Sorcery Supreme vs. Ouroboros

"The universe is falling into my eyes. Light, gravity, electromagnetism... nerves, muscles, joints, cells... time, space, entropy, destiny... Everything is within my grasp. Right now, I am omnipotent." Yaxiu slowly exhaled, his iridescent white hair fluttering in the wind. Though standing upon the razor-thin precipice of the doomsday battlefield, he was as relaxed and content as if he had just stepped out of the bath onto a balcony to catch the breeze, his eyes hazy as though he had just awakened. Having successfully suppressed Black Demon, Yaxiu had not only reclaimed his body, but also temporarily shared Black Demon's sorcery realm. This was the first time he possessed both the power of a Sorcery Supreme and the wisdom of a Sorcery Supreme... He had truly ascended to the pinnacle of sorcerer civilization. Yet in truth, Yaxiu's raw performance had not increased in the slightest; he could perceive just as much as before. If compared to the Divine Realm: when Yaxiu stepped into the Divine Realm, he was able to "see colors he couldn't see before," whereas now, he could "comprehend the colors he couldn't understand before." In fact, Yaxiu's spiritual perception was already infinitely close to a sorcerer's limit, as evidenced by his ability to see the Divine Realm in Fantasy Hell. As the crystallization of knowledge and sorcery power, void wings were fundamentally how a sorcerer perceived the world—one could even say void wings were a sorcerer's sense of touch. The moment Yaxiu possessed supreme void wings, even without secret realm void wings, his spiritual perception was among the top two across all history, with only Fanxing firmly surpassing him. Yet perceiving so much was meaningless when Yaxiu's sorcery realm was so barren. To use sound as an analogy, Yaxiu could hear across all frequencies, capturing even infrasound and ultrasound, but the only range he could actually comprehend was between 20 Hz and 20,000 Hz. The machine was still limited by the skill of its pilot. Although Yaxiu could share sorcery experience with his operators—essentially letting everyone pilot on his behalf—Sonia and the others were simply too young. Even Vichy, who had walked the furthest along the path of a sorcerer, was only a dual demigod of Soul and Prophecy; not a single one among them had broken through to the God-Leader realm. Only now did Yaxiu realize that the reason he couldn't unleash the full performance of supreme void wings was that his operators hadn't worked hard enough. He couldn't even count how many sorceries Black Demon had mastered—Black Demon herself probably didn't know either. Yaxiu had already found ninety-nine sorcery factions that had reached the God-Leader realm, along with hundreds, if not thousands, of demigod-level sorceries... In the past, Yaxiu had never had much of a concept of what it meant for the Doomsday Quintet to bury worlds and gather the remnants of civilizations. Only now, having shared Black Demon's sorcery realm, did he realize just how many corpses these ghouls had devoured. They had likely turned every deceased Sorcery Supreme and God-Leader into Sorcerer's Handbooks or Experience Orbs, mastering in an instant the sorcery achievements that others had spent thousands of years studying. Even with some attrition in the process, quantitative change was more than enough to trigger a qualitative leap. Based on what Dead Frenzy had previously revealed and Yaxiu's own deductions, a world on the brink of destruction would typically give rise to several Sorcery Supremes, dozens of God-Leaders, and hundreds of demigods in succession. By burying a world, the Doomsday Quintet could pocket the crystallized civilization of that entire timeline. Black Demon commanded ninety-nine God-Leader-level sorceries, the vast majority of which she had never personally cultivated. Yaxiu couldn't even begin to imagine how many apocalypses she had witnessed, or how many times her hopes had been shattered. Perhaps Black Demon was the only normal person among the Doomsday Quintet. Anyone would be driven mad by such a hopeless flight. She wasn't weak; she simply wasn't strong enough. Therefore, this endless apocalypse had to end here... Now was the best opportunity, and the last. Locking onto the auras of Igola and Harvey, Yaxiu flicked out two beams of sword light imbued with "Jump" to heal them, then turned to the four God-Leaders behind him. "Consider what just happened your price for trying to gang up and kill me. Any objections?" "Why not hit us again? Otherwise, I'd say you haven't had your fill," Weaver chuckled. "You don't strike me as someone who repays injury with kindness." "If you are willing to step into Hell to protect this world, I am willing to wipe the slate