Smoke rose over the Ancient Battlefield, the Mountain of Corpses and Sea of Blood reeked with stench, Wind, Flowers, Snow, and Moon bewitched the mind, the Hanging Gardens hovered high in the sky, six angels stood by with downcast eyes, and four Divine Lords watched like stalking tigers!
Such majesty was enough to terrorize all living beings; such an aura was enough to cow the gods. The mortal realm had never witnessed such a grand spectacle, nor had the Void Realm ever known such a desperate dead end!
And so, no one could have anticipated that Yaxiu would dare to strike first!
A clear, ringing sword cry tore through the sky as Yaxiu traced two arcs of ink-black light with his twin swords. Facing the abyssal, prison-like majesty of the Divine Lords, nothing could express his defiance better than this wonder:
Heart-Hunting Throne!
Yet the target Yaxiu aimed for was not one of the six angels, but—the Lord of the Endless Abyss!
Crawling out from the mass grave of the Ancient Battlefield, the Lord of the Endless Abyss saw the convergence of ink-black sword marks. He slightly raised his gray brows and stood straight without making any move to dodge. The ink-like trails, suffused with Yaxiu's soul pressure, passed right through the Lord of the Endless Abyss's body. But like a tranquil lake merely stirred with slight ripples, he suffered nothing that could even be called damage.
"Just as I thought," Yaxiu said, breathing a sigh of relief as his impassioned tone soothed his companions' fears. "You haven't truly descended into the mortal realm!"
From the start, Yaxiu had refused to believe that the Divine Lords could descend into the mortal realm. If they could come down in person, why would they send so many angels? For a saturation kidnapping?
Ten world secret realms plus ten angels were still far inferior to the personal descent of a six-winged Divine Lord.
Besides, Yaxiu and his companions had just slain two of the Lord of the Endless Abyss's Principalities. If the Lord of the Endless Abyss had already descended, how could he have stood by and watched Naglfar and West perish? He couldn't possibly have thought he had too many angels on hand and decided to downsize through Yaxiu's blade, passing the chill of the Endless Heaven down to the mortal realm, could he?
Moreover, Yaxiu had noticed another crucial detail: all the angels had looked surprised when the Divine Lords manifested, meaning Bell-Listening and the others hadn't known the Divine Lords would follow them down.
If Yaxiu guessed correctly, the four Divine Lords hadn't intended to appear either. They simply hadn't expected their thousand-year-old angels to be bluffed by Yaxiu, and seeing that the Sword Princess was genuinely about to claim the Ancient Battlefield—with Yaxiu having forced open an opportunity out of an inescapable dead end—they had no choice but to step forward and regain control of the situation.
"Of course we cannot. Even when hunting the Prime Angel, we could only operate through demonic vessels. No matter if you are as vital as the Prime Angel, we still cannot descend in our true bodies."
The All-Knowing Weaver chuckled. "It is not that we cannot, but that we will not.
"In truth, it is extraordinarily difficult even for demigods to descend into the mortal realm. Fortunately, now that the Sixfold Hell has vanished, a temporary vacuum has formed in the Void Realm's rigid world boundaries, allowing us to send angels down to fetch you. In ordinary times, we would have had to wage an earth-shattering battle against the Void Realm just to send angels into the mortal realm. Though under normal circumstances, you would certainly be in Hell—and sending angels to Hell is far easier than sending them to the mortal realm."
At this point, the Weaver sighed and shrugged. "I was merely hidden within the world secret realm as a trump card, with no intention of making a move from the beginning. Unfortunately, though this little girl Bell-Listening has served me for so many years, she hasn't picked up an ounce of wit. If I hadn't shown myself, I fear you would have spun her around your finger, conning her into bed ten times in a single week."
Bell-Listening felt both humiliated and ashamed. "Weaver..."
"As for you, Yaxiu, after parting ways with Igola, you seem to have picked up all his cunning calculations instead," the Weaver said with a laugh. "Or has the Spectre Prophet tainted your innocence? Or perhaps the Maiden of Splendid Fireflies awakened your true nature?"
