Nightfall, Twin Palace.
Around the mouth of the Abyss pit sat several long tables piled high with books. Igola sat among them, buried in his studies. Whenever fatigue set in, he rubbed the corners of his eyes, used the Water Therapy sorcery spirit to soothe his retinas, and then dove right back into the reading.
These books had all been hauled out of the "laboratory." In truth, considering the technological prowess of the Grey Fox Divine Era, genuinely critical information was bound to be preserved in cloud storage drives. It was not that Nightfall lacked cloud storage, but accessing it required identity verification—let alone Igola, even the Twin Cult held only pet-level permissions.
Paper records did exist, however. They were simply dense and cluttered with unexplained jargon; even if Igola understood every individual word, strung together they read like blasphemies of an evil god. In his eyes, every sentence looked like a scrambled mess.
For that very reason, the Twin Cult did not mind Igola poring over the documents in the slightest. After all, they could not understand them either.
Igola could just as easily have read them in the lab, without going out of his way to relocate to the edge of the Abyss pit. Yet...
Igola pinched the bridge of his nose, glanced back at the dark pit of the Abyss, and then looked at Black Crow meditating cross-legged by the opening. Then he lowered his head to scour the texts once more, trying to extract anything useful.
The palace doors swung open. The Dark Snake Twins strode inside reeking of blood, their garments flecked with red. Harvey trailed behind them.
Setting down his book, Igola raised an eyebrow at the necromancer, a sneer curling at his lips. "Congratulations. When are you inviting us over to your new home?"
Apart from an hour or two of rest in the Void Realm, Igola had worked continuously for dozens of hours without bathing or tidying up. His golden hair was a mess, his complexion haggard, his spirits utterly drained. Yet that very state gave him a frail, sickly beauty, like a thorn-laden rose about to wither, giving even the Dark Snake Twins pause.
Harvey raised a finger and said calmly, "I went with them to wipe out the Nature Cult."
"Oho, how industrious," Igola said, leaning back in his chair and spreading his hands with a smirk. "Then again, an outsider really does need to make a name for himself to secure a foothold in a new outfit. What did the Twin Cult offer you? The post of corpse disposal section chief that you've always dreamed of, or permission to scavenge beneath their meat grinders?"
Harvey drew a coffin from a spatial card. Alice rose from within and also raised a finger toward the Swindler.
He continued, "At the Nature Cult, we found several texts left by Master Wubainian. Aside from that, I advise you not to make me raise a third finger."
Harvey had one finger up, and Alice had one finger up. Just who would raise the third?
The Swindler and the necromancer traded a stare. After a brief silence, Igola ran a hand through his hair, slumped wearily against the desk, and asked, "Who is Master Wubainian?"
Only then did the Dark Snake Twins speak: "The Nature Cult follows Master Wubainian of the Grey Fox Divine Era, and Master Wubainian was a follower of Master Square-Round Cicada."
"Square-Round Cicada's lineage really runs deep—never dying out no matter what." Igola looked up at Harvey. "You thought the Nature Cult might have clues, which is why you...?"
Harvey placed several bloodstained books before Igola, then sat down beside Black Crow along with Alice.
Igola flipped through the volumes. After skimming them briefly, his eyebrows rose. "Interesting."
"Is there any useful information?" the Dark Snake Twins asked.
Igola turned, glanced toward Harvey and Black Crow nearby, cleared his throat, and said, "Master Wubainian believed that human beings have limits.
"The same goes for the soul. Everything with form will inevitably meet death. Death is the one certain destiny for all things in this world.
"Although Master Wubainian improved upon the Ascetic faction and researched paths of evolution that allowed the physical body and soul to grow extraordinarily powerful, in the end, that could only grant longevity—it fell far short of immortality.
"Therefore, Master Wubainian branched into another approach: since humans can never achieve immortality on their own, why not fuse with something that is immortal? The Nature Cult follows this branch. They crave union with nature, seeking to become indestructible and eternal from then on.
"Yet the Nature Cult's current methods diverge wildly from that philosophy. Merging with nature does not mean turning into fire, lightning, or oceans. Even the sun will burn out, lightning flashes only for a fraction of a second, and oceans dry up. The principle that 'all things with form must meet death' applies just as well to non-living matter.
"Thus, true immortality requires becoming something without form.
"So what in this world is formless and intangible, yet eternal and imperishable?"
Though Igola's question sounded winding, almost every sorcerer in the hall arrived at the same answer in an instant.
