She Bought It, She Really Bought It

"O Time, heed my command—halt!" In the Astral Realm, following Diya's resounding chant, the Chiming Bronze Dragon behind her unfurled its massive metallic wings. The left wing was etched with the sun, moon, and stars, while the right was carved with scales, feathers, and beasts. As the bronze dragon drew its colossal wings together to shield the Four Pillar Cult sorcerers, a gigantic circular clock manifested across its body. Upon its face rested only a single hand and three tick marks of time. When the hand advanced to the first mark, the starry barrier of the bulwark shattered. Starlight flooded everything, parting only around the bronze dragon. When it advanced to the second mark, space-time across the entire area rippled. Stones twisted, soil surged, and rays of light bent, reducing the entire world to a smeared swirl of blended paints. When it advanced to the third mark, the ruins sheltering the Four Pillar sorcerers were devastated a second time, and all the nearby sorcerer phantoms dissolved entirely into ash. With the three ticks ended, the phantom of the Chiming Bronze Dragon quietly dispersed. Diya also reverted to the form of a white-haired little girl, having lost the strength to maintain her adult Empress posture. She glared sourly at the clock seal on the back of her hand and pouted. "I'm completely out of time!" Yet Diya's sacrifice was well worth it. Thanks to her Time Stop Sanctuary, the Four Pillar Cult sorcerers safely weathered the second starry collapse. Unlike an ordinary person's conception of stopping time, she had not halted the world's time, but the time inside her own sanctuary. The sort where the entire world stood frozen while one remained free to move was halting the world's time. Just now, the world had continued its motion, while the time of Diya and her allies had been stopped. They were not even conscious that the Chiming Bronze Dragon had counted down through three ticks; they only felt that in the blink of an eye, everything around them was destroyed. The essence of time was motion. When their time was stopped, they naturally remained unaffected by external movement. In simple terms, it was as if they had been severed from the outside world, creating an intangible spatial barrier. To Diya, the Witch of the Time Sanctuary, it was all quite straightforward—all motion generated the waters of the River of Liquid Gold, including vibrations, air, and miracles. Yet whether it was a world-ending divine miracle or an insignificant drop of rain, the liquid gold water they produced was identical, bearing neither hierarchy nor distinction of worth. What the Chiming Bronze Dragon had actually created was a "liquid gold well" capable of absorbing all the liquid gold water generated inside the sanctuary within three seconds. If the entire world were considered a River of Liquid Gold, then in those three seconds, the bronze dragon had carved out a hollow bubble. The liquid gold water of Diya's party and the liquid gold water of the starry shockwaves were all sucked into it, manifesting externally as what the world perceived as a time stop. Fortunately, the deathrattle detonation of the starry barrier possessed no Time faction amplification. Otherwise, it would have only needed to increase the volume of liquid gold water to fill the well ahead of schedule, naturally bringing the Time Stop Sanctuary to a premature end. "You're still cuter like this." Sonia patted the Witch's head. "Looking like this, you just seem like an ordinary little girl with a daddy complex." "Yaxiu and I share the mutual love of peers!" The little Empress bared her teeth and swatted away the Sword Princess's hand. "Oh really? Then have you ever called him Daddy?" "I... back then, we..." "Have you, or haven't you?" The Witch's shoulders trembled with rage. The Four Pillar sorcerers dared not utter a sound, terrified of getting caught in the crossfire between two seats of honor. Yet the Witch suddenly composed herself, even breaking into a smile. "Yes, I called him Daddy in the past. And not just in the past—even after Lisi is separated out, I'll keep calling him that." She tilted her head, a few strands of black weaving into her pure white hair. "Hearing an Empress call him Daddy, he'll surely be thrilled, won't he? When the time comes, if you'd like to listen, I can arrange a room for you in the imperial palace, right nearby." *Whoa, absolute overkill.* Disaster Messenger Claire was listening with such awe she nearly applauded. Though the Witch Seat hadn't explicitly mentioned it, every single word was aimed straight at the Sword Seat's social background. While legendary sorcerers no longer required any aristocratic pedigree—they themselves being the highest nobility—there remained a vast chasm between nobility and royalty, especially given that the Witch Seat was the ruling Empress of the Gospel Realm. Moreover, the Observer Seat was himself a legendary sorcerer. Choosing the Sword Seat would bring virtually no change to his status; choosing the Witch Seat, however, would make him the master of a nation, receiving the worship of hundreds of millions. Any dream he dreamed the night before while holding the Witch Seat in his arms could be brought to life by the entire country the very next day. And offering to arrange a room for the Sword Seat in the palace... Put kindly, that was living under another's roof; put crudely, people might wonder if the Witch was taking both the Observer and the Sword Princess as her consorts! The corner of Sonia's mouth twitched. "Calling on your sisters for help when you can't win an argument on your own?" "What does it matter? In the end, we'll all be together with Yaxiu anyway..." "Wait!" The Witch's hair color abruptly snapped back to normal. "I haven't agreed to that yet! Wait until he comes back!" The Sword Princess sneered. "It seems you have even more romantic rivals than I do." The Witch huffed. "At worst... well, the meat's simmering in the same pot anyway. The only question is how large a bed we need to prepare." Dark