In Rainfall City, the gates gaped like a toothless maw, and not a single guard stood watch; inside, no patrols circled the hollow streets.

The rain kept falling, a pitter-patter like silver needles threading into the heart; the avenue lay cold and bare, an empty stage with no actors. A shopkeeper slumped over his table like a wilted reed, eyes dull, as if he’d given up on customers ever coming.

“This city feels colder than Miracle City,” Xi said, propping a paper umbrella like a pale moon over her shoulder. “Miracle City was quiet too, but it held a trace of warmth. This cold sinks into the bones. It’s… eerie.”

Ouyang didn’t answer. His gaze hooked on an eave, where a figure stood like a raven on a temple ridge, a black cloak swallowing all color. The face was hidden, but to Ouyang that breath of presence was an old scar under the sleeve—impossible to mistake.

“Long time no see. Won’t you come down for a chat?” Ouyang’s voice was a breeze under the rain, too light for ordinary ears to catch at this distance.

The figure on the eave shuddered under the cloak, shadow twisting like smoke, then in the next blink stood before Ouyang. Wrapped head to toe in black, he was a riddle to everyone—everyone except Ouyang.

Xi didn’t know him; memory had slipped from her like rain off tiles. As for Xian, back in that era she hadn’t been swept into those storms. Bai least of all; names and faces slid from her like fish from a net. One person to remember in her world was plenty.

Loyin narrowed her eyes, thoughts rippling beneath the surface; she rolled her small fists like stones warming in a stream, looking one heartbeat from starting a fight.

Ouyang let their reactions pass like wind over grass. His smile stayed, soft as a lantern’s glow. Where Loyin bristled, he carried the quiet joy of meeting an old friend from before the seasons turned.

“Let’s find a place to sit and talk,” he said, nostalgia rising like steam from hot tea. “I didn’t expect to run into you here.”

The cloaked man said nothing, his silence a tide following at Ouyang’s heels.

The rain kept up its pitter-patter, a thin veil over an empty world. They walked a long time, boots whispering on wet stone; the number of people they passed never climbed past a handful. Hollow city, cold streets—like a shell after the spirit has flown.

At last, they found a shop in the void. It was empty too, a dim room where a man past fifty crouched by weak candlelight, turning yellowed pages with sighs like wind through reeds, mourning something lost. The place was shabby; chairs and tables were old timber gone gray with years, and the roof let the rain tick, tick, in the corners.

“Owner, got any local specialties?” Ouyang asked, voice easy as the rain.

The language here was the old lingua franca from the former “Source” World. As a high world of the Panworld Alliance once upon a time, it had spread it well.

They stepped in, and the floorboards answered with creak-creak, a tired boat on a dark river.

The old man rose, slow as sap in winter. He looked them over, not like a shopkeep sizing up customers, but like a scholar trying to parse a script from before the flood—only to find every line beyond his sight.

“Local specialties… only homestyle dishes, and some aged wine,” he said at last, each word pulled like a bucket from a deep well.

“Oh? The wine, then…” Ouyang turned to the cloaked man, warmth like a hearth behind his eyes. “Do you drink? If you do, I’ll keep you company.”

The man under the black cloak was quiet for a beat. He bared his head. The face was plain as unmarked clay—none of Devila’s noble poise, none of Augustine’s striking handsomeness.

“Then I’ll have a little. Rare to have you treat, Boss.”

Ouyang’s smile flashed, clean as new snow. “Alright. Owner, bring some aged wine, not too much. As for dishes—anything’s fine, but make sure there’s mapo tofu. Oh, and… could I borrow that book?”

The owner had risen to fetch wine and food, but that last request snagged him like a hook. He hesitated, hands hovering over the candlelit pages.

The cloaked man glanced once, eyes a dark blade. “Codex of the Void?”

“If I’m not wrong, yes—the Codex of the Void. An early second edition,” Ouyang said, memory stirring like dust in sunlight. “It’s hard to find antiques like that now. Seeing it brought a lot back. Owner, would you let me take a look? Let me sit with the old years a moment.”

