Ouroboros... was dead.
Of course, no one believed that a magnificent being capable of traversing worldlines and devouring the Sixfold Hell would perish so anticlimactically. Even without further information, Fanxing knew that it went far beyond the concept of a living creature; it was an existence on par with the Void Realm itself, truly indestructible and eternal.
Yet at least for this moment, the Ouroboros that had descended here in an attempt to further infect the Sixfold Hell seemed to have truly been wiped out by their concentrated fire.
Everyone knew it would inevitably return, and that this world still hung by a thread. The time it needed to resurrect might be mere years, decades, or perhaps several centuries... but that sliver of a buffer was all the sorcerers needed.
If civilization was an upward spiral, then the preceding thousand years had been its nadir: the intensity of warfare suppressed to a minimum, competition among the five nations virtually nonexistent, and the six God-Leaders keeping all other gods firmly beneath their thumb... Over 1,668 years, both the mortal realm and Heaven had arrived at a bottleneck.
Yet now, the seventh layer of the Void Realm had been born, and the five nations were reunited once more. This was precisely the turning point of sorcerer civilization. The long slump had finally given way to a rebound, and from mortals to gods, everyone realized that the coming century would be an era of fierce contention brimming with infinite possibilities.
Fanxing, though holding an early lead, might not have the last laugh; a novice sorcerer who had only just stepped into the Void Realm today might well stride into the Divine Realm in just a few years... This was no delusion, but the very history the God-Leaders themselves had lived through.
In truth, every God-Leader had risen to prominence amid the chaos of such contested eras. Like the ebb and flow of the tides, sorcerer civilization experienced a world-sweeping grand era every few centuries. Sometimes a child of destiny conquered the Void Realm and elevated a Kingdom of Heaven; at other times, a heavenly God-Leader harvested the world's fortunes. Vichy herself had witnessed two instances of kingdoms being raised to Heaven, though those challengers had merely served as nourishment for Fanxing and the Blood Moon.
Across millennia, far more than six demigods had elevated their Kingdoms of Heaven.
Yet even Fanxing and the Blood Moon, armed with their first-mover advantage, had been unable to prevent the rise of the Endless Abyss, the All-Knowing, Senluo, and Fantasy.
There were only eternal thrones, never eternal reigns.
The civilization suppressed by the six God-Leaders for 1,668 years was on the verge of erupting. Within the next few years, destined sorcerers would inevitably arise to challenge the six-winged God-Leaders and Sorcery Supremes. In fact, they had already witnessed such destined sorcerers—apart from the anomaly that was Yaxiu, Sonia, Lisidiya, Weise, and Vichy were all geniuses capable of presiding over an entire era.
Though they had certainly taken shortcuts, shortcuts entailed immense risks alongside their benefits. Their ability to bear the crushing pressure and grow into their power was itself a testament to their genius—much like an elementary student skipping straight to university while maintaining the highest GPA, a feat far more arduous than normal matriculation.
Beyond them, there were bound to be many more soaring young sorcerers. When those youths lifted their heads, they would naturally yearn to shatter the Kingdoms of Heaven that had looked down upon the mortal world for millennia... for if they did not supplant the remnants of the old era, how could they board the ship of the new?
The dawn of new life must always welcome the final curtain call; the new and the old were on the brink of transition. For the God-Leaders, they might well face unprecedented challenges, but for sorcerer civilization, this was an unprecedented release of long-accumulated power.
Perhaps years or decades from now, a different roster of sorcerers would stand atop the pinnacle of civilization, but they would undoubtedly stand taller and see farther!
Right now, the six of them—Yaxiu and the others—had barely scraped a narrow victory against Ouroboros. But with a few years or decades of development ahead, if their strength stagnated or grew only marginally, they might as well cut their own throats and step aside. Put another way, if they failed to seize this opportunity to advance, others would naturally take their places.
Yaxiu felt the command links to the four Kingdoms of Heaven quietly sever. He was not surprised in the least; the death of Ouroboros meant this unprecedented alliance between God-Leaders and Sorcery Supremes had ruptured at the same time... Just like a brief, dazzling firework burning out its passion, what followed was a long, cold night.
What did surprise him was that the Kingdom of the Stars remained under his control. Raising his brow, he looked at the woman before him. Mirrored in her gaze was no sign of trust, but a pride as brilliant as starlight.
In Yaxiu's ears echoed the words Sword Melody had once relayed: "Yaxiu, it is not your turn to save this world. From this moment forth, leave everything to me."
Yes, this was Fanxing.
