Bel prostrated himself before Anbaixiu, defiance still smoldering in his heart.
A mere mortal had suppressed him, relying solely on the power of Hell. Anbaixiu was well aware of Bel's lingering resentment, but he didn't care. Bel hadn't accepted Zariel back then either, considering it an utter humiliation to have an angel perched above him, yet he had still served her for all those years.
The fellow was simply a bully who feared the strong. Besides, Anbaixiu wasn't afraid of an ambush. At worst, Bel could kill this manifested avatar of his, but Anbaixiu was still the Spirit of the Magic Mirror; his true form wouldn't suffer the slightest harm.
Anbaixiu asked, "Bel, earlier I told you to go inspect the demon captured by my kin. Have you confirmed its identity?"
Bel froze for a moment, then answered awkwardly, "My apologies. The front line was hard-pressed just now, so I haven't had the chance to inspect it yet."
Anbaixiu let out a cold snort, puncturing Bel's little scheme. "It sounds more like you didn't take my words to heart."
With a mere snap of his fingers, Bater and the demon were brought before Anbaixiu.
Such was the power of planar laws. The First Layer of Hell was now Anbaixiu's divine realm, making spatial relocations of this sort laughably simple.
Seeing Anbaixiu's new movements, little Bater was stunned for only a heartbeat before recognizing the drastically altered Anbaixiu.
Prostrating on the ground, Bater said to Anbaixiu, "Great White Bone God! Your humble believer offers this bizarre demon to you. We could barely inflict any harm upon him."
Anbaixiu hoisted the creature, which resembled a red-faced baboon, and inspected it closely.
The monster bore only a single wound, running from chest to back—a piercing injury left by some razor-sharp weapon, through which its squirming organs could be plainly seen. Normally, so long as it wasn't instant death, a demon's self-healing capabilities would have knitted such a wound shut long ago. Yet this wound looked as if it had just been punctured moments earlier; the severed edges were so smooth that not a speck of granulation tissue had formed, and even though its blood had nearly drained dry, it showed no signs of scabbing over.
For a moment, Anbaixiu failed to discern anything remarkable about it, but nearby, Bel let out a cry of disbelief: "Beastlord Malar?! You captured an Abyssal Lord?!"
"Malar?" Anbaixiu felt a faint trace of recognition at the name. After a moment's thought, he blurted out, "Isn't he one of Lolth the Spider Queen's allies?"
After Lolth betrayed Corellon, she had become a deity of the evil pantheon and a member of the demonkind. One of the layers in the infinite Abyss was called the Demonweb Pits, Lolth the Spider Queen's personal domain.
Malar was apparently an Abyssal Lord as well, though one with little real competence—at best a lesser deity. Anbaixiu couldn't even recall which layer of the Abyss was his domain, having only heard the name in passing while looking up information on Lolth.
Even so, Malar was still a genuine deity, and this was his true body. How could he have been captured by a mere mercury soul puppet?
Anbaixiu turned hurriedly to Bater. "What on earth happened? Bater, tell me everything in detail."
Bater hastened to recount the entire sequence of events from beginning to end.
Shortly before Zariel lost her mind, Bater had led the mercury soul puppets in pulling off an audacious feat: disguising themselves as demons to capture prisoners for human experimentation on demons.
The boy was not only clever but remarkably daring. Anbaixiu had no idea where he found the nerve to charge into an army of hundreds of thousands of demons with only several dozen mercury soul puppets.
Even if they were only picking off stragglers, they were putting their lives on the line.
Yet to everyone's surprise, they succeeded.
Using bait, he had genuinely managed to trap quite a few dim-witted demons, and this Malar had been among them. They had netted him casually at the time without noticing anything extraordinary.
However, right after they brought the demons back to the Mercury River, demonic pursuers arrived in unexpectedly massive numbers.
Under normal circumstances, as long as the mercury soul puppets sank to the bottom of the Mercury River, the demons would give up the chase.
Submerging into liquid mercury was no simple feat. Mercury possessed immense buoyancy; even someone bound with solid iron spheres would simply float on the surface.
This time, however, things took a different turn. For the sake of this peculiar demon, the pursuers began relentlessly bombarding the Mercury River with magic and even prepared to dam and divert the river to drag Bater and his crew out.
Left with no alternative, Bater had to lead the mercury soul puppets in a temporary retreat. He had originally intended to bring the strange demon back along with them, but the creature couldn't pass through the portal.
The reason was simple: this demon had exceeded the spatial portal's capacity limit. He was no ordinary demon.
Out of options, Bater had to seek help from their deity at once.
Far away in the divine realm, Evil Silver Shaded knew everything and immediately relayed the matter to Anbaixiu, requesting the "White Bone God" to intervene.
