[POV: Gu Jie]
The woman strode through the endless palace corridors with slow, measured steps, her black robes sweeping against the polished jade floor. Lanternfire flickered along the walls in muted gold, illuminating the cold beauty of her face as she removed a crimson gourd from her storage ring. The moment she uncorked it, the scent of fresh blood spread through the hallway like iron carried on rainwater.
Gu Jie tilted her head back and drank deeply.
The blood had been harvested only moments earlier from condemned cultivators awaiting execution beneath the imperial prison. It still carried lingering spiritual essence, enough to nourish her abnormal constitution. Her pale skin gradually regained color, faint golden veins surfacing briefly beneath her throat before fading away. Bones cracked softly inside her body as she grew several inches taller, lean muscle tightening beneath her robes while her already striking features sharpened into something almost inhumanly exquisite.
Behind her walked two towering figures in human form.
Horse-Face wore dark armor beneath a loose crimson cloak, his long brown hair tied into a savage tail that reached his waist. His sharp eyes narrowed with visible disgust as he watched her lower the gourd.
“You’re seriously drinking blood in the middle of the hallway?” Horse-Face said with irreverent annoyance. “I still haven’t forgotten that time you knocked me unconscious after probably drinking too much of that stuff. You sure you’re not insane or something?”
Ox-Head nearly stumbled.
“You?” he asked incredulously, staring at Horse-Face. “She knocked you out?”
Horse-Face immediately straightened himself. “That was different.”
“How?”
“She cheated.”
Gu Jie snorted softly.
Ox-Head folded his massive arms. Even in human form, he looked like a mountain stuffed into ceremonial robes, his broad frame radiating pressure with every step. “At the time, Young Miss Gu wasn’t even in the Ascended Soul Realm.”
Horse-Face pointed defensively at Gu Jie. “You try fighting a monster that bites people and starts laughing halfway through the fight.”
“You lost to someone below Ascended Soul,” Ox-Head replied flatly.
Horse-Face’s expression twitched. “You don’t have to keep repeating it. Also, she cheated!”
Gu Jie exhaled through her nose before stopping in the center of the corridor. The playful atmosphere vanished from her face almost instantly as she turned toward the two underworld guardians.
“I brought both of you with me because I needed protection,” she said calmly. “Once this crisis ends, you’re both free to report everything to my father and mother if you wish.”
Neither of them responded immediately.
The truth was simpler than she cared to admit aloud.
She needed strength.
Like always, she was the one cleaning up the disasters left behind by her father’s ambitions and the Empire’s arrogance. Seeing the future was not a blessing. It was a burden that gnawed at her sanity each day she kept her ocular powers open. Every possibility layered itself endlessly behind her thoughts until even breathing became exhausting.
Nongmin had it easy.
He abandoned his Heavenly Eye.
Coward, she thought bitterly.
Then her expression abruptly changed.
Gu Jie moved instantly, darting behind Ox-Head while gripping his sleeve with alarming force.
“There are enemies around us!”
The hallway exploded.
Dozens of assassins emerged from empty space itself, their bodies rippling into existence as concealment treasures shattered around them. Every single one radiated the terrifying pressure of the Tenth Realm. Blades descended from impossible angles, aimed directly toward Gu Jie’s throat, heart, and spine.
Yet before any strike landed, golden light flashed within her eyes.
Gu Jie’s Origin Art activated.
Information flooded outward.
At the same time, the puppet standing silently inside her pocket dimension finally moved. Wen Yuhan’s corpse, refined into her Ascended Soul puppet, opened its eyes as streams of spiritual calculations spread through the corridor. Enemy trajectories, weaknesses, hidden positions, muscle tensions, breathing patterns? Everything Gu Jie perceived was instantly projected into the minds of Ox-Head and Horse-Face.
Horse-Face grunted.
His hair exploded outward.
The brown mane extending behind him suddenly hardened into countless spear-like strands that pierced through the hallway with horrifying speed. Ten assassins were skewered before they could react, their bodies pinned against pillars and walls as blood erupted across the palace corridor.
Only two survived.
One emerged directly from Ox-Head’s shadow.
The other appeared above Gu Jie with twin daggers descending toward her skull.
Both assassins bit down on pills hidden between their teeth.
Boom.
Their cultivation surged violently into the Eleventh Realm, just shy of Ascended Soul.
Gu Jie’s fingers twitched.