Her defining difference from the four God-Leaders was that she considered this her world; therefore, she would pour everything into protecting what was hers. She had never even entertained the thought of Yaxiu stabbing her in the back—or rather, even if the worst came to pass, she feared nothing.
Only someone so confident and decisive could say things like "A sorcerer who pursues perfection is like a crying child." She understood what she wanted all too clearly, and thus would never shed a single tear over what she discarded.
"Very well, then. Have it your way."
Black and white flames erupted from the twin Sorcerer's Banes as Yaxiu swept a brilliant tide of multicolored sword-light back and forth; meeting him tit for tat, Fanxing held the Kingdom of Heaven in her left hand and the starry sky in her right, raining down hundreds of millions of radiant beams!
Boom!
The iridescent sword tide and the cascading galactic swords did not annihilate each other. Instead, they invaded and blended into one another, brewing a supreme storm that swept through Fantasy Hell. The world secret realms built by the hell demigods over tens of millions of years with countless resources all became fuel for the tempest; since they could not take them anyway, it was better to put the waste to use.
Only after every inch of land had been scoured repeatedly did the hell demigods in the ruins dare to poke their heads out. Looking at this thoroughly cleansed new world, barely any time had passed, yet it felt as though they had been reborn into another lifetime.
No one celebrated; they were filled only with crushing exhaustion and numbness.
Because of this sudden war, Hell had lost far too much. Aside from guardian spirits, every demigod creature species had been reduced to sacrificial offerings; of the hundreds of billions of dead spirits wandering Hell, more than half had ended up in Ouroboros's belly, and the rest had nourished the gods. Most crucially, less than one in ten demigod sorcerers survived. After enduring the madness calamity, what greeted them was no dawn, but a far thicker storm cloud: the Supremes and the God-Leaders.
Before these sorcerers standing at the peak of civilization, the demigods possessed no voice whatsoever. They remained mere spectators—only previously, they had watched the exceptionally rare spectacle of Supremes and God-Leaders uniting against an outside enemy, while now, the war that had played out thousands of times before was about to begin anew:
A sorcerer civil war.
Confirming that not a shred of Ouroboros's remains was left, Yaxiu's Sorcerer's Banes completely extinguished.
Yaxiu, Fanxing, the Supreme Lord of the Blood Moon, the All-Knowing Weaver, the Fantasy Lord of Joy, and the Lord of the Endless Abyss stood facing one another. All remained silent, the tension in the air no less suffocating than moments before.
Everyone was calculating the possibilities ahead: if Fanxing moved to annihilate the four God-Leaders, Yaxiu would inevitably ally with them against her; if Fanxing moved to plunder Yaxiu, the four God-Leaders would most likely fish in troubled waters to seize a share of Yaxiu's supreme authority; if Yaxiu gained the upper hand in his battle against Fanxing, the four God-Leaders would certainly join him in counter-slaying Fanxing.
Facing two Sorcery Supremes, the four God-Leaders had to stand united to stand any chance at all. They did not even have the luxury of withdrawing, leaving them no choice but to advance and retreat together.
Yet where the situation would go could only be decided by the two Sorcery Supremes.
Fanxing still held the Sword of the Kingdom and the Sword of the Starry Sky; the control over her Kingdom of Heaven she had granted Yaxiu had just been revoked as well. She watched Yaxiu in silence, as aloof and haughty as ever, as though she stood atop a train while Yaxiu could only look up at her from the sports car trailing behind.
Yet the person standing at the absolute summit now was not Fanxing, but him... Yaxiu, fused with Black Demon!
"Today is a good day," Yaxiu said. "Don't you think?"
Fanxing glanced at the near-desolate Hell. "To me, every day is a good day. Every day, I walk further than the day before."
"Did Sword Melody pass on my message?" Yaxiu asked. "Sooner or later, I will take back everything that is mine."
"Why would one who gazes into the future care about someone chasing their shadow?" Fanxing said calmly. "Just how far away is this 'sooner or later' of yours?"
"Right now."
"Right now?"
"That's why I said today is a good day." Yaxiu drew a sword from his spatial ring. "When all troubles can be settled at once, doesn't life become so much simpler?"
Fanxing nodded. "It is indeed a good day."
The two Sorcery Supremes locked eyes in silence, and the entire world grew quiet with them. The six-winged God-Leaders held their breath; the hell demigods shivered and trembled. Everyone realized that the clash to follow might obliterate even the Void Realm.
Just as the tension reached its breaking point, at the critical juncture where the Heavenly Throne's owner would be decided once more, the Sixfold Hell suddenly shook.
No, not shaking—it was collapsing!
