From the very beginning, Anbaixiu had never intended to rely on his own strength to confront the Abyss.
What a joke. He was merely a mortal. Zariel had held out for so long only because she had the backing of the other devil archdukes. What qualifications or ability did he possess to hold back the Abyss using the power of the First Layer of Hell alone?
Had Zariel not pulled this sudden stunt, Anbaixiu would never have intervened in the first place.
Yet the temptation of becoming a devil archduke was simply too immense. Who could refuse an opportunity to ascend to the heavens in a single step? Even if for nothing else, being able to smoothly reincarnate the Rose of Decay made it all worthwhile.
Therefore, seeking outside help was an absolute necessity.
Since the devils of Hell were untrustworthy, he had to rely on the forces of lawful good.
Fortunately, Anbaixiu had extensive connections.
The God of Alchemy was his first backer; an offering from his mentor was guaranteed to be nothing ordinary.
Anbaixiu returned to Hell with the crystal ball, circled near the Blood River Fortress, and found a reasonably suitable open ground.
Channeling magic into the crystal ball, a colossal projection immediately materialized.
It was the projection of an immense alchemical factory covering a vast expanse of land. Anbaixiu first needed to anchor this projection before liberating the factory sealed within the crystal ball.
Comparing every detail until the projection was aligned to absolute perfection, Anbaixiu finally set the crystal ball down.
As the crystal ball shattered, myriad rays of light shot from the fissures, landing squarely upon every corner of the projection. Then, like a brush filling in a painting, they gradually "rendered" the illusion into substance.
Such an enormous factory—a colossal complex resembling a palace cluster—could actually turn from illusion into reality in this manner.
Anbaixiu could not help but marvel, "Such is the power of a deity; it truly exceeds anything a mortal can imagine. If I hadn't grasped the power of Hell's planar laws, I probably wouldn't even be able to comprehend it."
This was a most peculiar method of energy conversion that Anbaixiu could not describe in simple words, yet as the master of the First Layer of Hell, he could clearly sense the process.
It was truly fascinating. No wonder so many fought tooth and nail to become gods.
It was not merely immortality, nor was it just sheer power, but also this grandeur incomprehensible to mortal intellect.
Anbaixiu watched the construction of the alchemical factory with relish, staring intently for several hours until the final stroke of color was filled, marking the factory's complete assembly.
A rumbling din echoed within the factory—the sound of the internal machinery preheating and kicking into gear.
Anbaixiu flew around the perimeter. He saw no internal mechanisms; it resembled an entirely sealed iron beast. This was an alchemical factory that required no workers whatsoever, featuring only various intake hoppers, discharge ports, and scrap depots, with even the control console positioned on the outside.
Anbaixiu walked over to the console, operated it for a moment, and then ordered the devils to haul over the corpses and scrap from the battlefield.
Flesh or bone, hides with meat or horned plates—every scrap of material was dumped straight into the same type of intake hopper. A conveyor belt naturally carried them deep into the interior, where the internal machines would chop, crush, and process them into various components and materials.
Crude and brutal though it seemed, this was alchemical technology perfectly suited to Hell's environment. Much like an infernal engine, cramming materials in was enough to make it run without need for excessive delicacy.
Anbaixiu had the devils bring hundreds of tons of bloody corpses—demonic, infernal, perhaps even mixed with a few who hadn't breathed their last... Regardless, the battlefield never lacked such things. Shove them all onto the conveyor belt, and the factory began churning at top speed.
"Let's see. Let's start with something traditional—let's churn out some Death Knights for fun."
Anbaixiu worked his hands across the console, pulling up several basic templates, among which were Death Knights.
As one of the most classic forms of high-tier undead, a Death Knight's most distinctive feature was master horsemanship. Undead possessed no natural sensations, so ordinary undead could barely walk steadily, let alone maintain balance and combat effectiveness astride a galloping mount.
Most necromancers lacked Anbaixiu's soul-tuning techniques, so they could only make physical adjustments to the undead bodies.
