Before heading out to sea, Leira, the Lady of Mists, had warned Anbaixiu that the goddesses he had crossed were banding together once more to stir up trouble.
Thus, the moment he confirmed that these monsters were tracking him, he knew Shar was behind it—or at least one of the culprits.
After receiving knowledge of the Shadow Weave from Shar, Anbaixiu's location could be pinpointed by the Goddess of Darkness at any time. Such was the price of obtaining forbidden lore. That was also why, after swindling Shar the last time, Anbaixiu hadn't even bothered returning her artifact dagger. Since she could already track him, keeping one more artifact hardly made a difference.
Now, seeing Shar's smug demeanor, Anbaixiu remained unperturbed. This cabal of goddesses talked a big game, but every single time, all they did was deliver free handouts.
The main reason was that each of them was busy pursuing her own agenda.
Chaos could not overcome Order, and Evil could not defeat Good—not because of any inherent disparity in power between the alignments, but because one side could unite completely while the other was left fighting piecemeal, forced even during occasional alliances to worry about being stabbed in the back by their own partners.
Consequently, an alliance of evil goddesses was flimsy enough to collapse at the slightest prod, hardly sturdier than a paper wall.
Still, he had to at least find out who was coming to deliver gifts this time.
"Lady of the Night, our previous cooperation was quite pleasant," Anbaixiu said to Shar. "You wouldn't want the details of our partnership getting out to others, would you?"
"Threatening me?" Shar's face of black mist pressed right against Anbaixiu's countenance as she sneered, "You are growing increasingly irreverent toward the gods, little skeleton. I hope you can always maintain this delicate balance, for the moment you overstep even an inch, my dear friends can hardly wait to bring divine retribution down upon you."
Anbaixiu disregarded the threat entirely. Countless people hurled curses at the gods. Back when religious fanaticism peaked in Ryan, someone had smashed a statue of Velsharoon, the God of Liches, straight to pieces, yet Velsharoon had never been seen retaliating against mortals for it.
"Alas, I had thought our cooperation was quite pleasant. Since Your Divinity is unwilling to give me an answer, I suppose I must bid you farewell."
"Heh, I would love to see what means you possess to resist me. The knowledge I granted you back then is something you cannot even write down or speak of to others. It is a forbidden secret branded with my divine power, thoroughly merged with your very soul."
During their original deal, Shar had made a pact with Anbaixiu: this knowledge could only be used by him alone. As for the seal Anbaixiu later handed over to the elves, it actually had nothing to do with the Weave anymore.
It was more like Shar had taught Anbaixiu a mathematical formula, and Anbaixiu had used that formula to complete a single calculation, saving an immense amount of computational effort to derive an extraordinarily elegant result, which he then passed on to the elves.
The elves might be able to replicate the sealing scroll he created using that final answer, but they had no way of reproducing the underlying derivation that led to it.
Once Anbaixiu accepted that knowledge, his soul was essentially bound to Shar, leaving him unable to conceal himself by any means. She could locate him whenever she pleased.
Just as Shar began to look triumphant, her expression abruptly turned to shock in the next instant. "Are you mad?!"
Anbaixiu was not mad. He simply reached out, thrust his hand into his own skull, and drew forth a thread from within.
"Goddess Shar, you didn't know back then, did you? My understanding of souls is far greater than you imagine. You assumed this knowledge was already fused into my soul, but in truth, it's nothing more than a tumor. I can cut it away whenever I like. At most, it's just a bit painful!"
Anbaixiu sounded calm, yet his soul was already undergoing excruciating agony akin to death by a thousand cuts, as though his living nerves were being pulled out to string an instrument and played into a frantic rendition of *Flight of the Bumblebee*.
With every tiny thread he extracted, the searing torment doubled.
It was the most horrific agony Anbaixiu had suffered since transforming into a lich, but threatening a goddess required paying a heavy price.
In this moment, Anbaixiu once again became the desperate outlaw of years past, the man who could lose an arm and a leg and still smile while negotiating business.
Shar had never imagined Anbaixiu would go so far. She understood the agony of tearing one's soul all too well, and thus could feel Anbaixiu's utter resolve.
This lich truly dared to tear his own soul apart on the spot, all to excise this segment of memory.
To Shar, such an action technically had no direct impact on her.
At worst, she simply wouldn't be able to track Anbaixiu's location anymore. Yet she still felt a profound threat radiating from him. If she forced Anbaixiu to rend his own soul, then as long as this lich survived, he would stop at nothing to tear her down. Even if he could not reach her divine realm, every last shred of Shar's power remaining in the mortal plane would suffer his ruthless vengeance.
Anbaixiu didn't need to say this aloud; the various feats he had accomplished during this time were more than enough to prove that his threat held weight.
Shar had miscalculated. She had never expected this cowardly, death-fearing lich to possess such sheer ruthlessness.
Hadn't he turned himself into a lich precisely because he feared death?
