"First Unholy Law: Gender Inversion!"

A goblin raised the Forbidden Codex like a black sunrise. With his shout, strange runes steamed from the pages like ink-smoke. The black sigils drifted toward the lizardmen like drifting ash, then burrowed into their bodies like worms into wet earth.

Then wonder twisted into shock. Their genders flipped in a heartbeat like a fish turning in a net. Feeling a sudden organ gained or lost, they froze like statues in rain, hands fumbling over mismatched parts.

The goblin saw that the First Unholy Law brought no direct harm, like a wind that chills but doesn’t cut. Black circular sigils bloomed under his feet like ripples on dark water.

"Second Unholy Law: Luxuriance!"

The lizardmen’s limbs, heads, and tails swelled thick and long like vines in spring flood. If they had fur, they’d be shaggy as storm-bent grass. With limbs outsizing their torsos, they lost all balance, wobbling like toppled crates and failing to stand.

…

In short, that whole war-band got floored by a single goblin like trees felled by a dull axe. Top-tier fighters of the underground world were wrecked by a scrawny, cannon‑fodder goblin.

From afar, Heim and his companions watched as their three-world views shattered like mirrors under hail.

When Heim’s group finally met Ouyang’s crew, the mood settled like dust after a stampede.

"So you came to uphold a millennia-old pact and stop that flock of underground weaklings?" Ouyang and Dufei kept chewing roast meat like wolves by a campfire. Glenza was the same; he was a skeleton, yes, black as charred wood, yet his eating wasn’t like other skeletons. Food vanished the moment it entered his mouth like sparks into night—one uncanny skeleton.

At first, the others jumped at the sight of a skeleton like birds startled at thunder. They thought an undead had crawled up from the underground. But the pitch-black skeleton looked harmless as a grazing deer, and their urge to hunt him faded like smoke.

"Fatty, this looks fun."

"Yeah, I think so too. Let’s go watch the show."

So the army suddenly had four very odd fellows, like four bright fish in a muddy stream. The goblin Barakala, who called himself a Forbidden Mage, drew special watch like a torch draws moths. Everyone kept a measured distance from him like sheep edging away from a thorn bush. They’d seen how the lizardmen met their end, and the sight clung like frost. The lizardmen died to their own bodies. Their organs sprouted mouths and eyes like night-blooms, then bit each other in a frenzy. When the lizardmen finally died, their entrails were gone, gnawed to nothing like leaves eaten by locusts.

So everyone held a wary gap around Barakala, afraid a stray spark would kindle his shadow.

Heim watched Ouyang and Dufei inside the marching line like a hawk over fields. He noticed what no one else did—their carried gear. Brooms and shovels, plain as farm tools under sun.

At last, Heim couldn’t hold back. He stepped up like a stream seeking the sea. "Brother Ouyang, Uncle Dufei, why do you carry brooms and shovels? Are these new weapons from your world?"

Heim’s forebears had once visited the Origin World, and his clan carried its common tongue like a flame through winter. He learned it from his grandfather, and other clans, other-world "reinforcements," were similar, like branches sharing sap.

If they could come to fulfill a thousand-year pact, it meant they fared well across centuries, like a tree that kept fruit. Their ancestors’ legacy, including another world’s language, passed down intact like heirloom jade.

"Un…cle…"

Dufei’s true age could be Heim’s granddad’s granddad’s granddad’s storm and root. Yet why did that brat call Ouyang big brother but him uncle? The thought pricked like a nettle. Dufei’s face soured.

He glared once, and Heim stumbled back several steps like a fawn before a tiger.

Luckily, Ouyang pulled Dufei behind him like a fisherman pulling back a net.

"Fatty, that’s not right. Don’t scare the kid." Ouyang’s smile curled warm as moonlight; his mood felt light as wind. He looked at Heim. "Young man, since you’re this curious, let me show you what a broom can do."

Ouyang swung onto the broom like a rider mounting a cloud.

"Let’s go!"

The broom came alive, hovering like a sparrow in updraft. It carried Ouyang into the high air like a leaf riding the wind. Seeing Ouyang show off, Dufei and Glenza refused to be outdone, pride flaring like torches. Glenza rose first, riding a magic broom skyward like a black kite. Dufei…

Crack.

Under a certain fatty’s over-limit weight, one magic broom groaned like old wood, then snapped clean in two.

"Ahem… accident, pure accident! That shop dared sell a shoddy broom. I’ll tear that place down when I’m back!" To cover his awkwardness, Dufei dumped blame on a vendor that didn’t exist, puffing up like a rooster. White light flared, and the broom reassembled itself like bones knitting. The break healed over like ice sealing a river.

With Dufei’s power sewn into it, the broom finally bore his weight like a mule under full packs.

The three of them flew up into the high sky, and then didn’t come down again, hanging like stars.

