Finishing off Kamen was to Ouyang like swatting an ant. Gods of this world might quake, but in their lives it wouldn’t raise a ripple. To Lingwen, now an Ancient God, a so‑called Supreme God was an ant crawling on a stone.

When she was still a Realm God, she’d have sighed over losing a Supreme God. After ascending, her horizon broadened like a sea after rain. A single Supreme God no longer weighed on her mind.

The moment Lingwen woke, her first act was a great cleansing of this world. Like when she first became the Creator God, she scrubbed heaven and earth. Continents withered like autumn fields; ancient races vanished like smoke. Since then, only a handful of species remain. Most were erased in that purge, or faded in the long years that followed.

Lingwen’s cleansing spared no one. The blood of gods stained the far clouds red like a sunset wound. With Gaia’s sigh drifting like wind through pines, Divine Blooms fell in quiet spirals. The Creator God’s judgment shook heaven and earth. Countless mortals knelt like waves on a shore, and gods who’d waited in shadow for her return stepped out like stars at dusk.

“Lingwen, imprison any spies you catch. I’ll take them back and squeeze answers,” Ouyang ordered, his voice cool as steel in snow. He’d watched the river of time; this war was Kamen’s mischief, but hounds from the God, Demon, and Nether realms also stirred the mud.

The three high civilizations had been ground to dust by Ouyang with the Other Shore like a millstone on bone. But their subordinate worlds were countless. Many hadn’t heard their masters were gone, and still carried out old commands like wind‑up dolls.

As the Creator God, Lingwen could feel the breath of outsiders drifting in our world like foreign incense.

She took one step, and in the next heartbeat stood amid the starsea. The constellations trembled like strings plucked by an ancient hand. Old notes rang between stars, a hymn of the world. Only the choir of the heavens, the touch of ancient Star Spirits, and the blessing of law could raise power so vast.

At the rim of the sky, Ouyang’s mouth curved into a cold smile, sharp as a crescent blade. “You think my turf’s a revolving door?”

As his laugh cut the night, Bai appeared at his side. She unfurled silver wings like frost, and the starlight dimmed like embers. The stars kept chanting, and ancient Star Spirits woke like sleepers rousing at dawn. They sang; they praised; their voices rolled like tide.

For the first time since the Starlight Angel’s birth, she bared her unique strength to this sky.

“Stars, show me their footprints.” Her voice was heaven’s bell, and the stars shed particles like silver rain. The motes braided into a chart, inked with symbols old and knotted like roots.

Suddenly, a cold snort cracked across the void, and the star‑woven chart shattered like glass in a fist.

“Nothing can defy our will.” In Bai’s silver eyes, a vast starfield unfurled, ancient and distant as a forgotten temple. Not of this world, not of tomorrow—an old past no one remembered.

A giant hand closed around that sky in her gaze and crushed it like ash.

“Bai, do it.”

“Your will is the mission of the stars.”

Her silver irises spun a storm. The ruined sky in her eyes twisted into a great vortex, a whirlpool of argent fire. The real sky felt its pull. A colossal silver vortex bloomed across the heavens like a cyclone over a sea.

“Hmph. I am a True God. With a lift of my hand, I snap star‑rivers. What can starlight do to me?” The voice came from the vortex’s depths, aloof and proud like winter iron.

Ouyang and Bai said nothing. They had no time for crows boasting in the storm.

Bai pressed her palms together, and the massive vortex tightened like a noose. She spoke softly, her words a blade. “Starlight… Annihilation.”

The silver vortex burst like festival fireworks, a thousand lilies of light exploding across the void. Darkness fled, and the cosmos blazed like daylight on snow.

“Ouyang, you just wait!” The hysterical shout rose from the vortex’s deep like a drowning man’s last air. From the sound alone, you could taste his panic.

When the brightness drained away, only a gray vortex hung in the sky like a wound, slowly knitting itself shut.

“A‑Yang, the other side has fully withdrawn.” Bai looked up at Ouyang and blinked, little stars in her eyes asking, How did I do? Ouyang chuckled and rubbed her head, his hand like warm wind. As the Starlight Angel, she can command the stars; even ancient Star Spirits bow to her as a sovereign.

Star Spirits are the spirits of the stars, like Gaia is the will of Ling World. But a Star Spirit isn’t the same as a world’s will. A world will is a low‑tier mind, able to follow complex orders like a river following banks, but not thinking like a person. A Star Spirit is high‑tier mind, with judgment and emotion, like rain that chooses where to fall.

