Xiao Bayat kept refusing to step outside, again and again, like a door braced against winter wind. The Mystic Priestess finally caught on.

“Brat…” Her voice came low, like thunder crouching behind a ridge. “You playing me?”

Caught out, Xiao Bayat didn’t panic. His gaze held to the gray vortex, a storm eye in the air. Black flame seeped from it, laying a road. Three silhouettes sharpened, like ink strokes drying.

“Abyss Walker!”

At the sight of black fire, the Mystic Priestess blanched, color draining like rain from dawn. The gray vortex writhed, as if she tried to cancel it, like twisting shut a whirlpool with bare hands.

“It’s useless. I’ve locked your coordinates. In spatial arts, few surpass our Alaiyas Clan.” Xia Zuo’s voice came from the far side of the gray swirl, steady as an anchor. Xiao Bayat finally let out a breath, a stone dropping from his chest.

Black fire pressed through from beyond, its heat prying at the vortex, keeping it from sealing like a stubborn door.

Then a pair of hands—long, deft—thrust through, pale as moonbone. They grabbed the vortex and pulled. It widened, like cloth torn along a seam. It grew until aid finally stepped through.

“The Alaiyas Clan… blessed by the Tenth Demon King, if the tales are true…” The Mystic Priestess watched Xia Zuo force the closing passage open, her face dark as storm glass. Her words clicked for Xiao Bayat; no wonder Xia Zuo boasted—his clan’s space craft ran deeper than most rivers.

The Tenth-seat Demon King, they say, roams the world as a serpent, cold scales in shadow.

Among all Demon Kings, the Tenth’s mastery of space is unmatched, a star that outshines the others. What stuck with Xiao Bayat most was the opening of the Second Space, like a secret ocean inside the sky. When Qiu Bi 250 whisked him away, they walked a rainbow corridor—that was the Second Space.

What eyes see and hands touch—that’s the First Space, soil underfoot. The Second Space is a layer eyes can’t see and fingers can’t grasp, wind behind wind. Details? Xiao Bayat never kept them straight; too complex, like knots tied in mist.

The Second Space shines at the Panworld Alliance Transit Hub, a lantern between worlds. Normally, to go from one world to another, you open a path to that world, a single step across the threshold.

Back then, it worked fine—one step, and you’re across, like hopping a brook. But after the Panworld Alliance formed, one world linked to many, threads weaving fast. Dozens, even hundreds, drop by in a day, footfalls like rain. If you keep smashing barriers between pairs of worlds, one or two trips don’t matter, ripples in a pond. Dozens or hundreds will thin the world-wall, like moths chewing silk. Space goes unstable; quakes ripple through the void.

The Panworld Alliance Transit Hub avoids that, a bridge that doesn’t break the banks. From the Aup World, you enter the Second Space, a pale road under a dim sun. You walk roughly a day, like crossing a quiet desert. Then you exit back to First Space, and you appear in the “Origin World,” sure as sunrise.

But many get lost in the Second Space—gods included, lanterns snuffed in the fog. The Tenth Demon King carved a transit network there, where even gods lose the path, a road set through cloud. Since then, you follow the Tenth’s routes; at forks, there are signposts like standing pines. Which road leads to which world. You reach your destination, steady as moonlight on water.

Because of the Tenth Demon King, the Panworld Alliance can truly speak between worlds, voices traveling like birds on a current.

That’s what Xiao Bayat remembers of the Tenth’s spatial craft, a constellation in his mind. Favored by that Demon King, the Alaiyas Clan ranks near the top in space, a blade honed on the void.

No wonder Xia Zuo could wrench that gray vortex open with his bare hands, like tearing silk glued to stone.

Three stepped out of the gray vortex. Xia Zuo led, still holding the space apart, arms like pillars. Jaster followed, quiet as thick snow. Chloe came last, eyes bright as cold starlight.

The Mystic Priestess shot them a glance, frost on steel, then fixed on Xiao Bayat.

“How did you figure it out?”

Confusion pooled in her eyes like ink in water, swirling with doubt.

Xiao Bayat ran toward Xia Zuo and the others, feet pattering like rain. He reached the three seniors and gulped air, palm pressed to his chest like steadying a drum. He spoke amid the quick thud of his heartbeat.

“First, you forgot a basic thing—or you barely know Mystic Priestesses and witches. They refer to themselves as ‘this humble one,’ an old turn of speech. One slip alone isn’t conclusive; people act off when they’re exhausted, like strings gone slack. I could chalk your misused self-reference up to being trapped here, mind frayed like wet rope. But that act of self-sacrifice—that’s what really set off alarms, bells ringing in fog.”

He pulled a water flask and chugged, throat working like a thirsty traveler’s. “For a Mystic Priestess or a witch to truly fall is very hard. I bet you don’t even know of the Devotion Sanctum. They’re envoys under the Lord of the Divine System. Even if they ‘die,’ their souls appear in the Devotion Sanctum—ignoring space, ignoring all barriers, like light slipping through cracks. To trap or erase one of their souls, you’d need power far beyond the God their order serves.”

