While all this was unfolding, Lilith and Erin had pieced together most of this world. With Arcane Power veiling them and bodies woven from soul-light, no one noticed them, like wind slipping through reeds, and their moves turned swift and clean.

“Looks like we’ve got the lay of it, Miss Erin.”

Lilith walked through an upside-down world, like a reflection on a rippling lake. It was a fissure in the Tianyan Barrier, a hairline crack she found by tailing people and things like a shadow stalking a lantern’s glow.

To Lilith’s seasoned eye, that was good news, like dawn leaking under a door.

The Tianyan Barrier had always been near its limit. When they first used it, they were just testing the ice with a toe. If they didn’t gather Adrian’s soul in time, if it scattered like ash in wind, their hope of bringing him back would be gone like smoke.

After nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine reincarnations, a mortal may glimpse the Heavenly Dao and rise like a crane through cloud. So the old books say. Lilith and Saki never worked out what truly comes after. But this crack differed from all before. It even let Lilith recover a good deal of strength, like rain soaking parched earth. That meant something inside the barrier had started to collapse from within, like rot in a beam.

That collapse bore fruit on the branch named Changqing.

“The nobles here aren’t any better,” Erin said, face tight as drawn bowstring. “Killing and looting, fire and blood, just dressed in different robes.”

Her look soured when she thought of Young Master Li. A straight-laced knight like her had no smile for that kind. And only a noble of her special stripe would think so. Most of Ankanduin’s lords would shun a ‘mud‑legged’ Changqing like mud on silk.

But the Northern Clan was different. They began as warriors scratching life from a bitter land, like wolves in snow. To live, they stood shoulder to shoulder with commoners, and from that frost grew the War God line of the North.

The Grand Duke of the North taught Erin to know the line between noble and peasant, like a fence in a field, yet walk closer to the people, like fire shared in winter.

“I don’t know why Master’s deepest memories look like this,” Lilith said, a smile like a sliver of moon. “But from the crack, Master’s personal memories are stirring. With a bit more shock, this cycle ends.”

She shook her head, amused. Her view of nobles was half in light, half in shadow. The nasty ones, Master always chased out like dogs in a temple. Those with honeyed tongues? She liked them no better, like lilies hiding thorns.

“This world is a little too ordinary,” she murmured, a calm pond with no wind.

It’s not that this world is low on magic. In Adrian’s memories, there were worlds where spells twisted space like potters twist clay. Across the cycles she and Saki had read, none felt this plain. So plain it rang hollow, like a drum with a split skin.

“Too plain… That man called Changqing already fights like a storm,” Erin judged. “In our world, a normal man with Arcane Power or battle‑qi at low level would still lose to him. By pure technique, he’s a top grandmaster or a monk.”

She wasn’t wrong, by their world’s measure. But Arcane Power and battle‑qi don’t just smash like hammers. Arcane Power becomes spell arrays; it flowers into magic. Battle‑qi takes shape; it melts into technique. So arts bearing Arcane Power or battle‑qi tower over mortal craft, like mountains over fields. There’s no point comparing.

From a mortal’s angle, though, Changqing’s body was iron under silk.

“We can’t borrow this world’s tech,” Lilith sighed, breath like mist on glass. “So many past worlds were ahead of us. Saki and I wanted to crib their engines or arcane frameworks. But whenever we pushed in, the Tianyan Barrier bristled, like ice creaking before it breaks. After too many close cracks, we had to stop.”

Outside, the demon war had burned past the point of control, like a forest fire riding the wind.

The only reason the line still held was the Empire, a great machine grinding on behind the front. Without demon legions crossing planes like tides through gates, if the Empire started a war, who could halt their iron hooves but that vast ancient empire in the East?

War is a nation’s weight thrown like a spear. Economy, politics, military—once war drums beat, the gears turn, smoke rises, and it’s more than burning coin. They rally small states, levy men, forge weapons, hire every blade they can, sign treaties they might later burn, and keep every artery of supply flowing like rivers in flood.

After millennia of hoarding strength, the Empire had become something to fear, like a mountain looming over plains. In Adrian’s generation, if he hadn’t shrugged off the crown, then with Norlon, that old monster still hard as iron, and Adrian, the future emperor who won hearts by war merit, the Empire would’ve had a real shot at unifying the continent.

When the Church’s vassal states moved against Adrian, the Empire’s claws already flexed in the dark like tigers in brush. So when the demon legions first fell, losses were heavy, but they bought time to stretch a long defense like a wall of shields. Then experts marched out, hunting Demon Lords and other apex forces like hawks stooping on wolves.

But Lilith had seen the Empire’s edge dull. On the front, she felt it in her bones. The Empire’s power still bears the war, but the bow is drawn to breaking. There must be an outside force strong enough to smash the demons’ roots in this world, like yanking weeds out with the soil, or this war won’t end.

That force could be a person, a legion, even a nation. On this, Lilith and Saki agreed for once—the world needs a new kind of technology, a spark to light dry tinder.

While Adrian slept without self, Lilith didn’t stand still. She sprinted. The knowledge he once filtered out or planned to teach later, she now handled like a craftsman handling tools.

