“Hey, you bat up front, freeze. Put the camera down and we’re still friends!”

“Those few with grim, oily grins—come over, take a beating, and I won’t keep score!”

“And you, Lin Yue. Stop posing as a passerby; moonlight doesn’t fool me.”

Ouyang tore after them like a storm; they scattered like birds into night. After the cover blew, the First Cult bolted fastest, wind under their heels.

When Ouyang found them, they were toasting on the moon, cups clinking like cold bells.

They had ambushed him, then flaunted it with a lunar party. Rage pounded his ribs like drums; he almost spat blood.

Back in the Starry Citadel he’d been pranked plenty; that tempered his skin like old leather. Without another word, he called the Sword that Pierces Cause and Effect, intent on throwing them into the little black room.

But the First Cult’s escape art was unmatched under heaven, smoke on a breeze. In a blink, every silhouette was gone.

Left behind, the Moon Goddess and the Ancestor of Blood Night stared, eyes like empty lakes. They’d heard legends across the Other Shore and the myriad starfields, but seeing it was another sky.

As the daze lifted, the fragile pact between the Ancestor of Blood Night and the Moon Goddess cracked like thin ice. Kanofia sold the Moon Goddess out in a breath, tossing every blame like stones onto her back.

The Moon Goddess opened her mouth to argue. Kanofia flicked a rope of shadow, bound her like a moth in silk, then ran without a backward glance.

The little boat of friendship flipped with one wave. Kanofia sold her ally clean, salt on fresh snow.

After tonight’s cooperation, Lin Yue’s hostility toward Kanofia had eased like frost under dawn. Now it froze solid again.

She regretted ever thinking, that bat wasn’t half bad.

Where was the script where rivals spar for years, no one prevails, and respect turns enemies into confidants? That rain never fell.

“Bastard. Dead bat. Give me back my feelings!” Her shout cracked like thunder.

To be fair, Kanofia’s sellout was shrewd, a fox crossing dew. If they ran together, Ouyang would hunt one to the end.

Leave Lin Yue immobilized, and Ouyang wouldn’t abandon her to chase Kanofia. Leave a tether, and you get away.

Reality said otherwise. Kanofia had overthought it.

Ouyang ignored Lin Yue and chased Kanofia like a hawk on a ribbon of wind. Why?

Because someone held a photo of him. That sad face from a heartbeat ago had been captured like frost in glass.

If that photo reached the First Cult, their paparazzi chief would spin a storm for the ages.

From the moon, Ouyang surged after Kanofia, relentless, like tide gnawing a cliff.

Midway along the route between Eternal Slumber and the moon stood a waystation, lanterns like quiet stars. Ouyang shouted ahead, voice like a bell, “Augustine, stop that bat for me!”

Augustine, the god who oversees day and night, worked most days in that waystation, tending cycles like turning pages.

It didn’t help much; most of Eternal Slumber sat in eternal day or endless night, sand fixed in the hourglass. Still, he did his duty with steady hands.

Inside the waystation, Augustine was planning a Sunshine Coast gathering with Caro, Plis, and other veterans of the Twelve Divine Demon Artifacts hunt. Hearing his teacher, he bolted out like a startled deer.

He froze. That bat was a Tiered Being, a mountain under storm. Did he dare to block her?

While Augustine quailed, the White Cat on his head rolled its eyes like marbles. In a blink, it appeared before Kanofia and cut her path, fur like snow in moonlight.

“White Cat, beautiful work. I’ll get you a platter of top-grade salted fish.” Ouyang’s mood rose like sun after rain; the scarcely noticed cat had seized its moment.

But—

“Fat cat, get lost!”

Kanofia slapped the White Cat, sending it flying into some random corner of the starry sky, a leaf in gale.

Seeing that brutality, Augustine hunched his neck like a turtle. His choice had been right; rush in, and he’d end like that cat.

“Teacher, it’s not that I won’t help,” Augustine whispered, voice like a thin reed, “I just don’t have the skill.”

