Reunion

The signing was complete. The rune flashed three times, then vanished beneath the skin.

Yicha was about to withdraw his hand when an incredibly furious, shrill cry tore through the sky.

Almost at the same moment, something sped toward them from afar.

A whistling rush of wind sounded by his ear.

He saw Yifomiet across from him furrow his brows, wearing a strange expression.

Bang!

A slender body crashed into his back. Sharp claws seized his neck.

A huge cloud of purple dust came hurtling fiercely at his face.

Yicha grabbed the claw at his neck with his backhand, lifted it, and easily swung the newcomer in front of him.

"Run! What's wrong with you? Aren't you supposed to be strong?" the attacker screeched at Yifomiet.

Yicha sighed and held her suspended in the air.

"Xiqisi. It's me."

Yifomiet glanced at them.

"I don't know you," the Joyful Saintess said irritably.

Her four long, slender wings beat wildly as she raised a leg to kick Yicha—when she found she could not reach him, she kicked in Yifomiet's direction instead.

Yifomiet shook his head and made a lifting gesture. Xiqisi's two bird legs stuck together.

"What are you doing?! I came to help you!" Xiqisi shouted. Yicha covered her eyes with his other hand—the coarse red pattern on his palm gave off a metallic gleam.

Xiqisi froze.

Her face twisted as she stared at Yicha for a long while, then turned to stare at Yifomiet. Her nimble tongue tied itself in knots. "You... you..."

"Where did you go?" Yicha cut in.

"I went..." She glanced at Yifomiet, seemingly judging whether she should continue.

"Tell me. He's one of us now."

Xiqisi gaped, turning into a bird-person statue.

"You told me not to interfere with the people around you..." Yifomiet said slowly. "Does that include her?"

"Oh. Due to some accidents, she's studying under me now," Yicha explained, releasing Xiqisi—she did not realize it until she had fallen thirty feet.

"That's right. Ahem. That's how it is. Studying."

Xiqisi flapped her wings and flew back up, half her face twitching while the other half was as flat as a tabletop.

Remembering something, she immediately seized the initiative and demanded aggressively of Yifomiet, "What about you? What are you doing with him?"

"Studying too," Yicha naturally answered for him. "Stop arguing. From now on, everyone is classmates."

The air fell silent for a moment.

Xiqisi and Yifomiet both looked a little strange.

But for the sake of their dignity, neither said anything in the end.

"Are we classmates too?" the small demon in the cult quietly asked Cult Leader Sankarabi.

"Whatever the Holy Angel says goes," Sankarabi said solemnly.

The demons of the Fallen Angel Cult nodded in sudden understanding.

"It's good that everyone knows each other. We don't need too many introductions."

Ignoring the hundred frantic meaningful looks Xiqisi threw at him, Yicha spoke to Yifomiet. "I think we can begin now. You know, Beelzebub's patience isn't all that reliable."

Yifomiet said nothing—it was difficult to distinguish any emotion in his bloodshot, bulging eyes.

He pinched his hands together—the massive Extermination Destruction Cone shrank and changed color in his grasp, ultimately becoming a slender bird bone, sharp at one end and rounded at the other, with several words carved into it.

Pointing the sharp end downward, he plunged the bone straight into the back of his right shoulder near his neck, then descended expressionlessly.

The first request Yifomiet agreed to fulfill for Yicha was to repair his courtyard as much as possible.

The demon grand duke hovered five feet above the ground on the second level of the floating island and began directing the somewhat unwilling demon soldiers—

He had them prop back up the statues they had just knocked down, sort the piles of marrowstones that had been kicked apart and mixed together, fish all sorts of debris from the pools...

"The demons are cleaning the Holy Angel's courtyard," the small demon in the cult muttered.

"A great miracle." Sankarabi tried not to show too much emotion.

Praise once more drifted through the night sky.

Yicha watched for a while and was pleased to find that the restoration work led by Yifomiet, Hand of Destruction, was progressing at astonishing speed.

"All right. Tell me," he said, turning to Xiqisi.

"Why are you like this? Where did my dad come from? What exactly are you people doing? Why did your home explode? Where is everyone else?"

"You forgot. I told you to answer my questions. Where did you go?"

"Oh..." Xiqisi paused for several seconds, and her expression gradually returned to normal. "I remember you told me to stop the Apocalypse War, right?"

Yicha gave a grunt of acknowledgment.

"I went to find the Chaos Child," Xiqisi said.

That was truly an unexpected answer. But it was a good one.

"Did you find him?" Yicha asked.

A hint of pride appeared on Xiqisi's face. "What do you think?"

But regret soon appeared on her face again. "Unfortunately, I couldn't take him away."

"That's already very good." Yicha nodded.

He truly felt it had exceeded his expectations.

Really good. Xiqisi could have escaped control and run away using that marrowstone.

Yet not only had she returned, she had also brought back another option.

The Chaos Child was inseparably tied to the Apocalypse War. If they could deal with the Chaos Child cleverly, the King of All Demons' war plans would suffer a severe blow.

Beelzebub probably could not endure much longer. Once she discovered that Yifomiet no longer obeyed her control either, she would likely come looking for trouble immediately.

Beelzebub still had to be dealt with first... he calculated inwardly.

But he still needed to check the other circumstances...

"Where is the Chaos Child?" Yicha asked.

"I'll take you there."

"Not now."

He pointed at the pool below. "Just display it for me here."

What he meant was, naturally, the simplest vision-recreation spell.

"Hmph." Xiqisi crossed her arms.

Yicha examined Xiqisi.

Being far from her believers had caused her divine radiance to fade.

Half of the half-demon, half-fairy saintess's body was submerged in chaotic black mist with a core, while the other half was surrounded by several nail-shaped pale golden masses of energy—fairies' innate domain, beguiling control energy.

"So you can't do it." Yicha discovered that there truly were no traces of any refined law energy on her body.

He could use dream energy to read her memories and determine the location...

But he did not think that was a long-term solution. "I'll teach you."

"You really think of me as a student! I only came for fun."

"What you call me doesn't matter. But these are all basics," Yicha said calmly. "Your divine power comes from your believers. What will you do if one day they stop believing in you? You haven't mastered much of what demons and fairies have either."

"I..."

"How many believers do you have?"

Xiqisi stopped responding.

"Two thousand six hundred and fifty-two. I only just..." After a while, she argued.

Yicha glanced at Xiqisi, pulled her down, and stopped three feet above the pool.

"Watch the demonstration carefully. Picture the location or existence you want to see—the prerequisite is that you must have seen it before. Then draw the symbols in the corresponding direction."

He stirred the law energy and used it to draw several simple symbols.

The rippling surface of the water first flattened. Then an image appeared:

On a jagged cliff cut by blades and axes, with lava streaming everywhere, two figures clung to the rock as red currents battered them.

One was terrifyingly white against the backdrop of hell, while the other was thinner and had a head of golden hair.

Below the cliff lay a bottomless abyss, while several gray-black creatures above them stretched out heads with jumbled features.

Xiqisi leaned over and let out a snorting laugh.

Yicha watched the two figures for a while, then snapped his fingers.

"Goodbye" leaped out of a pool of glistening green slime and obediently pounced into his arms.

He patted the hellhound's head, whispered a few words into its ear, then took a book from his robes, turned to a page, and handed it to Xiqisi beside him. "Knowledge is power. This power belongs to you. Now it's your turn."