clean between us," Yaxiu replied in a cold, clear voice. "Though that only represents myself—if Sword Princess and the others want revenge on you, you can't blame me." Supreme Lord of the Blood Moon snorted, his eyes defiant. "I'll be waiting." The Lord of Joy breathed a sigh of relief and said sincerely, "Thank you for your generosity." The Lord of the Endless Abyss said nothing, for Ouroboros launched another earth-shattering assault. Tens of millions of eyeballs fixed their gaze upon them, and a vast, dense turbulence of sorcery arrived in an instant! Eight-Winged: Glance of the Serpent! Having elevated all sorceries to the God-Leader realm, Yaxiu understood even more details of the Glance of the Serpent: it did not stem solely from Ouroboros's infinite source energy. From the very second it left the eyeballs, it constantly absorbed energy from this world—space-time, destiny, truth, light, airflow... By the time it shot toward Yaxiu and the others, it had already drained every scrap of usable energy from the surrounding area, like a sun scorching the earth dry before crashing down, leaving them not a single drop of water! The sorcery factions involved were so numerous that even Yaxiu couldn't see them all clearly. If even he, sharing Black Demon's realm, couldn't see through the essence of the Glance of the Serpent, he had no doubt it encompassed every sorcery from throughout history, and even future sorceries that had not yet been invented in this timeline! And such nearly insoluble "suns"—Ouroboros could fire tens of millions of them with every single breath. No wonder the God-Leaders could only summon their Kingdoms of Heaven to resist, burning through thousands of years of accumulated foundations to trade attrition, because they had no other choice. What appeared to be a simple, brute-force Glance of the Serpent was actually far more intricate and ingenious than any miracle. There was no way to unravel it. The only way was— Counter offense with offense! "Sword Princess," Yaxiu called his lover's name across the Sixfold Hell, unfurling his void wings without restraint as his silhouette merged and overlapped with the red-haired maiden across infinite distance. "Let's go." In the Empress's bedchamber inside the Yisu Imperial Palace, Yaxiu's body lay in bed. Diya sat by the bedside dozing, Weise was reading a book, Vichy rested with her eyes closed and an expressionless face, and Sonia was listening to music with headphones on. As if sensing something, Sonia suddenly drew the longsword at her waist, sliding the pad of her finger along the blade and flicking it to produce a clear, ringing hum. "You're not allowed to lose," she murmured softly. Yaxiu and Fanxing moved at the same time. Faced with Ouroboros's overwhelming assault, all four God-Leaders were forced to hold fast within their Kingdoms of Heaven. Only the two sword sorcerers could carve a path between life and death through this impenetrable deluge of gazes. Inside the Soul Kingdom of Heaven, aside from a few spectacles like "Jump," "Heart Hunter Sovereignty," "False Promise," and "Sorcerer Bane," the vast majority of spectacles had been completely dismantled. Through Yaxiu's current perspective, the construction of those spectacles was so crude it looked like a story typed out by a chicken pecking at rice scattered on a keyboard. Now possessing Black Demon's sorcery realm, Yaxiu was like someone who had received nine years of compulsory education—fully capable of using his current resources to compose a proper narrative or persuasive essay! Although he could only borrow Sword Princess's god spectacle without changing its structure, that didn't stop him from using his own sorcery spirits to empower it. Countless novel ideas surfaced one after another in his mind. He could conceive of hundreds of sorcery spirit construct configurations every second. Everything under the sun was under his command; all he had to do was choose whichever design he fancied. If he had previously been a rusted, sluggish old machine, he was now a brand-new Strike Freedom fresh off the assembly line! Supreme Technique: Vermilion Water Moon - Annihilation! In a single breath, Yaxiu flashed across a distance of over a hundred kilometers, detonating nearly half of Ouroboros's eyeballs. Crimson-tide sword light accelerated to the absolute limit dyed half of Fantasy Hell red, severing two of Ouroboros's wings! Meanwhile, the other half of Fantasy Hell became the stage for an inverted galactic river! Fanxing likewise slashed through half of Ouroboros's eyeballs, exerting her full strength to sever three of its wings! The God-Leaders launched their counterattack right on their heels. They all knew Yaxiu was the final reinforcement; no other miracle could possibly