At the time, Anbaixiu had only listened to a brief outline. Believing Bater had merely provoked a demon army by mistake, he casually conned Bel into going to lend a hand, knowing none of the specific details.
"Bel didn't help. How did you beat back that demon army?" Anbaixiu asked curiously.
Bater answered calmly, "I summoned Lord Evil Silver Shaded's projection."
Anbaixiu's eyes nearly popped out of his skull. Shocked, he demanded, "You... summoned... By my Lord of Hell, you became a cleric and used Divine Intervention?!"
Evil Silver Shaded was a bona fide racial deity. Summoning the manifestation of a god was an ability unique to clerics.
Sure enough, after questioning him thoroughly, Anbaixiu discovered that Bater had indeed become the first cleric of the mercury soul puppet race.
A cleric was someone who devoted their entire body and soul to serving a deity.
The greater their piety, the stronger the response they received.
As the very first cleric of the mercury soul puppets, Bater commanded almost the entirety of Evil Silver Shaded's divine attention.
Consequently, even though his own personal strength had yet to reach the legendary realm, he was able to invoke that immensely powerful divine spell exclusive to clerics—Divine Intervention.
Borrowing the power of a deity with a mortal body.
Back then, James Watson, Supreme Arbiter of Ryan, had used Divine Intervention to draw the gaze of the Lord of the Dawn, forcing even the Headless Horseman Gareth to yield the field temporarily.
Bater had used this very divine spell to summon Evil Silver Shaded's projection.
The massive creature had already grown to a terrifying degree. Although its divine power was not exceptionally strong and it suffered from an extreme imbalance in attributes, every single point had been poured into resistances. Whether magical or physical, its resilience had reached an absurd level.
According to the God of Alchemy's estimates, even if Evil Silver Shaded lay motionless and let the Lord of the Dawn strike at will, his arms would grow sore from swinging his hammer before he could kill it.
When the mountain-sized Evil Silver Shaded manifested on the battlefield, a casual roll crushed a vast swath of demons.
Tens of thousands of spells pelted the projection, yet not a single ripple disturbed its surface as the magic collapsed directly into nothingness.
The demons' fangs and claws were useless, their magic was useless, and in the end, it took the intervention of a lord within the demon army to finally dispel Evil Silver Shaded's projection.
With that critical window of time, Bater successfully led his people and their spoils back to Hell.
Yet through that battle, Evil Silver Shaded had severely overdrawn its divine power.
It had never been a particularly mighty deity to begin with, and projecting an avatar through such a backdoor maneuver stretched its limits to the utmost. It was now resting in the God of Alchemy's divine realm like someone recovering from a grave illness, likely needing several decades to convalesce.
Listening to the account, Anbaixiu sensed something amiss. He asked, "Your spatial corridor couldn't possibly allow an entity of divine stature to cross... Ah, I see. It was my fault."
Anbaixiu had only just taken over the First Layer of Hell, altering the planar laws across the entire realm. A loosening of spatial corridor restrictions was merely one manifestation of that shift.
No wonder the demons had caught on so quickly. Such changes had undoubtedly rippled through every aspect of the realm, easily spotted by anyone observant. Anbaixiu hadn't had the time to inspect all these shifts carefully; there were probably even larger loopholes lying in wait for him.
Still, now was not the time to fret over those details. Gathering an army of demons took time. If push came to shove, he could send Bel ahead as cannon fodder while he figured something out at his own pace.
Right now, Malar was the priority.
What had truly happened to this fellow?
As if guessing Anbaixiu's thoughts and realizing he might be sent to plug the breach, Bel hurried forward to prove his worth. "My lord, your subordinate suspects Malar was gravely wounded by Corellon and fled into hiding, only to have the misfortune of running into your kin when he could no longer hold out."
"Corellon? What proof do you have?" Anbaixiu asked.
Bel said, "I have witnessed Corellon slaying demons before. This wound is strikingly similar to the strikes I have seen."
When deities killed, they relied on far more than mere swordsmanship; their attacks were woven with divine power and intricate mysteries. What appeared to be an ordinary sword stroke could easily contain hundreds of distinct divine spell effects to mortal eyes.
Therefore, every deity's moves carried signature hallmarks. If Bel truly had witnessed Corellon wield a blade, recognizing it would come as no surprise.
Anbaixiu examined the wound once more: a strike of pinpoint accuracy piercing straight through the chest, impaling the heart along the way, with not another scratch on the body.
Either the assailant had been supremely confident that a single thrust would kill Malar, or they hadn't regarded Malar as worth a second thought, brushing him aside with a casual flick of the wrist.
Either scenario fit Corellon's stature perfectly.
The Elven God-King possessed terrifying might; for a lesser deity like Malar to fail to withstand a single blow under his blade was only natural.
Stroking his chin in thought, Anbaixiu remarked, "Then it seems Malar got caught in the crossfire when Corellon took care of Lolth."
