This world was sliding toward collapse, the first Nether War opened a centennial loop of despair.

—Great Prophet Jiuwenxin, On the Centenary Nether War

Just as Jiuwenxin wrote in later compilations, the world was a cracked glaze, spiderwebbing toward ruin.

At the start, Glenza and Dufei were trading in the shadows, like rats bartering in a cellar. Then Moqi, that snake who loved digging like an earthworm, bored spatial holes across the land like moth-eaten silk. Ouyang stumbled and dropped into one of Moqi’s tunnels, like a stone swallowed by a well.

Inside the hollow, disgust prickled first, then action. Ouyang found a certain snake coiled like a rope of ink. Anger flared like hot iron. He snatched the snake with one hand, ready to turn it into snake soup over a village fire. Then a familiar scent brushed the air ahead, like a wind carrying home. Ouyang tightened his right hand around Bai’s fingers, warm as a lantern. He hauled the snake with his left and headed for the exit like a hunter climbing out of a ravine.

He emerged and caught two figures mid-deal, like thieves bleaching under moonlight.

“Damn, the world’s going down the drain. You two hiding to make your trade?”

At first, triumph rose like a drumbeat in Ouyang’s chest; two schemers caught in the act. Then nausea rolled in like a black tide. The killing power of that steaming pile behind Dufei was apocalyptic. Ouyang threw up a magic shield, sealing the air like glass. Even so, just seeing the heat shimmer off the crap, just seeing flies swarm thick as locusts, had his stomach revolt like a stormed sea.

It was… it was terrifying.

Revulsion struck first, then thought. Ouyang didn’t get it. Dufei, that fat glutton, loved food more than sunrise. Why was he so invested in a steaming turd? Had the man acquired a new taste? The idea crawled like frost up Ouyang’s spine. His gut surged like an upturned river.

“Damn it, I grossed myself out with my own brain.” Ouyang clutched his belly with one hand, his mouth with the other. He breathed through the wave, will hard as iron filings in a magnet, pushing the bad visions down like a lid on boiling broth.

As the saying goes, like draws to like; a flock of crows brings rain. Four shameless rogues together never meant good harvest. Feges had pictured them dog-eat-dog, teeth and mud. But they all knew each other’s tricks like gamblers know stacked decks. So fighting was hard to spark; instead, a crooked harmony settled, heroes nodding at crooked mirrors.

“Why don’t… the four of us team up and knock everyone else out?” Glenza offered, words oily as lamp smoke. Whatever their shared language was—traps, pits, pranks—they couldn’t deny it. Together, they could disgust the rest beyond rescue.

Dufei stroked his chin, then his bald head, like polishing a gourd. “Mm. Not bad. We were all from the First Cult. With a common enemy, drop grudges, face outward.”

Moqi folded his coils and sat floating, shouting like a temple bell. “Long live the First Cult!”

“Twilight’s stars never fade!” Dufei’s words lit Ouyang’s old blood like a spark to dry pine. Back then, Ouyang met Dufei, Moqi, and Glenza because the First Cult knitted their paths like threads in dark cloth.

Especially Dufei. The man had done well, said to be the lead of the First Cult in a certain star domain—like a branch master in a secret hall.

Moqi and Glenza weren’t far behind. They hadn’t climbed as high, but both had held posts in their sectors, badges like copper hung on their chests. Ouyang had never admitted he was a member, but Mapleleaf had uploaded his profile to the First Cult’s information platform like a leaf pressed into an archive.

In short, the crew had gathered because the First Cult made a fire in their winter.

“Geh-geh… Twilight’s stars never fade! Let’s reclaim the glory the First Cult once wore.” Glenza’s laugh was a cold saw on bone. Ouyang and the others answered with sly laughter, a ring of hyenas around carrion. Four shameless men formed a circle, cackling like addicts riding a bad wave.

“Twilight’s stars never fade!”

“Twilight’s stars never fade!”

Moqi and Dufei shouted the First Cult’s most famed slogan. They said it hid a secret, like an acrostic in a prayer. “First Cult” was only a called name, not the true name. Most people used the label until the real one faded like ink in rain. Among the four, Dufei had held the highest rank. He’d heard the original name was embedded in that classic cry.

“Ouyang, you’re from the Other Shore. Do you know the secret inside that slogan?”

Tension pricked first, then silence. Moqi and Glenza stared blankly, fogged fields. They’d never heard of that story. Dufei took a minute, words like stones in a stream, to explain the tale he’d caught. Many members never knew the First Cult’s true name. Now that the question hung, everyone wanted a taste of truth.

Eyes turned toward Ouyang, the one most likely to know. He had never served inside, but the Starry Citadel—his home—was the First Cult’s headquarters, a mountain amid a thousand hills.