To revive someone, you first master necromancy. Necromancy was born from nature magic. Nature magic splits like a river into countless streams. These tangled branches weave the mage’s whole tree. A proper mage is a walking library, a tower of books under a robe.

For that, Lilith borrowed the power of the shade inside her, a whisper coiled like smoke.

Power beyond mortal reach is a nectar that stings. If she paid with enough reason and will, she believed that inner figure could even defeat Solomon, like lightning splitting an ancient oak. That’s not blind worship of power. That shade had burst with that level before.

If Saki hadn’t grabbed her back in time, Lilith might’ve already let her mind go, dug Solomon up, and whipped his corpse under a blood moon.

So she learned what unbalanced power truly means—it breaks scales like a hammer shattering glass.

“I’ve only seen this kind of force on Nameless,” she mused, eyes like cold stars. “Maybe Master was chosen by the Mage‑God for that same spark. Pity the Mage‑God won’t act.”

She had hoped, like any common soul looks to a lighthouse, for the Mage‑God Nameless to strike. But the symbol of humanity’s greatest power vanished at the war’s dawn like a dragon into cloud. The strong of the human realms hoped too.

Nameless never showed.

“Who knows the cause,” Erin said, voice like a low drum. “Maybe it ties to Emperor Loren, and that’s why Lady Nameless stays her hand…”

Even she couldn’t convince herself. At Nameless’s realm, you can hide in a pocket space like a pearl in a shell. Why bleed for strangers? To be blunt, toward unrelated commoners, not striking them down is mercy enough.

A power like Nameless would be welcomed by any camp, like a comet falling into any sky. Why chain yourself to a human ship already taking water?

Many nonhuman races once under human rule thought the same and raised banners like weeds after rain. Of course, by their strength, resisting the Empire is hard. They can only make trouble where the Empire’s eye doesn’t reach. If they meet a real Imperial legion, the Empire shows them why their ancestors were chained, like thunder teaching fear.

The strength of Imperial legions is measured in demon corpses, black mountains under red suns.

“Who knows,” Lilith said. “The Empire faces wolves without and knives within. The quarrels haven’t burst, but when they do, the water won’t flow back into the bowl. I don’t expect today’s human legions to beat the demons’ planar invasion. Those gates anchored at the Origin? Even together, we couldn’t break them. The Empire’s current powerhouses have no hope.”

She snorted, breath sharp as frost. She didn’t believe the Empire could defeat the demon legions. It isn’t about skill. It’s disparity, in quality and quantity, like a brook before the sea.

From forbidden lore, Lilith learned the demon plane’s truth.

Demons aren’t human. Humans take long seasons to grow. It takes at least ten years to temper a child into a soldier, like steel folded again and again. He must grow safely to youth and survive the war whole to count as a blade.

Demons are born warriors, like wolves whelped with fangs. Most aren’t born the human way. A few high demons do, but most spawn from the chaotic Origin, like sparks from a forge. Low demons start stronger than humans and cost fewer resources, the Origin’s best expendables.

Humans need time like crops need rain. Seven years since the last big war only turns a boy to a man. If not for the Empire’s deep coffers, this demon war wouldn’t have lasted a year. By now, men fit for the line are thin as winter geese.

With current human strength and tech, large battles start with mages pounding from afar like thunderheads rolling. But demons field mages too, and their spells strike harder, so that edge gets shaved away like bark under a knife. While the mages duel in the void, legions crash below like tides on rock.

Set aside the great engines of war. It takes three human infantry to surround and kill one ordinary demon, a loss ratio that gnaws hope like rust. Demons replenish faster than rains in spring. Kill a legion today, and two cross tomorrow, then three. Human‑wave tactics won’t win this sea.

The Empire calls itself a land of many people, a river with many tributaries. Before the Origin, it’s a puddle in the sun. The line holds only because many greats strike from above, and because top‑tier hunters like Lilith and Saki ambush demon legions like tigers in tall grass. Without that, the front would crumble like sandbanks in flood.

“At least we need more top‑tier power,” Lilith said, eyes steady as stone. “Once Master returns, the demon legions won’t be a problem.”

She didn’t worry for the Empire. She held this line only for Adrian, like a lantern held for one traveler in the night. Whether imperial folk lived or died meant little. Call her blind to doom, call her ignorant of lips and teeth; before they judge, they should ask what the Empire ever gave her but cold wind.

Erin understood. Hearing her, she could only sigh, like a harp string plucked and left to fade.

Uncertain at heart, she held only scattered shards of the past, moonlight on ripples.

Adrian's grasp ran deep as a well, so she didn't dare pronounce judgment.

But the Empire was different in her eyes; if it fell, winter would gnaw the North, and her people would bleed.

It was the Imperial legions holding the front like a wall of shields that eased the vise closing from two sides.

If she could bring Adrian back, she would fight to seize a dawn for them.

Though each kept her own counsel, they met at one river: Adrian must return.

At the very least, they wished him back as a storm-forged blade, a strength to hurl into the fray.