"Fine. You aren't afraid to die—that does exceed my expectations. But what difference does that make to me? What if you slaughter every last one of my mortal followers? I am the Goddess of Darkness. Wherever there is light, darkness shall follow. I am eternal and imperishable, whereas you will sooner or later pay the price for this recklessness."
Seeing that Shar was still stubbornly talking back, Anbaixiu pulled another section of the soul thread outward. This time, unable to endure the agony, his body began trembling violently, and he sank to his knees.
His voice quavered, yet he still said to Shar, "Seeing how resolute I am, shouldn't Your Divinity praise my courage? Otherwise, I can only use this forbidden Weave lore to curry favor with the Goddess of Magic. A businessman can't make a losing deal, wouldn't you agree?!"
Shar's singular desire was to seize the portfolio of the Goddess of Magic, for the first Goddess of Magic had been born from Shar's own wounds. In Shar's eyes, the Goddess of Magic had usurped her power to attain her current might.
The Shadow Weave was one of the methods Shar had devised to seize that position—a trump card developed over countless ages that could bypass the divine portfolio of the Goddess of Magic, enabling spellcasters to wield magic without requiring her permission.
Even though Anbaixiu possessed only a portion of the Shadow Weave's secrets, if that knowledge fell into the hands of the Goddess of Magic, it would likely render Shar's centuries of scheming completely futile, forcing her to devise an entirely new way to deal with her rival.
Shar remained stubborn, saying, "The Goddess of Magic might not necessarily answer your prayers. Have you ever even laid eyes on her? Do you think obtaining her response is a simple matter? Even if you offered my portfolio in your hands, she might not deign to cast a single glance upon you."
Anbaixiu replied, "Then there is something you do not know. It just so happens that I know a certain deity who can bridge the gap and help me reach the Goddess of Magic. Under normal circumstances, praying for her gaze would naturally achieve nothing, but with this forbidden knowledge in hand, perhaps the Goddess of Magic might be willing to meet a mortal like me."
Leira had been reborn and had now joined the camp of Silvanus. Through Leira, he could reach Azuth, the subordinate deity of the Goddess of Magic, and thereby establish contact with the lofty Goddess of Magic herself.
Anbaixiu might not have a hundred percent certainty, but he was at least ninety percent confident.
This was an outcome Shar could not endure. She said in fury, "You are mad! You are tearing your own soul apart! You are an undead—if your soul shatters, what will you have left?! Can you guarantee that your soul won't be obliterated in the process?!"
Anbaixiu said with a shudder, "I can't guarantee it, which is why I didn't want to burn our bridges unless pushed to the brink. I have always been deeply grateful for the knowledge you bestowed upon me. You understand that as a wizard, what I value above all else is wisdom. Your grace toward me is practically a second birth; I would have loved nothing more than to take you as my master. Alas, the God of Alchemy is extraordinarily petty and would never allow me to study under another.
"So, can't you truly spare a nobody like me? There are plenty of talented folk eager to embrace the darkness. Take a walk through Ryan right now, and you might easily find yourself a few candidates for a chosen. Besides, my requests aren't demanding at all. I only wish to know which deity is pulling the strings from the shadows, and that you never pry into my whereabouts again. Just two simple requests. Goddess, do you truly wish to force me to offer this shattered soul to the Goddess of Magic over such trivial matters?"
Shar gritted her teeth in hatred, yet this lich was truly detestable beyond measure. Over her lifetime, Shar had seen countless mortals—wise, foolish, mad, divine... but not a single mortal had ever genuinely threatened a deity, at most causing a god to lose some face. Yet this lich had accomplished it.
Not only had he caused Lolth the Spider Queen to lose half of her divine portfolios, directly reducing her to the weakest of deities, but he had also foiled Tiamat's schemes several times in a row... Yet precisely because of this, the goddesses of the evil faction all sought to claim this lich for themselves.
This lich possessed the capability to set the entire continent ablaze, yet he had willfully abandoned his evil alignment, doing nothing but maintaining continental peace.
Now, Shar had to make a choice: completely burn her bridges with this lich, or compromise.
Shar hesitated for a long time before finally letting out a deep sigh. "I truly admire you, little skeleton. You are the most interesting mortal I have seen in all these years. You are the most pivotal figure on this plane, the chosen I have dreamed of finding..."
The more Shar spoke, the more Anbaixiu felt something was off. What did this Goddess of Darkness mean by that? A "but" was about to follow, wasn't it?
Just as Anbaixiu expected, Shar continued, "However, you also reminded me of my origins. Hiding in the dark for so long has left me with nothing but plots and deceit, turning me from one of the primordial deities into a clownish figure. I shouldn't be bargaining with you so much. Regardless of whether your schemes succeed, a mortal who offends the dignity of a deity deserves to die."
Anbaixiu's voice took on a frantic edge. "Wait! Goddess, you will be punished by Ao for this!"
Unmoved, Shar said, "It matters not. I am the Goddess of Darkness born after Ao's creation of the world; in truth, I can be considered his daughter. When a father punishes his daughter, it is always lighter. So die with your regrets—for such is the fate of offending a deity."
Chapter 381