The old man stared at the ever-smiling man in black. His hands trembled like leaves in rain. After a long breath, he steadied and offered the book with both hands.

Ouyang took it and stroked the cover, fingertips tracing scars of time. The binding was ragged, the pages yellowed to tea-stain brown, many characters blurred to ghosts.

“Long ages have passed. The divine blessing on this book has nearly bled away,” he murmured, a sigh like smoke. “For it to survive till now, it’s a true antique. If the Panworld Alliance reconnects someday, the owner could fetch a sky-high price.”

He sighed again. The Codex had climbed into the hundreds of editions by now. Aside from the very first, a second edition was ancient as moss on stone.

Every decree on those pages had been hammered out by the Demon King Council, every line settled after spittle-flecked arguments that rattled the rafters. Each edition was a growth ring of the Void Church—and a chapter of Ouyang and his people growing up in the storm.

The first Codex, Ouyang compiled alone—only one copy in the world. Later, at the proposal of the first Pope, Collin, he convened a council to draft the second edition.

Seeing Ouyang turn those yellowed pages in silence, the girls around him held their peace, soft as cats by the fire.

No one knew how long had passed before the owner brought out the wine and dishes, steam curling like white snakes in the dim.

“Whew. Owner, this book has a long history,” Ouyang said, closing the not-so-thick Codex with a hush. “Is it a family heirloom, or did you get it another way?” If it were one of the later hundreds, he wouldn’t care much. But the early ones were different. The first had only one. The second? Maybe not even ten copies back then.

In those first days of the Void Church, they didn’t need many codices. Later, believers multiplied, and times changed; old editions no longer fit the world, so they kept revising to meet the age.

Which is why, with fewer than ten copies of the second edition, Ouyang was curious how one drifted all the way here.

“That book… has been passed down in my family,” the owner said, voice rough like gravel under water. “It concerns an organization called the Void Church. It’s said our first ancestor was one of them. But those are ancient matters. The sheepskin scrolls from the elders record it… dimly.”

These weren’t secrets he couldn’t tell. Meeting someone who knew the Void Church at all, he let the words spill like stored rain. He’d never told the younger ones; if he died, the earth would swallow these stories with him.

Long ago, this world had an organization called the Void Church. What they believed, who founded them, what their creed was—time buried it all like leaves under snow.

Until a few hundred years ago, when the Bayat family birthed a genius. His rise was uncanny. He vanished for a while, then returned already ascendant. But fate chose a cruel tide. That era was the fiercest age of gods at war. A Demigod like him fell before he could take the last step. Later generations burned with curiosity about his ascent. In the genius’s residence, the Bayats found a clue—a letter he left behind.

As a Demigod, he had a dim sense of his fate. He wanted to fight the current, yet feared he couldn’t break it. So he left a letter, an oar for those downstream.

He wrote that he’d vanished because he’d tripped an ancestral mechanism and was sent into a vault. In that vault he saw knowledge and treasure left by their forebear.

That forebear was no common ancestor. He was the founder of the Bayat line—Suolu Bayat, a being who had become a god in a far-off age. In his time, something brutal had happened, so he left a treasure behind, waiting for later blood to claim it.

The book came from that vault, carried out by the genius centuries ago. According to the letter, it concerned an organization called the Void Church. Their first ancestor had hoped to use it to commune with the Demon King the Church worshiped, to draw that Demon King down into this world. But an accident struck, and the ancestor had to toss the book back into the vault, handing the unfinished task to those yet to come.

For centuries, every Bayat patriarch studied the book. Even that genius couldn’t unravel it; the knots refused every hand.

Candlelight wavered in the draft like a moth’s breath. After the tale, Ouyang looked at the man in the black cloak across from him. “Cataclysm, what do you think?”

Cataclysm—the Second Seat among the original Demon Kings. Back then, the Second Seat, Cataclysm, and the Third Seat, the Sword Demon, betrayed them. It had gnawed at Ouyang ever since. Yet now, meeting him again, Ouyang held no anger. In his eyes, Cataclysm was still Cataclysm—the old friend from the years when the rain first began.