The forest lay under a shroud of power, and the roadside trees and flowers stood like watchful spirits in a dusk-lit shrine. Put bluntly, one glance and you felt they were about to turn sentient, like roots waking with eyes.

It made sense; a godshard glinted behind it all, a splinter of divinity like a fang in the earth.

If Ouyang’s guess was right, the general sent by the Laisenya royal house had already brushed a shard, like a man touching thunder and keeping the burn. Touch a shard, and you get strength past mortal measure, a storm bottled in bone.

With power like that, why still bow to a crown? He’d pick that village as his stronghold, raise banners from fields like reeds, and chase a grand work the way hawks chase sun.

Of course, it was only Ouyang’s read, clouds of thought drifting until the truth showed its face.

“Who’s there? Seize them!” The shout cut the air like a spear, and the troops that came with the general spotted Ouyang and Bai, hackles up like wolves under moon. The general had forbade outsiders; Ouyang and Bai wore no uniform, two stray swallows among crows.

To them, outsiders were invaders, thorn and fire.

Some soldiers held fireballs like meteors cupped in palms; others had lightning twined round their blades like angry snakes. They moved with borrowed might, storm-steps on dusty ground. Ouyang flicked his brick slab upward, lazy as a cat with yarn; the brick swelled midair like a cloud fattening to rain. It grew into a house-sized block, then dropped like a cliff, and the soldiers below turned into wet paste, red as spilled pomegranate.

“You weaklings never learned the right fear,” Ouyang said, voice mild as wind through bamboo. “Think a godshard lets you beat us?”

The falling slab stirred a thunder of echoes, and the commotion drew the general and the rest of the troops like moths to a bonfire. Circles of men closed in, shields rising like a tide; their uniforms had shifted from Laisenya’s colors, new sigils blooming like bruises. That general truly meant to start his own banner, a new hive in old woods.

The crowd parted like reeds in a river, and a heavy-armor figure stepped through, black plates drinking light like night water. Blood-red eyes burned beneath the helm, and black mist coiled around him like a hungry fog.

Ouyang squinted, smile curling slow as a crescent moon. He looked like he’d found a hidden shore.

“Interesting…”

He knew the godshards well; he and his people had thrown them into this world, sparks cast from a brazier into dark. None of those shards had any taste of “demonic taint.” Yet the general’s brow held a diamond-shaped shard as black as pitch, a thorn of midnight set in flesh.

“Shards should be purple. Why is this one black?” Ouyang murmured, thought drifting like smoke. He hadn’t seen other shards since entering this realm; he couldn’t tell if all had turned night-dark, or if only a few had been polluted like wells gone bad.

The general ignored the whisper, grinning like a wolf under torchlight. He flexed his fists, iron groaning like old oaks; then he drove one knuckle into the ground. Boom. Dust billowed like storm surf, and when it cleared, the earth split into a lattice of cracks, a spiderweb of ruin that made the nearby soldiers cheer like crows at dawn.

“As expected of the General! No mage lives under your fist,” one soldier cried, flattery tossed like flower petals.

“First Warrior, do you find my strength acceptable?” the general asked, voice ringing like a bell in fog. He knew Ouyang was from the legendary Nether, a shadow realm whispered like wind under doors. With shard power burning in him, he feared mages less than he feared warriors from the Nether, those who walked up from deep night to claim shards.

He’d fought a mage after taking the shard; “mage” no longer weighed heavy in his mind, a candle beside a sunrise. But the Nether still knotted his gut like cold river rope.

“Why not work together?” he said, words smooth as oil on water. “I don’t know how I compare to your kind, but I doubt I’m far behind.”

Power is coin on the table, thick as gold. Before this, he wouldn’t have dared. Now he carried strength beyond the common run, thunder bottled under skin. He’d killed a mage; he ranked himself above them like a mountain over ants. At worst, he’d stand level with a Nether warrior. At best, he’d surpass them, a hawk over hawks.

He had no measure for a warrior’s peak, so he wouldn’t claim the crown too soon.

“Interesting,” Ouyang said again, eyes half-lidded, tone as soft as snow.

“Oh? Don’t fancy my strength?” the general asked, doubt flickering like candle flame, but his spine held. He still had ten thousand troops, a vast flock of iron cranes. With shards in their ranks, ten thousand soldiers meant ten thousand mages, a storm-front thick as locusts.

Ten thousand mages. If not for other shard-holders lurking like sharks under waves, he’d already march his army out, a rolling tide to wash nations clean. Even the Sole Empire would be paper in rain before that black tide.

Maybe Ouyang beat him one-on-one, a spear from heaven. But he didn’t believe an ocean couldn’t drown a man. Ten thousand mage-soldiers would dogpile even gods like ants eating fruit.

That was the fire in his chest, the drum in his bones.

“If you gather fifteen shards and fit them into a complete Magus Crystal,” Ouyang said, voice calm as still water, “then maybe you could face me. Now? You’re too weak.”

His eyes didn’t ripple, a lake under moonlight, and truth fell out of him like stones.