Golden strings erupted from her fingertips as two puppets clad in black and white robes materialized from opposite sides of the corridor. The black puppet sliced upward with a crescent blade while the white puppet thrust forward with skeletal fingers. The assassin above Gu Jie barely had time to widen his eyes before both attacks tore through him simultaneously.
At the same moment, Wen Yuhan stepped forward and unleashed a palm strike into the assassin’s collapsing torso.
The body detonated into a rain of shattered flesh.
Meanwhile, Ox-Head roared and swung his great axe downward toward the second assassin. The assassin reacted instantly, activating a translocation spell that switched his position with Ox-Head mid-strike.
Unfortunately for him, Ox-Head had expected that.
The axe still connected.
A bloody explosion painted the walls red.
Chunks of flesh slapped wetly against Gu Jie’s robes and face.
She stared at herself in silence.
“Great,” she muttered dryly. “I’m now a mess.”
Spiritual heat radiated from her body, instantly evaporating the blood and organs coating her clothes.
The four of them resumed walking as though nothing had happened.
Several minutes later, they arrived before an isolated chamber hidden deep within the palace.
Inside sat two individuals.
One was an elderly man wearing dark robes embroidered with demonic scripture, his eyes sharp despite his age. The other was a young woman with corpse-pale skin and silver nails, calmly feeding spiritual insects within a porcelain bowl.
The only officially acknowledged cults within the Hollowed World.
Gu Jie entered without ceremony and slid two folded papers across the table.
“Wei Bao of the Heavenly Demonic Cult,” she said, looking toward the old man.
Then her gaze shifted toward the young woman.
“Zhu Chin of the Eternal Undeath Cult.”
Both cult representatives narrowed their eyes.
“The Empire needs you,” Gu Jie continued. “Enemies have infiltrated our ranks deeply. Some disguise themselves as loyal citizens of this world while feeding information to forces beyond it. Others are simply rotten beyond redemption. I want every name on those lists dead.”
Silence filled the chamber.
Through the abilities of her Origin Art, Gu Jie had already mapped much of the corruption infecting the Holy Ascension Empire. Certain names belonged to spies created through Conquest’s influence. Others were officials, generals, elders, and nobles whose greed had hollowed them out long ago.
Removing them now would not hurt the Empire.
Leaving them alive would destroy it later.
“You will be compensated generously,” Gu Jie said. “No one within the Holy Ascension Empire or the allied factions knows these orders exist. You must remain discreet.”
Wei Bao slowly opened the paper, his aged expression darkening.
Zhu Chin read hers silently while tapping one pale finger against the table.
Gu Jie continued speaking.
“The Great Beast has thrown the world into chaos. Use that chaos. These assassinations must appear organic. Accidents. Betrayals. Internal disputes. Failed missions. I do not care how you accomplish it, so long as no one realizes the targets were systematically hunted.”
Her golden eyes dimmed slightly.
“At a later date, the names on those lists will be revealed publicly,” she said. “When that happens, I will shoulder the responsibility alone.”
…
..
.
[POV: Alice]
Alice floated silently within the vacuum of space, clad in armor from head to toe. Crimson radiance bled endlessly from the engraved seams of her armor, drifting outward like smoke before dissolving into the stars themselves. The massive cape behind her fluttered without wind, sustained only by spiritual force. Beneath the helmet concealing her face, her eyes remained fixed upon the endless stream of logistical vessels moving between the Hollowed World and the orbital warp satellites surrounding it.
The Hollowed World itself looked sick.
The Dark Veil completely engulfed the enormous realm, wrapping around its layered structure like a cocoon. Even from this distance, Alice could see the Ninth Layer slowly disappearing into the abyssal mass consuming it. Mountains collapsed into darkness. Oceans evaporated into black mist. Entire continents vanished piece by piece beneath the jaws of the Hollowed World.
“Too slow.”
The Hollowed World was moving too slowly.
At this rate, the Great Beast would finish devouring the Sixth Layer long before the Hollowed World completed its devouring.
Resting atop the moon nearby was Ru Qiu.
The Heavenly Demon sat cross-legged beside Soulsunderer, the black sword resting across his lap while he performed maintenance upon its damaged edge. The weapon once belonged to David himself, and even now it radiated enough killing intent to distort the surrounding space faintly.
“We shouldn’t be here,” Ru Qiu complained through Qi Speech. “We should be on the front lines.”
Alice didn’t turn toward him.
“You should’ve spoken up when David decided to put us here.”