"Sorcery spirits," Igola said. "The ultimate end of the Nature Cult is to embody nature and become an intelligent sorcery spirit. However, in the Senluo Wasteland, they had an even better choice—
"To become an intelligent god."
After a brief pause, the Dark Snake Twins suddenly said, "We obtained the embers of the Nature Cult's god. Should we use them to stimulate the Abyss?"
***
*Boom!*
Weise slammed both palms into the phantom's chest. A soft, penetrating force rippled through its entire body, stunning the phantom for two full seconds—rendering it unable to muster even a shred of sorcery power!
This was a technique she had picked up from a notebook in Slay All Crows. By precisely directing combat force, no matter what part of the target was struck, the impact could be guided to the pituitary gland, heart, or spinal cord, completely stripping a sorcerer of their ability to fight back!
Naturally, when Weise first read that notebook, she had treated it purely as a madman's wild fantasy. Only later did she learn that its author was named Tamashi Slay All Crows.
Even so, she could only barely manage to execute the technique within the trial. Had her physical prowess and senses not been honed to unimaginable limits throughout the trials, there was no way she could have produced that so-called combat force with bare hands, just as ordinary mortals could never fathom how sorcerers summoned sorcery spirits.
This alone made clear just how preposterous of an outlier Tamashi, that remnant of Slay All Crows, truly was.
Still, "combat force" was rather wordy; it was better off shortened to...
Just as Weise was turning the thought over, two cold glints flashed behind the phantom. A head flew high into the air before thumping onto the ground.
Two plumes of fiery light rose from the phantom's corpse and drifted into the two combatants' bodies.
The Watcher wiped the blood from his sword with the crook of his elbow, sheathed the blade, and stepped back until he was ten paces from Weise.
Ten paces—the optimal buffer where either could react if the other suddenly attacked.
Though Weise and the Watcher had already fought through three combat trials together, unexpectedly, neither of them had spoken a single word.
They needed no communication at all; their actions had fallen into an immaculate rhythm. They maintained a ten-pace gap when moving forward, and split the battlefield into zones during combat, ensuring the other remained visible at all times.
Operating under mutual wariness, they still achieved near-flawless coordination. One pinned the foe while the other ambushed. When one came under a fierce assault from the phantom, the other made a decisive intervention—neither plotting to kill with a borrowed knife, nor allowing their partner to be cornered.
Even when Weise had worked with Youlan, their rapport had never been this seamless.
In a faint, lingering way, Weise felt that the Watcher was precisely the "perfect ally" she had always envisioned. So cold, so calm, sharing her exact way of thinking—perhaps even more flawless and detached than she was.
It could not get any better, Weise thought. Even the "real Yaxiu" would likely be no more than this.
*So should I find a way to kill Yaxiu and keep the Watcher?*
The moment the thought surfaced, last night's scene involuntarily came to mind: the Sword Princess, Yaxiu, and the Witch sitting on the edge of the rooftop, their fingers intertwined.
Listening to one another's pasts, pondering one another's futures.
Weise suddenly recalled a question—could Yaxiu and Youlan truly cooperate to clear the trials?
She arrived at the answer almost immediately: they could.
For reasons she could not explain, Weise was certain that Yaxiu could not only work with Youlan, but would do so without the guarded, wary coordination she shared with the Watcher; it would be an open, sincere partnership.
If it were Yaxiu, he would persuade Youlan and place his trust in her.
If it were Yaxiu, he would not keep a ten-pace safety buffer, but would walk shoulder to shoulder with Youlan.
If it were Yaxiu, he would not worry about losing sight of Youlan, nor would he hold anything back; he and Youlan would tear through the trial phantoms with the utmost ferocity and efficiency.
If it were Yaxiu...
If it were me...
Seeing Weise clutch her head and stop, the Watcher halted as well, retreating five paces further.
Her head throbbing violently, Weise turned to see this. Her mind was nearly torn down the middle: one half held that the Watcher was correct, that stepping back to widen the safe distance was the proper response; the other half raged in protest—*if Yaxiu were here, wouldn't he show some concern, even if only pretending?*
Weise shook her head, gritted her teeth, and pressed forward.
*Too weak.*
*When did I... become so weak?*
Soon, before the next trial began, an unfamiliar tremor rippled through the underground.
The challengers looked up at the ceiling. Weise realized at once that it had to be Yaxiu's companions attempting a rescue—it could not be the Twin Cult, who had made zero headway after all these years. It had to be that mind sorcerer and his group.
At that very moment, the trial countdown ran out.
A figure unfamiliar to Weise stepped slowly out from the corridor. The instant she appeared,
Chapter 584