Tonight, Alice joins the hunt.

Did I really just play cards there for ten thousand years? No, that's not it. Long before I stopped there, I did so many things. In countless loops, I helped the protagonist win, helped the villain kill the protagonist, fought against both sides, and even deliberately messed things up so they would kill me as an enemy… I did it many times, but when the next loop began, everything returned to normal.

Those killed in the last cycle of reincarnation will still exist in the next. The souls extinguished in the last cycle will still exist in the next. The ideologies purged in the last cycle will also still exist in the next—they remain themselves, regardless of birth, aging, sickness, death, or suffering…they are all themselves. As long as one remains within the script, within the cycle of reincarnation, there is no liberation. And death as perceived by mortals…is merely a part of the cycle of life.

For them, for us, for extraordinary life forms... death is not death.

So, Xiao Honglu reached out his hand to the fox-eared witch in front of him. The latter, for some unknown reason, blushed slightly, but still straightened her chest.

"What you perceive as death is not true death. Everything you have experienced and encountered is merely a part of the cycle of life and death. All I have done is reverse the cycle of life and death, and when the next era arrives, those companions you thought were dead will be resurrected."

"...if you have another era."

The next moment, Xiao Honglu's fingertips touched the witch's chest.

However, before the priestess could even show a cooperative expression, a burst of flame suddenly erupted from her body outwards!

She couldn't help but scream, but the scream was twisted and distorted by the flames. Her delicate female body turned into a burning skeleton in an instant, and even as her flesh and blood turned to ash, she still stretched out her arms, trying to protect the little witches behind her.

Xiao Honglu simply watched her silently, watching this witch, almost identical to the woman in his memory, walk towards the same death through her own hands. Even as her flesh dried up, even as her skeletal jaw, which opened and closed as if pleading, ceased to move, he continued to gaze at her.

Then he discovered that deep down, his heart had remained completely undisturbed from beginning to end.

Death is merely a part of the cycle of life, and he knew very well that if he so desired, he could resurrect all the dead orcs in an instant. To a transcendent being, death as perceived by mortals is nothing more than a life cycle, like a hair or a fingernail falling to the ground, and he knew he had finally gained this perspective unique to transcendent beings.

[Alice is like this, Patchouli is like this, Zhao Yingkong is like this, Sirin is like this... they should all be used to it by now. So when they take action, they don't care much about the life or death of mortals nearby, because in their eyes, that kind of death doesn't even count as death...]

[Only Brother Zheng Zha still maintains a mortal's perspective. Even though he has long since transcended it, he still keeps himself stuck at the stage of 'life is precious'...]

Xiao Honglu sighed softly, his gaze sweeping over the group of terrified, screaming little witches.

"You may proceed to the next stage as well." He waved his hand, and the eyes of the young witches instantly lost their sparkle. Having completed his task, he sat down in the temple hall, quietly watching the blood of the orcs pool into streams within the witch's workshop.

The orc race has become history from this day forward.

Having completed his mission, Xiao Honglu gazed at the blood-red stream and quietly let out a sigh.

“You know what? There’s one downside to working under Sister Alice.” He tilted his head back, seemingly talking to someone. “Sister Alice is too cautious, so cautious that she never assigns her companions any tasks beyond their capabilities. In other words, as long as I, or anyone else, obediently follow her instructions, we’re almost guaranteed to succeed, and it will be an easy success.”

"This might be considered a good thing, but I... am a little rebellious. Although my current actions may be part of Alice's plan, I can't help but want to do things that I want to do myself."

The deep red stream flowed quietly as the boy gently lifted a strand of hair from his forehead.

"So the so-called orc race doesn't even exist, right? The most primitive ancient god... your name should be Fanlou, right? I should have left after killing all the orcs, then you, who have been lurking in the orc bloodline, would have continued to lurk, waiting for the opportunity to revive after the war."

Before the words were finished, the flowing blood-red stream suddenly stopped, freezing in place.

The boy shrugged.