“Void Art: Other Shore Blossoms.”

The Other Shore flower blooms for a thousand years and withers for a thousand, red spider lilies on riverbanks of forgetting. It’s a gate where lovers pass but never meet, a tide of time that bleaches names to salt.

In a blink, the hills exploded into crimson, death-flowers opening like wounds, a field of red spider lilies swaying like a blood sea. Petals gleamed like blood drops; bloom, fade, bloom again… and in a breath, ten thousand soldiers’ hair turned white like frost on reeds. Old age rushed over them like winter wind; knees buckled like brittle twigs, and they fell in rows, breath thinning to smoke.

“This… this is…” The general stared, hollow-eyed, watching his men age in a heartbeat and drop like leaves in late autumn. Panic crawled up his spine like ice, and he realized he’d read the Nethe­r wrong, weighed it with broken scales. He’d underestimated warriors from the deep night.

“Run,” a whisper slid into his ear like cold rain. “Run as far as you can.”

He obeyed like a deer bolting from torchlight, legs churning, breath burning white. Ouyang stood still, head shaking gently like reeds, no chase in his eyes. He’d let the general flee to see if the hidden hand behind that polluted shard would reach out, a shadow smelling blood. To taint a godshard, you needed power like a storm god’s hammer.

“Yang, what is it?” Bai asked, warmth trembling in her voice like tea steam. She tugged Ouyang’s sleeve, light as a sparrow nudge.

“Nothing,” Ouyang said, gaze tilted to the sky like someone reading clouds. “I just remembered a certain someone we forgot. I don’t recall his name… maybe I never did. Interesting.”

He searched the forest, rustle in moss and hush in boughs, but found nothing that mattered, only wind and lost footprints.

———

Elsewhere, the general ran until the night wrapped him like a wet cloak; when his mind returned, moon bled silver like a blade over hills. He didn’t know where he was. He only knew he still breathed, his heart thudding like a drum in a mountain pass.

“Heh… I lived. I lived.” He laughed, a cracked sound like dry wood snapping, manic at first, then settling like ash in a brazier. He’d thought he was on the peak, eagle on the sun. A single word from Ouyang had kicked him off the cliff. He doused the fire in his chest and sifted his thoughts like grains of sand.

“He didn’t kill me,” he said, voice growing steady like an iron bar. “So that aging power doesn’t work on me… no, it doesn’t work on the shard. The shard in me blocked it like a black umbrella. And fifteen shards…”

From Jiuwenxin, he’d learned there were fifteen Nether warriors and fifteen matching shards, stars over a dark sea. From Ouyang’s mouth, the number rang true like temple bells.

“One shard already gives this much,” he whispered, eyes glinting like knife points. “If I gather all fifteen and forge the complete Magus Crystal, I’ll get three wishes and the might of all fifteen shards. Like that warrior—life or death, decided in one thought.”

He remembered Ouyang speaking, words dropping like petals, and ten thousand mage-soldiers turned old and died like candles guttering. If he held fifteen shards, would he wield that same tide? Wishes sounded like fairy tales, brittle as sugar; they’d likely have limits like walls under paint. But shard power was a real, iron weight, a heat he’d felt under skin.

“Nether warrior… wait for me,” he growled, black mist rising from the diamond shard in his brow like smoke from a kiln. “I slipped the reaper tonight. When I gather the other shards, I’ll take my revenge.”

Black fog wrapped him like coiling snakes, and when he snapped his eyes open, confidence shone like a star cutting through cloud.

———

“Skeleton, you want an alliance? Are you messing with me?” Dufei’s voice rolled like thunder in a canyon, crude and bright as a bonfire.

In a rocky gorge, atop a colossal mound of steaming dung that smoked like a volcano, Dufei sat on his throne like a king carving crowns from chaos. Opposite the reeking mountain, an enormous construct of bones loomed, a giant skeleton stitched from countless ribs and skulls, white as moon-bare cliffs.

On the skull giant’s crown sat a throne of vertebrae, and on it lounged Glenza, grin thin as a knife-edge.

“That’s right. Believe me—I come with honest intent,” Glenza said, words cool as night mist. He told Dufei what he’d found, a string of tidings like beads: Feges and two others had allied, three blades weaving one storm. Dufei’s calm cracked like dried mud. He could stir any pot, his shit‑stirring talent a wildfire in tall grass. But even a troublemaker gets flattened under a mob.

Glenza scratched his bony head, fingers ticking like beetle legs. Teaming with Dufei didn’t rank as unthinkable; it felt oddly clean, like stepping into shade. Even the steaming dung mound wasn’t a problem. His underlings were skeletons—no noses, no smell, only clack and rattle, a world of black and white.

No stink to choke them, no color to sicken them, only function and fight.

Think it through, and it dawned on him like sunrise over salt flats: his skeleton troops could work with Dufei’s dung warriors. The pairing was grotesque and perfect, a shield and spear with no shame.

It might even be invincible, a filthy crown on a clean skull, a horror that marched like a tide.