The air between the two sides curdled like storm clouds over a summer pond, and the handsome man calling himself Sade flushed with awkward heat. He’d always been a gentleman, a willow bending before beauty, never a blade. Now his team moved like wolves to corner two girls, and that scraped against his code like grit in the eye.

So Sade stepped between them, a lone reed in a river trying to part the current. In his eyes, this was straight-up bullying, a pack of “Future Star” prodigies crowding two fragile blossoms—while the one guy with them didn’t even register on his radar.

“Tilafei, as members of Future Star, we can’t—”

The “Tilafei” in his mouth was the girl menacing Xi and Glorious Moon, but the words barely left him before she raised her wand. A column of fire howled out like a pine forest catching, and it rushed straight for Xi and Glorious Moon.

Tilafei didn’t give him a sliver of face, and Sade’s cheeks went as dark as rain-soaked slate.

“Tilafei, stand down!”

With a shout that cracked like thunder, a labyrinthine golden sigil bloomed before Sade, bright as frost on wheat. A human-shaped blaze clawed out of it, and the fire pillar Tilafei had thrown sputtered, then curled back as if it sensed the arrival of a flame-king.

Ouyang stared, slack-jawed, the way a city kid sees his first lightning strike. “Holy—Brand, the fire guy?”

The burning figure turned, interest sparking like flint. “Gah, gah… interesting. To meet one of my own kind!” The voice rode out of the flames like wind from a tomb. Without more words, a swarm of fireballs budded around him, then poured toward Ouyang like a meteor shower.

Sade’s face went ink-black. “Aelirais, he’s not an enemy. This isn’t the time. Your job is to stop Tilafei—”

This time the flame-being, Aelirais, didn’t answer at all, the way a volcano ignores a whisper.

As the fireballs fanned out like a red tide, Ouyang curled his lip, calm as a pond under moonlight. His long blade flicked into a red cylinder—a fire extinguisher. Pffft—white powder whooshed out in a winter squall, and every flame winked out like stars at dawn.

“Hey, little fireling, you’re a walking wildfire in a cedar grove. You trying to burn down the forest? I’m doing you a favor here—no playing with fire, okay?”

Extinguisher in hand, Ouyang charged, grinning like a fox in fresh snow.

The flame-being stood like a cliff and snorted. “You think that’s enough to douse—”

This time the extinguisher belched foam, thick and white as sea-spume. It plastered Aelirais from crown to heel, and his flames died with a hiss like rain on coals. The fire peeled back to reveal a rugged Western face, all sharp edges and flint, with short, wind-tossed red hair.

Aelirais stared at Ouyang, a muscle ticking like a moth in a lantern. “You dog of the science side. I took you for one of us, and you, a god among the mystic path, betray faith to use science?”

“Redhead, if you don’t like it, bite me.”

The air cracked again like ice breaking on a river, and the two oddities crashed back together. As the host, Sade felt his own strength leaking away like sand through a sieve while Aelirais kept manifesting.

“Aelirais, stop! I told you, he’s not the enemy!”

Others might not see it, but Sade knew the weight on his shoulders as clearly as the weight of rain. His contract partner belonged to the Divine Kind—overbearing as thunderheads. Sade had carved his way into Future Star on Aelirais’s battle merit, but keeping a godling present was like feeding a furnace with your lifespan, and now the fool was brawling some mystery freak, burning fuel like a bonfire in a drought.

Aelirais took a boot to the chest from Ouyang and pinwheeled through the air like a maple leaf in gale. “Silence, mortal,” he snapped mid-flight, voice hot as lava. “This is the battle of our kind!”

While Aelirais mouthed off, Ouyang sprang after him, matching height like a hawk on the updraft. The extinguisher flipped into a brick. “Alright, try the number-one folk artifact from my hometown!”

“Eat my brick!”

The brick smacked Aelirais’s skull with mountain-weight, and he streaked down like a fallen star. The impact punched a crater into the ground, dirt bursting like a brown bloom.

Only then did the other Future Star members finally put the puzzle together like dawn through fog. A hit that craters the earth isn’t from some alley thug. If Aelirais were of the Dragon Essence kind, Sade’s current level wouldn’t let him take human form. That trick demands a higher peak. Outside dragon lines, only the legendary Divine Kind boast bodies like iron mountains and command the world’s elements like puppets on silk.

And that black-clad guy who made a suspected Divine Kind eat dirt—no way he was simple.

The stage split three ways like a river into deltas. Two suspected Divine Kind were trading blows in the sky. Future Star stood rooted, watching with carp-eyes. And Tilafei was still pressing Xi and Glorious Moon like a winter wind worrying bamboo.

But Aelirais and Ouyang’s fight glittered so bright that everyone forgot Tilafei’s flames licking at the girls.