How to modify muscles and bones so the Death Knight's body was suited for cavalry combat, how to allow them to support heavy armor and weapons, how to enable them to quickly grasp basic martial techniques, and so forth.
These were all experiences accumulated by predecessors, considered precious knowledge even among necromancers, and Anbaixiu had paid no small price to learn them back then.
However, after so many years of research, the template for Death Knights was largely finalized with little room for groundbreaking improvements, so Anbaixiu simply selected the standard version.
The factory continued its rumbling as dark smoke mingled with bloody, acrid stench billowed forth. Within mere minutes, ten robust Death Knights were rolled out.
Anbaixiu walked over to inspect them. The quality was exceptional, though the material consumption was slightly wasteful.
According to the control console's readouts, producing these ten Death Knights had consumed a massive amount of material. Under normal circumstances, if Anbaixiu had crafted these Death Knights by hand, he would have used less than a tenth of that.
Yet the alchemical factory's speed was beyond anything Anbaixiu could match. It took him a day or two just to craft a single Death Knight, whereas this factory went from raw input to finished product in mere minutes.
With such efficiency, what did waste matter?
Just as Anbaixiu had put it, devils and demons deserved death anyway; who cared what their corpses were worth? It was all scrap recycling.
Now that the Death Knights were built, the next step was inserting appropriate souls.
On this point, the God of Alchemy had already planned ahead.
Having ascended to godhood, Anbaixiu now possessed the ability to lend out his authority, meaning his legendary boon could also be "lent" for others to use.
Such was the difference between a deity and a mortal.
Anbaixiu could fully imbue this alchemical factory with the power of "Simulated Soul." Automatically synthesizing souls from materials, as long as the souls followed a standardized template, the factory could fabricate the matching "souls" simultaneously.
Anbaixiu conducted a comparative experiment: he personally infused souls into half of the Death Knights, while having the alchemical factory install souls into the other half.
The result of the comparison showed almost no difference between the two.
In other words, the alchemical factory could indeed mass-produce souls flawlessly, the sole drawback being ten times the consumption.
Yet that was hardly a drawback at all.
Anbaixiu casually queued up several basic targets on the console: plague zombies, Death Knights, cannon-fodder skeletons of various forms... Once a whole array of standard undead troop types had been configured, he ordered the devils to keep shoving materials inside as hard as they could.
Fully automated production—and the undead created were directly imprinted with Anbaixiu's brand, automatically rallying according to his commands without needing anyone to haul them out.
In this way, Anbaixiu's undead factory could continuously churn out undead legions in short order. Combined with the undead cannon fodder converted earlier by the Rose of Decay, Anbaixiu estimated that launching a counteroffensive was well within reach.
There was no reason to merely wait for demons to invade; devils could take the initiative to strike out as well, couldn't they?
Previously, constrained by Hell's rules, they could only rely on the Blood River Fortress to block demonic incursions. Because demons were inexhaustible, a counterattack was meaningless, and Zariel had essentially slacked off, letting things rot as they were.
Now it was different. On the Blood River front, Anbaixiu called the shots.
A new broom sweeps clean, and with the First Layer of Hell on the verge of crumbling, there wasn't much left to shake up internally—so Anbaixiu naturally needed to find a target to make an example of.
Demons suited the bill nicely. Since they delivered themselves to his doorstep, Anbaixiu would gladly give them a splendid finale.
However, Bel could not be dispatched on an expedition into the Abyss. That fellow was tied far too closely to the Blood River Fortress; removed from this familiar battlefield, Bel's commanding capabilities would plummet by more than half.
Bel himself was also an unstable factor; ghosts only knew what mischief he might stir up on an Abyssal expedition.
Therefore, it was better to keep Bel right under his own watchful eyes. As for the commander of the counteroffensive... Ange Watson certainly had the talent; his commanding prowess was beyond doubt, yet he lacked experience and required a staff advisor to assist him.
After pondering for a long time, Anbaixiu finally recalled a candidate he had forgotten.
Taking out the magic mirror, Anbaixiu tracked down Paluriel, who had run off to who knew where.
