"…"
"…"
The silence inside the car stretched.
Wang Xiao leaned back, arms lazily sprawled, his sharp eyes locked onto Xue Hanqin. A minute ago, she had been nothing more than an intriguing piece of ass wrapped in mystery, a mature beauty exuding charm and hidden motives.
But now?
Now, she had just casually dropped the equivalent of a cosmic nuke onto his lap.
Third Great Lord of Hell?
What, was she expecting him to clap and hand her a dal?
His mind ticked, the casual smile never leaving his face. He wasn't the type to gawk like so weak-willed fool hearing about divine beings for the first ti. But even he had to admit—this one was special.
His gaze flickered down her body for half a second. Dark, silky hair cascaded over a pair of supple curves, clad in a dress that practically scread, 'Rip apart' in three different dinsions. But those long, elaborate earrings?
Yeah. Those weren't fashion statents.
They weren't even from this world.
Everything started making sense—the way she carried herself, the way her presence pressed against reality like a glitch refusing to be patched.
And yet…
"Why would you tell that?" Wang Xiao finally said, voice calm, fingers tapping idly against his thigh.
It wasn't like he had figured her out. She just straight-up admitted it. And that? That was suspicious as hell.
For soone who had lived through the grand cosmic gangbang of deceit, he knew one thing—people didn't just hand over their secrets for free.
Xue Hanqin studied him, her eyes gleaming in the dim light.
"You're curious, aren't you?" she murmured.
"You say that like you aren't a walking contradiction yourself."
Xue Hanqin chuckled softly. "Then let's say it's a gift for the future. A show of trust."
Wang Xiao frowned. "I don't do trust.... I do deals."
Her lips curled. "Then consider this an investnt."
He narrowed his eyes. "In what?"
"In you, naturally."
That's when the night swallowed the car.
Moonlight flickered—no, it vanished, devoured by an abyss darker than the void itself. The windows blurred, and suddenly, it felt as if they weren't sitting inside a car anymore.
They were sitting inside sothing else.
Sothing ancient. Sothing waiting.
Wang Xiao didn't flinch.
"Go on," he said, voice steady.
Xue Hanqin leaned forward slightly. Her scent was intoxicating—a blend of old world spices and sothing disturbingly sensual, like the lingering warmth of a funeral pyre mixed with silk sheets.
"I t your enemy," she whispered.
And just like that, Wang Xiao's amusent drained.
His fingers twitched, an imperceptible motion, but the space itself seed to react, the very molecules in the car bending slightly toward him.
"Who?"
"He ca to ," Xue Hanqin continued, unfazed, as if she wasn't sitting in front of a monster who could snap reality in half if he felt like it. "Tried to convince to join his side."
Wang Xiao exhaled slowly. "And you're telling this… because?"
She smiled. "Because I refused him."
"Why?"
Xue Hanqin flicked a strand of hair over her shoulder. "He's an executioner. An arrogant one. His task ends when you're erased. Then, he vanishes. He didn't offer anything in return. Do I look like a charity worker to you?"
Wang Xiao let out a low chuckle. "So, he's an executioner, huh?"
"Executioner of reality," she corrected. "You humans call it the 'multiverse.' When sothing unnatural happens—when soone breaks the script—these creatures show up to… correct things."
"Let guess." Wang Xiao, "I'm unnatural?"
Xue Hanqin's smile deepened. "Did you transcend in this world?"
He stiffened. The shift was almost imperceptible, but her trained eyes caught it instantly.
"Ah," she breathed, tilting her head. "You didn't?"
Wang Xiao's jaw clenched.
"Every universe," Xue Hanqin continued, her voice turning almost seductive, "has a limit. A weight it can bear. The mont you, a transcendent being, set foot back here—you tipped the scales. This world wasn't ant to house you."
"So, I'm the issue?" Wang Xiao muttered darkly.
"The biggest issue," she confird. "This world already has its one transcendent. By being here, you're breaking everything. The rules, the order, the very fabric that holds this place together."
A slow, amused chuckle slipped past Wang Xiao's lips. "Oh? Then tell … who's the other transcendent?"
Xue Hanqin's eyes glead. "One very old. Hiding."
Wang Xiao's gaze sharpened. "Not you?"
She let out a throaty laugh. "If it were , you'd already be sweating bullets, boy."
Wang Xiao raised an eyebrow. "Arrogant."
"Experienced," she corrected. "And careful. If I used my real power, another executioner would co after , and we'd be fighting two impossible enemies instead of one. Right now, you're the one painting a big, juicy target on your back — not ."
Wang Xiao was quiet for a mont. Then, slowly, he raised a hand. A faint ripple of illusion materialized before them—an image of a man.
White-haired. Muscular. Eyes like ancient embers flickering in a dying fire.
Xue Hanqin's lips parted slightly.
"That's him," she murmured. "The Karmic Emperor."
"But that's just a shell," she added. "These executioners have no real bodies. They only have souls."
For the first ti that night, Wang Xiao genuinely grinned.
"Ohhh," he exhaled, dragging the sound out. "So that's it…"
Zeus was fucking dead.
That body walking around, spewing self-righteous crap?
A parasite. A corpse puppet.
Everything suddenly made sense.
He turned back to Xue Hanqin, his smile growing. Damn, this woman was useful.
For a fleeting second, he almost wanted to kiss her senseless right there, just for solving one of his biggest headaches.
Almost.
Instead, he tilted his head.
"You still haven't answered the most important question," he mused.
She raised an eyebrow.
"How did you get here?" he murmured, leaning in slightly, "Because you shouldn't exist here either."
The car trembled slightly.
Xue Hanqin's eyes darkened, a small, knowing smile playing at the edges of her lips.
"..."
"..."
For the first ti since stepping into this car, Wang Xiao felt like he had t soone worth fighting—or worth destroying.
Wang Xiao leaned back, fingers interlocked behind his head, listening carefully to her explanation...
His mind was a storm of calculations, fragnted theories, and half-ford sches crashing into each other like celestial bodies on a cosmic collision course.
So this world...
This miserable, shackled, insignificant realm was called the "Prison Realm" in the Netherworld's records?
So Aurora had been right, huh?
Xue Hanqin had just confird it.
"In ancient tis," Xue Hanqin murmured, her voice a charming whisper of secrets long buried, "our ancestors in the Netherworld did sothing unprecedented. They… extracted energy from other universes. Devouring them. Compressing them. Pulling everything together into a single celestial mass—a world with infinite space, infinite sky."
Wang Xiao's eyes glimred. "Like a black hole?"
Xue Hanqin smiled. "More like a god's dream."
It reminded him of sothing.
"The Kardashev Scale," he murmured.
Xue Hanqin raised an eyebrow. "What?"
Wang Xiao smirked. "Human theory. A civilization's power is ranked by how much energy it controls. Your Netherworld would be at least a Type V. Pretty high."
"And what about Type VI? Type VII?"
Wang Xiao chuckled darkly. "Who knows? Maybe they don't exist. Maybe they do, and we just haven't survived long enough to see them."
His amusent faded.
This conversation was getting too fucking real.
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