Put plainly, a world will runs by rule, steady as a clock. Some grow strange and learn to judge, yet they still fall short of human thought. Star Spirits are a metamorphosis from that will. They have deep wisdom. They cry and laugh, sorrow and joy, their inner weather as complex as ours. Because of that, most stars that birth Star Spirits carry no life on their backs.

A world’s will is fine; it obeys the rulebook and guides a world toward life, like a gardener tending spring. Star Spirits are different. Their moods shake the star like quakes. Even if life sprouts, a Spirit’s bad day can scour it clean. Most Spirits dislike strange lodgers living on their bodies. A case like Ling World is rare as a phoenix feather.

Strictly speaking, Gaia isn’t yet a Star Spirit. She’s between Spirit and will, like dawn between night and day. Her emotions haven’t reached the mark. But if she keeps growing, one day she’ll ascend and wear the name of Star Spirit.

Ouyang stared toward the world’s far edge, and for a blur of heartbeats he saw Merk’s ragged shape stumble like a shadow. He also saw a girl smiling at him, twin ponytails bouncing like sparrows, that familiar grin bright as a spring brook.

“Ouyang the peeper, keep it up!” Her voice drifted in and out like wind through reeds, and he wore a look of longing, soft as old wine.

“Tch, you twin‑tails. I told you those things back then weren’t on me. Why pin it on me every time…” He muttered, eyes lost on that far sky. The gray vortex had vanished like smoke in rain.

Some people, some moments, stay like carved jade—you can’t forget them.

Sometime later, two figures arrived beside him without a ripple. Ouyang didn’t have to look to know. Cataclysm and Sword Demon.

“Emperor Jiling has already left… you still didn’t meet?” Cataclysm watched the horizon like a man reading storms. He knew things. Sword Demon, by contrast, wore pure confusion like a mask.

He was not pleased. Why does Cataclysm know so much while I stand here clueless?

While Sword Demon stewed, Ouyang turned and looked at him, gaze like a quiet blade. “Yo. The old traitor dares stand before me…”

Ouyang hadn’t moved yet, but Bai already gripped a Starlight Sword, ready to lift a head from shoulders. Sword Demon yelped and hid behind Cataclysm. No joke—she’s a Tiered Being.

“Ouyang, boss, let’s talk. We’re on the same side—don’t swing… don’t swing…”

He was terrified. If that Starlight Sword slipped and flew, and pinned him like a moth, who would hear his complaint? That weapon carried a Tiered Being’s power. One stroke, and not even dust would remain.

When Ouyang stopped Bai with a glance, Sword Demon finally breathed like a man saved from deep water. Still, if the instigator—Cataclysm, who goaded the Demon Kings to rebel—stood there calm as a mountain, why was he so scared?

Even if debts come due, shouldn’t they knock on Cataclysm’s door first?

Yet before Ouyang, Sword Demon couldn’t muster calm. His heart beat like a trapped bird.

“Ugh, what a disappointment. Back then, that Great One roamed the starsea with the Godslayer Sword, a butcher of gods, a storm in armor. And you, the sword‑spirit of the Godslayer, turn into this coward?”

Ouyang’s tone was iron with pity, like a smith scolding dull steel.

Maybe that Great One had angered too many. Under a siege by countless gods, the Godslayer Sword shattered like ice under a hammer. Its spirit almost dispersed to mist. The trauma carved deep in Sword Demon’s heart, hollowing his courage like rot in wood. That’s why he lacks the spirit the Godslayer’s guardian should wear.

Stung, Sword Demon turned away and pouted, face sour as old vinegar. Ouyang had torn the scab, and memories of that shadowed year rose like smoke.

Ouyang and Cataclysm both shook their heads, helpless as men watching rain.

After a pause, Cataclysm asked, “You already knew, didn’t you? When you saw us, you were calm—like you’d read the script.”

Another line that left Sword Demon staring blankly, lost in fog.

Bro, please. We’re on the same side. Could you say something I can understand?

Ouyang and Cataclysm ignored him, their silence like stone.

“Yeah. I knew long ago.” Ouyang answered evenly. He took off the straw hat on his head and drew out a black feather, matte as night. Runes flickered along its barbs like fireflies, and strands of great power coiled around it like smoke.

“Everything was left in this feather when Nanyang departed.” Nanyang—the crow’s name, taken from the sun over southern waters.

That crow had two bodies. One in another starsea, one shed and left behind in this sky like a cast skin.

To pass the gate linking two skies, you can only project a shadow here. A projection is thin as paper, too weak to move mountains. But the crow was different. It had left a body in this sky. Once the projection settled into that body, while not at full strength, it held enough power to do many things.

That was Ouyang’s last true contact with them. Before the war years opened, what he met at Yiye wasn’t contact at all. It was an image from a far season, a memory fossil left in time.