"After all, according to the mythology I know, the ancient thunder and fire fought each other, and when the Lord of Thunder finally won, He led the sea creatures who followed Him to leave the ground and go to the moon palace. And if I'm not mistaken, that Lord of the Moon and Thunder... should be the sister Alice I just mentioned."

“Interesting, isn’t it?” A slight upturn of his lips. “Your enemies have been watching you all along, and you’re completely unaware of it. If I don’t say these words here, the biggest variable on your divine chessboard will fall into slumber due to the destruction of the race you’ve been attached to. Your giant body will be destroyed and used by another group of us.”

The next moment, the stream reversed direction!

In an instant, all the remains of the dead orcs turned to ashes, and all the essence, mass, and soul that made them up merged into one, becoming a complete form again—the face of that form blurred for a moment, and finally reappeared in the form of the fox-eared witch who had been killed by Xiao Honglu himself.

The orc race has not existed for a very long time.

When the Shrine Maiden Organization appeared, the Orcs became part of the slumbering Homura. The will of Homura flowed in their blood, and the abandoned flesh and power of Homura became the progenitor of the giants!

"You... want to use me as a whetstone." Fanlou, who had the appearance of a shrine maiden, said softly, his fingers quietly grasping a long, flaming sword that had suddenly appeared.

“Yes.” Xiao Honglu nodded. “The task that Sister Alice assigned me is essentially to keep you here. If I fail, you can go to another battlefield and merge with the Ancestor of Titans, regain your power, and become a variable capable of disrupting Sister Alice’s plan. So I will not let you leave, and you must leave from here.”

“So…” Xiao Honglu stretched out his hand, and the next moment dozens of cards suddenly appeared behind him.

"Although I think my current choice is actually in Alice's plan, I am ultimately responsible for the complicated situation I have created."

He exhaled softly, a smile playing on his lips.

"Come and fight, primordial flames and sun lord Sail. You and I are now on the same level. Either you leave victorious, or I ascend using you as sustenance. In any case, only one of us can leave this place!"

Chapter Ninety-Six: The Decisive Battle (Part Six)

Crimson flames ignited from the orcish royal court, scorching the earth, burning the sky, drying up the plains, shattering them, and transforming the crystalline land into a smooth mirror, then riddled with cracks. Even without authority, power, fortune, and the completeness of her spiritual light, Fanlou, once the only true god in this world, remained powerful. And when she entrusted herself to this bloodline avatar, unleashing all her power, the bursting crimson flames, viewed from the moon palace, resembled a small flower blooming on a divine chessboard.

The outcome of the battle in the Moon Palace was beyond Xiao Honglu's consideration. He only knew what he should do and what he could do—the cards behind him unfolded, one of them vanished, another transformed into a solid, high-heat barrier to protect him, and the remaining cards silently expanded in all directions. Immediately following, a large-scale spatial erosion engulfed the area where he and Fanlou, two beings who were neither human nor god, resided!

The spatial structure in front of him shattered, and without wasting any more words, Fanlou pierced straight through the unstable spatial structure, aiming for his neck. However, Xiao Honglu neither dodged nor evaded, letting that crimson blade light slice through his body—yet it sliced ​​through him as if severing a phantom!

“I apologize, but my primary objective is to prevent your escape from here. Therefore, I have no choice but to isolate this battlefield from the outside.” Xiao Honglu said politely, his phantom-like form twisting his neck 180 degrees to look at Fanlou, who had appeared about 100 meters behind him after the attack missed. His usual psionic token then slowly appeared in his hand, and the entire space with a radius of 30 kilometers centered on him was completely isolated, existing independently like a demiplane!

The orcish royal court still burned fiercely in flames, and the land beneath the capital continued to cycle between crystallization and direct decomposition under extreme heat. Cherry-colored flames filled the sky, but only the sky, because beyond thirty kilometers, all matter and spacetime structures had ceased to exist.

Fanlou adjusted her posture, reassuming a fighting stance. In her eyes, everything disintegrated into countless interwoven blocks of color and lines. These lines intertwined and merged, forming a spatial fault that blocked the land within a thirty-kilometer radius. And she easily found about a hundred nodes in different locations at the junctions of these lines.

