The universe was black as ink, and a spear of light tore the void open. With that blinding flare came a roar of fire, waves upon waves rolling outward like a storming sea.

“Is it over?” The question fell like a stone into a still lake, ripples of dread spreading.

“Yeah. It’s over.” The reply was a tired wind across dead grass. “This war that dragged on for who knows how many millennia has finally ended.”

“But... God-King Ulaficales slipped away with his last faithful.” The doubt was a thorn under the tongue, sharp and stubborn.

“No need.” The answer was iron struck cold. “Anyone who’s survived is monstrous, but we’re short on hands now. We... don’t have the breath to hunt every stray fish in this net.”

Ouyang’s face carried a dusk of exhaustion, shadows pooling under his eyes like rainwater. Before him stood Feges, the dark elf, her gaze a blade still wet from battle. When the Tiered Beings were first banished, the second wave of vanguard to arrive had been God-King Ulaficales himself. The god who killed Tangela had been Ulaficales’s direct subordinate, a knife in the dark moved by his order. Without Ulaficales, Tangela would never have fallen; the cause was the hand behind the hand.

A war of ages finally sank like a sun beyond the horizon. The Other Shore, a continent that once bore endless glory, became a stone in Ouyang’s palm. He hurled it like a meteor, and it smashed three enemy worlds to ash. The Divine Realm, born from fragments of the Divine Continent. The Underworld, old enough to remember the last cosmic epoch. The Demon World, whose roots stretched before the Other Shore Era. The Other Shore hit them like a mountain dropped on glass, and the collision of worlds blotted everything out like a wave dousing a lantern.

It wasn’t elegant, but it was an ending. It was the one Ouyang could reach when the sky was already falling.

Drag this longer, and the ancient exiles would find their way back like wolves finding a trail. So Ouyang had to end those three worlds before those old monsters returned. Miss this window, and once those elders came home, the hunt would not be so simple.

With enemy Tiered Beings still alive, smashing three worlds was like breaking iron with bare hands. It was almost impossible. A whisper brushed his spine, an omen like frost before dawn. He knew he couldn’t wait. The Other Shore was vast as a sea under moonlight; the gods had gone, but the shell left behind was a relic forged by uncounted years.

Long ago, Ouyang had prepared. He told Saya to move every archive on the Other Shore, to lift out what mattered like seeds saved from a ruined field. Then, with a performance of baited breath and simmering fury, he let three allied worlds lock arms. They tried to gather their final strength for a last stand against him. They had to, because Ouyang’s side had five Tiered Beings; fight alone, and they’d drown like sparks in rain.

He waited for them to huddle. Then the Other Shore fell like a hammer. It slammed into the Divine Realm, the Demon World, and the Underworld; world struck world, and even Tiered Beings burned in that supernova. Only two or three Tiered Beings broke away with scraps of their followers, limping out of the blast like shadows with torn wings. They lived, but half-dead; without ten thousand years, they wouldn’t mend.

With that, the war of untold ages was finally a closed book. Yet Feges still held on to the name Ulaficales like a shard in her palm.

“Let’s head back. We rebuild the intelligence hub and the traffic hub,” Ouyang said, voice low as embers. “Once those are up, it’ll be easier to catch their tracks.” He knew Feges didn’t want to let the culprit breathe. But everyone was wrung dry, their spirits like bows that had lost their string. This war stretched across the stars like a wildfire. The sky was left scarred and ashy; countless civilizations lost whole layers of lineage, and many more were swept away like sand.

In this long grind, the old members of the Panworld Alliance either vanished like mist or fell silent like winter fields. Maybe some worlds still stubbornly held their lines. Maybe some already defected and joined those three higher civilizations like birds fleeing to a taller tree.

The war had been too savage, and Ouyang’s side was barely keeping their own house from burning. If not for the Nightfall side still holding the Eternal Empire’s elites, and the Abyss sending aid like a deep tide, Ouyang’s people would’ve been slaughtered at the opening bell. Because the Eternal Empire’s elite and the Abyss kept the blades busy, Ouyang’s camp had time to grow, to sharpen, to survive.

Ouyang stretched out a hand, and the glittering debris in the black sky gathered like snow to a fire. The fragments were mixed beyond naming now. You couldn’t tell Divine Realm from Other Shore, ash from bone. He took them all in. Around him, the starfield was a graveyard; not a single intact star hung in that dark sea.

This battle stood shoulder to shoulder with the grand sacrifice at the end of the Sixth Epoch. The stars were silent; the night was a bell with no tongue. Their fight didn’t pull in those out-of-scale Third-Tier existences like that old sacrifice. But their war lasted like winter without spring, so long that Augustine, Ouyang’s student, grew into an Ancient God. And the White Cat, that ridiculous creature, climbed and sat upon the throne of a Primordial Deity like a cat on a sun-warmed wall.

Jue did as he once promised: he struck up the world’s hymn, a song like thunder under the sea. Agas, Ouyang’s former teacher, did the same; count in Yiye and the Demon Monarch, and they had five Tiered Beings in all. Yiye left with the Imperial legions and turned the starry river into a hunting ground, chasing stragglers like a red hawk over fields. He vanished into the dark; no one knew where the First Emperor’s shadow now fell. The Demon Monarch returned to the Abyss, a tide sliding back to a colder deep. Allies, yes—though only barely, like bridges of ice in late spring.

Why Yiye hunted so hard was simple and bitter. From Yiyue Qianliu, he’d learned someone had targeted the Nightfall Clan. His tracing led him to a god of the Underworld, a knife in the fog. Back then, the last embers of the Nightfall Clan lived like seeds in frost, too scared to even attempt apotheosis. The moment anyone tried to ascend, they’d be marked and culled like a lamb at a gate.

