The split between out-of-spec and in-spec is simple: in-spec moves under the universe’s script, out-of-spec holds the pen.

Out-of-spec can scribe rules like ink across the sky, even bend the Supreme Law.

If the Supreme Law senses the warp, it will smooth the page and correct the line.

Being able to tamper with the Supreme Law means out-of-spec is absurdly strong, a storm that rewrites coastlines.

Ouyang and Aililais were in-spec.

Against two out-of-spec, they were leaves in a gale.

From the first bell, the fight was a crush.

Ouyang didn’t aim to win.

He only needed time—time for Ou Xinxue to reach Xi, and time for Glorious Moon to finish.

A sour ache rose before thought.

He wiped blood from his lip and stared at a starfield gone silent, like a cemetery of suns.

For a heartbeat, a thousand feelings surged like tides.

“You look like you’re waiting on something.”

A white-haired angel hovered, cold as winter light.

Only one pair of wings arched behind her.

In this era, an angel’s strength often tracks wing-count, feather to power.

Not always, but mostly, people judge by wings.

Long ago, ancient angels wore only one pair.

No frills, no peacock tails.

Like the one before him—one pair, pure white, feathers like fresh snow.

She looked no different from the weakest two-wing.

Yet she trounced six-winged angels, and twelve-winged legends weren’t fit to carry her shoes.

“If you’re waiting for the Supreme Law to step in, give up.”

Another voice cut through the void.

Black wings unfurled.

A fallen angel spoke like nightfall.

They were both angels, mirrors of light and shadow.

One white, a banner of purity.

One black, the emblem of fall.

One was a survivor from the Divine Continent.

The other, a refugee out of the Netherworld.

When the Divine Continent shattered, the white angel didn’t stir.

To her, first-tier brats were wind-chop on a lake.

As long as the continent wasn’t erased, as long as battle didn’t wash onto her sleeping ground, she wouldn’t lift a hand.

Later, the people of the Other Shore grew into a storm front.

When she woke to it, they already held six out-of-spec titans.

Even if she teamed with the fallen angel, light and dark overlapping like twin tides, it wasn’t just one plus one.

Yet they still couldn’t face six out-of-spec from the Other Shore.

Ouyang was a stray spark near dry grass.

So was Xi.

But Aurora the Goddess of Aurora was out-of-spec like them.

That made Ouyang the easier prey.

Killing him would bar the one who could reopen that door and call back the gods of the Other Shore.

It would also crack Aurora’s calm.

A rattled Aurora is easier to hunt than moonlight.

Ouyang understood the black angel’s “give up.”

With this much noise, the Supreme Law should have intervened.

Letting beings like this brawl unchecked is a comet strike across countless civilizations.

Since the Eighth Epoch of the Other Shore ended and that earth-shaking event settled, two Tiered Beings in this starfield weren’t allowed to meet.

For out-of-spec, that leash meant nothing.

They hid their tracks like fog over a river; the Supreme Law struggled to catch them.

That rule existed for two reasons.

First, to keep Tiered Beings from gathering and staging another Other Shore.

Second, to keep them from clashing.

If two Tiered Beings fought with no handbrake, countless civilizations would be buried like cities under ash.

Early in the Ninth Epoch, Tiered Beings camped on their own turf, quiet emperors under familiar constellations.

By mid Ninth Epoch, things shifted.

The leash on Tiered Beings loosened like a frayed rope.

Now, at the Ninth Epoch’s end, Tiered Beings wage war.

The Supreme Law feels dead, a lighthouse gone dark.

Black angel and white angel hemmed in Ouyang and Aililais.

No rule blocked them.

Yet they didn’t strike the killing blow.

“After long ages, that broken fool of a rule finally reaches its end…”

Aililais might not know why.

Ouyang did.

The Supreme Law, too, walks toward dusk.

The universe has a lifespan; so does the Supreme Law.

What governs now is a remnant from a previous cosmic epoch, written by the prior Manager.

After that epoch’s brutal war, the Supreme Law didn’t die with the universe.

A thread remained.

In the new epoch, it kept watch, a thin line across the sky.

But it’s broken, scarred with wounds that won’t heal.

It held on until it found a new Manager.

Then it could finally let go.

If it were intact, it would have watched the new Manager grow, slow as trees.

It might have raised Ouyang into a rival of the previous Manager.

Reality was crueler.

Its injuries won’t last until Ouyang can take the mantle.

In the years ahead, no Supreme Law will bind the sea.

Everything will roil into chaos—unless a new Manager arrives and writes a new Supreme Law.

“By the way, Black Lady, White Lady—are you sure you won’t kill me?

If so, I’m heading home for dinner!”

The words left his mouth like a pebble out of a sling.

He wanted to slap himself.

They didn’t know why they weren’t killing him.

If they were happy to stall, he should’ve let the clock run.

His mouth lit a flare in the dark.

Aililais stared at his pig-headed teammate.

Half-dead, he still wanted to split Ouyang’s skull with an axe and see what was inside.

“Red-hair, hear me out… I didn’t mean it!

You two in black and white, don’t take it seriously.

Peace is precious.

Why don’t the four of us sit down and talk?

Play some mahjong—very harmonious…”

Bang.

Ouyang was swatted into some unknown corner of the sky.

Aililais took a hit too.

He was truly innocent.

Because he’d met Ouyang a few times, black and white angels marked him.

Now, because Ouyang misspoke, he got dragged into the pit again.

“Ouyang, you idiot!!!”

“Black Lady… White Lady… that’s us?”

The black angel blinked, curious as a cat.

“Is that… a name?”

The white angel stayed blank, face like unbroken snow.

“That guy’s wrapped in a massive causal law.

Kill him, and that web lands on us.

Can you shoulder it?”

The black angel sighed like wind through ruins.

The white angel shook her emotionless head.

Killing Ouyang was easy.

Surviving the karma wasn’t.

Elsewhere, Ouyang clawed out of a dead star’s core, a miner of doom, and yelled at the sky.

“You two in black and white, just wait.

When I become Manager, you won’t escape.

I’ll have you bringing tea every day…”

A fist erased him again.

He flew so fast he couldn’t tell if it was the black-winged demoness or the blank-faced white-wing.

When the haze cleared, he found himself rammed into another dead star’s depths.

Aililais lay not far away.

“Yo, Red-hair bro, two drifters under the same cold sky…”

He barely finished before Aililais punched him.

A bruise bloomed around Ouyang’s eye like a dark crescent.

“Red-hair, I thought we were brothers, life and death!

But you… fine, I won’t hold back!!!”

Ouyang took the opening and kicked Aililais in the crotch.

Then he ran like a startled deer.

Aililais roared behind him.

At a time like this, they started infighting.

Even the angels watching felt speechless, like statues in a storm.

They were torn.

Their plan had been simple.

Kill Ouyang, rattle Aurora, then take her while she reeled.

But once they moved, they saw the size of the causal law coiled in Ouyang’s soul.

Kill him, and be ready to die with him.

Spare him, and they’d offended him; leaving him alone was planting a thornbush.

Watching them fight, the angels were happy to sit with popcorn.

“Ouyang, stop!

If I don’t butcher you, I’ll cut off your little bird, soak it in sugar syrup, and let ten thousand ants eat it…”

The threat crawled over Ouyang’s skin like ice.

He shivered.

He flew and spotted the two angels ahead.

He cried, face crumpling like rain, “Angel sisters, help!

That guy’s gone crazy…”

The two angels froze.

What kind of play was this?

An enemy asking them for help?

Even after endless ages, they’d never seen a twist like this.

A comrade turned foe; a foe turned lifeline.

They glanced at each other.

Help, or not?