Aililais tore after him like a storm at his back, and Ouyang shot forward like a desperate flicker of light.

The gap shrank, tension like a drawn bowstring. As Ouyang neared the Black Angel and the White Angel, Aililais closed in. “Big sisters, help! I swear I won’t oppose you again!” He was a wreck, the swagger gone; panic washed his face like a man hunted by the whole world.

That sight tugged at them; for a heartbeat, both Angels almost moved to shield him.

If not for what came next, everything might have gone the way they imagined. But the world doesn’t do ifs. Ouyang fled on a line that skimmed past the two Angels, and in that breath Aililais overtook him.

“Void… Grand Funeral!”

“Trace the Root!”

They focused fire on the White Angel, a sudden strike like a dagger from the dark. Neither Angel expected it; or rather, Ouyang’s acting fooled them both. The blast bloomed at once, the center collapsing into nothingness—like a star detonating—its glare bleaching a swath of sky.

Void Grand Funeral was Ouyang’s current ultimate: the essence of all things rising from primal nothing, this strike digging straight for the root.

But it wasn’t enough.

An out‑of‑spec existence isn’t a joke. Even a root‑level attack couldn’t truly wound her as he was. Aililais’s Trace the Root carved out the opening Ouyang needed.

Most beings—born outside pure chaos or peculiar exceptions—grow from weak to strong. Aililais pulled the White Angel back to when she was small and fragile. Ouyang’s Void Grand Funeral hit that younger state; even now, as an out‑of‑spec being, she couldn’t come away unscarred.

World‑shattering ripples spread, a dead sky suddenly bright with ruin and light, like frost and flame dancing on an empty sea.

With the ambush landed, Ouyang and Aililais didn’t dare linger. They sprinted for the far horizon, running like leaves before a gale. They knew flight meant nothing before out‑of‑spec power, but people live like this—fight even when hope is ash. At least, when death comes, you can face your life and say—you tried, you struggled.

While he ran, Ouyang felt a killing intent he’d never known, a tide that drowned breath. Even at a distance, it pressed on his chest like an invisible mountain.

“I might’ve messed up…”

A white beam lanced from the end of the stars, ignoring time and space, a concept‑arrow aimed at his heart. Aililais glanced back just in time to see Ouyang’s body speared by a pillar of light.

Pierced, Ouyang let out a helpless, crooked smile, bitterness like winter rain. He hadn’t expected his ambush to kick a hornet hive. Before, no matter how the Black Angel and White Angel struck, they held back. But this move burned that restraint to ash—especially for the White Angel. Void Grand Funeral wasn’t a prank.

That blow, landing when she was young, had dealt damage beyond imagining to who she is now. Yet out‑of‑spec is out‑of‑spec. She hadn’t guarded against Ouyang and Aililais; his ambush landed; her power wasn’t even half recovered.

Even so, Ouyang’s all‑out strike couldn’t make her fall. Unprepared or not, he couldn’t cast a second Void Grand Funeral in time.

When she saw Ouyang’s “plea,” the White Angel had been willing—just a little—to talk. She never imagined it was his stagecraft. What truly stoked her fury wasn’t the wound; it was the lie. She’d wanted, if possible, to talk Ouyang and Aililais down. If killing was off the table, then you try to soften the line.

The sudden betrayal shattered a heart that had been still as a well.

“I… hate lies.”

Because of that lie, she stepped into the dark, ready to bear a colossal burden of karma, no matter the cost.

In that knife‑edge instant, Ouyang saw something he’d never noticed—the vast, unthinkable web of cause and effect.

Everyone tied to the world carries their own karma. Since he’d sounded the hymn of the world, Ouyang hadn’t felt any on himself; when Ouxinxue appeared, he sensed only her thin thread of karma, nothing more.

Now he understood. It wasn’t that he had none; he simply couldn’t see it.

After the White Angel—bloodied, deadpan no longer—launched that annihilating strike, the immense karma shifted onto her.