So Yiye locked his teeth on that enemy and never let go, a wolf running by moonlight. Ouyang didn’t know where the First Emperor roamed now. The stars were too wide; the map was all dark water.

With the three worlds destroyed and the curtain fallen, everyone turned back toward the world they’d left for too long, a homeland made barren as a drought-struck plain. The road home ran through black space. They followed the astrolabe’s pull like sailors chasing Polaris; not a single whole star showed its face. The entire universe was full of drifting remains, like bones in a river.

They reached their base, and what met them wasn’t a whole world anymore. From afar it looked like shattered islands, a plate dropped and scattered. The largest ‘island’ carried Miracle City, shining faintly like a lighthouse in fog.

The old ‘Source’ world had split like ice in spring. Even what they could see now wasn’t all of it. Most fragments had flown who knew where, like sparks on the wind.

Miracle City was still Miracle City, but the bustle had drained away like color at dusk. When the main force returned, the Hell Lord Christo, whom Ouyang had asked to guard this place, flicked her furry tail like a banner in a tired breeze. Ages had passed, and she still hadn’t sounded the Hymn of the World. That said enough: the Hymn wasn’t a song you hummed and nailed. It was a thunder you had to earn.

Jue had the age of mountains behind him, and Ouyang learned more at the Gate of Truth. Jue had once followed someone immense, a figure like a peak above clouds. That someone lost at the end, and Jue was cursed; before that great one sank into eternal sleep, they lifted Jue once, kept him from dying outright. But the curse stayed like a chain around his throat. He could never step beyond the highest gods.

When Jue’s master closed their eyes and the last dream faded, the previous cosmic epoch finally ended. Jue survived from that last epoch; the knowledge he held and the roots he’d grown were forests beyond counting. For him, sounding the Hymn of the World was as natural as a bell swinging at dawn.

Agas, dean of Starry College and vice-chair of the Dark Magic Association, had shaken hands with countless Tiered Beings. In the Other Shore’s golden age, he had even tried to sound the Hymn. He failed, but he touched that door; his later success felt like a river finding the sea it always promised.

As for Ouyang—what needed saying? He had been a Void Watcher once, a Tiered Being by birth and burden.

Aside from those three exceptions, the Hell Lord Christo still hadn’t climbed that ridge. She stood for most beings, and most beings fell short. That was the way mountains worked.

“Next...” Ouyang’s voice was a whetstone under rain. “It’s time to fit this broken world back together and make a new one.”

Creating worlds was easy now, like breathing on a cold window and drawing a sun.

The outlines of those broken ‘islands’ lit with a pale white glow, like frost catching dawn. They drifted toward each other and began to melt together. Ouyang watched the clump he pressed together, a knot in his palm; he frowned. The new world’s seed was too small. For mortals, it would be endless as prairie. But Ouyang’s people, the ones still alive, were gods at minimum. For gods, that world was a teacup sea.

He thought for a breath, then took from Augustine the fragments of the Divine Realm, the Demon World, the Underworld, and the Other Shore. The empty universe shivered as countless remains bloomed into being, each a continent vast as a country, each a bone of old giants.

With a flex of will, Ouyang fed every shard into the world-seed. The knot kept swelling, a slow-growing moon. He didn’t blink, eyes fixed like stars on a winter night. The fragment bearing Miracle City he kept aside. He left its face unchanged, let it drift in space like a scar he refused to hide.

Time passed like sand through fingers. The knot grew to the size of a sun, a glowing heart in the dark. Only then did Ouyang stop. The Divine Realm, the Demon World, the old Other Shore—each had once stretched wider than a sun by countless measures. This new world, forged from their bones, should match at least one of them. But Ouyang saw no need, not yet. They had only so many people. One day the world would swell; for now, too much empty land would be a cold echo.

When the Other Shore began, it hadn’t been so big either. Back then, it was a moon-sized seed. As time rolled and people gathered like birds to a warm tree, the world grew and grew.

He looked at the immense, silent knot and let out a breath, white as mist. In that instant, the sky bloomed with clouds, white sails across blue. Grass unfurled over the land like a green tide, flowers opened like lanterns after rain, and forests rose at a speed the eye could catch, a dark ocean of leaves.

Mountains heaved up like the backs of sleeping beasts. Rivers unwound like silver snakes. Blue sky, white cloud, green earth—life rewrote the silence.

In the end, Ouyang still didn’t fold Miracle City into the world. He hung it above the newborn land, a city in the sky like a memory carved into the moon. His will was clear: remember Miracle City. Let it hang there like a bell. When people looked up, they’d remember the old wound, the names that became stars.

Most of the old world merged into the new, except for three places: the Rift Wasteland, Ancient Memory Town, and Miracle City. The most mysterious place of the old world, the Sealed Land, was missing. Ouyang had heard from Jue that when Litian and the three-alliance Tiered Beings clashed, the storm licked the Sealed Land. Then it vanished like a stone in deep water.

Truth be told, after probing the Gate of Truth, Ouyang knew more about the Sealed Land than most. His soul came from the First Universe, that place called Earth. But his body was tied to the Sealed Land like roots to old rock.

A Tiered Being’s soul married to a chaos-born body—that was Ouyang. He was the kind of monster who could do nothing but eat and sleep, sleep and eat, and still crest beyond the highest gods, like a tide that rises even when the moon looks away.

“Next, we build out the traffic hub and the information hub,” he said, voice like a map unrolled. “We reach the worlds we lost. They suffered disaster because of us, like villages hit by the flood from our dam. If our old allies aren’t gone, we lend a hand.”

“Our people are still too few,” he added, eyes like flint catching a spark. “In this age of frontier and brambles, we’re short on muscle. Time to recruit some.”