"Hey, where did you run off to? I'm the master of Avernus now, you know?" Anbaixiu asked.
Through the magic mirror, Paluriel appeared to be standing on the rim of an erupting volcano, staring down into the boiling magma.
Yet Hell was rife with volcanoes; without a thorough search, Anbaixiu truly could not pinpoint where the fellow was.
Paluriel frowned. "What kind of news is that? All of Hell already knows."
"I could crush you with a snap of my fingers right now, you know?" said Anbaixiu.
Strictly speaking, the two shared a blood feud. Previously, riding high on her status as a deity, Paluriel had spoken without the slightest courtesy. Now was the time to let her know who was in charge.
Yet Paluriel replied with complete indifference, "Quiet. I'm thinking."
Anbaixiu asked in bafflement, "What's so interesting about a volcanic eruption? Shouldn't you be sick of seeing them by now?"
No matter which layer of Hell one visited, volcanoes were the most commonplace scenery, with countless eruptions occurring daily. What was there for a devil to gawk at?
Paluriel remarked, "I'm not watching the volcano. I'm wondering—if I jump in, will I die?"
Anbaixiu could not help but retort, "Have you lost your mind? Even if the volcano detonated, you wouldn't die."
Devils inherently possessed immense resistance to fire, to say nothing of an erinyes of divine rank like Paluriel. Were she to dive in for a bath, she might well complain the magma wasn't hot enough.
"Right, I wouldn't die. But why did such a thought even occur to me? Why would I wonder whether jumping in would kill me? If I never feared magma in the first place, why would the idea of jumping into magma to commit suicide cross my mind? Just like humans—they don't choose to commit suicide by taking a bath. Such a thought never occurs to them because they know bathing won't kill them!"
Anbaixiu was utterly lost. What sort of lunacy was this crazy woman concocting now?
Just as he was about to cut short this pointless daydreaming, Paluriel scooped up a handful of scorching magma and began muttering to herself, "Arthas, do you think it's because I was once human—a mortal—so in my consciousness, magma burns people to death? That's why, even though I've become a deity and can ignore the heat of magma, deep inside I remain nothing more than a mortal?"
Anbaixiu asked quizzically, "By saying that, are you trying to imply that at my core, I'm still just a mortal as well?"
"Who cares about you?" Paluriel tossed aside the magma in disgust, snapping impatiently, "Ever since the day my parents sold me off into slavery, I stopped caring about anyone. I only care about myself."
Anbaixiu chuckled dryly in exasperation at the lunatic. "What a coincidence—I couldn't care less what fit you're throwing, either. So get yourself over here!"
Having locked onto Paluriel's coordinates, Anbaixiu reached out across the void and snatched the madwoman straight back.
Although Paluriel attempted to resist, how could she defy the planar might of an entire world? She could only let herself be hauled directly back into the Grand Archive by Anbaixiu.
Paying no heed to whatever existential crisis she was pondering, Anbaixiu got straight to the point: "I'm launching a counteroffensive into the Abyss to push the Blood River battlefield into their half. I already have a commander in mind, and you will serve as his staff advisor. Any objections?"
Paluriel frowned. "What are you talking about? You kept telling me you wanted to end the Blood War, and now you're rushing off to expand the battlefield? Do you even know what you're doing?"
Anbaixiu froze for a moment, instinctively wanting to explain that circumstances had changed.
Who could have guessed that Hell's planar laws would favor him so much as to make him the master of Hell directly? Back when he stood outside looking in, he could cause trouble at whim, but now that Hell was his domain, his stance had naturally shifted.
Anbaixiu should have been able to utter these words smoothly, yet for some reason, he could not speak a single word at this moment.
Paluriel's words, however, pierced his soul like a sharp blade once again.
"The reason you wanted to end the Blood War was that Bel told you going to the battlefield was your destined fate—an inescapable responsibility for a sinner like you. You reacted violently right then, doing everything in your power to stay off the battlefield, even vowing to end this war. Yet now, you've become the most proactive of all.