Watching Kanofia escape, Ouyang didn’t spare him. “Stop making excuses. After tomorrow’s party, copy the current doctrine ten thousand times.”

“Not a single punctuation mark wrong. No divine power. Write it word by word.”

“Teacher…”

“Shut up.”

“But, Teacher…”

“What? You got opinions?”

“No…”

“Then shut up.”

“But—”

“Shut up.”

“Teacher, someone’s coming…”

“Shu—huh?”

Ouyang turned. Someone stood there, watching him with curiosity bright as starlight. Two others stood at his sides.

One was an old friend, Yiyue Qianliu, the other his sister, Yiyue Qianxue. In the middle stood the long-vanished Emperor of the Eternal Empire—Yiyue.

“Well now, back at last?” Ouyang waved, casual as wind through pine. By seniority, that emperor owed him an uncle’s greeting.

Back then, Yiyue led the remnants of the Eternal Empire to settle old scores, a blade carried into rain. For lives without end, centuries and millennia pass like a single year.

Yiyue nodded, then felt the out-of-spec aura coiling around Ouyang, pressure like deep ocean. He sighed, voice like old bells.

“The Seven Watchers of legend,” he said. “Aside from the fallen Void Watcher of that distant age, the other six were already out-of-spec by the Eighth Epoch.”

“Now the last Watcher has finally reached that height.”

If not for those old storms, Ouyang might have stood at the absolute peak back in the Eighth Epoch, a star among stars.

There are no ifs under heaven. Once the weakest Watcher, he now stood where his companions stood a whole epoch ago.

“Congratulations. Your title as Watcher finally matches your strength.” Yiyue bowed with the highest rite, moonlight pure in the gesture. “Your Grace, the Void Messenger.”

Yiyue’s words reminded everyone. Before them stood not “His Majesty,” but “His Grace.”

From some random corner of the starry sky, the White Cat scampered back and meowed, a note like rain on tile. Only then did it notice Ouyang’s weight.

To a being that hasn’t yet sung the world’s anthem, all Tiered Beings feel like bottomless seas. An Ancient God can punch apart a planet; a Primordial Deity can punch apart a planet.

From god-tier eyes, you can’t see where a Primordial Deity exceeds an Ancient God. It’s all tempest.

The White Cat had that problem. First tier or third, they all looked equally terrifying, thunder without edges.

On closer sense it caught a difference, a thin thread against night. Out-of-spec beings earn that name because they can, in part, rewrite cosmic rules, ink on the sky.

Without the restraint of the Supreme Law, they would be the ones who write those rules, pen scratching the firmament.

First tier gains the Supreme Law’s blessing and the stars’ chorus; third-tier out-of-spec makes both Supreme Law and stars flinch, thunder held back.

So both stars and the Supreme Law push back, a faint rejection like cold wind. Even with rules collapsed today, the White Cat felt Ouyang slightly out of tune with the world.

Once sure, the White Cat sprang onto Ouyang’s head and sprawled like a hat. “Boss Ouyang, put me under your wing!”

Under your wing?

Ouyang looked up askance, eyes like knives. Was that really a plea? He slapped the cat off his head, crisp as a wave.

He didn’t believe the fool furball wanted protection. If it did, would it dare squat on his head?

“Miaoo~ Boss, that’s my exclusive etiquette,” the White Cat said, solemn as a monk but lying like mist. “Those I approve, I squat on their head.”

“I even stomp hard with my paws. That’s the highest rite.”

Ouyang slapped the deadpan liar again, sent it sailing like dandelion fluff. Then he asked Yiyue to join tomorrow’s gathering.

With that done, Ouyang went back to hunting those clowns, wind in his stride.

Sadly, he searched every corner of Eternal Slumber, caves and coasts, but found no trace, only dust and echo. It was as if they’d vanished together.

Unwilling to accept it, Ouyang hunted through the night until the party began. At Sunshine Coast, when he met them again, he finally learned where they’d hidden.