In the civilizations of every realm and the cultures of every race, there was a legendary place invariably mentioned. It was the destination of life, the answer to death, the agreed-upon end of all things in the world.
Its name was the Six Hells.
The sinful suffered agony and torment in Hell, while the virtuous rested in eternal sleep. Yet very few ever paused to consider a question—
New lives were continually born, but the dead never disappeared. If the Six Hells truly existed, and if they could truly contain all death, then just how colossal were they?
Now, the answer had arrived.
The instant the second layer of Hell crashed down, Rajesh's newly formed soul body and his four void wings that blanketed the sky were pulverized in a flash, reduced to ashes and smoke.
This time, however, Yaxiu did not panic. Sure enough, a few seconds later, new void wings and a new soul body materialized. Four void wings, far larger and more dazzling than before, blazed with brilliant light as they attempted to halt the descent of the second layer of Hell.
Yet Weixi merely raised an eyebrow. "If he still hasn't figured it out, this is as far as he goes. He'll have to head back to the Knowledge Sea and become a void creature with bright prospects."
"Why?" Yaxiu asked. "Is it impossible for him to withstand the pressure of the second layer of Hell?"
"He can, but his method is wrong," Weixi said languidly. "If he doesn't know what is actually bearing Hell, the second layer will crush him completely."
Sure enough, no matter how massively Rajesh's four wings expanded—even when they enveloped the outline of the lower hell—the second layer of Hell continued its slow, inexorable descent.
Although none of them knew what officially constituted failure, anyone with eyes could see that Rajesh was drifting further and further from success.
A faint sorrow spread through the hearts of the sorcerers. Despite their differing allegiances and hostile relations, stepping into the realm of gods was the common aspiration of all sorcerers. Watching Rajesh on the verge of meeting his downfall there, the others could not help but feel dejected and crestfallen.
Only Weixi remained full of fighting spirit.
"Thousands of years have passed, yet the advancement ritual hasn't changed at all. Wonderful! My past experience will still come in handy."
Yaxiu could not help but sound a little sour. "Advancing to demigod must be child's play for you, huh?"
"I already told you to stop pawing at me and listen for a second," Weixi snapped, annoyed. "The reason I was always unwilling to deduce this secret poison was precisely because the demigod advancement ritual is too dangerous—so dangerous that even for me, it was practically certain death. Not to mention that all my net worth right now consists of a single Knowing and Guarding Fire sorcery spirit. Even when I was fully prepared for my past two advancements, I barely scraped by with my life. Every single time, I was on the brink of death.
"His current plight is our future fate. I am destined to die alongside a foolish master like you."
"If your ribs were any different from chicken cartilage, I'd have kicked you away already," Yaxiu said, teeth grinding in frustration. As he continued healing her, he asked, "Then why don't you look afraid at all?"
Weixi gave him a look reserved for idiots. "Did you forget I still have a soul phylactery in the outside world?"
"Oh, right, you have a second life," Yaxiu said, realization dawning on him. "So... in other words, you've finally succeeded. I'll die with you, and after you resurrect, you'll definitely be able to break free from the Ruby Chains.
"As expected of the Spectre Prophet. I'm truly no match for you." Yaxiu's tone was flat, revealing neither anger nor joy.
Weixi gazed at him, the corners of her mouth curling into a slight smirk. "Are you mad? Wondering why someone heinous and selfish like me gets to live, while someone like you, who only wants to embrace a quiet, ordinary happiness, has to die?"
"No." Yaxiu paused. "Well, not entirely 'no.' A little bit, perhaps.
"But I'm well aware that without you, we'd already be dead right now. Even if we die in the future, that stretch of life in between was indeed secured by you. I should be grateful, not resentful.
"My only regret is that I couldn't drag you down to Hell with me. This time, I'll truly have every reason to suffer and endure torment in Hell without even the right to defend myself. After all, until you arrived in Hell, the crime of 'letting the Spectre Prophet escape' would be enough to put me above hundreds of millions of sinners."
Weixi looked closely at him for a few moments, as if confirming whether he was telling the truth. Suddenly, she broke into a radiant smile, her shifting eyes brimming with seductive charm. "Perhaps this piece of news will brighten your mood—even if I am reborn, the secret poison will follow me. In other words, at most I only have two chances, but when it's time to die, I'll still have to die."
Yaxiu considered this and nodded. "Thanks. That really is the best news second only to me escaping this ordeal. So, why aren't you afraid? In fact, why do you look kind of happy?"