If she remembered correctly, the number of these nodes was roughly the same as the number of cards that had appeared behind Xiao Honglu earlier. The next moment, she instantly arrived at one of the nodes, her flaming longsword slashing down, but the tip of the blade was blocked by a sturdy protective shield!

The protective shield shattered instantly, but the next moment she sensed a high concentration of energy from another part of it. With a slight movement and a shift in coordinates, a blazing beam of light, reaching to the heavens, struck the node near her current location—she clearly observed that the node didn't become unstable despite the impact; instead, it absorbed a large amount of energy from the point of impact. The next instant, that immense energy dispersed into an unknown network of colored blocks and lines, and a layer of artillery arrays locking onto her various positions was generated.

'Boom—' The airspace where she had been standing was blasted into a blazing plasma cloud by the artillery barrage. When she reappeared, she found that Xiao Honglu was no longer in the same position as before—she suddenly realized that the cherry blossom flames she had released for wide-area destruction were shrinking and disappearing in a certain direction, and at that convergence point, she saw Xiao Honglu's hand controlling the cards!

She lost her sense of the flames, just as the energy that should have been labeled never belonged to her in the first place. The temporary position she had seized with this burst of cherry blossoms vanished—only then did she realize that the airspace she was in was filled with obvious hostility directed at her alone from all directions.

She raised an eyebrow.

"You took advantage of my eagerness to break free from this isolated space. Were the previous illusory body and spatial nodes just bait? It seems you and that visitor from before the era are indeed on the same side. Even though you have a 60% chance of winning in a direct confrontation, you still resort to underhanded tactics."

"That's simply because you don't understand Reincarnators well enough," Xiao Honglu said with a smile. He held up a finger, revealing a field engulfed in flames on the side of the card he held between his fingers. "A Reincarnator's first priority is survival. So even if I start an unplanned war, I will use every means I can think of the moment the battle begins, instead of being bound by useless things like face or pride. Therefore, even if I have the upper hand, I won't be controlled by words like a boxer."

Space suddenly distorted, and in the next moment, Fanlou had already broken through to Xiao Honglu's front. The Cherry Blossom Blade slashed down swiftly, and this time it struck the physical token. Immediately afterward, various spells and incantations bombarded her from the void in a chain reaction—she casually slashed them away, and then Xiao Honglu's form once again transformed into an illusion and appeared from another node.

After one round of combat, another began. Xiao Honglu seemed like a shadow in the water, constantly leaping back and forth between various spatial nodes, sometimes in physical form and sometimes in ethereal form. Meanwhile, Fanlou cycled back and forth between surprise attacks and breakthroughs. The overall battle was temporarily at a stalemate, with the scales of victory constantly tipping.

"And, I pity you, ancient Lord of the Sun." Xiao Honglu concealed his emotions, uttering a series of sentences during each teleportation. "Do you know? Just now, I should have heard something like 'Revealing information about the main god to a plot character, deducting XX reward points.' I thought I would hear it, but I heard nothing. Do you know what that means?"

Fanlou remained silent, focusing his energy on the increasingly intense battle.

But Xiao Honglu's voice still rang out.

"This means that in the judgment of some supreme being, you are neither human, nor god, nor living being. You are merely an object. Not even—"

next moment!

Xiao Honglu's words came to an abrupt halt with a sudden spurt of blood on his cheek! His form teleported between different coordinates, but each time, his true form was detected by the enemy!

“You talk too much nonsense,” Fanlou said calmly, the general structure of the entire battle zone now clearly visible before her. The protective spells blocking her path shattered, and her eyes shone like morning stars! “Sounds leave traces, and traces reveal weaknesses. This is something I learned from Miss Alice, whom you mentioned. And I have found you.”

The next moment, the burning blade pierced Xiao Honglu's chest!

'Boom—' Endless radiance engulfed her vision, and in her perception, this sealed world was rapidly collapsing inward!

The battle is over.

Yes, the battle is over.

