The land was ink-black, and overhead churned a haze of chaos—no sun, no moon, no blue sky, no cotton clouds.

Augustine watched Ouyang’s moves, baffled. After a thousand-plus failed trials, Ouyang had vanished. When he returned, he cut the experiment clean, like a blade through fog.

He’d brought back a slab of black earth, vast as a continent. Its darkness pressed on Augustine’s chest like cold stone. His gut said that soil was bad news.

After that, Ouyang tinkered nonstop. He touched every inch of that world. Even the murky sky—every thread of space—was etched with dense, ancient runes like crawling vines.

It only pricked Augustine’s curiosity at first. But Ouyang’s final act made his heart stutter—fear like ice, hope like a spark in ash.

He moved Miracle City’s Eternal Sleep Cemetery onto that black land. Many graves there were empty—war didn’t kill like mortals’ fights. Death there erased both body and soul.

At some point, this dim world chimed with wind-bells. Six-pointed snow spiraled down like feathers. A phantom clock hung in the chaotic firmament, its silence loud as mountain frost.

A light-stream, like the Milky Way, wove in and out of sight. Look close—inside were countless scenes, packed like stars, beyond counting, beyond reach.

“Those are… bodies!?”

Corpses fell from the sky like withered leaves. Keen-eyed Augustine saw familiar faces—friends long fallen. Their bodies had vanished in war, turned to particles or meat paste.

The earth writhed like a living thing. The ominous black clay swallowed each body. With every swallow, a little mound swelled—one body laid to rest, one hill raised.

No one knew how long it lasted. When the last corpse fell, Ouyang’s face went paper-pale, like a patient just out of a fever.

“Teacher… you okay?”

Even a Tiered Being this weak? Augustine felt a chill. To haul back bodies erased from history—power like a river bled dry, price like iron shackles.

When the last body landed, Ouyang swayed, unsteady as grass in a gale. Augustine rushed to catch him. Even two Tiered Beings clashing wouldn’t burn that much fuel.

“I’m fine… Truth is, I’m not a good leader. All I can do is bury them in Mingtu. Maybe, over endless years, seeds will grow into towering trees. But the wait is long.”

Mingtu—the mysterious soil Ouyang couldn’t parse. The Ancient Turtle told him: bury a corpse in Mingtu, and one day it might wake. The how didn’t matter. The outcome did.

He’d wanted to copy the Underworld, to decode life and death. A thousand trials later, he understood: that wasn’t his domain—like trying to net mist with bare hands.

Once, there was a vast world, a harbor for the dead. Even fallen gods slept there. It was called “Mingtu,” the Forbidden Zone of the Gods—eras layered like strata, ancient beings sleeping, each older than the last.

Then a war shattered ancient Mingtu. Countless lives winked out like sparks in rain. A larger shard later evolved into the Underworld. Ouyang’s aim was to rebuild Mingtu; only Mingtu let him glimpse the true laws of life and death.

He failed. No matter what he tried, souls from distant worlds didn’t appear in his test world. They flowed into their own “shadow layer,” like water finding its riverbed.

Every normal world divides into light and dark. Light for the living, dark for the dead. They depend on each other, yin and yang like day and dusk. Most dark worlds hide within the bright; even a local god might never find the door. Ouyang’s experiment broke on that reef—souls went to the dark, not his lab-world. When he forced it, the balance cracked, and the world collapsed like glass.

Only after he argued with the Ancient Turtle did he learn this: Mingtu was forged by countless Tiered Beings with deep mastery over souls, with Administrators meddling like editors of fate. One man trying to do it alone was a fool’s dream.

Hearing that, Ouyang finally got it. No wonder the Ancient Turtle had agreed so briskly. They knew even with the method, he couldn’t build a second Mingtu. Realizing he’d been played, Ouyang went full rascal—camped at the Ancient Turtle’s place and weaponized his voice, wailing in his ear like ghosts in a storm. In the end, that oldest being, an out-of-spec Third Tier existence, surrendered to Ouyang’s mouth-cannon.

From the Ancient Turtle, Ouyang got some Mingtu. Not much—just a trivial shard compared to the boundless original. The Turtle said: bury the bodies, and after long ages, they might wake.

But where would he find bodies? War had ground them down to dust, like sand in wind.

In the end, Ouyang paid in blood and fished corpses from the River of Time. The fishing alone drained his Tiered power to a trickle. There were curses and sanctions from the rules too… He ignored that part. He had a green light; without it, he’d never have dared.

Anything touching the River of Time demands caution—step wrong, and you drown.

He’d thought about fishing people right before their deaths into this present. He only dared to think it. That crossed the rules’ bottom line, a wire like steel.