The First Cult’s branches spanned worlds like scattered seeds; the headquarters was one tree only. And the Starry Citadel wasn’t a place stray dogs could wander into. Back then, Dufei and the others had toured it only under Ouyang’s lead, like pilgrims guided through gates. Even Dufei’s rank couldn’t open those doors alone.

More so, Ouyang’s old friends had mostly been First Cult, directly under headquarters like iron keys.

So, among them, Ouyang wore the heaviest cloth.

“The First Cult’s name?” Ouyang frowned, clouding like winter glass, then shook his head like a reed. “The true name itself is a curse. They say if you speak it, shadows will cling to that region like mildew.”

He wasn’t dodging. He was telling truth like a blade. Think about the kind of oddities the First Cult gathered. The earliest elders were true eccentrics. A prodigy differs from a genius the way a bent path leaves the road. The genius walks the right trail; the prodigy blazes into swamps with a torch.

At first, people pitied them. If they had stayed on the proper track, they’d have harvested bright fields. But eras turned like river wheels. Those gifted oddities vanished from common sight like stars at dawn. Years stretched long; that generation sank, quiet as stones in a lake. In the ocean of people, few save the ancient species remembered their blaze.

Had they been buried by time?

Only the ancient kinds cared for such layers. If not for the memory Ouyang held from the First Era, he wouldn’t know the underside of that sky.

Those mad ones walked farther on the “wrong road,” lanterns upside down. Explaining fire with water. Proving order by logic knotted into paradox. Debates between time and eternity like thunder arguing with mountains.

In the Library of Truth, nine in ten banned tomes traced back to the First Cult like smoke to a hearth.

With such creators of forbidden shelves, the First Cult’s true name becoming a curse wasn’t impossible. The rules of the world were programs of heaven; in the First Cult’s hands, they rewrote them like coders with god-keys. They slipped in switches. Someone speaks the true name, and the rules turn like gears, censoring like a filter that blacks out taboo words.

To reach that height was terrifying, like a cliff with no railing.

Ouyang explained. The moment they grasped the curse, everyone shrank their necks like turtles. As members, they knew. A First Cult curse wasn’t the flimsy hex of a village hedge-witch.

A First Cult curse was beyond brutal, morality stripped like bark.

For example… you might find yourself at noon on a public square, naked as a fish, dancing the square dance in front of all. Or in a public bathroom, compelled to scoop steaming piles of crap, then chew them while maggots crawl out like rice grains. The First Cult’s curse will redraw your bottom line, inflicting body and mind like twin saws.

Ouyang had heard of one atrocity. In a mortal world, a king offended a First Cult member. The curse took him like a puppet. At his daughter’s birthday banquet, his body moved without mercy; before the crowd, he assaulted her. After that, there was no after. The girl slit her wrists like fading willow. The king, without face, leapt from a cliff. The country fell apart the next day like a clay plate dropped on stone.

“Ahem. If it’s a curse, then let’s not say it, let’s not.” Dufei swallowed, Adam’s apple bobbing like a carp. His own bottom line was low, but when he met something lower, his guts turned to tofu.

Ouyang scratched his head, playing at simple like a farmhand. “Oh, right, I just remembered the name. Here, I’ll tell you—”

“Don’t!”

Dufei jerked back over ten meters, springing like a frog. Glenza matched him. Moqi dove into space and popped up a hundred meters away, a bird vanishing behind clouds.

“What are you scared of? With my Cursed Wings, we’re fine.” Ouyang sprinted toward Dufei’s spot, feet drumming like rain.

“Magaji—dammit! You bastard. You’ve got Cursed Wings, so you’re safe. We don’t!” Dufei burned to slap Ouyang into next week, the man talking high from a safe perch.

They played cat-and-mouse for hours, laughter and curses chasing like wind through reeds. Finally, breath steadied, the game ended.

“Come, gentlemen, a toast to our partnership.”

Dufei set a table in a canyon, laid with food like a harvest altar. Yet Ouyang, Moqi, and Glenza didn’t lift a hand, restraint tight as belts.

“Huh? Why so polite?” Dufei stared, gnawing a chunk of meat like a wolf, eyes puzzled. On any normal day, those three would have devoured his table like locusts stripping a field. Today, not one moved. “Did they know I laced the food with laxatives?”

His gaze flicked, guilty sparks jumping like embers.

Why didn’t Ouyang and the others eat?

Flies. A storm of flies raged nearby, black pepper tossed by a mad cook. Behind Dufei stood a great steaming pile, proud as a dung hill under summer sun. A bird winged overhead, graceful as a brushstroke. Mid-flight it convulsed like a seizure, tumbled, and dropped straight into the turd, a black petal drowning in sludge.