"Arthas, you are still firmly bound by fate. You have never broken free."
This time, Anbaixiu did not retort, for the realization had struck him as well.
After going in circles, he had ultimately fallen into fate's grasp after all.
Even though he had become the devil archduke of Avernus and a true deity, had he still failed to tear free from the web spun by fate?
If so, who could ever transcend fate?
Must he drag Ao down and crown himself the Overgod?
Anbaixiu could not help recalling Paluriel's seemingly unhinged ramblings just moments ago.
Because she had once been human, in Paluriel's subconscious, magma was lethal and leaping into magma meant suicide—a notion that had never faded even after she became a deity.
And Anbaixiu had been deeply branded by fate back when he was a mortal. He had always known that fate could not be defied. So even after becoming a god, had he truly never escaped the clutches of fate?
If that was truly the case, then even if he became the Overgod Ao, he would still be unable to untangle this Gordian knot.
Yet before despair could take hold, Anbaixiu faintly sensed that something was amiss.
Behind such an esoteric assertion, something crucial seemed concealed behind the words and logic, waiting for Anbaixiu to grasp it.
It felt like a key capable of unlocking the door named freedom.
"No, that's not right... It shouldn't be like this..."
Anbaixiu clearly felt he had brushed against the crux of the matter, yet he could not formulate it into words. Though he had perceived something, it eluded his grasp like smoke and phantom mirages.
Paluriel burst into loud laughter, interrupting him: "Stop struggling! You'll never have the chance to break free! I'm different. I'm not like you—I chose to become a divination wizard of my own accord. I willingly threw myself into the embrace of fate!"
Jarred from his train of thought by her laughter, Anbaixiu sighed. "This is nothing more than a besieged fortress—those inside want out, and those outside want in. Believe whatever you like."
Though Paluriel had cut his thoughts short, Anbaixiu was not overly bothered.
For he knew that behind fate lay something he could seize. Even if he could not yet articulate what had crossed his mind, he was certain he would have another chance to figure it out.
A momentary fog would not sap Anbaixiu's fighting spirit. Having suffered the sweeping kicks of the Goddess of Fate for hundreds of years, his mindset was as steady as bedrock. Besides, even if his morale broke, what of it? He still had to go on living.
In the blink of an eye, Anbaixiu cast aside his irritation and flicked his fingers, sending the smugly gloating Paluriel flying with a flick to her forehead.
"Dreaming of being a divination wizard? Right now you don't even qualify as an apprentice. A useless hack who hasn't even crossed the threshold has no business lecturing me about fate! You're serving as this staff advisor, and that's final. The counteroffensive into the Abyss begins tomorrow!
"I'll prepare an army of a million undead for you. Go slaughter a million demons before coming back to claim your reward. If you fail, don't even dream of Harvey giving you another lesson for the rest of your life!"
Paluriel clutched the swollen lump on her forehead. Who had the upper hand verbally was up for debate, but the disparity in raw power was undeniably vast—so vast that she hadn't even had the chance to raise a hand in defense.
"Hmph, I've already learned practically everything anyway. That brat William Harvey hasn't even read many books, and his own theories are barely in their infancy. I've already mastered most of it; the rest I can just teach myself."
Paluriel did not think much of the young Harvey. Although Harvey was the furthest ahead on the path of fate, his eloquence could not hold a candle to Anbaixiu's; Harvey understood many things himself but struggled to explain them to others.
After attending a few lessons, Paluriel gradually felt she had hollowed out Harvey's store of knowledge. Once the teacher had nothing left to say, there was no point wasting more time.
However, Anbaixiu told Paluriel, "I forgot to mention—Harvey has already advanced to legend."
Paluriel's eyes widened in sheer shock. "Impossible! He was only an apprentice two years ago!"
Anbaixiu gave a low chuckle. "What's so impossible about it? That's the beauty of fate! Paluriel, work diligently for me. If you don't put in the effort, that bastard son of the Goddess will never tutor you again."
Grinding her teeth, Paluriel hissed, "Damned Arthas... you are a born devil!"
Chapter 623