Gaia Temple, the world's hub, a quiet heart beating at the core.

Xi stared, lost, at this unfamiliar place. Suspicion fluttered like startled birds, when a familiar voice brushed past her ear.

“Welcome back...”

At that sound, hurt swelled; her lips pouted, and the dam burst. She dove into Ouyang's arms and beat his chest, a child storming in the rain.

“Calmed down?”

“I'm not! I'm angrier! I hate you more!”

Ouyang gave a wry smile and didn't fight back. He let those soft fists thump his chest, like spring rain on stone, harmless. Xiao Hei and Xiao Bai waited quietly nearby. Gaia watched Xi with puzzled eyes, like clouds studying a stray star.

Gaia knew the Demon Kings in broad strokes. Matters of the Other Shore lay beyond her sight, like a moon behind mist. Even Lingwen's knowledge of the Other Shore stopped in a distant era. Back when she wandered onto the Maragobi Great Prairie by chance. She never touched it again, so she couldn't know who Xi was.

After a while in Ouyang's arms, Xi rubbed her tear-salted eyes. A spark of urgency snapped back; this wasn't the time to cry.

“Ouyang, help Lingwen, please. She's in danger...” Before she finished, Ouyang pointed behind her. Xi followed his finger. A strange device sat there, showing Lingwen fighting Carmen.

Xi was no fool; understanding iced over fast. Her face darkened, teeth grinding. “You... you’ve been watching me all along?”

Seeing Ouyang again had warmed her like sunrise, smoothing out her sulking. But knowing he'd used that thing to watch her, the warmth guttered.

“No, absolutely not,” Ouyang said fast. “I heard your heart call, and only then took this out to find you.” His EQ wasn't great, but far better than that guy who ditched a girl and left her in the rain all day. Some things, even if both sides know, you never admit.

Never admit it.

Xi said nothing, cheeks puffed, glare fixed on Ouyang like a hawk on prey. She was ninety percent sure he'd been watching. He refused to admit it, leaving her helpless.

Her doubt had started when Xiao Bai brought out those dishes. Back when the castle lacked servants, Ouyang cooked most meals. Xi knew his food well. His skill carved a signature flavor, like a seal in wax. What Xiao Bai produced carried that same taste—Ouyang's hands, unmistakable.

With her mouth still pouty, Xi's heart tangled like vines. His watching stung, yet his care was real. She didn't fully grasp what a True God meant. But on the Eternal Sleep Continent they were forging stars. Ouyang had to outstrip even them. And a man that mighty still cooked for her, still kept an eye on her path...

“Hmph. I’ll forgive you—for now. Ouyang, go help Lingwen, quick…”

Even moved, Xi didn't forget Lingwen. The strongest in this world should be the Creator God. Yet on the Eternal Sleep Continent you could scoop them up by the handful. That Carmen guy wasn't even one. Ouyang should swat him easily.

Xi thought so, but Ouyang shook his head. He didn't plan to interfere.

“Wife, before we came here, remember I mentioned this world's Creator God?”

Xi frowned, thinking; crimson eyes flickered. Then her gaze widened like a sunrise bursting. “Creator God... Lingwen... don’t tell me it’s that Lingwen?”

“Yep. By my deduction, it’s that Lingwen.”

On the battlefield, Carmen and Lingwen fought on, and dread crept higher. Eerie—too eerie. He began with mortal strength. Then Lingwen’s power climbed, and Carmen folded away his pride. He drew on divine force.

Yet it did nothing. Lingwen's power rose to that same divine tier.

“Who are you, really?”

Carmen asked for the second time. For ages he'd hid behind the curtain, pulling strings, with heaven and earth nearly under his control. He hadn’t expected an anomaly like Lingwen.

What went wrong? Which link in the plan had cracked?

While Carmen’s heart trembled, Lingwen had kept her eyes shut. Suddenly, she opened them. Pale blue irises brimmed with frost, the aloof gaze of a maker looking down on all living things.

Sky-blue butterfly wings unfurled behind her. As those dreamlike wings beat, chains of divine order lanced through heaven and earth.