Ru Qiu clicked his tongue while continuing his work on the blade. “I didn’t think he’d actually stick me with you. I figured I’d have more freedom than this.”
He glanced toward the endless flow of transport ships entering and leaving the warp satellites.
“There must be a reason he placed the two strongest fighters in the Hollowed World here.”
Alice remained silent.
Around them, thousands of soaring vessels crossed the void in organized streams. Some emerged from warp formations carrying supplies, wounded soldiers, and refugees. Others departed toward distant fronts deeper within the battlefield surrounding the Great Beast. Massive arrays embedded into orbital satellites pulsed constantly as spatial gates opened and closed without rest.
Then one of the ships suddenly imploded.
Ru Qiu vanished.
A sonic rupture exploded across space as he reappeared above a monstrous Void Beast that had emerged from distorted space nearby. The creature resembled a mass of black flesh covered in translucent eyes, its body still twisting from invisibility.
Soulsunderer descended once.
The Void Beast split apart instantly.
The vacuum trembled from the force of the swing as black blood scattered into the stars.
At the same time, Alice moved.
Crimson light erupted behind her as she crossed the distance. She entered the remains of the destroyed vessel while fragments still drifted apart. Corpses floated weightlessly through ruptured corridors alongside panicking survivors whose bodies were already beginning to fail beneath the vacuum of space.
Most were below the Fifth Realm.
They could not survive here.
Alice opened her pocket dimension and swept the dead inside with a wave of her hand before retrieving the survivors. She gently placed them atop the moon’s surface within a protective barrier before kneeling beside them.
Golden healing light spread from her gauntlets.
The cultivators gasped painfully as divine restoration poured continuously into their bodies. Ruptured lungs regenerated. Frozen blood thawed. Torn meridians slowly repaired themselves beneath the constant flow of healing spells. However, because their cultivation remained too low to survive the void naturally, Alice had to maintain the spells without interruption merely to keep them alive.
While healing them, she scanned the corpses within her pocket dimension.
One body stood out immediately.
Ninth Realm.
Alice extended a hand.
“Divine Word: Raise.”
Sacred authority descended instantly.
The dead cultivator’s body convulsed before inhaling violently as life returned to him. His eyes snapped open in confusion while spiritual energy surged back through his meridians. Unlike the others, he managed to remain relatively composed after resurrection.
Alice noticed why immediately.
He had practiced one of the vacuum-endurance cultivation arts developed for space warfare. It allowed him to survive a little longer than ordinary cultivators exposed to the void.
Alice looked at him calmly.
“What happened?”
The man swallowed heavily.
“I don’t know.”
Alice’s expression hardened beneath her helmet.
This was not the first incident.
Over the past several weeks, ships had suffered unexplained failures, disappearances, and attacks despite the overwhelming military control established around the Hollowed World. At first they assumed the Great Beast’s influence was interfering with formations.
Now it was becoming difficult to deny the obvious.
Someone was sabotaging them.
Ru Qiu returned moments later, blood still evaporating from Soulsunderer’s blade.
“Everyone still alive,” he said while looking toward the wounded cultivators, “get inside the teleportation formation array and return to the Hollowed World in an orderly manner.”
The survivors immediately obeyed.
None of them dared argue with someone whose mere presence felt like standing beside an open grave.
Alice turned back toward the resurrected cultivator.
“What were you transporting?”
The cultivator hesitated briefly before answering.
“New experimental technology,” he said. “It uses the Holy Emperor’s Egress spell as its foundation. The idea is to send warriors back to the Hollowed World instantly.”
Alice narrowed her eyes slightly.
The man continued speaking.
“It’s meant to reduce frontline casualties and conserve resurrection spells. Captains would each carry one of the devices and use their pocket dimensions to retrieve dead or critically injured soldiers before activating the spell to retreat instantly to the Hollowed World.”
He coughed weakly before continuing.
“The ideal goal is to equip every soldier eventually, but production has been too slow.”
Alice processed the information in silence.
That technology alone would dramatically alter the battlefield. If frontline officers could recover corpses quickly, resurrection specialists would no longer need to waste enormous resources searching battlefields for remains. It would save lives.
Which also made it an obvious sabotage target.
Alice looked toward the shattered remnants of the destroyed ship drifting through space.
She still struggled to understand it.
The threat they faced would kill everyone if the Great Beast succeeded. Entire worlds were already falling into darkness. What kind of fool would challenge the Holy Ascension Empire and the World Council now of all times?
“Was that everything aboard the vessel?” Alice asked.