Facing the Weaver's lowered gaze, Yaxiu did not shrink back in the least, answering coldly, "Since you haven't truly descended—"
"You still have no chance of victory."
The Weaver lowered her eyelids. "With us present, no accidents will occur."
The atmosphere instantly froze, and the hearts of Yaxiu and his companions plummeted as though into an icy abyss, frost seemingly solidifying within their veins. The Divine Lords might not have descended in their true bodies, but no one believed they would sit passively in the audience without interfering. What was more, merely standing by and watching was enough to shatter their morale.
"Still, I was too impatient. If I had known Endless was here, I wouldn't have bothered coming out." She let out a soft laugh. "I thought you hadn't come. After all, you didn't even show yourself when West died. Who knew you were waiting for the battle intent to gather? What a shame. I quite liked that little wolf. How nice it would have been if you had appeared a bit sooner."
The Lord of the Endless Abyss shot her a cold glance, then looked over at the Supreme Lord of the Blood Moon and the Fantasy Lord of Joy. "This time, it was my subordinates' blunder," he said calmly. "Yet none of you ever intended to honor the agreement from the start. You all came down in person intending to snatch him for yourselves, didn't you?"
The Weaver picked up her teacup, took a sip, and smiled. "Yaxiu and I share deep ties. Naturally, I should be the one to negotiate with him."
"Yaxiu Heath is still a citizen of the Blood Moon," the Supreme Lord of the Blood Moon remarked, catching everyone off guard. Even Yaxiu only then remembered that he truly was a citizen of the Blood Moon Country—though the question was whether the Blood Moon Country still acknowledged a death-row convict permanently stripped of his political rights.
"Yaxiu must be placed under my custody." The Fantasy Lord of Joy appeared as a young boy, yet his tone was mature and steady. He waved his hand with firm resolve. "You have no contingency plan for cooperating with Fanxing; your minds are solely fixed on ascending to the Sorcery Supreme. But the Sixfold Hell is on the verge of ruin, and the Void Realm teeters on collapse. If we can secure the Supreme Holy Grail, that would naturally be best, so we may resolve the crisis alongside Fanxing and preserve the Void Realm. But if we cannot, Yaxiu must cooperate with Fanxing. Even if Fanxing becomes the sole Supreme and severs heaven from earth, that is far better than letting the world be buried alongside your ambitions!"
With the Lord of the Endless Abyss already out of the running, the remaining three factions refused to yield an inch. The Divine Lords argued fiercely with towering arrogance, reducing the angels to mere set dressing. Vichy and Weise exchanged a glance, both clearly seeing the pleasant surprise in each other's eyes. Their top priority right now was to lower their presence and let the Divine Lords fracture among themselves. That way, they might just find a sliver of hope—
A sigh suddenly sounded from beside them. Yaxiu drew the tips of his twin swords across the ground before his feet, carving a straight line into the soil of the Ancient Battlefield. Behind that line lay the Ancient Battlefield; ahead of it were the Mountain of Corpses and Sea of Blood, Wind, Flowers, Snow, and Moon, and the Hanging Gardens.
"Sword Princess, go find a way to claim the Ancient Battlefield for yourself," Yaxiu said calmly. "This line is my sword perimeter. As long as I still draw breath, not a single angel will cross it."
The Witch, Silver Lantern, and Vichy were completely stunned. They saw a flash of struggle on Sonia's face, as if she wanted to argue over responsibilities and reassign roles, but in the end, the red-haired Sword Princess turned on her heel and charged toward the Ancient Battlefield without looking back.
Sonia was clingy and jealous, narrow-minded and prone to double standards. Eighty percent of the friction within the team stemmed from her stubborn persistence, yet Yaxiu insisted on holding on to her. Everyone had harbored doubts to some degree—if only Sonia were out of the picture, the entire team would become a gentle haven orbiting around him, and they could even keep adding more people... Yet witnessing this scene, the Witch and the others seemed to finally discover the true reason the Sword Princess's position was unshakeable.
