like toads.

The news spread like wildfire and shocked every nation, a thunderclap over still water.

Feges heard it and patted her nearly board-flat chest in lingering fear, a sparrow startled from a branch.

“Scared me to death. Good thing I knew my limits and didn’t poke the Four Shameless Gods. I’d be soaked head to toe in that brown rain.”

She kept praising her own wise warlord self, a cat licking its whiskers; without that “brilliance,” she’d be filthy now.

Across from her sat Tangela and Wutong, two shadows over a brazier; as expected, Tangela had little to say, a stone by a stream.

Wutong had hesitated like a leaf in crosswind. After hearing what hit Laisenya’s royal capital, she wilted in a heartbeat, frost on grass. Terrifying, truly terrifying, a winter squall over the heart. Being eliminated wasn’t the fear for Wutong; falling into the hands of the Four Shameless Gods was the pit she dreaded.

Like Dufei’s trick, a move so vile you wouldn’t wash it off in a hundred years, a stain in bone.

So Wutong took Feges’s offer to ally, joining hands to cross a torrent. With two more allies, even if the Four Shameless Gods locked on, the pressure would split like firewood.

In times like these, don’t huddle, and you’ll get smeared beyond saving by those four, mud after rain.

As the three sealed their pact, the dark catacombs shuddered, as if ten thousand hooves thundered over the earth. Rumble, rumble, storm drums rolling.

Then the chamber caved in like a sand cliff. The roof crashed, and a flock of skeleton soldiers and skeletal horses tumbled in like hail.

“Which moron dug a pit to ambush me, the Meow King?” The Lich Glenza, one of the Four Shameless Gods, watched the marching ground sink like crust over lava, leaving a gaping maw. His first thought leapt to Moqi, that snake who loved tunneling, a mole through honeycomb earth.

Was Moqi here to snipe him, a viper in tall grass?

At that thought, Glenza’s rage flared like a torch in oil. He sensed life in the pit and meant to seize a few for questions, but the lackeys who fell in got erased like chalk in rain.

“Sons, hear the drumbeat—smash those rats to dust.”

A packed black tide poured into the pit, crows into a hollow tree. Skeleton after skeleton leapt in, and soon the maw was plugged with bone. They still didn’t stop. Even with the bottom jammed, more jumped like lemmings over a cliff, their wit so thin it made even Glenza anxious, an old cat watching kittens tumble.

Down in the fallen vault, Feges and company suffered disaster from a clear sky, sailors hit by rogue waves. They were plotting how to shaft others, when the roof fell and a shower of skeletons rained down. Archmage Aomalihas smashed one with an instinctive punch, a hammer hitting a jar. The rest blew up with fury on the spot, hornets from a kicked nest.

“How dare you kill our brother,” their clatter cried, chains on stone.

The other skeletons charged Feges like a sandstorm. Feges’s side reacted on reflex and struck back, sparks meeting dry tinder. Above, the rim went black as more skeletons kept jumping, an endless cascade, a waterfall of bones.

Now Feges finally saw the pattern, constellations clearing after clouds. They’d blundered into Lich Glenza, one of the Four Shameless Gods.

“Meow, Moqi, you little turtle-spawn, stop hiding underground if you’ve got guts. Come out and duel me. Digging pits to ambush my army—think I’m easy prey? Come out and duel.”

Buried under a sea of bones, Feges fumed, steam under a lid. Dig a pit? It was Glenza’s flunkies who stomped their carefully built catacombs into dust. How was that on them? But with Moqi volunteering as scapegoat in the sky, it wasn’t wise to rush out and correct him.

By her earlier plan, a fight here was inevitable, thunder after heat. They had numbers, so she’d strike first and erase the threat. But when she heard Glenza shouting Moqi’s name, a seed sprouted in her mind like ivy. The Four Shameless Gods were hard to handle; if dogs could be set upon dogs, that was the cleanest blade. On that thought, Feges chose to keep her face hidden.

As for this senseless mess, she’d swallow the grit to sow discord between the four, bait cast into a deep pool. The cave-in and the bone siege—she’d take it like broken teeth swallowed with blood. All for the greater game.