The cultivator shook his head.
“There were letters too.”
Alice paused.
“Letters?”
“Yes. Deliveries for members of the Martial Alliance and the Four Pillars. They’ve been piling up recently.”
That caught her attention immediately.
If this ship carried political correspondence, then the others likely did as well.
Alice stared at the man.
“What kind of messages?”
“Mostly personal communications,” he answered. “Some were reports regarding the political situation within their territories.”
He lowered his gaze slightly, seemingly reluctant.
“I’m a member of the Four Pillars myself. The elders of both the Four Pillars and the Martial Alliance have already begun investigating whether these sabotages are connected to the political climate back home.”
Alice fell silent again.
That was far worse than she initially assumed.
Internal instability during a war against extinction itself could destroy everything faster than the Great Beast ever could. Distrust between the factions, hidden agendas, territorial disputes, succession conflicts? All of it could fracture the fragile alliance holding the Hollowed World together.
Unease settled heavily inside her chest.
She wondered if her daughter even knew about this yet.
…
..
.
[POV: Saber]
“GET THE NPCS OUT OF HERE!”
Saber’s voice thundered across the battlefield as players died around her one after another.
The Seventh Layer had descended into complete chaos.
Far above the endless crimson landscape, the Great Beast loomed within the Soul Horizon separating the Sixth and Seventh Layers. Its colossal body stretched across the heavens like a living catastrophe, seven monstrous heads tearing through reality itself while black ash continuously sloughed from its fur and rained into the layer below. Every movement from the abomination distorted the blood-red skies and shook the foundation of the Underworld.
And now it was spawning.
Chimeras poured from its flesh endlessly.
Calling them small only made sense when compared to the Great Beast itself. Some resembled warped humanoids no larger than ordinary people, while others towered over mountains with grotesque bodies stitched together from mismatched lifeforms. One possessed the torso of a giant ape fused with hundreds of human arms that crawled independently across its skin. Another resembled a serpent covered in screaming faces with insect wings protruding from its spine.
Their forms constantly shifted, mutated, and adapted.
“GRAAAAAA—KHHHH—MOTHER—EAT—”
“SKIN US OPEN!”
“MORE SOULS!”
The chimeras spoke in broken, unintelligible shrieks that clawed at sanity itself.
Horrifyingly, some began speaking clearly.
“We are becoming,” one chimera hissed while crushing a player beneath clawed feet. “We are learning.”
“Rip apart the healers first!”
“Break the formations!”
Players screamed over guild channels and local communications simultaneously.
“Tank line collapsing!”
“Protect the civilians!”
“Why are they evolving this fast?!”
“Get the wounded moving!”
Above the battlefield, Nidhogg continued fighting.
The enormous serpent-dragon looked utterly ruined. Chunks of flesh were missing from its body, exposing glowing bone and blackened organs beneath shattered scales. Entire sections of its body had been torn away. Yet despite the horrific injuries, the ancient monster still hurled itself against the Great Beast without hesitation.
Golden healing formations continuously activated around Nidhogg while Guardians and support-class players desperately kept it alive.
Buff spells layered endlessly atop the colossal dragon with defense amplification, regeneration, soul stabilization, pain suppression, and anything they could cast.
Meanwhile, the Player Covenant, Guardians, and countless cultivators struggled to evacuate the Seventh Layer before the entire realm collapsed beneath the Great Beast’s advance.
Then the chimeras descended fully into the battlefield.
Saber vanished.
A silver line carved across the air as she crossed kilometers instantly, her blade flashing through two towering chimeras in the same movement. Both monsters froze mid-charge before spatial fractures exploded across their bodies.
She raised her sword.
A massive skill activated.
Blinding arcs of light erupted outward and tore through entire hordes, stunning dozens of chimeras long enough for civilians and weaker cultivators to flee.
Below her, countless NPCs scrambled desperately through the blood-soaked terrain.
Some were cultivators attempting to maintain evacuation formations while escorting survivors. Others were ordinary civilians or mortal souls from the Underworld who lacked the strength to defend themselves at all.
Children cried while spectral elders limped through rivers of blood.
Some souls tripped and vanished beneath swarming chimeras before anyone could save them.
The offensive had spread throughout the Seventh Layer completely.
Because the layer itself was formed from blood, wrath, grudges, and suffering, the dead rarely remained dead for long. Perished souls transformed rapidly into furious vengeful spirits that attacked anything nearby in blind hatred.
