In truth, Yaxiu was not all that surprised deep down. It was precisely because he had anticipated it that the pain had arrived so swiftly. He still remembered Igola mocking him for always being sensitive when he should be dull, and dull when he should be sensitive. If only he could learn to deceive himself and act out of pure self-interest, perhaps he could fully enjoy the wonderful qualities of the girls without tearing himself apart inside, steer clear of countless dangers without risking his life for others, and escape sorrow without losing what was precious to him.
"...Vichy actually made some sense," he murmured softly.
Dead Frenzy retrieved her cigarette and set it between her lips. "Not just your flesh—has your mind fallen too?"
"Before she became a sorcery supreme, she was actually unwilling to let anything from the outside world enter her heart," Yaxiu said. "All the beauty in this world will ultimately vanish like smoke and clouds. The only way to escape sorrow is to miss out on that beauty from the start."
"So what you mean is, you're going to break up with Sonia and the others?" Dead Frenzy took a sip of wine, tilting her head to look at him. "Should I thank you on Sonia's behalf for sparing her?"
"...Forget Vichy and Igola, even Harvey is better at comforting people than you are." Yaxiu glanced at the open coffin. "Dead Frenzy, have you ever lost someone important to you?"
Dead Frenzy watched the white smoke curling up between her fingers. After a moment of silence, she also sat down beside Yaxiu and set the wine bottle down.
"The last day I saw my mother was July 10th. After that, I entered the Cage of All Stars. The moment I emerged from the cage, I ascended to demigod and stepped into Hell. By the time I returned, the mortal realm was already a different world." She slowly exhaled a ring of smoke and tilted her head upward. "Thinking about it that way, my luck wasn't bad—I even managed to miss out on the sorrow."
Yaxiu looked at her and reached out to pat her shoulder, but his hand passed straight through the phantom. Dead Frenzy glanced at him sideways, as if looking at a small child trying to comfort an adult. "That happened who knows how long ago for me. Do you think I still care?"
"If you didn't care, how could you still remember the date of the last time you met?" Yaxiu picked up the wine bottle and took a small sip. "It's just that as time passes, sorrow ferments into regret, so it doesn't make you ache anymore—it only makes you drunk."
"It's been a year since Sonia last saw her mother. Back then, she wasn't even a sorcerer yet, thinking only of bringing her mother to Jialesi to enjoy life..." Dead Frenzy said softly. "She never imagined that would be the last time."
Yaxiu looked at the line of words carved into the coffin lid and said, "Who could ever know which meeting would be the last? It's just that when parting, no one promised when to meet again, and so everyone drifted apart."
Suddenly remembering something, he handed the wine bottle back to Dead Frenzy and said in all seriousness, "I will definitely go see her mother with Sword Princess, and then tell her, 'Please entrust your daughter to me...' I promise."
"If you promise it, you'd better do it," Dead Frenzy said suddenly.
She snatched the wine bottle and scoffed, "Why does that sound like something an innocent maiden would say?"
She chugged down half the bottle in great gulps, burping without the slightest concern for poise. Just the smell of it made Yaxiu feel a little buzzed.
"Speaking of which, that reminds me of someone," a reminiscent look surfaced in her eyes. "How should I put it... That person wasn't really a friend; she was actually an enemy I disliked quite a bit, who framed me several times. Later, something happened to her lover. She actually had the nerve to come ask me for help. My own situation wasn't good back then either, so out of kindness I told her to let it go, but she ended up picking a fight with me."
"And then?"
"Then she died. She died quite ridiculously too—at her lover's wedding... An old lover's funeral held at the same time as the new lover's wedding. For her lover, that must have been an unforgettable day."
"Thinking back now..." Dead Frenzy lowered her eyelids and murmured softly, "If she had lived, maybe our journey in Hell would have been much more interesting."
The reason Yaxiu had insisted on triggering the void rift in Sea Return Palace was not out of spite against Dead Frenzy, but because he wanted to find Hell demigods to gather intelligence on Igola and Harvey. The two newly ascended demigods could never survive in Hell on their own; given Igola's character, he would certainly seek out an organization to huddle together with.
Everything had gone smoothly. Yaxiu's deductions had been correct, and he had successfully found clues—it had just come too late.
If only he had explored Hell a few days earlier; if only he had gone to Blood Moon or Gospel, where they had left more traces; if only he had grabbed them the moment he emerged from the Cage of All Stars to show off Sword Princess... wouldn't everything have turned out differently?
If only...
"Calmed down so quickly?"
"Because I understand that without the World-Swallowing Serpent, none of this would have happened," Yaxiu said. "I'm sick and tired of feeling powerless about myself. This is a world full of miracles. What I've lost, I still have a chance to take back. And what I haven't lost, I must protect no matter what!"
He paused, then added, "Besides, staying with you only makes me more and more depressed. I'd rather seize the time to gather resources, and when I return to reality, I can go hug Sword Princess and beg for comfort."
*Thud!* The castle shook violently! Along with two piercing shrieks, a pair of longspears punched through the floor. A violent spiral current tore the sandalwood coffin and its lid into wood chips in an instant, lunging toward Yaxiu like two raging dragons!
A Forgotten One!
"Ya—" Dead Frenzy instinctively gripped her hilt to draw her sword, but the person beside her was faster!
Yaxiu drew his swords!
