Eva was controlled by Tethys and launched an attack on Xueji. In the high-speed world, Eva’s figure vanished from Xueji’s sight in an instant.
The next second, Eva tore Xueji in half.
The shredded Xueji dissolved into foam and dispersed, while the real one appeared right in front of Tethys, delivering a magic-enhanced uppercut straight to His jaw.
The top of the palace behind Tethys was shattered by the impact force. With one hit landed, Xueji once again turned into foam and shifted her position.
“Despicable ant!” Tethys had been guarding against Xueji with the mindset of a magical duel, never expecting that a mage like Xueji would choose such a savage way of fighting.
“Someone like you, who’s been a slave in the shadows, has no right to judge me.” Xueji retorted calmly, her words cutting straight to the bone.
Hearing this, Tethys was stunned for a moment.
And Xueji caught that moment. She trapped the attacking Eva in a water prison, then teleported right in front of Tethys, instantly unleashing a sky-piercing magic cannon made of pure magical power.
“So fast!” Tethys had never seen such a powerful human mage, one who could cast magic of this caliber without incantation.
This attack lasted for a full hour, blasting from the ocean floor all the way up to the heavens. The holy light illuminated the darkness for hundreds of miles around.
Even Ling Xiaoxiao, who was within the human forbidden zone, could feel it—in that instant, the darkness shrouding the world had loosened.
Tethys’s long hair scattered wildly, His form was in disarray, and the trident in His hand was completely shattered.
“What exactly did my troublesome sister give you? No human could possibly reach this level!”
Tethys’s voice was hoarse. Beneath what was once a beautiful face, a twisted visage nearly broke free from its restraints.
“Impossible? You’re right about that…”
After learning the magic of the Divine Era, Xueji’s magical power had risen to a level capable of threatening gods. But the drawback was obvious—each Divine Era spell required a full day of preparation to cast.
After learning it, she had once tried sparring with the Goddess of Fate, and the result was disastrous.
Gods are extensions of the world’s will, while humans are merely lifeforms that happened to be born on Blue Star by chance.
Even after touching transcendent power and becoming mages or cultivators, from a god’s perspective, it was nothing but a clumsy imitation.
Constrained by the limits of their physical bodies and soul strength, humanity’s exploration of transcendent power is finite.
But gods are beings beyond ordinary imagination. The magic that humans must study painstakingly is an instinct they were born with.
There are still many gaps, but if we’re talking purely about combat, gods are not invincible.
Xueji closed her eyes. Water currents surged around her endlessly, and star-like magic circles faintly emerged around her.
Seeing this, Tethys could no longer maintain His original form. A monstrous, grotesque visage burst through the original flesh.
Beneath a lamprey-like head was connected a massive, bloated, upside-down octopus. It was less a body and more like something half-swallowed by an octopus.
“You rebellious child! I should never have given birth to your lives!”
“You think that just because you’ve barely learned Divine Era magic, you deserve to toy with the ocean in front of me?!”
The moment those words fell, the seawater around Xueji stopped flowing entirely, like cooling molten iron.
His tentacles flailed wildly, slowly closing in on the immobilized Xueji.
Under a power strong enough to crush steel, Xueji’s thoughts drifted back to three days ago.
When Xueji was sparring with Klotho, the symbol of fate, the two of them had a conversation.
“Sage, what feelings do humans hold toward the ocean?” Klotho gazed at the completely still black sea, murmuring.
Xueji lay on the ground, thought for a moment, and replied, “It’s complicated. Reverence, fear, gratitude, curiosity…”
“He loves all life~” Klotho propped her chin on her hand and tilted her head toward Xueji.
“When the first forms of life were born within His body, He joyfully became a mother. Full of hope for the future of those little ones.”
In Klotho’s description, Xueji could vaguely picture an image of a great Mother of Life.
“Life is not a creation of the gods. Your birth was the most wondrous coincidence and the greatest miracle of this world.”