Even for the Witch, who had arrived the earliest, Yaxiu and Sonia had already been flirting by the time she joined. When Silver Lantern joined, she witnessed their relationship become official. As for Vichy, who arrived latest of all, though she hadn't met the Sword Princess initially, she had still been forced to listen to Yaxiu talk about how deeply in love they were for half a year in the Country of All Stars; after six months, it was even worse, as she had to watch them flaunt their love in person without any middleman.
And so, they had never known what Yaxiu and Sonia were like before they started dating, as though this shameless pair had simply fallen in love at first sight and were made for each other. Yet back in that mist-shrouded Knowledge Sea, the death-row convict from Shattered Lake Prison and the first-year student from Sword Flower University had forged a far more noble and sacred pact long before love ever blossomed—
They were fellow travelers who understood and cherished each other.
Back then, they were both merely shortsighted Silver Sorcerers. Even craning their necks as hard as they could, they could only glimpse legendary figures. Sonia had fantasized about becoming a songstress, while Yaxiu only wanted to break out of prison and find a quiet place to lie flat. But that had not stopped them from promising to walk together to the end. Yaxiu rejoiced in Sonia's accomplishments, while Sonia plotted strategies for his prison break. Even as their dreams evolved with expanding horizons, their pure bond as companions remained untainted.
Even without romantic love, Sonia would still have betrayed the Starry Country for Yaxiu; even if they were not lovers, Yaxiu would still have pulled Sonia toward even greater heights. Love was not a blessing to them, but a curse. Had they remained strictly companions from start to finish, they would not have been wounded by each other's flaws, nor bound by each other's virtues.
So how could Yaxiu ever let go of Sonia? To him, Sonia was another version of himself. He trusted Sonia even more than he trusted himself, and Sonia had never once let that trust down... not once!
"Felix, Daedalose, stay behind the sword perimeter. The rest of you, step forward."
Yaxiu took a step past the perimeter. Despite the swirling thoughts in their minds, the Witch and the others could only follow Yaxiu into this desperate fray!
"I don't know why you're willing to stall for time," Yaxiu said, spreading his virtual wings as his supreme tail feathers shimmered brilliantly. "But if you're willing to wait for the Sword Princess to master the Ancient Battlefield, all the better."
Vichy realized it too—the Ancient Battlefield needed time for battle intent to permeate. Did the other world secret realms not possess similar time-dependent amplification mechanisms? Take the Sword Rain Pool, which compressed the battlefield through the accumulation of rainwater!
As time slipped away, the angels' advantage would only grow. Counting foolishly on the Divine Lords turning on one another was worse than praying to the god of Lalafells for salvation. Their only path to breaking this deadlock was...
"Claiming a world secret realm is hardly so simple," the Weaver said, tilting her head slightly. "Do you truly believe your little girlfriend can return with the Ancient Battlefield and play out a scene of 'the beauty saving the Lalafell'?"
"I think it's rather unlikely too." Yaxiu gripped his twin swords tightly. "In that case, why don't we discuss the terms of my surrender?"
"Haha, talking with you really is amusing, Yaxiu." The Weaver rested her cheek in her hand and chuckled. "However..."
"We still cannot afford to give you any chances."
As she spoke, the smile vanished completely from the Weaver's face in the pavilion, replaced by a cold, majestic aura.
"Cherub, Blessing Angel, Poetry Angel." Taking a sip from her cup of black tea, she commanded casually, "Crush them."
The six angels unfurled their virtual wings, gazing down from on high at these reckless fools who knew no bounds. Murderous intent flooded across the ground like a surging tide, halting abruptly before the sword perimeter. Behind the perimeter stood Daedalose, Felix, and Sonia on the Ancient Battlefield; before the perimeter stood Yaxiu, Diya, Weise, Vichy, and the six angels descending to deliver divine punishment!
Chapter 1168