occur. This was the only miracle they could seize. The machinery of the Kingdoms of Heaven ran in overdrive: Supreme Lord of the Blood Moon's Feast of Flesh, Weaver's Determined Future, Lord of Joy's As One Pleases, Lord of the Endless Abyss's Tyrant Sky... The mightiest violence of Heaven was unleashed without reserve in Hell. Chaotic torrents of diverse sorceries collided and eroded one another, distorted rifts tore through space-time, and the entire world teetered on the brink of collapse. Never since its inception had Hell resembled hell more than it did today! Under their combined onslaught, Ouroboros's remaining three wings melted like ice cream, snapping one, two, three... Just as they thought this climactic battle was finally making crucial headway, they discovered a colossal shadow once again cloaking their eyes. The two wings just severed by Yaxiu and Fanxing had fully regenerated within a single breath. Everyone drew in a sharp breath. Combined, the length of those two wings spanned hundreds of kilometers, which meant its regeneration speed was at least a thousand times the speed of sound. If Fantasy Hell hadn't been shrouded in a starry sky by Fanxing, creating a vacuum, the sheer regeneration of those wings would have generated shockwaves on par with a nuclear explosion. The only good news was that the eyeballs on those two wings had not yet opened, and the other wings were regenerating slowly. Their attacks had not been entirely in vain, but no one could find joy in it. The reason they had coordinated so tacitly to target the wings was that Ouroboros's wing regeneration speed had given them hope—if they pushed a little harder, they could break all of Ouroboros's wings. It was like a gambling table that had rolled "high" ninety-nine times in a row, making them believe the next roll would certainly be high as well; as long as they scraped together enough stakes, they could turn the tables in a single wager. Yet they had forgotten that the house possessed infinite capital... Ouroboros's regeneration speed was not fixed at all. It likely had some sort of emergency hazard mechanism: once all its wings suffered severe damage, it would abruptly erupt with immense vitality to perform an emergency repair on the two wings in the best condition, maintaining its immortal, indestructible state. No one knew how many times this emergency mechanism could be triggered—perhaps infinitely. Or perhaps there was no mechanism at all; perhaps its regeneration had always been this fast, and it was only now getting serious. Though Ouroboros had only unraveled this single offensive, the blow it dealt to their morale was fatal. Even if Yaxiu and Fanxing could hold out, the four God-Leaders could not keep their Kingdoms of Heaven in overdrive indefinitely; such all-out, concentrated firepower could only last so long. "Continue." Fanxing's cold voice echoed across Hell as she surged forward, star-cascade sword light tearing the world asunder! Blood mist steamed from Yaxiu's entire body as though he were about to combust. A God-Leader-level Ascetic faction was enough to let him wring out the very last drop of his potential, unleashing a blood-tide sword light that dazzled the ages! The two wings Ouroboros had just regenerated were severed once more, while the newly forming wings sprouting in haste were brought down by the combined efforts of the four God-Leaders. Everyone gritted their teeth in an unbroken, relentless bombardment. It no longer felt like a battle so much as a race—the pursuer at their heels was named Despair, and so long as they ran fast enough, they could outpace it. But... This might be an endless torment, and Despair never grew tired. When Yaxiu and the others halted and looked back, they still saw Ouroboros's regenerated wings. No matter how many times they broke those wings, Ouroboros could instantly regrow them. So long as they could not obliterate this colossus hundreds of kilometers long and wide into complete nonexistence in a single instant, it could immediately reignite into a raging inferno, burning this world and them... all to ashes. Yaxiu and Fanxing returned once more before the four God-Leaders. Everyone stared at Ouroboros as wings and eyeballs sprouted anew; no one spoke. Reckless concentrated fire had proven futile. If they continued this high-intensity siege, their Kingdoms of Heaven would collapse long before Ouroboros broke down. Yet against such an unimaginable monster, aside from gathering their hot-blooded recklessness, the God-Leaders were out of options. After all these years, they actually found themselves reliving how they felt when they first encountered the Fish-Slaying Dragon—that dread of the unknown and sense of powerlessness gradually saturating their very souls.