Yes or No

They moved faster than he had expected. Yicha had originally wanted to ask Xiqisi what had happened on their side over the past few days.

He stopped before a cell holding a bear-like demon—the demon's gray-white eyes stared blankly through him as it chewed its own right forepaw with evident relish.

Smacking sounds mingled with the pained groans around him and the occasional bursts of roaring.

Yicha glanced at the demon. Aside from the forepaw that had been eaten down to a bare palm, its other limbs were still fairly intact, and its mind seemed sound enough.

It had probably been here for no more than three thousand years.

Yicha looked up.

The exit of the Underground Judgment Arena hung far above like a dim, inconspicuous moon.

They had likely descended at least forty thousand levels already, somewhere between the bottommost ten thousand and twenty thousand levels.

The air was salty and hard as soap.

He held his breath.

"Go down another ten levels before stopping. If you receive no new message from me in thirty minutes, return upward. Then wait for me at the six hundred and sixty-sixth underground level. No matter what happens, make sure Goodbye stays with you." Yicha sent the message to Xiqisi through the blood pact.

"Ha. Do you really need to be that specific?"

"Did you go any farther down when you came before?"

"I only went down a little... It felt kind of strange, so I came back."

Her emotional fluctuations traveled through the blood pact. That had definitely been more than "kind of strange."

Yicha understood. The demons deep within the Underground Judgment Arena had yet to adjust to their new lives.

They were full of energy, lively and vigorous, and emotionally aggrieved. It was inevitable that they had turned the entire atmosphere into a bit of a demonic carnival.

And that was not all.

As they drew closer to the foundation stone of the arena, traces of all kinds of ancient dark arts remained here.

Furthermore, as they went deeper into hell, all manner of mutated energies converged, and space frequently warped here. No horrifying sight would be surprising.

"Are you scared?" he sent.

"Who's scared?"

"There's nothing to be afraid of. Especially not you."

"Especially not me?"

"Hold out your hand." Yicha approached the edge of the central hole.

"Huh?"

"Stick your claw out over the opening so I can see it."

After sending the message, Yicha leaned out and looked down.

Before long, he saw a bird claw covered in blue-purple scales reluctantly extend from dozens of meters below.

"Catch it."

He sent the message through the blood pact, took out the small fragment of Sorena's feather he had cut from Flame Cliff, used a law spell to add matter and increase its weight, then aimed at Xiqisi's claw—

and tossed it down.

The half-feather of bright blue fell straight downward in an unnatural line—

landing on the tiny bird claw and swiftly merging into it like a sugar cube dropped into water.

"Eh? Hey?"

Xiqisi yanked her arm back with a whoosh and cried out as though she had been burned.

Her lively, shrill voice pierced the arena's endlessly echoing miserable background noise, stirring up even more interwoven roars.

"Don't shout. There's no need to draw anyone's attention," Yicha hurriedly advised. "How does it feel?"

It took Xiqisi a while before she sent another message.

"You might not believe it if I told you... It's like... like..."

She dawdled for a moment. "I don't want to say."

Yicha had not wanted to hear it. In truth, he could roughly sense through the emotions she conveyed that the phrase Xiqisi wanted to say was probably: "a mother's embrace."

The energy-rich material body of a pure-blooded fairy could, in a compatible environment, activate the corresponding innate domain within the bloodline of its direct descendants.

"This thing can protect you."

He said it casually and looked down.

His gaze passed through the center of the ring formed by tens of thousands of dark, long rows of cells.

A demon's darkvision could now barely reach the bottom of the sixty-thousand-level arena, that vast, filthy pit.

Looking closely, several conspicuous, fresh-colored corpses lay atop the densely layered pile of old bodies in the pit.

Those should have been the guards Xiqisi had killed earlier.

Within his energy vision, the massive, black clouds of disordered energy with cores violently squeezed against one another. On closer inspection, he could occasionally see small amounts of energy in various colors—elements, destruction, will, collapse, and more—orbiting among them like satellites.