Yaxiu looked down and saw an unfathomable sight: the crust and mantle of Fantasy Hell disintegrated, plunging into an abyss, and at the bottom of the chasm, they saw motionless golden river water.
That was Black Descent Hell, submerged beneath the River of Hidden Gold.
Yet Black Descent Hell was collapsing as well, exposing Ocean Hell beneath it. The River of Hidden Gold fused into the ocean, cascading down toward Barren Hell further below!
In such a brief span of time, the first four hells—Barren, Ocean, Black Descent, and Fantasy—had collapsed one after another, merging into a single whole!
No wonder the entire Hell was violently trembling; when the foundation collapsed, the building would naturally shake!
Such a grandiose, mad spectacle could only be compared in Yaxiu's memory to the collapse of the Distant Sky Realm. And the madness was not yet over—they watched as the waters of the ocean and the River of Hidden Gold flowing into the lowest hell rapidly dropped until they ran completely dry.
A hiss, so distant it seemed to originate from beyond the world itself, pierced through the four hells and transformed into a tempestuous soundwave that whipped up Yaxiu's iridescent white hair.
Accompanied by a scalp-numbing scraping sound, an enormous eyeball appeared beneath the lowest hell. In truth, they could not even tell whether it was an eye, for they saw only endless colors illuminating Hell through the breach; yet this tingling dread made them acutely aware that they were being watched—just like ants in a mound happening to lock eyes with a child outside.
"Is this..." Yaxiu's voice sounded as if it were being squeezed from his throat, "...the true Ouroboros?"
"It's over."
Yaxiu snapped his head toward Dead Frenzy beside him. This time, Dead Frenzy was not even smoking, merely staring blankly at the colossal entity beyond Hell. She looked at Yaxiu and said, word by word, "You're all finished."
In his heart, Yaxiu asked silently, "Didn't we kill Ouroboros's shell inside the Sixfold Hell? What is happening?"
"It gave up on devouring. Now, it's destroying Hell."
"Destroying? But we—"
"You did indeed destroy the feeler Ouroboros thrust into this realm, and it cannot regenerate it in the short term. That should have bought you several years, or even decades—but that was only if Ouroboros still intended to devour you... It's like a bear trying to eat a honeycomb that gets stung by bees; if it wants to try again, it has to heal first. But it could also just forgo the honey and smash the entire tree along with the hive to pieces."
"You can think of it as you destroying Ouroboros's digestive system. It can't digest the Sixfold Hell anymore, so now it's using its teeth—it wants to chew the Sixfold Hell to bits, even if it can't eat a single bite."
Yaxiu was at a loss. "But why would it do that?"
"To slaughter every last one of you," Dead Frenzy said. "It can't endure the long regeneration period. Its lust for revenge has surpassed its instinct to devour. It would rather get nothing to eat this time just to kill you all."
"Has it ever done this before?"
"This is the first time I've seen it happen, too. Probably because you leaked Black Demon's aura. We offended it far too deeply; Ouroboros, which should have been nothing more than a natural phenomenon, came to remember us over countless clashes. The moment it noticed our presence, it chose to abandon everything else and prioritize hunting us down."
Dead Frenzy added, "Just like the sun hating someone so much it would rather smash into the earth to crush them."
"Then what do we do?" Yaxiu said, somewhat dazed. "How much time do we have left?"
Before Dead Frenzy could reply, the All-Knowing Weaver beside them suddenly spoke: "The Sixfold Hell is beyond saving."
"Indeed," the Fantasy Lord of Joy said. "Let us find a way to help the Void Realm sever the Sixfold Hell completely and cede it to this serpent. That way, we can at least buy several decades."
"At least it cannot enter right now; we can withdraw to Heaven." The Supreme Lord of the Blood Moon glanced back at the demigods behind them. "Let us divide these demigods amongst ourselves. There is no longer any hell left for them to inhabit. From now on, there is only Heaven."
"So it should be," the Lord of the Endless Abyss sighed. "It is the only way."
Yaxiu looked at Dead Frenzy. "Is that true? Can their plan work? Will severing the Sixfold Hell really buy us a buffer?"
"How could it?"
Dead Frenzy sneered. "If cutting away the Void Realm could stop Ouroboros, we would have sliced the Void Realm to ribbons long ago. Though the Sixfold Hell can indeed be considered the Void Realm's arm, the Sixfold Hell and the Sevenfold Heaven are connected! Just like a left and right arm overlapping through the torso, if you want to cleanly sever the left arm that is the Sixfold Hell, you would have to slice away the torso that connects them as well! In truth, all seven layers of the Void Realm overlap from top to bottom, tangled and inseparable. There's no way to cut it clean!"
Chapter 1236