At first, the spirits hindered the chimeras.
Then the chimeras adapted.
Now they devoured the spirits too.
Some monsters grabbed wailing ghosts and stuffed them into gaping maws lined with human teeth. Others bypassed the transformation entirely and consumed mortal souls directly before they could become vengeful entities.
Saber narrowly dodged a barrage of projectiles launched by a winged chimera overhead. The attacks cratered the crimson earth behind her while another beast lunged from below.
She countered instantly.
Her sword carved open the creature’s stomach in a spray of black gore.
Hundreds of trapped souls burst free from inside the beast.
The newly freed vengeful spirits immediately rampaged against nearby chimeras in maddened fury while a handful of surviving mortal souls collapsed onto the ground, scrambling desperately away from the carnage.
Saber gritted her teeth.
If this continued, their forces would be overwhelmed.
Then the sky changed.
A brilliant star formation suddenly manifested within the vacuum above the Seventh Layer. Massive pillars of radiant judgment descended from its center like divine spears and obliterated entire swarms of chimeras instantly.
Players erupted into cheers.
“THE THREE CONSTELLATIONS!”
“THE TOP GUARDIANS ARE HERE!”
“WE’RE SAVED!”
A figure descended first.
Li Feng.
The Fighter Constellation moved through the battlefield with terrifying grace, his lithe frame weaving effortlessly between gigantic monsters while his fists shattered them apart. He punched through a mountain-sized chimera’s skull before spinning and driving his elbow through another creature large enough to flatten cities.
Every strike detonated with overwhelming force.
He looked less like a man fighting and more like a natural disaster given human form.
At the same time, heavenly arrows began raining from the skies.
Golden streaks pierced through hordes of chimeras with perfect precision, relieving surrounded players and cultivators moments before they were overwhelmed.
Hunter Constellation.
Su Ai.
Her arrows curved unnaturally through the battlefield, hunting targets across impossible distances.
At the center of the descending star formation stood a middle-aged man holding a folding fan.
Fu Wu.
The Thinker Constellation.
His calm gaze swept across the battlefield while formation diagrams rotated behind him like celestial machinery.
“The Guardians will soon commit to a full offensive,” Fu Wu announced calmly, his voice spreading across the layer through spiritual amplification. “Many of us will die.”
The battlefield fell quieter.
Fu Wu continued.
“When that happens, we ask the players to retrieve our corpses.”
A notification instantly appeared before Saber’s vision.
QUEST RECEIVED: CORPSE RETRIEVAL
Difficulty: Catastrophic
Objective: Recover the remains of fallen Guardians during the coming offensive.
Failure Condition: Permanent Guardian death.
Saber’s expression darkened.
LPO had always been brutal.
Dead NPCs did not simply return because players wished it. Resurrection required enormous resources, religious faction approval, Guardian intervention, or specialized resurrection skills that demanded massive investment.
And not all resurrections were equal.
Some returned damaged.
Some lost memories.
Some returned incomplete.
The fact that the Three Constellations were preparing for death meant the situation had become unimaginably dire.
Then the void above them split apart.
Warp arrays opened across the heavens as enormous ships emerged one after another.
Thousands of talismans rained downward from the vessels.
Each talisman exploded into light before transforming into armored Ezekiels.
Holy skeletons.
Every player recognized them immediately. They were infamous throughout the Holy Ascension Empire for their basic guard duties, deadpan behavior, and accidental popularity as one of the Empire’s unofficial mascots.
Now tens of thousands descended onto the battlefield in full war armor.
Two terrifying presences followed.
Players stared upward in shock.
“NO WAY—”
“IS THAT DA JI?!”
“ZHOU YONG TOO?!”
The heavens trembled as two colossal Immortal Beasts revealed themselves fully.
Da Ji appeared as an enormous silver fox with nine flowing tails large enough to blanket cities beneath their shadows. Every movement of her tails distorted illusion and reality alike.
Beside her coiled Zhou Yong in the form of a massive golden dragon whose body stretched across the sky like a living sun.
Then another figure stepped forward atop the flagship.
Ding Shan.
The acknowledged leader of the Guardians.
The old man carried two gigantic shields upon his back, both scarred from countless wars.
He raised one shield toward the battlefield.
“Commence the offensive!”
The ships above fired immediately.
Massive beams of destruction rained from orbit and tore through the chimera hordes, vaporizing entire sections of the battlefield in blinding pillars of annihilation while players and Guardians surged forward beneath the bombardment.