Their melee… was theater, a painted dragon dancing on silk.

They’d been at it forever, and their clothes stayed crisp as morning linen. Their spirits stayed high, their collars straight. If the crowd hadn’t watched every heartbeat, they’d think the two hadn’t fought at all—hundreds of exchanges, and both looked freshly pressed.

“Hah… worthy of my kind,” Aelirais said, eyes shining like twin comets. “I’ve roamed the star-sea for ages and finally met a kindred flame!”

Ouyang flicked a glance at Xi and Glorious Moon, reading the battlefield like frost etching a window. They weren’t Tilafei’s match, sure, but killing them? Hard as catching moonlight in a jar. In the Stellar Courtyard, those two are protagonist-level. Push them to the edge and they’ll bite the heavens—gods included. He didn’t rush to bail them out; growth needs whetstones. And Tilafei? To Ouyang she was an elite mob waiting to drop loot for Xi and Glorious Moon.

“Heh, redhead, you’re fun. Try another artifact from my homeland—the people’s top ten—” He grinned. “The frying pan.”

The brick melted into a frying pan, black as night water, and Ouyang lunged with it like a fisherman casting a net.

Frying pan? Artifact?

Aelirais didn’t know the tool, but danger rasped along his skin like cat-tongue. He chose to yield the edge, weaving aside with fox-foot steps, and the pan whoomped into the skull of a Future Star spectator.

Clang—like a temple bell struck at close range—and the world rang white. Everyone around clapped hands to ears as if caught in a hailstorm.

After a breath that felt like a season, they dared lower their hands. The world tilted like a boat in chop, and a swarm of buzzing gnats nested in their ears. Aelirais took one look and blanched; blood slicked from the onlookers’ ears like red threads. Ouyang hadn’t even aimed at them—that was just the backwash. The unlucky one who ate the full pan lay twitching, seven orifices bleeding, foam pearling at the lips, life hanging like frost on a leaf.

Ouyang hefted the pan again and rolled forward like thunder over hills, and Aelirais flung up a palm. “Stop! As beings who rule the star-rivers, we shouldn’t fight in such low, crude ways!”

He was a little scared, sure, but more than that—it was pointless as punching fog.

They’d traded for half a day, the ground cracked like old clay under a drought. Yet both of them still looked dapper as peacocks, and none of it mattered.

Under the rules of the Star Spirits, the power they could muster was shackled to their hosts like a kite to a string. Sade’s strength outstripped Glorious Moon’s, so Aelirais held a slight edge.

But it meant nothing. Neither could break the other’s skin; their true god-bodies stood like jade cliffs. With mortal-grade force, you might as well scratch iron with a reed.

It was like two full-build tanks slugging it out under a healing rain; they lost less than they regenerated, and after all that sweat, both bars stayed green.

So Aelirais opted out of the sandbox. He’d wanted a spar with the first Tiered Being he’d met, but the lesson was carved in stone—meaningless.

“True. We’re gods among gods.” Ouyang shrugged, sky-clear. “Tell you what, big guy, I like your vibe. Truce? Let’s talk.”

“Good idea.”

A beat later, under a dozen stunned stares, two life-and-death enemies had their arms slung around each other like old brothers under a willow. Nobody could read these two; their minds were mist over water.

The frying pan flipped into a straw hat, and Ouyang reached into it like a magician dipping into a lake. He set a table down, then pulled dish after dish from the hat, steam rising like morning fog.

“Brother Aelirais, your brother Ouyang has a good brother of his own, name’s Dufei. Let me tell you, that fat bastard’s cooking is legendary. Look at this glow, smell that aroma—it’s intoxicating as plum blossoms in snow. I always pack some when I travel. To celebrate our meeting in the endless star-river, I’m bleeding a little and sharing.”

Aelirais didn’t have Ouyang’s cheats; to become a Tiered Being he’d trudged through eras like a mountain under frost. Ouyang could guess that, but Aelirais knew nothing of Ouyang’s roots. So Ouyang crowned himself big brother, planting that first flag; first impressions carve rivers.

Faced with Ouyang’s warm tide, Aelirais hesitated, a fish nosing a hook, something off tickling his nape.

Ouyang snapped up a piece of meat with chopsticks and popped it in his mouth, bliss washing his face like spring rain. “Don’t just stare, little brother—eat. This is a once-in-the-stars specialty. Miss this ferry and there’s no second boat.”

Watching Ouyang swoon like a cat in sun, Aelirais felt shame to doubt a heart laid bare. If a man doesn’t fail me, I won’t fail him. So the sheltered Aelirais lifted the chopsticks and sampled the peerless chef’s art…

Seconds later, sweat sheeted down his face like summer rain. He reached out, hand shaking like a leaf.

“You… you poi… poisoned…”