Since his rebirth, Anbaixiu hadn't fought personally in battle for a very long time.
As the spirit of the magic mirrors, his magical power was supplied by all the magic mirrors combined, while he still retained the pay-to-cast capability of the Golden Throne.
Facing demons for the first time, Anbaixiu took a two-pronged approach just to be safe.
As it turned out, his caution was justified. Once the demons stepped within the boundary of the illusion, puzzled expressions appeared across their faces, one after another.
If one were completely bewitched, one wouldn't realize they had fallen under an illusion at all.
The fact that their expressions changed meant they had instinctively sensed that something was wrong.
These winged demons looked like a cross between a wild boar and an ape: the upper half of their faces was simian, while the lower half was a wild boar with protruding tusks. Their bodies were plump and robust; though their wings were stubby, a few quick flaps allowed them to fly with surprising speed.
Anbaixiu vaguely recalled that this kind of demon was called Nal-something or other. Unable to remember the exact name, he simply gave it an easier one to remember: flying pig-monkey.
Even if a single such demon escaped into the Prime Material Plane, it could slaughter an entire city. Ordinary armies would have a hard time dealing with a monster that was both thick-skinned and capable of flight.
Yet there were over a hundred of these flying pig-monkeys before him. If unleashed, Ryan would have to deploy its most elite paladin legion just to contend with them, and even then, casualties would not be small.
Compared to the dense swarm of demons in the distance, however, these hundred... were likely not even a drop in the bucket.
This was the true Abyss, the true Blood War. Mortal wars were mere child's play by comparison.
Anbaixiu finally understood why Ao's rules mostly applied only to the Prime Material Plane. It truly was a cradle of life, and those living there were like infants in swaddling clothes.
Ao gave those babes a measure of special protection, lest monsters from other planes crush them effortlessly.
These reflections lasted only a second or two before Anbaixiu refocused on controlling the demons, keeping them scurrying aimlessly within the illusion without any sense of direction.
But this state couldn't last long. Demons were chaotic evil creatures without patience; if they couldn't find their way for an extended period, they would go mad and start violently attacking everything around them.
When that happened, the illusion might not hold.
Before the flying pig-monkeys could catch on, Anbaixiu ordered Bater, "Capture a few, dead or alive."
All Anbaixiu wanted was intelligence; capturing a few would suffice.
Bater understood his creator's requirement and immediately rallied his companions to charge toward the demons.
Concealed by the illusion, the flying pig-monkeys failed to notice the mercury soul puppets approaching. Bater reached the foot of one demon and found that just a single foot was nearly larger than his entire body. Judging by its thick, tough hide, killing it wouldn't be easy.
Thinking for a moment, Bater said to his companions, "You two pin down its wings. The rest of you coordinate with me and follow my lead."
Bater's round body swiftly flattened into a thin film. The moment the flying pig-monkey lifted its leg, whoosh—he slipped right under its sole.
The massive demon only felt something slick beneath its foot before its balance began to slip.
It flapped its wings frantically, trying to steady itself, but before those stubby wings could flap twice, two mercury soul puppets pounced onto its back, wrapping their bodies around the wings.
The heavy weight made the wings feel as if stuck in thick slime, unable to flap at all. Immediately afterward, several more mercury soul puppets slipped beneath the demon's feet, acting like rollers to shunt the behemoth toward the Mercury River.
The off-balance demon had barely started to struggle before it found itself rolling forward, its entire body splashing into the Mercury River.
Though the demon possessed a powerful body, its density was not greater than mercury's, so it bobbed on the surface the moment it fell in. But opening its mouth to roar caused it to inhale a huge amount of mercury vapor, eliciting a frenzied howl of agony.
Bater seized the opportunity to dart into the demon's mouth, forcing his way directly down its throat.
The flying pig-monkey had likely never encountered a creature that voluntarily dove into its maw in its entire life. It clawed at its mouth, but couldn't dig anything out; instead, in its thrashing, it flipped over, its head submerging completely beneath the Mercury River.
The mercury soul puppets pounced one after another, burrowing into every orifice they could find. Moments later, they literally burst the demon apart from within.