Rules are like a program, edited by Administrators, then executed without favor. Even with a green light, the River of Time is the red line—don’t touch.

Dragging corpses—dead things—was already a violation. These bodies had become ash in history, gone from the present world. Any other Tiered Being would be sentenced to death. If Ouyang dared haul souls—living things—the price would be ruin. He could pull a mortal from the past into the present, sure—but he’d fall from his throne as the cost.

Spending that price to “fish” just one mortal? He let the idea go, like smoke through fingers.

“Let’s go… Let them sleep here in peace. In the far future, maybe we’ll meet them again.”

Maybe… just maybe. It wasn’t promise, only a star to steer by. Ouyang could only wait, counting time like beads.

“Brothers and sisters—far in the future, we… will meet again!”

Leaning on Augustine, Ouyang returned to his castle. He was weak, bones like hollow reeds. Even without punishment, the energy he’d poured out had nearly floored him. But after doing it, his mood lifted like dawn.

It might never work. The Ancient Turtle’s kindness might be a gentle lie. But even a sliver of hope gives a man a reason to push on.

After a few hours’ rest, two guests arrived. The castle stayed quiet as snow. Lately Moer and Little Night—those two sprites—had turned the world upside down. Cotton candy mountains rose like pink clouds, the continent’s only theme.

Xian came back, saw the chaos, and nearly burst a vein. She dragged her sister, Bai, and Loyin to rein those brats in. They were in charge of planning the continent; as lead, Xian had to crack the whip. So the castle held only Ouyang. When Ouyang summoned Liuli, he did it remotely—didn’t mean Liuli was inside.

“Skeleton. Fatty. What do you need from me?”

The visitors were Glenza and Dufei. Glenza was the same as ever—a pitch-black skeleton wrapped in a black cloak. Dufei wore a little vest, oil-belly jutting like a melon.

Liuli had reported they’d been looking for him for a while. But Ouyang and Augustine had been buried in experiments, nowhere to be found. Now that he was back, they zipped over like arrows.

Dufei saw Ouyang and grinned, patting his shoulder. “Kid Ouyang, I heard about the Demon King Expeditionary Army. Intel says it’s lively. How could we miss something that fun? Haven’t we gone too long without a group outing?”

Seeing Dufei like that, you knew he couldn’t sit still—feet like restless wind. Ouyang had heard all about it. The guy roamed everywhere, but few matched his rhythm. He’d gone out with some folks, then slunk back, tail between legs.

His words: those guys were boring. No joy rolling with them. The troll squad was best with just us degenerates. So Dufei ran to Skull Mountain, yanked Glenza out of the “Glenza Lab,” then came to find Ouyang.

Ouyang weighed it. Fair point. The Demon King legions were playing hard. And with a hope of revival glimmering, Ouyang’s heart felt lighter, like a window thrown open.

He slapped the table and agreed. The three of them had all been stained by the First Cult back in the day—poison sunk deep. If the cult lives, the clowns don’t stop! Moqi was busy; if he were here, they’d be four—the Four Heavenly Kings.

“Liuli, call Thomason, head of the FFF Brotherhood. And have the FFF Brotherhood mobilize.”

Back on the first illusory continent, Mapleleaf and Ouyang had cobbled together the FFF Brotherhood, and it had endured. Thomason was the sharpest among the three thousand members. Over long years, members fell and were replaced, holding at three thousand like a tide held in a bowl.

Because Mapleleaf once said: Give me three thousand members, and I can overturn the world.

So Ouyang never let the legion exceed three thousand. The civilian FFF Brotherhood was the street crowd; his legion was another beast entirely.

Ouyang’s move stunned Dufei for a beat, then had him clapping, laughing like thunder. No wonder they’d run together back then. He’d hung out with other Demon King legions—boredom stacked on boredom. But here, Ouyang’s first move hit his taste like spice.

Soon, the people gathered like storm clouds.

Demon King Expeditionary Army, Thirteenth Legion. Legion Commander: Ouyang. Vice Commanders: Glenza and Dufei.

“Sea of stars—wait for us to conquer you!” Dufei shouted at the sky, then broke into wild laughter like a bonfire.

Ouyang eyed the ranks ahead, neat as blades. Every member wore a black cloak stamped with a flame. Bold red letters blazed: FFF.

“Brats, what’s our slogan?”

Dufei slapped his oil belly and stole the commander’s thunder. He bellowed like a drum. The members drew torches in perfect sync.

“Burn!”

“Burn!”

“Burn!”

Though his thunder had been stolen, Ouyang watched morale arc like a rainbow; satisfaction settled in him like morning sun. He nodded, calm as a still lake, and spoke, his voice rolling like a war drum.

“Demon King’s Expeditionary Army, 13th Legion—the Burning Legion, move out!”