Infinity: Kill your way through the movie world.

Castio recalled the nights he spent studying ancient texts with Sam, who patiently explained human emotions, and he nodded as if he understood.

When Dean received the trench coat for Christmas, he teased him, saying he looked like an accountant, but Sam said it suited him perfectly.

Those ordinary, warm moments that belong to friends.

Castio looked up.

Dean is being attacked by five mutated demons. His left arm is injured and his movements are slow. His angelic power has not fully recovered, but he is still fighting.

Sam was on the other side, leaning against a pillar. His hunting knife was dulled, and he had at least three wounds on his body that were bleeding. Because of the demonic power he had previously fused with, he alone held off a large number of mutated demons.

Castio looked at everything before him. They could have escaped, they could have abandoned him, left this place, and let Leviathan perish with him.

But they didn't.

Because they are friends.

“I was wrong.” Castio’s voice was soft, but it carried throughout the entire warehouse.

All the mutated demons stopped moving at the same time and turned to him.

“I shouldn’t have coveted power,” he continued, his hand holding the angel’s blade trembling but gripping it tightly. “I shouldn’t have betrayed you, I shouldn’t have… thought I could play the role of God.”

He raised his knife.

The blade glowed with a pure white light, this time without any pale yellow mixed in; it was pure holy light, the very essence of Castio.

“I agree.” He looked at Dean and Sam. “I am willing to cooperate with the ritual and send all of these things back into my body.”

At the same time, deep within the Balanced Field, inside the Demon Hunter Guild.

Wu Heng sat in the monitoring room above the sealed room, with twelve screens in front of him displaying real-time footage of the warehouse, from Dean and Sam's arrival to Castio's appearance, to the outbreak of battle, and now to Castio's agreement to cooperate with the ritual.

He looked very carefully.

When Castio said "I agree," Wu Heng stood up.

Without any warning or explanation, he turned and walked out of the monitoring room, moving quickly along the underground passage.

His pace was so hurried that the puppet evil spirit behind him, that enormous being made of tentacles, had to speed up its wriggling to keep up.

Three minutes later, Wu Heng arrived at the Gates of Hell.

The rift solidified between reality and hell was unusually quiet at this moment.

The crimson light inside the door flowed slowly, like the breathing of a sleeping behemoth. There were no guards around; Wu Heng had transferred everyone away ten minutes earlier under the pretext of taking turns resting.

He stood in front of the door and looked for three seconds.

Then he raised his hand and pressed it against the door frame.

The balancing gloves glowed with a grayish-white light, which seeped into the door frame. The crimson light inside the door began to flow faster and faster, eventually turning into a blurry halo.

At the center of the halo, one could vaguely see a scene from another dimension: a hellish wasteland, a burning river, and a scattered group of demons gathering in the distance.

Wu Heng withdrew his hand, turned around, and went inside.

The puppet spirit merged into his body, and a massive swarm of tentacles slowly unfolded, blooming like a disgusting flower by the door. Dark golden runes lit up at the ends of the tentacles, connecting to form a net that covered the entire door frame.

The fluctuations of the Gates of Hell were completely concealed.

From the outside, it looks like there's nothing here; there's no energy leakage, no spatial distortion, and even the temperature readings are normal.

The newly rotated guards had already arrived outside the Gates of Hell, and no one knew that Wu Heng had silently entered Hell.

Inside the warehouse, the ceremony began.

Without complicated magic circles or lengthy incantations, Castio simply walked to the edge of the charred pit, knelt down, and plunged the Angel Blade into his own chest.

The blade pierced below the sternum, avoiding the heart, but penetrating something more fundamental: the energy core.

Pure white holy light surged from the blade and flowed into Castio's body. Then, all the power in his body began to reverse.

Castio released the infernal spirit within his body.

Pale yellow specks of light began to float out of his body, initially few in number, like fireflies, in small groups of three or five.

Then more and more, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands... specks of light seeped from every pore, drifting out from his eyes, nose, and mouth, as if his body were evaporating.

Each point of light is a fragment of a soul from purgatory.

They floated in the air, hesitated, and then were drawn by some force deep within the pit, slowly sinking back into purgatory.

The process is very slow.

Every second, Castio was in excruciating pain.

It wasn't just physical pain, but a tearing sensation on the level of the soul, as if someone were using a dull knife to slowly cut open his essence, forcibly digging out those deeply embedded parts.

He clenched his teeth until his gums bled, but he didn't make a sound. His body trembled violently, and his clothes were soaked with sweat, which evaporated into white mist under the high temperature on his body.

Dean and Sam stood guard on both sides, clearing away the occasional fish that tried to crawl out of the pit. Some soul fragments that had not yet been completely sent back coalesced into a twisted entity, trying to find a new host.

time flies.

Half an hour later, the rate at which the light spots emerged began to slow down.

Castio's face was as white as a dead man's, his breathing was weak, and his eyes were half-closed. He was only able to stay upright by sheer willpower.

The angel's blade on his chest was still glowing, but the light had dimmed.

“It’s almost over…” he said hoarsely.

Dean crouched down to help him up, but Castio shook his head to stop him.

“We can’t stop…if we stop…they’ll turn on us…” Castio spoke each word as if he were using all his strength, “Let me…finish this…”

The last batch of light spots floated out.

There were only a few dozen, but they were exceptionally bright and exceptionally... resistant.

It hovered in the air, refusing to sink.

Castio took a deep breath, gripped the hilt of the sword in front of his chest with both hands, and pushed hard.

The blade pierced another inch.

A burst of pure white holy light erupted, like a miniature sun shining in the warehouse.

Those resisting points of light were forcibly dragged into the pit, howling and accompanied by sharp, inhuman screams.

All the light spots disappeared.

A muffled rumble, like distant thunder, came from the depths of the pit. Then the opening began to close, the charred edges faded, the crystals evaporated, and finally only an ordinary, concrete depression remained.

The ceremony is complete.

Castio drew the Angel Blade, and the moment the blade left his body, he leaned forward. Dean caught him and held him in his arms.

“It’s over…” Castio gasped, a weak but genuine smile on his face. “They… went back… I…”

He coughed, coughing up pale yellow mucus, but the mucus evaporated into blue smoke as soon as it left his body.

“I just wanted to do the right thing…” He looked at Dean, then turned to Sam, “but I messed everything up… I shouldn’t have coveted power… and I shouldn’t have betrayed you all…”

His voice grew softer and softer, and his eyelids began to droop.

"Go to sleep," Dean said softly. "Rest a bit, and when you wake up, we'll...we'll think of something else."

Castio closed his eyes, his breathing becoming steady. (End of Chapter)