"The Witch is the Gospel Empress in reality?" Sonia's eyes went wide, her face full of disbelief.
"Am I some kind of lolicon?" Yaxiu clutched his head, unable to believe it.
"You are not!" Diya grabbed his shoulders and shook them hard, her face red with alarm. "I'm me, and Lisi is Lisi—we're separate! The one you love is the Witch Diya. The one you dote on is your daughter Lisi. What Lisi feels for you is pure family affection, and between you and me there's friendship and love!"
"Honestly, I think what Lisi and I have is friendship too." Yaxiu's expression was complicated. "I keep trying to get her to call me big brother instead—or just my name would be fine—but she won't change it... Still, isn't it kind of weird when your daughter says, 'Papa, let's go look at pictures of big-boobed girls together'?"
"But aside from games, that's the only entertainment you have left, and Lisi just wants to be close to you," Diya said. "Besides, we want to see them too. I can't believe you actually figured out the Gospel system has a function like that."
"Isn't that perfectly normal?" Yaxiu said righteously. "Wouldn't you want to ask, 'Gospel, Gospel, who is the most beautiful person in this world?'"
"But would a normal person follow up with 'Bring me more pictures of her'?" Diya muttered. "Annan definitely never imagined you'd spend your points on this..."
"Oh, right." Yaxiu immediately thought of the friends who had helped him stir the Gospel Country into one fine mess. "How are Annan and Banjie doing?"
"They're all fine. Banjie can even call Annan 'Mama' now," Diya said. "Annan is now the First Witch of the new Witch Governance Bureau, in charge of setting limits on the Gospel system and adjusting social policy. We don't want to keep relying on the Gospel system—we want to build the country we envision through our own will."
She paused. "As for Evalyn, Anfeier, Aunt Nona, Aunt Qinna... they're all doing well, and they've joined the Witch Governance Bureau too. They surely have their own motives, but at least they genuinely want to help Annan and me."
"That sounds exhausting. You've chosen a hard road." Yaxiu reached out and rubbed Diya's head, smiling softly. "Other Yisu Empresses never had troubles like yours. Good work."
"Other Yisu Empresses don't even have a 'troubles' function." Diya pouted. "I'm not Lisi, so don't treat me like a child who needs praise. Next time I bring Lisi into the Void Realm, you can spoil her however you like."
That said, she didn't push Yaxiu's hand away.
"If Lisi looked the way you do now, as an adult, I probably wouldn't dare get close to her." Just picturing an adult Lisi pouncing on him and acting spoiled made Yaxiu feel like he was sliding into the abyss of crime. "And how would I dare treat the Empress like a child? There's only one sun in the sky—in my heart there's only one sun, and that's the Empress!"
"In Stars, we have three suns," Sonia said suddenly.
Yaxiu and Diya started, only then realizing they had unwittingly left the Sword Princess out in the cold.
"Oh, don't mind me. Go on talking." Sonia stood straight beside them with her hands clasped behind her back, tilting her head slightly. "After all, you haven't seen the Witch in ages, and you haven't seen Lisdia in ages either, so your reunion index is at least twice mine. It's only natural for you two to be all lovey-dovey."
Yaxiu blinked. "Are you upset?"
"Why would I be upset? Upset that you've been reunited after so long? Upset that you have a relationship in reality that goes beyond friendship? Or upset that you have precious memories that belong only to the two of you?" Sonia turned away so she wouldn't look at them. "I'm not a petty person. Why would I be upset?"
Among the people we know, the only one even more petty than you is probably Igola / Aunt Bogin...
Diya hurried to clear herself. "Yaxiu and I don't have a close relationship in reality at all! The one who needs Yaxiu to brush her teeth, sleep beside her, feed her, and take her to amusement parks is Lisi, not me. What belongs to Lisi goes to Lisi, and what belongs to the Witch goes to the Witch... Anyway, whatever relationship you have with Yaxiu, Sword Princess, that's exactly the relationship I have with Yaxiu!"
Sonia's mouth twitched, and she gave Yaxiu a strange look. "You actually sleep with a little girl?"
"Don't look at me like that. She's very strong—plenty of times I've come back from the Void Realm and found I'd been kicked off the bed." Yaxiu wore the expression of a man whose past was too painful to recall. "One time her foot nearly ended up in my mouth..."
"Don't worry, I don't sleep like that," Diya said, hugging Yaxiu's arm. "Lisi is just too mischievous."
Yaxiu suddenly thought of something. "Now that you're the Empress, Lisi isn't going to stop studying, is she?"
"How could she? She'd certainly like to, but the White Queen and the Black Butler keep after her—though she studies for five minutes and then plays for an hour," Diya said. "We sisters are one in heart and body, but she isn't really afraid of us older sisters. You and Aunt Bogin are the ones who can keep her temperament in check... Oh, speaking of which, how are Aunt Bogin and Uncle Harvey doing?"
"How should I put this?"
Yaxiu found a raised pile of rubies and sat down, crossing his legs. "If you ignore the part where Igola was nearly ground to pulp like a doll, and the fact that every part of Harvey except his right eye has been swapped out once, then they're actually fine. This past month, we've been through a lot in the Senluo Wasteland... Weise is dead."
This abrupt news stunned both Diya and Sonia. They had been wondering why Youlan Weise wasn't there—had her soul been injured especially badly? Or had Yaxiu wanted to reunite with them first on the first night and so excluded Youlan Weise?
As Yaxiu told the story, they learned that the quiet, detached Truth Sorcerer in the party was none other than the Silver Lantern who had ravaged Senluo.
And in the month they had been apart, Yaxiu had survived one life-and-death crisis after another, far more dangerous than the Spectre Trial. The world-ending ritual, the three gods of the Divine Age, the Spectre Prophet Weixi—all made their entrances. If the Empty Door concept had never been born, if Yaxiu had not held the key to the Thousand Wishes Kingdom of Heaven, everything would have slid into an irreversible tragedy.
"Right now the Wish Hub should be in Tamashi's hands, and we can't get it back for the time being," Yaxiu said. "I believe that as long as Tamashi survives in the Thousand Wishes Kingdom of Heaven, he'll keep the Wish Hub safe and return it to me. But the Thousand Wishes Kingdom of Heaven is our shared property in the end. I handed it over to someone else without your consent—I'm sorry."
Diya shook her head and sat down beside Yaxiu. "I have no objection. We can't make use of the Thousand Wishes Kingdom of Heaven for now anyway."
"I have no objection either," Sonia said thoughtfully. "But that means Weise planned from the very start to hide her identity and deceive you. After all, you were hunting her at first. She learned your situation from the Void Realm and then countered your moves in reality. Only at the very end did her conscience stir, so she took her own life to become a god, and turned into the Silver Lantern to help you slay a god?"
"That's right."
"No. It wasn't her conscience at all. Someone with her strength of will would never regret what she has done." Sonia lowered her eyelids. "You told me before that the Silver Lantern once kissed you by force during the Divine Fire Trial... She wasn't trying to protect the country she had set out to destroy. She was only trying to protect you."
"I'd still rather believe she wanted to protect the world," Yaxiu said. "Even if she really only wanted to save me—when you're willing to save one person, you're already saving the world."
Chapter 764