The world drained to stark black and white, like ink spilled over a painting; even color seemed to hold its breath. Clouds hung still as bleached sails. Sprites froze mid-dance like moths pinned in glass. Ripples on the lake stiffened into etched silver.

In short, time itself stopped, like a heart skipping a beat.

And yet, in this charcoal sketch of a world, a few figures kept their colors, like lanterns glowing in fog. One was the Demon King who started it all. Another was a certain little yellow book that liked to roam like a stray cat.

“Weird. Kid, you that bored you froze a whole planet?” The Diary, immune to stillness, fluttered over like a leaf on a breeze. Jue and Agas arrived too, Tiered Beings whose steps rang like hymns in a temple. As the god above gods, Ouyang’s time-stop meant nothing to them, like rain on a dragon’s scales.

“What happened?” Jue asked bluntly, a blade of voice in the quiet. Agas appeared just behind, a shadow in sunlight.

Faces tightened with the same question—Tiered Beings attacking?—like stormbirds wheeling before rain. But then they saw Xi, not far away, yawning like a lazy cat on a sun-warmed wall. That unhurried look said plenty.

Realizing the misunderstanding he’d stirred, Ouyang coughed out a few awkward laughs, like pebbles skipping across a pond. “Relax, not a big deal. A certain clown is up to weird tricks. I’ll handle it. You all do your thing.”

Using the pause in time like a held breath, Ouyang sifted the crowd like sifting sand and found Nabelia. Thankfully, the head maid hadn’t wandered to another world. He tapped her shoulder; color bled back into her like dawn flooding a frost-lit field.

When Nabelia came to, her eyes took in the still world like a doe stepping into snow, wary and wide.

“Don’t stare. Here’s the deal. The food at the festival is compromised. While time’s on ice, cook fresh dishes. Swap everything on the field.”

The familiar voice rose behind her like a hearth rekindled. Nabelia turned and finally exhaled, as if setting down a tray too long carried. “Yes, Your Majesty!” Hand to heart, she bowed like a willow in wind, then hurried off, footsteps brisk as rain on eaves.

She’d been away from the castle for ages, waves of trouble washing the days thin, yet her craft as head maid remained sharp, like a knife that remembers the whetstone.

For now, it looked done, but Ouyang knew one thorn still pricked under silk. The time-stop only held this planet, like frost on a single leaf. Those drifting in the starry sea still moved, their clocks ticking like distant drums. If they looked down, they’d see the entire world bleached to grayscale, a pearl turned to ash. And the creatures of the Second Space couldn’t descend either; their time flowed like a river, while this world’s time sat like a frozen lake—the currents clashed.

So how to explain everything once the stillness thawed?

“How do I explain it?” Ouyang pondered, rubbing his brow like smudging charcoal. “Ugh, bothersome. I won’t. Anyone with opinions gets tossed into Glenza’s Skull Mountain and locked in the little black room.”

Inside Skull Mountain lay more than an Undead Research Lab; its heart was a giant cage, iron bones in stone flesh. For small-time offenders, a few days or weeks inside was just “the little black room,” like an elder making a brat face the wall. The First Cult’s Eternal Slumber branch had been breaking Wutong’s laws lately—tossing peels on the street, beating small animals, selling fakes in Miracle City—like sparrows pecking at temple corn.

For that lot, the little black room was routine, a monthly rain. If they didn’t spend a few days inside, they felt too shy to call themselves First Cult.

But for enemies from other worlds, locked for thousands of years and tortured daily, it was a prison with teeth. A little black room was family discipline; a prison was thunder laid on bones.

While Ouyang’s thoughts wandered like wind through bamboo, the ever-reliable head maid glided back and forth with trays, swapping food on the plaza like changing winter for spring.

“Your Majesty, all the food’s been replaced. What about these dishes? Toss them?” Nabelia had cleared out Dufei’s dark cuisine, those culinary abominations like storm clouds on porcelain. But how to dispose of them? You couldn’t feed this to anything that breathed. Burn it? Bury it? Since Dufei made them, she didn’t dare decide—he was one of the Ten Demon Kings, thunder both in title and fist.

“Bag it for me. I’ll need it later.” Ouyang hated to waste, eyes glinting like a fox at the henhouse door. Repurpose them—say, to trip up a certain redhead—delightful.

He snapped his fingers; the world exhaled and slipped back into color, like a kite string released. Most people felt nothing, like fish not noticing the tide. The god-tier sensed a snag in the weave, but only a peak god like the Hell Lord Christo could thread the needle and find cause. And if the sky falls, taller folks hold it up; the First Demon King and the Second Demon King, both Tiered Beings, watched the festival calm as mountains. That alone said it wasn’t grave.

Dufei, though, felt wrongness like grit in the teeth.

Wrong. Very wrong. Aupu lifted a slice of meat, lips parting like a gate. He chewed. Dufei waited for the spit-take, the foam, the collapse—like watching thunder roll in—and got nothing.