Much like dragons, this monster had a tough exterior, but its internal organs were hardly as resilient. Once inside, Bater and the others shifted into sea-urchin shapes, easily shredding its innards to pieces.
However, when they emerged from the demon's corpse, their bodies were tinged with odd colors.
Demon blood was highly toxic. Though mercury soul puppets possessed formidable magic resistance, they were not completely immune.
Fortunately, right beside them lay the vast Mercury River, allowing Bater to recover briefly through its waters.
Meanwhile, the moment the demon died, Anbaixiu scooped up its soul.
Disregarding their own injuries, Bater and his companions charged toward a second flying pig-monkey.
Maintaining the illusion, Anbaixiu watched the mercury soul puppets throw themselves wave upon wave into the demonic swarm.
Demon after demon was herded into the Mercury River and slain. The toxins accumulated within Bater and the other puppets, steadily hindering their movements. Yet Anbaixiu saw not the slightest hint of retreat from them. They expressed neither pain nor hesitation, showing only their usual eagerness, as if fulfilling Anbaixiu's command mattered far more than their own lives.
"These little fellows..."
Anbaixiu didn't know what to say. It was something akin to loyalty, yet far transcending it. He had only met Bater today, and he couldn't even tell one puppet from another.
Yet he could feel that these little beings truly revered him as their Creator, willing to sacrifice everything for him.
No incentives, no reasons, not even a conscious decision needed—from the moment of their birth, they had been prepared to offer everything to their Creator.
Back when Anbaixiu first created the mercury soul puppets, he had once made them kowtow to him, hoping to use their power of faith to generate some gold. He later discovered the efficiency was laughably low; the gold generated by a thousand puppets prostrating day and night wasn't even worth gambling a few hands at a tavern.
Back then, the puppets had possessed very little intelligence, like naive children, so Anbaixiu had felt like a parent coaxing a toddler into taking medicine—laborious, exhausting, and yielding negligible results.
But Bater and his kin were different.
Bater's conduct proved he possessed both courage and cunning, making him a qualified leader of his kind. Yet even with such intellect, Bater remained utterly devout.
When had mercury soul puppets developed the mindset of fanatical zealots?
Anbaixiu had never been a deity, nor had he ever encountered worship so pure and extreme. He couldn't say whether this strange sensation was good or bad, only feeling bewildered. He couldn't imagine anything taking precedence over his own free will, which was why he harbored no reverence for any god in his heart.
Retaining one's own will while simultaneously maintaining devout faith... did such a contradictory thing truly exist?
Perhaps the most devout faith lay in adopting the deity's will as one's own ideal. For their ideal, these puppets could throw themselves forward heedlessly, never considering it a sacrifice; rather, they viewed it as the greatest bliss and the highest honor.
Finally, after the fifth demon was slain by Bater and the others, Anbaixiu ordered, "Retreat. Return to the Mercury River to rest. This many is enough."
The puppets, now stained with various strange hues, promptly leaped back into the Mercury River and began ravenously consuming mercury to restore themselves.
Anbaixiu cast several spells to neutralize poison on them before finally dispelling the illusion.
Seeing the corpses of their kin, the remaining hundred-plus flying pig-monkeys howled frantically at first. But unable to locate the culprit, they simply fell upon the carcasses, devouring them with gusto, before flapping their wings back toward the shattered space to rejoin the demonic ranks.
Only after ensuring the coast was clear did Anbaixiu begin examining the souls he had acquired.
The souls of these flying pig-monkeys were exceptionally powerful, their wills still roaring and attempting to break free of his bindings. But Anbaixiu was arguably the most formidable soul expert beneath the gods; if they could escape him, he might as well find a crack in the ground, crawl in, and suffocate himself.
Squeezing and kneading the first demon soul, Anbaixiu forced out countless scarlet motes of light amidst its screams. These were useless memories of slaughter and battle, yet they made up the vast majority of a demon's life.
Stripping away these useless memories with brisk efficiency, Anbaixiu began peeling back the layers to search for what he needed.
Mainly recent memories: where they had come from, where they were headed, and what was truly happening with those shattered floating realms in the distance.
