Heir of the Void!

It was a descent rite, a doorway cut into night. By praying to the Void Messenger, you touch the black sea and let it flood your veins like moon-tide. The void’s power seeped in like cold mist, turning her half-unreal, a silhouette walking between frost and flame.

The skull was shackled like a chained comet, the robed men fled like crows at thunder, and Liuli’s chant ran on like a river under ice. No one broke it. She slipped fully into that half-void state, feeling the hidden gears of the world click like stars, the rules braided like roots under soil. She lifted her hand toward the world before her, a palm raised against a storm.

“This world’s existence… I deny it.”

—

Inside the Void Castle, Ouyang’s desk looked like a dragon’s hoard in candlelight. Dragon scales gleamed like frozen lakes, angel feathers lay like winter snow, World Tree leaves dried to bronze autumn, and ancient tomes slept like stones in a riverbed. He held a golden quill and wrote on a dragon scale, symbols curling like serpents around a pillar.

“Your Majesty… that’s everything that happened.”

Liuli kept her head bowed like a willow in rain and told it all, word by word, like pebbles falling into a well. Beside Ouyang, Dongze and Agas exchanged a glance like two blades meeting, while Jue ground World Tree leaves into powder, his brows knotted like stormclouds, as if catching a scent on the wind.

Ouyang waved a hand like brushing ash from a brazier, and Liuli withdrew like a tide.

Then Dongze said, voice steady as an old bell, “The Seven Deadly Sins… only a handful remember how to make them. The president of the Dark Magic Association, the alchemy branch’s head, the Sage of Truth, the Demon Monarch, me, and the boss. Other than me, they’ve all left like birds over a ridge…”

Dongze looked at Ouyang and smacked his forehead like a gourd. “Right, you too. You’ve got the method. Excluding us, no one else should have it.”

Ouyang kept writing, the golden quill scratching like a cricket in summer. He paused, and the room held its breath like a still lake. “No. You forgot two. Those two know it better than anyone. After all, fusing the Seven Sins becomes Original Sin.

“Origin and Sin.”

Jue’s pestle stopped with a dry click, the way a wind chime stills before rain. With that nudge, he knew who Ouyang meant.

“If it’s Loyin, that girl’s under Aurora’s eye like a pearl in a shell. So it’s not her. Which means it’s ‘Sin.’” Dongze propped his chin like a thinker carved in stone, and the fog lifted. “Only when ‘Origin’ and ‘Sin’ devour each other does the first Original Sin get born. Little Loyin’s here with us, so ‘Sin’ won’t dare step over the line…”

As Dongze spoke, Ouyang tapped the table, a slow beat like drip-water in a cave. He picked up from there. “Can’t touch Loyin? Then that creature cooked up a stand-in. Make seven Sins devour each other, forge an Original Sin, then ‘Sin’ swallows that fruit like a wolf swallowing the moon. She gets stronger.”

He studied the golden quill, its sheen like dawn on a blade. It had been centuries since ‘Sin’ abused time’s current, slipped into an elder era, and stole a gulp of Original Sin. You pay for that, the way a cliff pays the sea. Time’s law bites, and she should still be nursing wounds like a fox in snow. She won’t stir up a tidal wave yet.

With that settled, Ouyang bent back to his work, the quill flowing like a river over stone.

Hours passed like falling sand.

“Senior Dongze, you’re sure it’s three drops of Tears of the Gods?” Ouyang eyed the lab, a charred crater like a thunderfield. This was the sixth explosion today, smoke rising like ghosts. Their current goal was to crack Jue’s curse; this run had been another try, and not one had held.

“Kid, don’t rush,” Dongze said, breezy as a mountain wind. “We’re out of god-tears? We’ll go smack a few gods and fill the jar.” He had zero guilt, like a cat after a shattered vase.

Truth is, collecting them’s no easy harvest. A god’s a mountain; making a mountain cry is like milking a star.

But as a backbone of the First Cult, Dongze had tricks like a fisherman’s net. Back in the day, not just some random god—those pit-masters made even a Primordial Deity bawl like thunder breaking.

“Forget it. You keep at it. I’m stepping out for a walk.” After a year indoors, Ouyang finally left the castle. He looked up—and froze like a stag. A flock of suns crossed the sky like a school of golden fish.

“Augustine, you brat, get out here!”

He didn’t know the details, but those ‘suns’ were Augustine’s beat, like lanterns under his care. Thank the stars this wasn’t centuries ago; back then, a pack of suns at once was a scythe through wheat.

In this world, where Demigods walk like shadows at noon, the sky held.

At Ouyang’s roar, Augustine appeared, flustered like a pageboy in a storm.

“Uh—Teacher, there’s a reason! Those ‘suns’ went into heat, chasing the only female ‘sun’ like wolves after a doe. She ran ahead, and a whole pack of males chased her tail.”

In heat?

Ouyang was struck like by a bolt from a clear sky.

