Lius, the 8,999th Demon King, who should have been dust for millennia.

He wasn’t truly resurrected. He was a “past self” the real Lius carved from the river of Time—the peak version of himself, honed like a blade.

In Ye Weibai’s eyes, the Lius before him wasn’t a past self so much as an obsession given bones and breath, like smoke congealing into a man.

Just as the words he spoke next—

“I want to see it for myself—” He looked at Ye Weibai, honest as a clear sky. “How strong the strongest of this era is—either kill or be killed.”

Maybe, when death’s blade kissed his neck, Lius cut out his peak to guard Augustine. Maybe for some other shore across a dark sea.

But he didn’t think of this—he forgot, like letters washed off by rain, scattered by wind that knows no names.

Back then he was unmatched, a single star over an empty sea; his goal was one and pure: to be the strongest in the World.

Because of that purity, Lius became the strongest of his age; even Augustine was only his disciple, a moon following a fiercer sun.

But the same purity turned the revived Lius into a shadow driven by fixation, a lantern-ghost blown by its own flame in a night field.

Back then Lius never saw it, but [It] saw crystal-clear, cold as ice on a winter river.

So [It] watched with frost-bitten eyes, and let Lius, the moment Augustine severed his head, trigger that power and slice out his peak years.

[It] couldn’t possibly miss his little gesture. [It] kept that “past self” for other uses, then shackled him inside Lius’s years like chains on a clock.

He could never step past the moment the true Lius died; he looped like a wheel, the hand snapping back to midnight again and again.

Exiled for a thousand years, and now, finally, he had a use—like a long-buried blade seeing daylight after endless dust.

...

“Humans are always—”

“So arrogant.”

[Z] World Layer and [Y], [X] looked no different on the skin, like three leaves cast from one mold.

Three Worlds stood like parallel copies, mirrors not only of stone and steel, but of beasts and men in their cages.

On [Z] and [Y], life stayed in relative stasis, like frost over a pond that still mirrors the moon.

It was “relative” because here’s the trick: from any point in Time, you look at [Y] and [Z], and they shift with [X], like clouds tied to wind.

Their change wasn’t continuous; it flickered frame by frame, a stop-motion flipbook bound to [X]’s pulse like a drumbeat.

And she stood right across from Ye Weibai, like a shadow cast across a lantern’s face.

The Ye Weibai of this World wasn’t the real Ye Weibai, yet he was a perfect copy of the Demon King—body, ragged bangs, and that hateful smile.

She and he were a fist apart, four eyes locked like crossed blades catching starlight.

“Humans are always this arrogant.” She said it lightly, then turned her head toward Lius, like a moon turning to a cloud.

In her long memory, this man stood out—the one beheaded by his own disciple at sixty, like an autumn stalk cut by frost.

If Augustine was an ant rising on tiptoe, then this man was an insect that truly leaped, a gnat springing toward the sun.

He was still a hundred thousand miles from the sky, yet he had nearly stepped beyond the word “human,” like a foot on a cloud.

A human who, with no borrowed crutch, wrenches himself off the human species—that’s a feat like plucking a star bare-handed.

But the pity is, what’s fragile in humans has never—

“Never been the shell,” she said, cool as snow. “It’s the soul.”

Sages aren’t always strong, but the strong are rarely fools; the wise may bend, the mighty choose where to break.

Lius had weighed the flaws of a past self; he even tried to send some memory along that current, like bottles in a river.

[It] snipped those memories with ease, like scissors through silk or a dagger through wet paper.

Thus, we have this Lius. [It] hardly did anything; [It] only held up a mirror to the real “Lius,” calm as a black lake.

That past-self Lius knew the memories meant for him were smashed by [It], yet he didn’t care; he let the pieces drift like ash.

Proud as Lius, he wouldn’t be steered by anyone—not even by his original self, not even by a voice in his own bones.

Even if he had received those memories and the order, he would not obey; he’d walk his own road through snow and thorn.

That is Lius.

“That is humanity,” she said. “Arrogant, foolish, headstrong, without awe.”

“But, indeed—very useful.” She smiled, a knife catching light in a quiet room.

...

Xiuze knew what his junior brother was about to do. The weight in his chest sank like iron in deep water.

Qi would follow their master’s rule, which was also his, a riverbed carved by years. But he couldn’t follow now.

He couldn’t. He lived by a different set of lines, grain running a different way through the same wood.

People differ. Some stride to death with drums beating; some—

“Even if it means bowing low and losing face, they still want to live.”

His red-and-white cloak dragged over polished black starstone, and the Pope walked, slow as a falling tide through a cavern.

His tall frame seemed small in the vast palace; even the golden papal crown couldn’t graft more majesty onto him.

Silver poured from the glass dome and flooded the hall like moonwater spreading over salt flats.

Murmuring under his breath, he crossed that silver, as if bearing mountains and seas; his back slowly bent, a bow to the sky.

“Those who go to die are enough. The World, perhaps—”

Creak—

The great doors opened on their own, like ribs parting. He stepped out of the moonlight.

He entered a corridor where white sorcerous flames licked both walls like hungry wolves in snow.

The twin lights shattered his shadow into four and more, like mirrors kicked to shards.

He spoke softly, as if persuading someone behind the wind, voice trailing like smoke.

“The World might need a wretch like me who clings to life.”

He didn’t voice the last line; his lips shaped it like a silent prayer sinking into ash.

Before him, a knight who had hurried over knelt on one knee to the Pope, as quiet as a fallen stone.

“Go,” the Pope said, voice thin as paper. “To stay alive.”

The tall knight in black armor dipped his head; it trembled a fraction, like a leaf in late autumn.

When he spoke, his voice was dull and hoarse, as if fire had seared the throat and left cinders.

“I alone am enough.”

“No.” The Pope shook his head, like a tree in a cold wind. “Not enough. Not heavy enough.”

“[It] is watching. Since we’ve chosen to enter the game, we show our side; we don’t hoard our cards.”

The knight was silent for a long beat, like dusk holding its breath, then said, “Ilena just married.”

“Exactly because of that—” Xiuze said slowly, every word like a stone dropped in water. “Since you chose not to live for yourselves, then, when it’s time, die for those things.”

“You knew this when you chose to become the Church of the Divine’s Apocalypse Knights, didn’t you? My companion.”