Yet even such chaotic varieties and such dense energy could not conceal the dazzling golden light bursting forth.

That golden light.

Pale gold, nail-shaped enchantment energy.

It shot out from the gaps between those corpses like bright sparks, forming a beautiful vortex that spiraled upward.

An environment overflowing with enchantment energy like this naturally made Xiqisi, a half-fairy whose innate energy domain was half enchantment, extraordinarily powerful—

though she herself was far too slow-witted to even notice.

Yicha withdrew his gaze.

"There's nothing to fear. Go on. If anything happens, don't forget the prank."

He activated the blood pact again and sent Xiqisi the message.

"I won't!"

"You will." Yicha's tone was absolute.

Xiqisi sent no further message. After a while, her figure began slowly moving downward.

Sure enough, excessive energy interference had undergone a qualitative change. After descending merely three levels, Yicha felt his connection with her growing weaker and weaker. In his perception, the half-blood harpy's figure gradually blurred, as if sinking into some sluggish liquid that reflected only scattered fragments of her image.

Yicha was not worried.

He waited for a while. Once he was sure Xiqisi was far enough away, he began walking down along the circular path.

The cages beside him hissed.

The cages opposite him shrieked.

Many eyes burning with flames of different colors flickered in and out.

From this level onward, all the imprisoned demons were alive.

He moved swiftly downward.

The stairs began to grow springy, soft and squishy beneath his feet.

The filthy walls around him also began rising and falling like a sleeping person's belly.

Within the enormous, empty black hole, the noises made by all kinds of demons dragged out echoes, stretched long and flattened.

After descending around ten levels,

Yicha roughly understood what Xiqisi had meant by "you'll know the moment you see it."

Two cells on one side of the circular prison corridor were simply missing.

A huge bluish-purple mouth was embedded in the wall.

The mouth hung wide open, its stalactite teeth packed tightly together. Its broad lips were covered in honeycomb-like swollen lumps, while mucus swam between them like fish, as though gravity did not exist.

Through that mouth, he could see a passage beyond.

The floor beneath his feet was uncomfortable enough already.

That passage looked even more unpleasant.

"Man-Eating House, right?"

Yicha casually made conversation with the cage beside him.

The cage was silent.

Looking carefully, he found that the cell was empty.

Empty?

He had clearly seen a prisoner in every cell just now.

Without giving it much thought, he lifted his leg and prepared to step over the lower lip of that giant mouth.

"Oh, hahaha." Someone answered behind him.

Yicha turned and saw a low-level demon shaped like a pile of sand inside the cage.

The cage had clearly been empty just now.

"Oh, hahaha... you..." said the demon in the cage.

Yicha flashed before the cell, flames flaring in his eyes as he swiftly raised one hand.

"Command: Yes or No."

The command was issued.

The five eyes of the sand-pile demon all froze at once, neatly turning in the same direction and becoming vacant.

The command shattered its will defense.

"Yes."

The low-level demon stopped moving, blankly staring at a point that did not exist.

"You went out just now?" Yicha moved closer and stared at it.

The sand-pile demon moved its wrinkled mouth. "No."

"You were here just now?"

"Yes."

"You stayed here the entire time without moving?"

"Yes."

"Chaos Child is inside there?" Yicha pointed at the giant mouth.

"Yes."

"He controlled you?"

The sand-pile demon trembled, like a pitiful lump of ice cream. After a while, it answered:

"No."

It hesitated... It seemed it could not be sure about this. Yicha thought.

"You disappeared from here just now. If you are unfamiliar with this situation, answer 'no.' If you know what this is, tell me, is it related to Chaos Child?"

"Yes," the sand-pile demon answered mechanically.

So that was it.

Chaos Child probably had not deliberately controlled this demon.

It might merely have been power leaking out unintentionally. Or perhaps space had warped because of the collision of energies...

He could still ask one more question... Yicha considered.

"Is Chaos Child harmless?" he asked.

Unexpectedly, the demon answered:

"Yes."