Carmen’s pupils tightened hard. This pressure—he’d felt it only in a distant age. Aside from the aura that leaked when a Supreme Presence forced a glimpse into the river of time, not long ago.

This aura was no stranger to Carmen!

“Creator God!”

All along, Carmen had been wrong in one place—a fatal flaw. Among Mystic Priestesses, Lingwen had the highest affinity with the Creator God. Yet she was the only one who couldn’t sense that presence.

He was elated by that guess. If the Creator God had fallen, their legacy would be his. He cared little for the world—neither wars of gods nor lives of mortals. He wanted transcendence, that single step.

After hoarding years beyond counting, he was one step from the Creator God, but that step wouldn't come. He lacked no resources; time had filled his coffers. What he lacked was knowledge—insight.

The Genesis Crown was the Creator God’s vault of knowledge, holding their understanding of all things. If Carmen obtained the Genesis Crown, he was sure—he could take that step and become the new Creator God.

He was wrong—fatally wrong. No matter how he calculated, he never imagined this. The priestess most attuned to the Creator couldn’t sense them, because she herself was the Creator God, not because the Creator had died.

This error led him toward ruin without return, a fall into endless calamity.

“Carmen Junes von Kuiweika, god who governs life and death of the dead...” Lingwen spoke with a chill devoid of feeling. Each word dropped like ice, freezing him at the soul.

Her shoulder-length blue hair lifted in the evening wind. Chains of divine order speared sky and earth, circling Lingwen.

“Hahaha...” Strung tight to breaking, something in Carmen snapped. “I lost. I lost... The unawakened Creator God was at my side, and I didn’t see. The Genesis Crown was so close, just a hand’s reach... Hahaha... what a ridiculous fate!”

Indeed, Carmen had been one step from success. The unawakened Creator God stood beside him. If fate had kept its old track, under Carmen’s honeyed lies, Lingwen would have sacrificed herself for billions. She would have summoned the Genesis Crown, and Carmen would have plucked the fruit with ease.

But Ouyang and Xi stepped in, and fate stumbled. Ouyang had peered into the river of time, and Carmen feared his plan would be exposed, so he rushed it forward. Xi’s arrival drew the priestess from her shrine. When Carmen struck at Xi, that blow plucked a buried nerve in Lingwen’s heart...

So Lingwen “woke.” The Creator God standing at the peak of this world awakened.

Those chains of order across the sky were proof enough.

“Honestly, I kind of admire you. You dared reach for the Creator’s Genesis Crown, and almost pulled it off...” A voice broke the dead silence. Carmen and Lingwen turned toward it.

First glance showed a couple in matching clothes, hands linked. Looking closer, Lingwen finally saw who had come.

“Ling World’s administrator Lingwen greets Your Majesty, Void Messenger!”

She lifted the long hem of her Mystic Priestess robes and bowed to Ouyang. Long ago she hadn’t needed to bow, even though he’d already been stronger, and he had never asked it.

But Ouyang now was different. He had struck the anthem of worlds, become a Tiered Being, a presence hailed as a True God.

A True God—one thought to create, one thought to unmake. Eyes over the star-river, seated as the multiverse flickers out, writing rules at the tip of a finger. As a founding elder of the Panworld Alliance, Lingwen needn’t bow to Ouyang. This bow was not to the man, but to that greatness itself—to a True God, in reverence and awe.

Ouyang smiled and nodded to Lingwen. Then his face cooled as winter. “I may admire you, but I’ll still hold you accountable. She... is my family.”

He meant Xi. Without Ouyang there, without Xiao Hei and Xiao Bai at her side, and without ancient artifact clothes. Carmen’s single palm would’ve turned her to ash on the wind.

“Void... Messenger...”

Carmen’s eyes went wide. Honestly, he wanted to curse. It wasn’t enough to provoke an unknown-strength Creator God. He’d also offended the First Demon King, with a background even more terrifying. Why was fate like this? He wanted to howl about unfair RNG. Why does a level‑50 elite run into a level‑60 boss? Fine, but before that boss swings, a level‑100 maxed mythic beast pops out?

“I... refuse... to accept this... ah!!!”

His shrill scream rippled across heaven and earth, like a torn wind over a bleak plain...