“This little sister of mine has suffered the deepest corrosion, because He is closest to you all. That’s why He couldn’t flee, and didn’t want to.”
Xueji understood what Klotho meant. The sea had become what it was because He had blocked the [Great Shadow]’s corrosion of the real world.
And now, Klotho was fighting to the death against the children He had cared for all this time. What a painful fate that was.
“So what can I do for Him?” Xueji had heard the plea in Klotho’s words.
“I want to save Him—with my help and yours.”
That day, Xueji went to the research institute and carried out a classified plan called “Artificial Ocean.”
Back to the present, the Ouroboros mark on Xueji’s hand detached from the back of her hand, transforming into silver runes within the seawater.
At the same time, inside the underground experimental facility of the Magic Capital Research Institute, elite scholars from various nations, using the AI computing power of nearly the entire world, were reconstructing the ocean as it was before the spiritual energy resurgence.
Thanks to breakthroughs in materials science, liquid memory material could serve as the substitute for simulated seawater.
“Data fluctuations are starting to intensify.”
“How’s the signal transmission delay?”
“It’s stabilized within 1 microsecond.”
“Good, the experiment officially begins!”
The nameless one who had once fought alongside Xueji—the researcher known as Soraka—was now watching the progress inside the lab from the sidelines.
“Taking back the sea… what a crazy idea.”
She watched as the “seawater” was injected into the simulator, and couldn’t help but feel excited.
“It has to succeed.”
…
At the deepest part of the Mariana Trench, the Ouroboros runes successfully revealed Tethys’s thread of fate.
Klotho finally appeared. While Xueji was fighting Tethys, she hadn’t been idle either.
Through her efforts, Eva had successfully recovered.
“Si—Sister!” It was the first time she had spoken with emotional fluctuation.
The black thread fell away. The wound on Eva’s chest from earlier had long since healed—it seemed to be Tethys’s doing.
“I’ve come to take you back.”
After a brief embrace, Xueji began the final action plan.
“Everyone’s here. Let’s move.” Klotho was too impatient to wait.
Eva touched her beating heart, gazing at the “monster” bound by the thread of fate with complicated eyes.
Xueji held Eva’s hand and said gently, “Let’s save her together.”
“Mm!”
Eva gripped Xueji’s hand tightly.
Klotho controlled Tethys, while Xueji used spiritual power to help Eva utilize the authority of Creation.
Fate, Creation, plus the Sage’s control—three beings of the divine domain were enough to change a god’s destiny.
“Tethys, come to our side. Your children are far stronger than you think. They can protect you now.”
Xueji couldn’t speak, but as the one providing control, she was now in contact with Tethys’s true soul.
It was a mother-like soul, gentle enough to embrace everything.
“I must look terrible right now, child.” The water-blue eyes avoided Xueji’s gaze.
“Why say that? What I see is clearly a great mother covered in wounds.”
“No, I’m not. I hurt my own children with my own hands.” Speaking of this, her hands wouldn’t stop trembling.
The corrupted thread of fate bound her tightly. If this continued, everyone’s efforts would be in vain.
“It’s clearly not your fault! Why won’t you forgive yourself!” Outside, Klotho was so anxious she forgot all decorum and shouted at the top of her lungs.
As humanity’s guardian, Xueji found it hard to offer words of comfort given her position. Many people had lost their lives when facing the ocean’s rampage.
Eva’s heart was filled with complicated emotions. Feelings long suppressed in her heart left her not knowing where to begin.
She didn’t understand—clearly no one was at fault, so why did it have to turn out like this? She felt sorrow for what Tethys had endured.
“Good child, don’t cry. It breaks my heart. Don’t cry for me…”
In her daze, Eva’s long-sealed longing for her mother overflowed uncontrollably in the face of Tethys.
“Mom!”
The girl’s call, filled with longing, pierced through the barrier of the heart. A single crystal-clear tear condensed into a star that illuminated the abyss.