The spectacle within his soul kingdom flared with seven-colored radiance. One hundred and thirty-one sorcery spirits raised their voices in a roaring chorus, and at the spectacle's center, the core sorcery spirit, the Substitute sorcery spirit, rose from its bed. Like an orchestra conductor, it arranged the laws of the one hundred and thirty-one sorcery spirits into the melody of war drums. As origin power surged furiously from his hell wings, the thunderous beats echoed through his soul kingdom, and the sorcerer's heart sounded a resounding chime!
Medial Spectacle: Sword Retainer!
The white frost in the passage billowed into a flurry in an instant. The Forgotten One's all-out dual-spear thrust was pinned directly to the floor by Yaxiu's twin blades. The raging dragons of destruction had their heads forced down, crashing into the floorboards and shattering the castle's foundation!
The Forgotten One tried to wrench his spears back to continue the fight, but the moment his body moved, both his arms snapped. Retreating slightly, his legs shattered into countless pieces. When he tried to channel origin power, half of his body had already silvered, freezing the flow of origin power; as his eyes darted, his head was cleaved cleanly in two by blazing flames!
A Forgotten One with threefold hell wings was utterly obliterated by a single retaliatory strike from the spectacle!
Only when the Forgotten One collapsed in pieces did Yaxiu notice four phantoms standing behind him. The phantoms flickered like candles in the wind, faint and misty, yet anyone looking upon them could vividly feel the underlying destructive hues that swept over everything: purple-red rage, black-and-white malice, silver-gray madness, and eerie-blue cruelty!
As Yaxiu flicked the blood from his blades and sheathed them, the phantoms dissolved without a trace. Dead Frenzy glanced at the spot where the phantoms had vanished and smiled. "Interesting. Were you trying to show off the fruits of your past two months to me?"
Even Yaxiu was somewhat surprised by his own results—or rather, awed by the combat strength of Sword Princess and the others. Even with the element of surprise, an all-out coordinated strike from the phantoms had managed to instantly slay a Forgotten One with threefold hell wings!
Yaxiu's ability to construct the Sword Retainer spectacle had actually been an accident.
He was naturally inclined to be lazy, and having had to recover from his injuries over the past two months, he had planned on obediently serving as a carefree stress-relief tool. Yet precisely because he was helping everyone relieve their stress, as their emotional bond deepened, Yaxiu gradually became able to sense the negative emotions they suppressed deep within their hearts.
Yaxiu wasn't surprised by this ability of his; the Princess of Resplendent Fireflies had granted him the power to perceive yearning long ago. Perhaps the Princess of Resplendent Fireflies had mostly recovered, or perhaps zero-distance yearning triggered a special effect; in any case, Yaxiu could extract the deepest darkness within Sword Princess and the others.
He didn't just feel it; he could even draw it out and store it inside his own soul.
At first, Yaxiu didn't think much of it, assuming he was merely cementing his reputation as an emotional wastebasket. Later, while observing his soul kingdom out of boredom, he discovered that the fool of a Substitute sorcery spirit had actually taken the initiative to touch their negative emotions, whereupon it transformed into the likenesses of Sword Princess and the others.
With a flash of inspiration, using those dark emotions as raw materials and constructing guided by an inexplicable feeling, he naturally formed the Sword Retainer spectacle. He excitedly told everyone right away that this was his first original spectacle, but everyone's reactions were thoroughly underwhelming: Sword Princess and the Witch both remarked that flashes of inspiration like that happened from time to time, Silver Lantern praised him for being amazing, and Vichy sharply critiqued that his soul attainment still needed work.
The updated Sword Retainer was completely different from before. In the past, the Sword Retainer miracle summoned phantoms of Yaxiu to assist in attacks; now, the Sword Retainer spectacle summoned four operators to join the fray. Although Sword Retainer was only a medial spectacle, as long as Yaxiu expended enough origin power and dark emotions, the operators he summoned would possess combat strength remarkably close to the real thing, and the attacks they unleashed would even be the spectacles and miracles they excelled at most.
Sometimes Yaxiu really forgot that his operators were a group of genius female sorcerers. The only skills he seemed more talented in than them were matters of intimacy...
"I also hope that one day I'll never have to use this spectacle again," Yaxiu shrugged. "But until then, let me borrow their strength with a guilty conscience."
"What do you think?" Yaxiu asked, curious about Dead Frenzy's evaluation.
"A lovers' spectacle," Dead Frenzy said, hitting the nail on the head. "Without the dark emotions they provide, this spectacle is merely an empty shell. But using your lovers' dark emotions as a weapon, hmph..."
She paused, then sneered, "Still, in the hands of a playboy like you, this spectacle is practically no weaker than a celestial spectacle."
Yaxiu blinked, then nodded. "Of course."
By now, the castle was tottering on the brink of collapse, the ceiling crumbling and shattering. Yaxiu let out a long breath. "Let's go. Time to collect the resources of the Third Hell."
Dead Frenzy instinctively raised a hand to pat him, but after a second thought, she lowered it and followed him crashing through the window to escape the crumbling castle. Only then did Yaxiu discover that the castle had been built above a broad golden river. He looked up, yet still saw no sky—not because the sky curtain had been stolen, but because this realm simply possessed no sky.
This was an enormous cavern world. The rock walls overhead were covered with dimly glowing fluorescent moss, and a wide golden river wound its way through the expanse, its dazzling golden light spreading in all directions like a mist of gold foil permeating the dark.
"Welcome to the Third Hell," Dead Frenzy said. "Blackfall Hell."
Chapter 1144