"Because being afraid won't increase my chances of passing the advancement ritual by even a fraction," Weixi replied. "Yet the ritual hasn't changed much. My past experience might increase my odds of survival by a thousandth, a ten-thousandth, or a hundred-thousandth. Shouldn't I be happy about that?
"Perhaps you haven't noticed—we are currently in the Country of All Stars trying to snatch the fruits of the Divine Lord of Stars. In truth, that is far more likely to claim our lives than an advancement ritual. If the Divine Lord of Stars decides to flip the table, we won't have the slightest hope of surviving.
"A Divine Lord is a hundred, a thousand times more dangerous than the Path of Origin. A sorcerer's greatest enemy is only ever another sorcerer.
"The life-and-death crises I've lived through are far more numerous than you can imagine," Weixi said serenely. "A sorcerer like me, unwilling to remain ordinary, must live on the edge of a blade to fight for a chance at supreme heights. If my heart wavered for even an instant, I would have died without a grave long ago. Maintaining ambition and confidence at every waking moment is the most fundamental survival quality for someone like me.
"Even if my hope of passing the advancement ritual is microscopic, I will still throw everything I have into stepping onto the Path of Origin. To hell with probability! The word 'miracle' was coined for sorcerers like me reaching for the apex!"
Not only Yaxiu, but even Niya and Feili looked at Weixi with irrepressible admiration.
However, Yaxiu quickly came to his senses. "Don't you two go getting emotional! She's deliberately making it sound inspirational to prey on your internal turmoil. Her role card is a villain! No matter how much she sugarcoats it, she's still an utterly wicked person. Don't be fooled by her!"
Resting her head against his chest, Weixi tilted her head back to look up at him. "Then were you moved?"
"Yes, my blood is boiling, too," Yaxiu said sourly. "Just the thought of dragging a sorcerer with such an unyielding Dao heart into the grave makes me feel like going to Hell is worth every bit."
Even so, Yaxiu reined in the melancholy and fear in his heart, looking up to observe Rajesh's advancement ritual attentively. While they had been talking, the sky had been quietly changing.
Rajesh's Silver Void Wing suddenly began to straighten and lengthen until it turned into a glittering silver ribbon. It circled the first layer of Hell once, looking as if the hell was bound by a silver sash.
Afterward, his Gold Void Wing also looped past the first layer of Hell, repeating the trick as a dazzling golden ribbon to firmly bind the second layer of Hell as well. Once he completed those two steps, Hell ceased its descent. But because both the Silver Void Wing and Gold Void Wing were used to wrap around the hells, only the Rainbow Void Wing and the Multicolored Void Wing remained to partition the sky.
"What's going on?" Yaxiu murmured. "His void wings..."
"For a sorcerer who suddenly underwent an advancement ritual, the fact that he could figure it out is quite impressive," Weixi remarked with undisguised praise. "If you think about it carefully, you'll understand that what bears Hell has never been the sorcerer's body, but our void wings. The greater the surface area of the void wings in contact with Hell, the less pressure Hell exerts.
"Earlier, he couldn't stop the fall simply because his void wings hadn't touched the second layer of Hell at all. Now that he's using the Silver Void Wing to bear the first layer of Hell and the Gold Void Wing to bear the second layer, it is indeed the correct approach. However..."
"His Gold Void Wing is a good deal longer than his Silver Void Wing," Yaxiu noted as well.
The first layer of Hell was below, while the second was above. If the wings enveloped both layers with equal circumference, the Gold Void Wing still needed extra length to bypass the first layer of Hell.
"Exactly. That is the second stage of Four-Wing Balancing," Weixi said with a smile. "The void wings are destined to vary in length. A dynamic balance must be achieved to keep oneself from falling under the control of the Void Realm's will."
"Wait, wouldn't he achieve balance simply by making all four wings as long as the longest one?" Yaxiu asked, slightly puzzled. "It's just that the wing bearing the upper hell has an extra section."
"Because his wings are already too long," Weixi explained. "With every inch a void wing lengthens, the speed at which he absorbs knowledge increases by a notch, and it's a process that cannot be stopped. When his wings are long enough to bind Hell, he is no longer absorbing knowledge—knowledge is opening the floodgates upon him.
"Expanding the void wings without limit will ultimately turn him into a brainless sorcery spirit.
"By that point, he won't even have time to shorten his wings. Lengthening them further would drown his consciousness in the deep sea of knowledge. The correct move here is to use the wing with the greatest attraction to bind the lowest hell, which constrains the primary torrent of knowledge." Weixi glanced at the Silver Void Wing wrapping around the first layer of Hell. "He did quite well."
