No matter what upheavals the descent of the gods in Saint form stirred across the Material Plane, it had little to do with Li Wei and the others for the time being.
To protect those unarmed civilians from the Demon Army's onslaught, to preserve the spark of Zelandia's civilization, and to exact vengeance upon the Dead Three, the masterminds behind it all—
They had paid far too heavy a price.
One of the most immediate costs was that, in a sense, they had all already died once.
Having lost their bodies and followed Coriel World's underlying laws to the Lower Plane, strictly speaking, they could now only be considered Petitioners.
Even if they returned to the Material Plane through teleportation or other means, they could only either become liches whose memories and emotions faded with time, or gradually lose their strength beneath the suppression of planar laws and be cast back into the River Styx to drift downstream once more.
Li Wei's original plan had been to remain for the time being in the Fugue Plane of the Wastelands of Destruction, repairing his soul, riddled with cracks, through brief periods of sleep while searching for a way to reshape bodies for everyone at the smallest possible cost.
Since the gods of death had destroyed their home, them taking over the magpie's nest could only count as returning courtesy for courtesy.
But with the visit from Bael, Avernus's acting Archduke, that plan encountered one—
A tiny little accident.
What lay before Li Wei and his unconventional army was a wasteland blackened by fire and strewn with shattered rocks.
Mountains and sloping hillsides broke up the monotonous landscape. Blood-filled streams ran through Avernus, eventually joining the River Styx.
The air itself glowed blood-red. Fireballs could even be seen appearing out of thin