After Feges and the others slipped away like shadows, Glenza cackled, a crow’s rasp on a grave wind.

“Good thing your Meow King’s got wit,” he crooned, a cat by the hearth. “If they’d truly joined hands to strike, I couldn’t have held. That girl Feges thinks too much and bites too big.” Truth was, the moment the vault collapsed, Glenza had felt their breath like warm smoke. In a catacomb like this, a few rats huddling in secret meant a deal, tracks in fresh snow.

A deal meant an alliance, eight in ten by the stars.

Three Demon Kings joined was a storm front. Glenza wasn’t dumb enough to solo three thunderheads. So the clever Lich shouted Moqi’s name, a smoke screen like fog over reeds, tricking them into thinking he hadn’t noticed.

“They’re teaming up already,” he mused, frost creeping on glass. “Solo acts won’t fly. No, we’ll have to form a ring too.”

Blue fire danced in his hollow sockets like twin candles. With teams forming, he felt solo hunters would be picked off like lone deer. Early days were past; in the midgame, you huddle or freeze.

Elsewhere, Laisenya’s royal capital spread like a wounded hive.

Hot dung still ran wild like lava flows, and dogs barked without end, drums in alleys. At any corner you could see dogs chasing skittering fresh piles, a chase between hound and filth, wind herding fallen leaves.

The news blew up like fireworks; every nation went off like powder kegs. Laisenya couldn’t keep that capital; drenched in a thousand rains of filth, it had to move, a camp after flood. No one crowns a city bathed in dung rain.

The palace moved first, a flock of cranes to a new lake, the royals fleeing to the nearest city. From afar, Jiu Wenxin watched the once-bright capital, now with hot droppings strolling like goblins, dogs chasing on every street, and flies orbiting each pile like a black halo.

“As expected, the thing I feared most still came,” she sighed, a reed bending under rain. From the wizard Tike, she’d learned what the so‑called Hero could do, lightning in a bottle. The day she saw that silver-white dragon, she grasped it clearer, a mountain revealed after mist. The dragon erased several streets of the capital, and she sensed it then—this world would be played to pieces like a toy.

Now the dread had flowered, rot through wood. Laisenya’s capital was the first broken piece. Jiu Wenxin felt it in her bones that this was just the first ripple; it would spread through Laisenya, and in the end roll over the whole world like a tide.

With the capital ruined, Ouyang felt it rude to bother the royals, knocking on a sickbed. He would hunt the so‑called magic crystal shards instead. This wasn’t idle whimsy, clouds adrift; the lead he asked Jiu Wenxin to watch had finally shown its tail.

Simply put, someone in a village had seen a pig that climbed trees, a fish taking wing. Chased by a wolf, the pig went up a trunk and perched like a fat bird. A pig in a tree was a crooked omen, so Jiu Wenxin guessed a shard might be there. With the capital’s disaster, the royal family was sunk in gloom, dusk over snow.

So Ouyang let them be and set out with Bai, two lanterns headed for a small village.

Per Jiu Wenxin’s report, a general had the village under watch, a hawk over a field. Ouyang needed only reach the outskirts, show the royal writ, a seal on wax, and the general would guide them to the shard.

That was the script, yet when Ouyang reached the village with Bai, soldiers blocked them, a palisade of spears. The royal writ did nothing, a feather in wind. When he showed it, the troops tried to seize him instead, shouting that he was a spy from a foe, dogs baying at the moon.

“Heh, interesting.” Staring at the forest breathing magic like mist, Ouyang began to see the roots. “However shabby that godhead, it’s still a godhead; split into fifteen shards, it still carries a storm’s strength.”

As he spoke, he dropped several soldiers with a single brick, apples off a branch. Under the shard’s influence, those soldiers had Star Ring Level power, torches turned into bonfires. A dozen such men were a dozen wizards, enough to rake a nation, fire through straw. Before Ouyang, nothing changed; the brick still laid them out, felled reeds.

“So you really thought a shard makes you invincible?” he murmured, wind teasing chimes. “Curious mortals.”

Ouyang took Bai’s hand, and they walked the eerie forest like two ghosts through dew.