Was Aupu’s Old-God-tier power too thick-skinned, so his dark cuisine failed?

Dufei shifted his gaze like a hawk choosing new prey.

In a quiet corner, two girls wore matching cuts of clothing, two petals from the same world. No third shared their style in the Astral Plaza, which meant their world had only two representatives—only two gods under that sky.

“Mmm—so good, Jiu Wenxin. Lucky I dragged you here, or we’d miss this free feast,” one girl said, sweeping the table like a storm scouring leaves.

The other covered her face, shame flushing like sunset. “Tiko, enough. You’re embarrassing our world.”

Tiko waved it off, casual as a willow in spring. “Embarrassing our world? Please. Our world only has us two as gods; mortals don’t get seats at this festival. If you don’t tell, who’ll know? And this world’s the top high-civilization world. Look at these—cabbage, radish, tomato. Back home they’re divine items, like stars you can bite. A mortal could become a Demigod with one meal. When the wind shifts and we go back, chances to freeload like this will be rare.”

Hearing that, Jiu Wenxin felt words dry on her tongue, like ink drying mid-stroke.

“Not right, Tiko. With the World Nexus opening again, if the Demon Kings get the itch and host the ‘Nether War’ in our world after tens of thousands of years, won’t other gods learn about us?”

The Nether War began when a few Demon Kings got bored, shells tapping on a quiet pond. The First Demon King sensed Jiu Wenxin’s prayer and found that world, like a fisherman finding a hidden cove. Projections rained down. They fought hard and messy. The first Nether War had no winner; some Demon Kings got outplayed and tossed, some got trolled by scoundrels and stormed off. Glenza, the seeming winner, destroyed the winner’s token—the “Magic Crystal”—shattering the crown like glass. No crystal, no victor.

That was the first Nether War, a seed buried in ash.

Every century, the gods were supposed to stage a new one there. Between wars, the world had a hundred years to heal, a field lying fallow. The world’s gods had to guide civilization down the right road, like lanterns on a mountain path. If the world died from the war, who would host the next one?

So Jiu Wenxin and Tiko were picked as that world’s gods, clerks under Demon King bosses in fancy robes. War years cut threads between worlds, and the Nether War hadn’t run in ages.

Through those wars, their world was one of the few left untouched, a lantern shielded by cupped hands. For tens of thousands of years, they watched their people grow like trees across seasons. Once cut off, they knew their forcibly boosted power was too thin, like paper armor; they didn’t dare leave even to scout. They stayed home, still water in a clay bowl.

Ages passed. Mortals forgot the Nether War like snow melting into soil. For Jiu Wenxin and Tiko, it felt like yesterday’s chill in today’s wind.

Dufei ground his teeth, flint on steel. He stopped watching the girls and looked elsewhere.

Another corner held a couple pressed close, two swallows on one branch. Their clothes marked them as from the Aupu world. Dufei had seen them before; the memory was hazy like fog over a lake, but for a god, recall was easy as breathing.

They were Rex and Besha. Rex had been one of the Demon Kings, but he hadn’t gone off the deep end with the traitors, so he still breathed under this sky. Besha was a little princess of the Land of Light in the imperial era, sister to Pulis in Augustine’s team, swept with Augustine back to the Mythic Era like leaves caught in a whirl. After returning to the present, invited by the couple Morris and Belle, Rex took Besha to the Aupu world.

Pulis had weight in the ‘Source’ world, so Besha could’ve lived sweet as honey there. But not Rex. A traitor once, he lacked the courage to linger under that sun. Besha chose to go with him, and the two eloped like a pair of stars leaving their constellation.

Now Rex fed Besha bite by bite, voice soft as moss on stone.

Dufei wasn’t the FFF Brotherhood; he didn’t want to burn that dogged couple. His point was this: they ate his dark cuisine and stayed fine, like iron pots shrugging a storm.

Beside them sat Morris, descendant of Aupu’s God of War, once a hero whose name moved crowds like a drum. Now he was a winner at life. To his left was Belle, his old fiancée, soft as a spring bloom. To his right was Jiangxue, the blade-bright comrade from the Mythic Era who chose him in the end. Belle was already his fiancée—that part was fate stamped in wax.

Still, Dufei’s focus stayed true: why hadn’t his dark cuisine floored them like thunder?

At last, Dufei decided to taste his own poison. He picked a bite, chewed, let the flavor bloom like tea leaves in hot water. Familiar. Delicious.

“Wait… no.”

He was sure this wasn’t his. That familiar signature—he’d mooched meals at Ouyang’s castle for years, so Nabelia’s flavor was snow on his tongue. This was Nabelia’s cooking, clean as spring.

Nabelia wouldn’t dare swap his dishes on her own. If she did, only one answer fit—the order came from Ouyang.

As Dufei leveled a murderous gaze at Ouyang, sharp as a drawn bow, Ouyang laced his fingers with Xi’s. The two vanished like fireflies slipping into night, headed, by the look of it, for the Stellar Courtyard.