As Xiao Bayat laid it out, the shock Xia Zuo’s trio felt at seeing a Mystic Priestess ebbed like tide drawing back. They still didn’t grasp the details, but they saw it—the Mystic Priestess was a fake, a mask over a face.

“Most important—my third point!”

Xiao Bayat capped the flask and stowed it, motions crisp as folding paper under lamplight.

“I’ve only stayed at the Demon King Academy for a year, but I’ve heard countless legends of the Void Messenger, echoes in the halls. The versions differ, sure, like leaves in a stream. They all point to one fact—the Void Messenger is strong. Terrifyingly strong, a storm behind a door.”

“And a Mystic Priestess under the Void Messenger’s mantle should be able to commune with him, not sit and wait to die like you…”

The Mystic Priestess smiled, but color sat wrong on her face, like paint on cracked clay.

“Kid, that last reason’s a stretch. If a Mystic Priestess is truly wounded, she can’t communicate with a Demon King…”

While she spoke, Chloe tapped Xiao Bayat’s shoulder and cut her off, touch light as a swallow’s wing. “Junior, nicely done.” She gave him a thumbs-up, bright as a spark.

When the gray vortex first bloomed before Xia Zuo’s group, they were baffled, like walking into fog with no path. Then a crystal dropped out of the whirl, a glint in the murk. Chloe knew that crystal well; she’d given it to Xiao Bayat, guilt tugging at her sleeve after she dragged him off without permission. It was compensation, a small star in the palm.

When he got it, Xiao Bayat was over the moon, hopping left and right like a sparrow. The crystal was said to be worth ten thousand Demon King coins, a pile like a mountain.

For a kid from a low-civ region, ten thousand is a sky-splitting sum, thunder in a purse. If a crystal he’d treat like heirloom fell out, it meant danger—real danger, iron in the air. The kind that made him toss it without a second thought. If it were minor, Xiao Bayat would claw it back no matter what, fingers bleeding on stone.

From one crystal, Xia Zuo and Chloe read a storm of clues, lightning in glass.

“Junior, let me give you a lesson—about your third point.” Chloe spoke while drawing a spear from her pack, lightning flitting along its shaft like trapped swallows, blue-white and quick.

“Other Mystic Priestesses might be too weak to commune with a Demon King. But a Mystic Priestess of Void—if she can still speak, she can call the First Demon King.”

Chloe leveled the spear at the impostor Mystic Priestess, the tip humming like a storm held on a needle.

Xia Zuo and Jaster traded puzzled looks, waiting for her to finish, attention taut as bowstring in winter air.

“Among the fifteen Demon Kings—Junior, you’ve never heard the First’s name, right?”

Xiao Bayat nodded. Xia Zuo and Jaster nodded too, silence falling like snow on pine.

“That’s because the First Demon King’s true name can’t be spoken lightly, a spark that calls fire. You already know Demon Kings’ true names are taboo—but that limit applies to the Origin World. The First’s true name—say it anywhere, and he senses it, like wind feeling its own whistle. As a Mystic Priestess of Void, she would know his name. In this bind, all she’d need is to cry it out.”

Chloe’s words sealed Xiao Bayat’s third point like a perfect stamp in warm wax, neat and certain.

“So, if you’re not a Mystic Priestess of Void—who are you?” Xia Zuo drew a dagger, silver runes flickering across its blade like fish under moonlight, scales flashing.

Watching weapon after weapon come out—each screaming quality at a glance—Xiao Bayat swallowed hard, throat tight as a reed. Teammates pulling out artifacts—what a feeling, like sitting under a canopy of stars. Is this the legendary ‘carried to victory’? No. Not quite. One, it’s not over, the night still deep. Two… he did risk his life to buy time, a candle burning short.

Ringed by them, the Mystic Priestess slowly closed her eyes, lids dropping like dusk over a field.

Then the giant skull covered in crystalline matter cracked—ka-cha—breaking its restraints like ice shattering. Its jaws clamped shut, black miasma coiling around it like night snakes. Vines wrapped the Mystic Priestess, countless and tight, green turning to black. The massive skull held her in its mouth, a shrine turned cage.

Through the skull’s bone lattice, they could see her, bound in black vines, eyes closed as if asleep, quiet as winter ponds.

“Looks like the Mystic Priestess is real. But some other will was steering her body, a shadow behind the lamp. Her true mind is sleeping. Otherwise she would have spoken the First Demon King’s name, and it would be over, like dawn ending a dream.”

Xia Zuo and the others didn’t spell it out, but Xiao Bayat felt it—Chloe must come from a very secretive clan, mist around pine. Her insight outstripped Xia Zuo and Jaster’s; she read the Mystic Priestess at a glance, like seeing patterns in frost.