They took one step, and the world jumped like a cut in a scroll. In the next breath, they stood at the planet’s skin, space black and crisp as obsidian. It was exactly as Augustine said: a host of blazing divine beasts, each a miniature sun, hounded the lone female like comets chasing the moon. Ouyang knew that mother-beast. Back when he launched the Sun Capture Plan, Kanofia had yanked that one from the Divine Realm like hooking a carp.

“You buncha idiots—stop. Now!”

Sound doesn’t travel in vacuum, but gods treat rules like reeds in wind.

Ouyang’s shout pinned them like nails. They turned and saw the First Demon King. Their heat cooled like doused coals, and one by one they slunk back to the Hall of Radiance, a ring of light-halls hovering between the moon and the ‘Source’ World like beads on a string.

The so-called Hall of Radiance is really a station strung in the night. It’s where those divine beasts rest; Augustine keeps a duty roster like a careful farmer, who shines today and who tomorrow. Off-duty ones can nap in the hall or wander the nearby bodies like deer in a grove—just be back by horn-blow.

Insiders see a transit hub. To Demigods and mortals below, the Hall of Radiance is the fabled palace of the god who governs day and night, a lantern on heaven’s river.

After chasing the rut-drunk beasts into the hall, Ouyang called to the distant, breathless mother-beast. “Wild Chicken, over here. Tell me what happened. I’ll see you get justice.”

At that, Wild Chicken—the first sun-beast they’d ever press-ganged—flapped over and wept like rain on slate.

Here’s how it went. Some damned fatso brought a banquet to “reward” the working ‘suns,’ dishes steaming like mirages. A quarter of the beasts took one bite, foamed at the mouth, and dropped like felled pines. Another quarter rolled on the spot, faces twisted like knots, riding waves of pain. A third quarter staggered off to the healers, legs like reeds in wind.

Eunice, the eternal loli goddess of water, leads the healing pantheon; on mending flesh, she’s a spring in drought, and the medics are all spun from her loom.

The last quarter? Their bodies went scorching hot, like roosters at dawn.

As for Wild Chicken—the OG sun-beast—she knows the ‘Source’ World and its Demon Kings like birds know their trees. Dufei? She knew exactly what kind of man that was. She hadn’t eaten his food, so she’d dodged the storm.

“That idiot fatso!”

Thinking of that fatso lit Ouyang’s temper like dry tinder. In recent years, Dufei’s dark cuisine had laid out a parade of gods like logs. First, he used the ‘Source’ World’s gods as white mice; after that, the victims complained to Wutong. In Miracle City, she’s the chief executive, high judge, planner, lawmaker—nine jobs out of ten, she carries like a bamboo yoke.

Wutong scolded Dufei till sparks flew. He didn’t quit. He kept pestering Ouyang about the marrow of dark cuisine, like a moth to flame. Ouyang finally nudged him: if you can’t poison your own, go wow some strangers.

So Dufei hid his name and went to a high-civ world called Galawell, and there he opened a restaurant like a trap set with flowers. Ouyang even sent a projection to help, and they toasted the grand opening under borrowed stars.

Long story short, Dufei and Ouyang’s projection turned that world upside down like a stirred anthill. It ended when that civilization’s very Creator God got flattened by dark cuisine, like a titan tripped by a teacup.

“Ahem… well… Wild Chicken, look—those guys can’t work for a few days. I’ll need you to carry the sky awhile, like Atlas with a smile. When they’re back on their feet, I’ll give you ten years of paid leave.”

Wild Chicken hesitated, feathers ruffling like grass in wind.

“One hundred years off, unpaid. Pick.”

In the end, she chose the paid vacation, like a sparrow choosing grain over clouds.

With the ‘suns in heat’ event wrapped, Ouyang gave Augustine a knuckle-flick on the forehead, a sharp pop like a seed bursting. He wasn’t truly angry; the real culprit was Dufei, and even if Augustine wanted to stop it, he was a broom in a flood.

Then Ouyang paid Liuli a visit.

He slid open the shrine doors, and paper rose like snowdrifts. Liuli sat amid mountains of files, her brush flying like swallows.

Seeing that, Ouyang withdrew on soft feet like a fox, utterly sensible. Back when the Panworld Alliance was small, Xi handled such things at his side. For the last few hundred years, after the Mystic Priestess was chosen as his voice, he hadn’t really checked in on Liuli’s load. One rare visit, and he felt defeated like a banner sagging in rain.

Good thing a Mystic Priestess is a god. A mortal would’ve burned out like a candle.

To clear that paper mountain, his first thought was Azure Bird. As a living intelligence akin to an AI, Azure Bird cuts work like a bright knife, quicker than a priestess’s steady brush.

“Looks like it’s time for a big reform,” Ouyang muttered, the words drifting like smoke. Truth is, the Demon King Academy already runs on Azure Bird in many parts. She once managed all the data of the Other Shore like a spider on a vast web. Handling one ‘Source’ World and the Panworld Alliance? That’s a pebble in her palm.