The moment the outer partition collapsed, outside this separated battlefield, another unharmed Xiao Honglu was quietly suspended outside this arena with a radius of thirty kilometers. In his hand, a card depicting his own image was silently turning to ash.

"It's not good to underestimate a spellcaster, Sister Fanlou," Xiao Honglu said calmly, while beneath his feet, a five-headed, five-colored dragon roared silently.

And at the moment the barrier collapsed, they delivered a deadly five-colored dragon breath to the sole victor.

..........................................

The sun dimmed.

It is said that long, long ago, before the gods appeared and before the Elven Corridor was conceived, mortals were the rulers of the world.

No, to be precise, it should be one-third of the overlords, or one of the three overlords. If the mythology is correct, in that distant era, there were only three races that occupied the entire world.

These are the orcs, who inhabit the land, occupying the vast majority of the land and hills, maintaining their dominance on the land through their powerful physique and vitality; the marines, dwelling in the depths of the ocean, gaining power through meditation and their innate water-controlling organs, able to ride the waves and manipulate the tides; and finally, the mortals who live on the border between sea and land, rarely worshipping gods and lacking powerful physiques, but who use their wisdom and skillful hands to create various machines and cleverly employ diplomatic means to navigate between the two powerful races.

That was truly a good era. There were no gods, no Elven Corridors, and naturally, no natural disasters of such immense power that are beyond the imagination of ordinary people. Although the Orcs were strong and savage, with the Sea-dwellings as allies who had no conflict of interest with mortals, mortals were ultimately able to protect their coastal fortresses at that time.

Life was somewhat difficult, but not impossible. The wisdom and skills of mortals were enough for them to survive in the battlefield between gods.

Yes, mortals do not revere gods because they do not need them. Mortals lack physical strength and magical abilities, but they pride themselves on their intelligence—in that ancient era, there existed only two gods, who were at war with each other. One was the Lord of Sun and Fire, the ruler of the orcs. The other was the Lord of Moon and Thunder, the object of worship for the sea creatures.

Did the war between the orcs and the sea creatures originate from a conflict between the sun and the moon? — No one knows. But for the mortals of that era, the Moon Lord, who stood on the side of their allies, was undoubtedly friendly, or at least indifferent. The Sun Lord, who commanded the orcs, was detestable and hateful, deserving of the curses mortals would inflict upon him until the end of time.

But all that is in the past, a very, very distant past. With the decline of the faith in the Moon Lord and the Sun Lord, the departure of the Sea-Dwelling Race, and the arrival of the Gods and the Elven Corridor, few remember the glorious era that mortals once had in ancient times. Few even remember that their ancestors once had an ally in the Sea-Dwelling Race. All that remains is the blood feud forged over millennia with their natural enemy, the Beastmen, and the lingering hatred for the Sun Lord that permeates that hatred.

Mortals hate orcs more than they hate the other thirteen races combined. This is because their relationship is one of predator and prey, and because they are entangled in a blood feud spanning millennia.

But...but...people don't live simply to hate. Even amidst hatred, there are wise people among mortals who strive to think during the darkest, most difficult years of survival.

If, at the end of those ancient times, mortals possessed deities to protect their races… would that mean they could at least be one of the fifteen races, instead of being as insignificant as weeds, only able to hope their people wouldn't be destroyed by natural disasters?

If such an opportunity were to truly arise, should mortals set aside their pride and offer prayers to the gods?

The last wise man among mortals looked up at the sky, watching the ancient serpent and giant battling in the far distance. The battle had begun ten minutes earlier, and at the very moment it started, all living things in the entire mortal stronghold were moved by the woman who called herself Zhao Yingkong with a wave of her hand to a plateau about a thousand kilometers away.

An invisible shield covered the heads of the mortals, perhaps the work of the creature that appeared to be a woman. And it was for this reason that the tens of thousands of people in the settlement were trapped atop this plateau, left only to wait silently for the battle to unfold.