A single sword—cut through spacetime and sheared off her wing. Upstream along the river of spacetime, countless silhouettes flickered, like a prosperous age reflected on water. Sweet wind‑bells chimed eerily in the stars, and phantom snow drifted across the void. A demon eye born of chaos and order gazed from a distant era on this age.

“You… even you—so what? Across the river of time, do you think we’ll fear you?”

The Black Angel stepped in front of the gravely wounded White Angel. But under the falling snow, her body began to shrink. Not just her; the White Angel’s clipped form dwindled too.

Left unchecked, they’d regress to infants, then return to the first nothing, to a time before they ever were.

The Black Angel bit down hard. She tore off one of her own wings, blood scattering like red rain. The wing became a long sword and cut the years. They refused the pull of temporal power—but the wing‑sword shattered as it struck.

They lived.

The Black Angel and White Angel: one with both wings severed, the other with only ragged feathers left. Time rewound their bodies to childhood. Any further and they would slip back into nothing. Thank the Black Angel’s severed wing for breaking the years. Yet the price fixed their forms there; at a glance, neither looked older than ten. The one‑winged Black Angel held the broken‑winged White Angel close, two injured birds in a silent embrace.

“You go… I’ll bear this karma alone.” The usually deadpan White Angel touched the Black Angel’s single wing, her face human now, soft for once. But the Black Angel wouldn’t leave. She wrapped the White Angel in her arms.

The vast karma wasn’t simple; alone, the White Angel couldn’t live through it. Even with the Black Angel, the odds were thin. Still, the years stretch long. When everyone you care for fades, what’s the meaning of living alone?

Endless eras passed. They ruled age after age, watched worlds fall, forged immortal myths by hand. Standing atop everything, what regrets were left?

“You were too rash… forget it, saying so now is pointless. We’ll carry that karma together.” The Black Angel knew the White Angel’s deadpan nature; she rarely acted on impulse. That move was wrong. But as she said—none of it mattered now.

The White Angel looked to the distance as Ouyang’s body thinned into nothing.

“Sorry… just now… I lost control a little.” Her final apology reached him. And when it touched him, Ouyang understood. Too late.

He tried to speak, but he was already gone from this sky.

The moment Ouyang vanished, the colossal karma detonated.

“Void Grand Funeral!”

A cold voice rang out. The Black Angel and White Angel shut their eyes in despair. Their bodies, like Ouyang’s, unraveled into nothing. Only Aililais, who’d watched it all, stood frozen, mind a tangled haze. The flood of information had been too much. Especially that last Void Grand Funeral—cold voice or not, he heard it. It was Ouyang’s voice.

But hadn’t Ouyang already become nothing? What was that final Void Grand Funeral?

And from the level of power, the last one was worlds beyond the strike Ouyang used before. Was Ouyang dead, or alive?

While Aililais spiraled in thought, a girl stepped onto the battlefield, twin black ponytails draped over her shoulders, strolling through the dead sky like a shadow on snow.

“I’m still late… even risking exposure couldn’t rewind this. The karma meant for that guy got triggered early. Don’t tell me this has nothing to do with him.”

As the girl muttered, Xi finally arrived at the field.

“This is the plan you promised? Truly… disappointing.” The proud queen’s voice was ice as she faced the girl. “Jiling, if you don’t give me an explanation, this doesn’t end short of death.”

Jiling turned slowly. “Sorry. This wasn’t in the plan. Right now, the only thing that can fatally hurt that bastard is the karma anchored to Ouyang. That last Void Grand Funeral was his future self using karma to reach back and strike the past. In the original plan, that hit was reserved for that turtle. I didn’t expect two little brats to ruin it.

Honestly, after sensing Ouyang’s karma, those two shouldn’t have gone this far.”

“So you planned to sacrifice him from the start?” Xi’s temper flared like dry grass catching flame. Litian arrived just in time and barred her path, or she’d have rushed Jiling crown‑first. Ouyang was already like this, and Jiling spoke as if it were weather.

“How fiery… looks like you care about him. Good for him—glad someone kept him company while I was gone. But rest easy…” Jiling set her right hand over her heart. “My life is tied to his. As long as I’m alive, he won’t vanish for good.”