"Wait," Yaxiu's eyes widened. "Is he still expanding his Silver Void Wing?"
"Sorcerers are all greedy after all," Weixi chuckled.
"Greedy?"
"Four-Wing Balancing doesn't just determine whether you can advance; it also determines the outcome of your advancement: the Temple of Sorcery," Weixi explained. "Although the four wings will return to their original state once it's over, their condition at the very end directly affects the tier of your Temple of Sorcery.
"The larger the void wings, the greater the space inside the Temple of Sorcery. The more balanced the four wings, the greater the potential of the Temple of Sorcery. While there are methods to increase space and potential later, they are exceedingly difficult to come by.
"The tiers of temples can generally be divided into high, middle, low, and supreme. The weakest, a low-tier temple, can accommodate at most a single god. You might say that's meaningless if you don't have a god, but even without one, the larger the temple, the greater the scale of sorceries your spirits can construct, to the point of manifesting the might of miracles. A low-tier temple can only accommodate sorceries built by a hundred sorcery spirits, whereas a middle-tier temple is enough to accommodate sorceries built by a thousand sorcery spirits.
"A tenfold difference in the number of sorcery spirits can easily create a twenty- to thirtyfold gap in the power of a miracle. Now you should have some understanding of the temple's importance. But beyond space, a temple's potential is even more vital.
"If your Four-Wing Balancing is poorly handled—say, if your Rainbow Void Wing is vastly longer than the others—your temple will mostly be composed of colored glaze. Inside, aside from Three-Wing sorcery spirits being relatively active, the other spirits will be lifeless and dormant. You might even find Three-Wing spirits killing off the others behind your back.
"That is because the Rainbow Void Wing becomes the primary foundation of the temple, granting Three-Wing spirits a massive boost while severely suppressing the rest."
Yaxiu asked, "Then wouldn't it be fine if I just made the Multicolored Void Wing the longest? Once you're a demigod, you'd only use Four-Wing sorcery spirits anyway, right?"
"Then the second scenario occurs," Weixi smiled. "The sorcery faction that makes up the majority of your Four-Wing spirits will bully and eliminate other factions. If they all belong to the same sorcery faction, they will continue dividing infinitely, establishing majorities and minorities based on purity to keep fighting.
"The greatest impact of severe imbalance on a temple is that it makes a certain faction of sorcery spirits wildly overexcited. In an extremely imbalanced temple, the spirits will slaughter each other until only a single one remains. If the sorcerer inserts new spirits, they'll just keep killing until one can monopolize the entire temple."
Weixi paused, opening her innocent-looking eyes wide as she looked at Yaxiu. "Sorry, I'm talking about the temple, not making fun of your love life, Master."
Pfft.
Feili could barely hold back a burst of laughter. Niya's shoulders twitched once, though she made no sound.
The corner of Yaxiu's mouth twitched with fury, yet he could find nothing to retort with. He had no choice but to take a deep breath. "It's fine. I forgive you."
Satisfied, Weixi continued, "However, if the four wings tend toward balance, the temple becomes far more diverse. Not only will the sorcery spirits coexist in harmony, but their efficiency in constructing miracle sorceries will increase drastically. In an imbalanced low-tier temple, the moment you order the spirits to construct a sorcery, you turn around only to find they've already started brawling with one another.
"The greater the space and the more diverse the construction, the higher the temple's tier. As for me," Weixi said with quiet pride, "I previously possessed a high-tier temple, second only to the supreme tier."
"Is that so?" Yaxiu said sarcastically. "Did a god ever live in your temple then?"
"None of your business." Weixi glared at him.
*Don't believe her. How could a demigod get angry over something like this? She's definitely faking it to satisfy my urge to provoke her...* Even though Yaxiu saw right through it, deflating Weixi's ego still brought him a burst of satisfaction.
Just then, the third layer of Hell plummeted downward. Armed with earlier experience, Rajesh had his form broken apart once more, but he quickly extended his Rainbow Void Wing to wrap around the third layer of Hell, rapidly halting its fall.
When the fourth layer of Hell descended, Yaxiu suddenly realized a problem. "If every layer of Hell requires a void wing to bear it, but he only has four void wings...!"
"Yes, he only has four void wings." Weixi wore a subtle smile. "So, what comes next is the most interesting part of the demigod advancement ritual—
"The parts you cannot bear are what truly make it Hell."
Chapter 885