From such a massive soul, surprisingly little useful information remained; Anbaixiu could only make out its movement route over the past few days. Without bothering to examine it closely, he casually brought out the second soul, screening it roughly in the exact same manner.
In this way, all five demon souls were unraveled into threads, which intertwined under the manipulation of his fingertips to weave together vivid, concrete images.
Countless demons entered and exited that shattered space—various races, diverse clans. The viewpoint darted through those spatial portals, ultimately converging upon a dark, murky realm.
It was a desolate wasteland. In the sky hung a great, chaotic black sun. Innumerable spatial rifts flew forth from this black sun, crashing onto the ground to form passageways. In every single instant, tens of thousands of spatial conduits opened, while tens of thousands closed.
Demons crawled out of one conduit only to plunge into another. Some of the slower ones were severed in two as portals snapped shut, while the majority, unable to discern direction, could only wander endlessly through the spatial labyrinth.
But these demons were like countless balls in a pinball machine. Getting lost, tumbling into dead ends... it didn't matter. There were so many demons that, favored by sheer luck, many would inevitably find their way, traversing these perilous spatial passages into other planes.
"This... is the River Styx?"
Anbaixiu was rather astonished. This so-called River Styx was not a river at all.
Though the image didn't match the name, the power radiating from the black sun closely matched the descriptions in his records. Chaotic and lightless, an abyss of boundless darkness connecting the myriad planes. Within the River Styx, there were no rules of time or space; only that black sun governed all.
To verify his conjecture, Anbaixiu fashioned these soul memories into a memory crystal and sent it to Paluriel.
Before long, Paluriel sent her reply: "Indeed, this is what we're looking for. However, that black sun is not the River Styx itself, but merely a tributary closest to Hell—a physical manifestation of the concept of a Styx tributary. To demons like these, the River Styx is not a river, but a sun guiding them toward various worlds. That is why it appears as a black sun in their memories."
Anbaixiu asked, puzzled, "So if I saw this River Styx with my own eyes, it might take a completely different form?"
"Yes. Knowing your character, it might turn into a dazzling golden beauty."
"Your misunderstanding of me runs deep."
"Heh."
Anbaixiu had no desire to bicker with this madwoman, immediately cutting to the chase: "I can deduce the location of the Styx tributary from their memories. But how are we supposed to plug this thing?"
Real or conceptual, that black sun possessed boundless chaotic power. Tearing through space was as effortless as breathing for the River Styx; in a single breath, countless spatial rifts opened, allowing demons to travel at will.
Anbaixiu couldn't distinguish which ones led to Hell, nor did he have the power to seal all those spatial rifts that formed and collapsed countless times every second.
To put an end to the Blood War, resolving the tributary of the River Styx was the only way.
But Paluriel was a deity. Surely she had more tricks up her sleeve than a mere mortal like him?
However, Paluriel replied, "I don't know either. I originally thought the Styx tributary's connection to Hell was straightforward—even if it were a massive spatial conduit the size of an entire plane, we'd just have to deal with that single passage. But what you showed me is utterly ridiculous, and those conduits are constantly shifting. Aside from Ao, nobody could possibly seal every one of them.
"My suggestion? Try becoming an extraordinarily powerful deity, then slice this Styx tributary clean in half with a single sword strike. That'll solve it once and for all."
Anbaixiu asked, "How powerful?"
"Strong enough to kill Corellon, the Lord of the Dawn, and Oghma with one punch, plus the Goddess of Magic and the God of Death... That ought to be about enough."
"You might as well just tell me to become Ao."
"Are you an idiot? You're a mortal, so naturally you can throw that name around. But I'm a deity! How could I dare mention Him so casually?"
Anbaixiu was done talking to this lunatic.
So the River Styx had been located, yet there was no way to seal it completely?
On second thought, that wasn't surprising. If ending the Blood War were really that simple, would it ever have fallen to Anbaixiu to do it?
Sealing it off entirely was impossible. But Hell had managed to lock down all teleportation entry points to the River of Blood, so couldn't he approach the problem from that angle?
For instance... what if he dismantled the entire River of Blood region and ejected it out of Hell altogether?
Chapter 604