lines crossed Sonia's forehead. "I will definitely stop you... if only to preserve his life." "What wild things are you imagining? We're just going to sleep together!" "That's precisely what worries me." Just then, another army of Four-Wing phantoms appeared. The Claw-Extending Sword Saint looked at the bulwark's final starry barrier and drew her blade. "We only spent twenty minutes on the second barrier... I wonder if we'll make it in time." Thanks to the purple-red sword light empowered by the Extinction Resentful Blazing Dragon, Sonia could strike at the church sorcerers within through the starry barrier. Consequently, the church sorcerers were never able to operate the barrier properly, and it was shattered before it could even unleash a third of its potential. Yet despite their blistering pace, the Divine Lord of Stars seemed faster still. The pillar of white light piercing the sky at the center of the bulwark was shrinking at a visible rate. In less than half an hour, it would vanish completely. The disappearance of the white light signified that the Divine Lord of Stars would no longer require mortal rituals to assist—meaning the digestion of the angel's wing was complete. "Use an amplification miracle to accelerate my casting speed," Sonia said. "Alright." Golden threads of water shot from Diya's fingertips, connecting to all the joints of Sonia's body. "You really have changed." "How have I changed?" "Whenever you used to argue with me, no matter how much you suppressed or masked it, venomous murderous intent would always leak out," Diya said evenly. "So I was quite afraid of you... and Yaxiu was afraid of you too. "Come to think of it, only Youlan Weise wasn't afraid of you, because her wickedness far exceeded yours," she continued. "Yet just now, you didn't just initiate the banter; there wasn't a trace of malice in it. It was like playful teasing between friends." Sonia replied, "We were always friends to begin with." "Yeah, which is why I really miss the time we spent rampaging through the Time Continent," the little Empress said. "Back then, our friendship was pure. I didn't know you loved the Observer of the Void Realm, and you didn't know I loved the real-world Yaxiu." "Because I've thought it through." The village girl blinked. "While he's very important to me, you're also my most cherished friend. No matter what happens between him and me, I shouldn't take it out on you and ruin our friendship." Diya started slightly, surprise flickering in her eyes. "Are you... yielding?" "Why would I yield? It's not as if I can't seize the best for myself." Sonia rolled her eyes. "I certainly don't want some leftover drained dry by you witch sisters. "I simply refuse to spend my days soaking in a foul, heavy swamp, defeated by negative emotions until I become some fragile, pathetic Sword Princess. "Speaking of which, were you deliberately trying to rile me up, hoping I'd turn into an unreasonable, resentful shrew so you could act all gentle and considerate when he returns, driving a wedge between us?" "Eh?" The white-haired little girl tilted her head innocently. "Sword Princess, whatever are you talking about? I don't understand at all." "At any rate, I will keep my emotions in check," Sonia said, meeting Diya's gaze. "Whether to save him or for our own sakes, we cannot harbor mutual hatred over a single man... That would just be too pitiful." Diya looked somewhat touched. "That's true. We are legendary sorcerers, the very finest across all six nations... You are a Sword Princess with a boundless future, and I am the Empress of the Gospel Realm. No matter how important Yaxiu is, he shouldn't be the sole measure of our lives. "We still have our lives, our sorcery, and our future." Sonia extended a hand toward her. "And we still have friends." Watching the Witch and the Sword Princess smile and shake hands in reconciliation, Disaster Messenger Claire beside them was moved to tears. *Yes, this is how it should be! No matter how formidable the Observer Seat is, he isn't worth two such women losing their minds over him. Better to toss the Observer Seat entirely aside and forge a precious friendship between two legendary female sorcerers—* Yet the moment Sonia turned around, Claire saw both of them stick out their tongues simultaneously, identical triumphant smirks plastered across their faces: *She bought it, she really bought it!* *Hey, give me back my heartfelt tears!* "Adjustments complete." Diya lightly flicked her fingers. "Do you need time to get used to it?" "No need." Sonia took flight, the phantom of the Extinction Resentful Blazing Dragon manifesting behind her. With a single sweep of her blade, half the purple night descended! Dozens of points of light on the bulwark's starry barrier vanished in an instant. Under the siege of tens of millions of Four-Wing phantoms, the starry barrier was being degraded at an astonishing speed! "Truly worthy of a battle of myriad armies," Daidalos murmured. She clearly recognized that without the Witch, they would have failed at the very first step of the Heavenly Light Plan; yet without the Sword Princess, they could never have destroyed the Divine Lord of Stars' ritual fortress before He finished digesting the wing. The Sword Princess's destructive power was far better suited to this kind of battlefield than Trozan's. Earlier, she had actually felt dissatisfied with the Four Pillar Gods appointing the Final Observer as their leader. Perhaps that was why she was merely a feeler while the Four Pillar Gods were gods—putting aside the Final Observer's role in the Country of All Stars, the mere fact that he had reeled in the Sword Princess and the Witch made him well worth the price! Yet if this side in Astral was already so spectacular, one could only imagine what mythic epic was unfolding on the side of All Stars. "Four Pillar Gods," the Chaos Diva chanted softly, "please bless us to successfully break the silver wings of the Prime Angel and cast it down. "...And likewise, to shatter the shackles of the Fifth Pillar, bringing about its birth."