Only when the reinforcements found an entrance into the underground world and camped nearby with fires like red eyes did they return. On the second day of watching that mouth into the deep, the trio finally floated down on their magic brooms like drifting feathers.

Their clothes were ragged like refugee flags, and the Silverlight Knights’ commander, Leficada, felt curious as a cat at a door.

"Friends, what did you go through?"

Compared to Leficada’s grace, Davel, that all‑gold fellow, was direct as a hammer. He sidled up and clapped Ouyang and Dufei on the shoulders like drums. "Did someone bully you? Relax. You’re part of our Underground World Crusade now. I’ve got you. Name the punks. I’ll lead the army and crush them."

The gold-shining and silver-shining leaders watched the three eccentrics in silence, like owls at dusk, waiting for an answer.

The trio, in perfect sync, pointed toward the high sky like reeds toward the wind.

Everyone wore the same blank look, faces empty as sand.

"Above the moon," Ouyang said, voice thin as smoke. Yesterday, once the three goofs rose, their speed‑demon souls lit up like engines. If not now, when to race? They tore through the sky, you chase me, I ram you, like comets playing chicken.

Their racing arc drifted beyond the atmosphere like birds leaving the treeline. As they whooshed past the Hall of Radiance, Augustine, god of day and night, stared, baffled, like a shepherd watching three goats on lightning.

Soon, their path angled toward the Initial Moon.

The Initial Moon is the first of the three moons, the oldest wheel in the night, pale yellow like pressed silk. The later two were born from experiments by the First Cult, a dead ash reburning like a kiln.

Initial Moon. Moon of Life. Moon of Mana.

The Initial Moon is the first moon, home to the Moon Goddess, and called the Forbidden Moon, a place other gods avoid like cliffs in fog.

The Moon of Life gleams emerald, and under its green light, harvests swell like seas. Common diseases fade away like frost at dawn. Wounds heal faster, lifespans lengthen, everything brightens like spring after snow. It has another deep role: under its light, animals drink moon‑essence year after year, growing wiser than beasts elsewhere. They say you can snatch a random critter from deep forest, and it will have the wits of a five‑ or six‑year‑old child, bright as a lantern.

The Moon of Mana concerns power itself, a furnace behind the sky. In a world where laws remain unedited, energy tends to conserve like water in a cistern. In the Origin World, with Demigods thick as reeds and gods walking like storms, the available elements aren’t enough. Without interference, the Origin World would be sucked dry of elements, turned to wasteland, life blown out like a candle. After countless years, elements would slowly recover, and the world would green again like a valley after rain.

The Moon of Mana feeds the Origin World with endless energy, a vast converter hanging like a millstone in night. It drinks the starry sea’s many energies and churns them into elements the people of the Origin World can use, like grain milled into flour.

That’s the story behind the three moons, a myth braided like a river.

When Ouyang’s trio reached the starry heights, they remembered a thing, bright as a bell. The palace above the moon.

Back in the Eighth Epoch, before they were sealed away, Ouyang and the others built a palace on the moon—Guanghan Palace, cold and fair as frost. Thinking of that palace, the three decided to visit the Initial Moon and stir old laughter, like friends revisiting a street.

Their landing was smooth, like a boat finding a calm bay. The Moon Goddess seemed not to be home, the house quiet as snow.

But Guanghan Palace was guarded by a tribe of rabbits, who blocked their entry like hedges. The three Demon Kings burned hot—mere rabbits, and this palace was theirs to begin with. Even if it weren’t, they meant to claim it, a banner planted like a spear. What could rabbits do?

Ouyang’s lot bristled, and the rabbits bristled back, whiskers sharp as grass.

They fought.

The result held no suspense, as flat as a still lake. In the Eighth Epoch, when a band of Demon Kings first went to the moon, they also fought the Moon Rabbit tribe. Across countless years, the Demon Kings and the Moon Rabbits clashed again upon the moon. Calling it a battle flatters the rabbits; it was more a butchery of the young, cruel as frost.

The Moon Rabbits were beaten until the whole tribe cried to father and mother, wails rising like winter wind. The three Demon Kings laughed wildly, shouting to the empty sky: Who else?

Then the Moon Goddess returned from her stroll, steps like nightfall. The rabbits added oil to the tale and reported it to the Moon Goddess. What Ouyang’s trio hadn’t expected was this: the palace they built ages ago had been taken as the Moon Goddess’s residence. In the rabbits’ telling, the three Demon Kings tried to force their way into the Moon Goddess’s palace.

So the three buffoons got a beating, clean as rain.

In short, some memories are better left unplucked, like thorns.

Heads lowered, the three fools kept it simple—they’d been thrashed by the Moon Goddess upon the moon.

"The Moon Goddess? A true god?"

Hearing their brief account, the reinforcements fell into thought like stones into a pond. If this world truly held gods, perhaps they could ask one to act, a prayer tossed like a coin.