To say they were in distress wouldn't be entirely true. Even if they could now step outside the shield's range, few of the mortals present would dare leave this sole sanctuary during a lull in the divine war. Even if they were separated by thousands of miles, even if neither side considered mortals as targets. However, when a tangible beam of light energy shot out from the center of the battlefield, instantly slicing a nearby mountain range in two like butter, even the most reckless among them learned to remain rational.

Because mortals are so weak and insignificant. Even the strongest will to strive for self-improvement is meaningless when faced with an insurmountable natural disaster.

"Liku, what should we do next?"—Suddenly, such a voice seemed to ring in the ears of the last wise man.

Chapter Ninety-Seven: The Decisive Battle - Part Seven

He turned around, but didn't see a single person behind him—only then did he remember that just two minutes ago he had calmed the people who had been moved to this area and let his sister, Kelong, take over the responsibility of maintaining order. He had just walked alone to the edge of the shield and stood on the edge of a cliff where a boulder blocked his view, looking at the sky beyond.

No one was there—and even if someone were nearby, they wouldn't bother him while he needed to think.

Unless what comes here is not human.

"Is that Shubi?" He tilted his head and, unsurprisingly, saw the slender, petite figure of the mecha girl in another blind spot—just as before, even in this situation, this mecha girl still adhered to the Golden Apple Pact and remained by his side as a mortal. Even though the Golden Apple Pact had not yet determined a winner and was no longer meaningful to fulfill, she still maintained the image of the orphan girl that Riku had taken in.

Fragments of memories surfaced in Riku's mind, and he felt as if he had returned to the day when he used the golden apple pact to coax the three women back to their settlement—at that time, he was trembling with fear, his mind preoccupied with how to save his own life without wiping out his tribe. He had gone to great lengths to arrange things for these three great gods, and then racked his brains to try to delay the inevitable, to prevent a decisive outcome among the three.

Shubi, Jibril, Zhao Yingkong… He accurately judged their relative strengths and weaknesses, and the true meaning of the Golden Apple Pact, the very next day after he brought these three women back to the settlement. He knew that Zhao Yingkong was the real key, and that the bet existed only because of her spur-of-the-moment decision. However, after that, his focus quietly shifted from 'preserving the settlement' to 'securing benefits for the settlement'.

They spent a considerable amount of time together, and during this time, he used his words and actions to buy time for himself and his people, while also gaining a deeper understanding of Shubi and Jibril. After they improved the lives of their people at his request, treated many wounded and sick individuals, and helped them through several crises, perhaps as a human he still harbored resentment towards the Winged and Machine races, he could no longer feel hostility towards these two independent individuals…

until today.

"Riku, what should we do next?"—The mecha girl's soft, timid voice rang in his ears once more. The illusion of memory vanished from his eyes, and he shook his head, gazing at the battle on the horizon, a bitter smile playing on his lips.

“There’s nothing we can do. This is a battle situation beyond our control.” He seemed to have thought of something, his fingers twitched slightly but were forcibly pressed down—he slowly turned his head to look at the mecha girl who had been with him for a period of time.

“The bet on the Golden Apple is meaningless now, Shubi,” he said softly. “You can leave here and return to your people.”

“That’s impossible.” The machine-type girl replied quickly, her gaze towards Riku seemingly carrying a peculiar glint. “The All-Link Command has already rejected Shubi’s machine-type identity. Shubi can no longer participate in the war between the machine-types, goblins, and forest elves in the Moon Palace. Riku, are you going to send Shubi away?”

“How could this be—” Riku answered instinctively, then his words froze in mid-air. He took a deep breath and abruptly changed the subject. “—Is there a war on the moon too? A three-way battle between goblins, forest elves, and machine gunners?”

“And the Tsukuyomi.” Another voice rang out, and Jibril, half-hidden in shadow, appeared not far from the two, leaning against a giant rock. Her voice was low, and her mood was visibly somber. “The Tsukuyomi participated in the war as allies of the Machina. And not only them, but we Skywings did too. About two minutes ago, all the Skywings except me died in the war against the Vampires. Lord Artesh removed my Skywing identity. Now, the Skywings should be considered extinct…”