Earlier, the Elven Gods had launched a divine war to utterly resolve Lolth and her allies. Malar was likely one of those dealt with along the way. His vitality had simply proven resilient enough to cling to a lingering breath after that mortal wound.
"If he didn't die, why didn't he hide in his own domain to nurse his injuries instead of running around out here? Hiss... could the elves have wrecked his domain too?"
Anbaixiu recalled numerous legends concerning the elves. Those arrogant deities were truly capable of tearing down a layer of the Abyss—how else could it earn the name of a divine war?
In Anbaixiu's imagination, Corellon had led his host of Elven Gods straight into the Abyss, dragged Lolth out to thrash her mercilessly, and casually swept through the domains of her various allies, slicing every demon in half and crushing an entire layer of the Abyss into dust.
Dragging his grievously wounded body, Malar must have fled in fear of discovery by other demon lords, forced to disguise himself and blend into the forces marching on Hell.
Unfortunately, luck had abandoned him, and Bater had scooped him up for a bargain.
Or perhaps Malar's identity had already been exposed, and with other demon lords hunting him down, he had deliberately allowed Bater to capture him. In truth, the scheming demon had wanted Bater to help stall his pursuers.
He had likely planned to use the mercury soul puppets as cannon fodder to buy time, never expecting Bater to be ferocious enough to summon a divine projection and drive the demon pursuers away.
At this thought, Anbaixiu looked once more at the tightly shut eyes of Malar. Was this fellow playing dead?
"Heh, let's see how long you can keep that up!"
Anbaixiu's body swelled rapidly, transforming into the stature of a giant. One hand locked around the Abyssal Lord's neck while the other reached straight for Malar's head.
The instant Anbaixiu's hand was about to touch his head, the unconscious red-faced baboon snapped his eyes open and unleashed a roar at Anbaixiu.
It sounded as though all the malice in the world had converged into that scream. Anbaixiu's ears buzzed violently as countless curses spewed from the demon's maw, washing over Anbaixiu's body.
Every single curse was potent enough to instantly reduce a mortal to a pool of liquefied flesh and bone, yet to Anbaixiu, it amounted to nothing more than a foul, suffocating stench.
Even in Malar's prime, he lacked the power to curse an Archduke of Hell.
The planar laws of Hell shielded Anbaixiu, granting him immunity to the vicious assault, though they offered no defense against the demon's foul breath, causing Anbaixiu to knit his brows in disgust.
Tightening his grip, Anbaixiu seized Malar's skull in his palm, and with a ruthless squeeze, bones splintered with a sickening crunch.
Bater had exhausted every method without leaving a scratch on Malar's body, yet that skull, tougher than steel, was effortlessly crushed in Anbaixiu's grasp.
Rancid blood and brains burst outward, and along with them, Anbaixiu wrenched out Malar's soul.
Gripping the soul as it radiated a somber light, Anbaixiu murmured in mild surprise, "A so-called deity... is merely this?"
Once upon a time, Anbaixiu had been a mere mortal who had to treat every deity with the utmost deference, for even a lesser god possessed the power to snip his life away with ease.
Yet now, an Abyssal Lord of lesser deity status had been granted not even the slightest chance to resist before him.
His skull crushed, his brains splattered, and his very soul extracted by Anbaixiu's hand.
Anbaixiu gazed at his own palm in disbelief, marveling inwardly at the power of a deity.
Pity it was not truly his own, but merely power lent to him temporarily by the laws of Hell.
Not one to become intoxicated by borrowed might, Anbaixiu unraveled Malar's soul thread by thread, sifting through its memories. Just as he had surmised, Malar's domain had been thoroughly obliterated by the elves. He was nothing more than an Abyssal Lord reduced to a stray dog, completely unrelated to the impending demon invasion.
Anbaixiu casually sealed away the dismantled demon soul, setting it aside to deal with as spoils of war once he found the time.
Looking down at the corpse with its pierced chest and crushed skull, Anbaixiu smiled faintly.
This had come at the perfect time. He was currently in dire need of top-tier materials to craft undead, and the corpse of an Abyssal Lord suited his needs splendidly.
Still, his own skills alone wouldn't suffice. Anbaixiu specialized in weaving souls; when it came to fabricating undead bodies, his craft was lacking.
Right now, he needed a true master of undead fabrication.
Anbaixiu waved his hand to summon the magic mirror, and soon, the visage of the Rose of Decay surfaced upon its glass.
The Rose of Decay opened bleary eyes, looking as though she had only just awakened, and asked in a languid tone, "What is it? Seeking me outside of the dreamscape... must mean you have important business?"
Anbaixiu smiled at the Undead Queen. "Indeed, it is a matter of great importance. Rose, would you like to come to Hell with me?"
Chapter 620