In the First Hell, two figures were traveling in a bizarre manner.
They stomped hard against the ground, using the reaction force to leap toward the earth above. But the moment they did, the ground above became below. They repeated this stamping process, leaping back and forth like jumping spiders with immense springiness, darting rapidly between two wooden boards.
"Any hell without a sky curtain is usually traversed this way," Dead Frenzy said, flipping her body in mid-air like a dancing red butterfly. "It's much faster than simple flight, and it lets you get used to this special 'Heaven and Earth Useless' combat environment."
"Aerial combat in an environment like this is far more complex than normal aerial combat. The constant flipping of up and down distorts a person's sense of distance. Combined with miracles like illusions or spatial manipulation that confuse orientation, an adept demigod can dodge all incoming attacks purely through footwork while pummeling the enemy into helplessness."
"Demigods who specialize in setting traps and long-range attacks hold a clear advantage here—if they know how to exploit this upside-down environment. That said, physical-combat demigods won't fare poorly either if they learn to use Heaven and Earth Useless to close in quickly on enemies. Ultimately, any sorcerer who fails to adapt to their surroundings ends up at the bottom of the food chain."
Along the way, Dead Frenzy didn't bring up the matters Yaxiu cared about most. Instead, she took her time introducing common knowledge about Hell. She knew what Yaxiu wanted to hear, but she deliberately withheld it.
Yaxiu didn't press her either. For one thing, he had no means to threaten Dead Frenzy—she could blow smoke rings into his face, yet he couldn't even touch her body. For another, he actually harbored a faint shred of trust toward her.
Perhaps it was because she was the person who had once shown him warmth in Shattered Lake Prison, or perhaps it was the concern she displayed whenever mentioning Sonia, which made it impossible for Yaxiu to view her entirely as an enemy.
Hell was not as barren as Yaxiu had imagined, though it was hardly flourishing either. If he had to describe it, it felt like "a land drained of resources." Sparse wild grass, murky small lakes, vast swathes of exposed bare earth—withered things as far as the eye could see offered no visual grandeur, yet it genuinely made one feel that this was Hell.
Stranger still, despite flying for so long, Yaxiu hadn't seen a single road. Looking closely, one could spot a few animal tracks, but this was Hell, where demigod sorcerers congregated. Any one of them unleashing an area-of-effect blast could easily carve out a shortcut; their absence simply proved that no one here needed to walk.
In reality, Two-Wing Sorcerers already didn't need to walk, but to accommodate ordinary people and One-Wing Sorcerers, the six nations maintained complete basic road networks. Furthermore, because powerful regimes governed the sorcerer population, not even Two-Wings or Sanctuary sorcerers were permitted to fly freely.
In Hell, however, there were no ordinary people and no unified regime. Demigods naturally flew about as they pleased. An infrastructure like roads, which best exemplified civilization, had no reason to exist in a Hell where the general caliber of sorcerers was ridiculously high.
Moreover...
"Why is Hell so empty?" Yaxiu suddenly asked.
They had traveled at least a dozen kilometers, yet along the way, there wasn't a single living creature. No beasts, no flying insects, no sorcerers, and not even the ghosts one would expect in Hell. Everywhere they looked, there was only silence.
He doubted whether there were even bacteria or parasites in the lake water.
"That's just how a world consumed by Ouroboros is," Dead Frenzy said calmly. "It seems we're almost at our first destination."
Ahead, an expanse of flowers suddenly sprawled across the hills and fields: blue roses, red roses, white lilies. After gazing at Hell's cold palette for so long, the sudden burst of warm colors made Yaxiu's eyes light up. Yet perhaps because the blossoms were too dense and excessively vivid, staring at them for even a few seconds filled Yaxiu with an indescribable discomfort. Leaping back and forth, he nearly misjudged the distance and tumbled to the ground.
"Don't go looking all over the place. Keep your eyes on my back," Dead Frenzy said. "This is the outskirts of the Ten Strings Mansion, the 'Wilds.' It impairs a person's spatial perception through sight, touch, and smell. Staring at it too long will cause severe damage to your visual system. Even if you can resist the erosion, the Wilds will leave a mark on your pupils, which the demigods of Ten Strings Mansion can detonate through a wonder, causing flowers to bloom from every single orifice of your body."
A cold shudder ran through Yaxiu, and he obediently fixed his gaze on Dead Frenzy's cloak.
A strange thought suddenly crossed his mind: Was the reason Dead Frenzy had abandoned her mature-sister look of a miniskirt and mink coat, opting instead for this conservative, noble Blood Saint attire, precisely because he would be following behind her today?
"What is the Ten Strings Mansion...?"
"A demigod organization in the First Hell," Dead Frenzy explained. "I recall the mansion master is 'Shenyin,' and the deputy master is 'Burning Steel.' Both are at the second tier. Though called an organization, it's really just a small gathering and distribution hub."
"Second tier?"
"Hm? Didn't Gloom Demon explain the strength hierarchy of demigods to you?"
"It's Vichy," Yaxiu said seriously. "Not the Gloom Demon you knew."
Dead Frenzy let out a disdainful scoff, then continued after a moment, "Just like the Six Hells, demigods are divided into six tiers, from first to sixth. When a demigod fully condenses their fifth void wing, they officially become a first-tier demigod.
"However, the fifth and sixth void wings are different from the others. They have no upper limit and can accumulate and extend indefinitely. So after condensing the first tier of wings, one can condense a second tier.
"Except demigods soon discovered that with every additional tier of wings condensed, the difficulty of condensing the next increases drastically. If condensing a first-tier wing takes fifty years, then a second-tier wing takes nearly five hundred years.
"Even though the difficulty increases, each tier of wings provides the exact same degree of enhancement to a sorcerer. In other words, in theory, a second-tier demigod is only twice as strong as a first-tier demigod." Dead Frenzy said leisurely, "A sixth-tier demigod would only be twenty percent stronger than a fifth-tier demigod... Do you think that's how it actually works?"
"Of course not," Yaxiu said calmly. "When a demigod spends more than ten times as long to condense an additional tier, their seniority, accumulation, and insights will inevitably increase alongside it. More importantly, Vichy said that the fifth void wing is the 'Wings of the Thief'—not just referring to demigods stealing knowledge from the Void Realm, but also as a metaphor for the almost bottomless competition and slaughter among demigods!"
"Exactly." Dead Frenzy smiled. "Weak demigods can barely even condense the first tier of wings before quickly becoming cannon fodder. Every extra tier of wings condensed means a demigod has defeated at least ten times as many competitors of the same tier.
"Only thieves can survive in Hell, and only the most ruthless scum can rise in Hell!" A reminiscent look surfaced in Dead Frenzy's eyes. "Back when we first ascended to demigod, if the Watcher hadn't hooked up with Gloom Demon, not even dust would have been left of us..."
Yaxiu asked casually, keeping his composure, "Did you ascend to demigod together?"
Chapter 1060