Divine Kingdom

"Ah, I’m tired…"

"Sage, is there any way to undo your contract?"

"You know perfectly well, don’t you? You’re doomed."

Yu Huaxin twitched numbly as he lay amid a vast field of corpses, the stench of blood engulfing his entire body.

The warped black-and-white sky overhead remained unchanged. There was no way to tell how much time had passed, nor where this place even was.

Yu Huaxin had never expected to die in a place like this.

When Bai Cangshu said he was tired, it was naturally a teasing remark, but he truly was growing irritated.

Repeatedly killing a target that had lost the ability to resist made him feel like a butcher in a slaughterhouse, endlessly bleeding one pig after another.

This kind of slaughter offered him nothing but a meager amount of Satsui no Hado. There was no enjoyment in it.

So, pinching Sage’s cheek, he tried to make this exceptionally hard-to-kill Reincarnator voluntarily give up the will to live and let himself be killed quickly.

He would not spare Sage. This man’s ability was, in a sense, truly disgusting. Moreover, during the battle on the outskirts of J City, Sage had used that Substitute Death ability to steal several prey that should have belonged to Bai Cangshu.

It was true that he had nearly wiped out the Chaos Sage team, but he had not obtained many Scarlet Drop Cards. That was a loss Bai Cangshu could not overlook. He had to make Sage cough them up—with his own Scarlet Drop Cards!

"With so much blood on your hands, you’re insane… Mercenary Tao…"

Sage spoke blankly. At that moment, he was truly certain that this madman, Mercenary Tao, intended to keep killing him until every Plot Character who had signed a contract with him was dead, and he himself would eventually be killed as well.

This kind of thing… could no longer even be described as madness.

No butcher in history could possibly have personally killed so many people.

Bai Cangshu was almost amused by Sage’s words.

A Reincarnator who had committed every evil still cared about something like blood on his hands.

Besides… when all was said and done, Sage himself, after using that ability, was the root cause of those Plot Characters’ deaths. Yet he seemed to be trying to create a moral dilemma: you cannot kill me, or else you will be an executioner who slaughtered hundreds of thousands.

"Tsk, that’s really not clever enough."

Splurt!

Bai Cangshu bludgeoned Sage to death once more.

Another corpse appeared, and Bai Cangshu continued tormenting Sage without expression.

But as the number of times he killed the other man grew, he could sense the aura of spirits in this space becoming increasingly dense.

Some twisted power was also becoming more and more apparent.

At first, he could only faintly sense it. Now, it had clearly entered his perception.

Bai Cangshu turned to look around. Space in the black-and-white Spirit Realm had always been distorted, but now, amid that distortion, there were things resembling ripples.

It seemed that the resentment and souls of those who had died unjustly, along with this twisted form of death, were giving birth to something new.

Bai Cangshu paid it no heed and continued bludgeoning Sage to death.

The ripples grew more numerous, and the aura of spirits grew increasingly intense.

Rather than being afraid, Bai Cangshu killed with even greater diligence.

Evil spirits, Grudge Spirits, cursed spirits—those things might pose a challenge to ordinary Reincarnators, but to him, they were pure fragments of power~

Especially now, as the Myriad Tribulations Yin Spirit Yellow Springs Physique gradually awakened its true traits, his efficiency in utilizing the spirits within his body was growing higher and higher.

This time, after Sage shattered the barrier of his Star Spirit Body, he could even release every spirit within his body and have them move far away from him.

As long as he could fully master this trait, Bai Cangshu would eventually be able to truly become an army unto himself.

He did not need teammates at all, much less divide resources to strengthen them.

He could simply kill powerful beings in mission worlds and absorb their souls.

In the end, just as he had done with Satoru Gojo and Uchiha Madara, he could use threats or temptation to make these powerful beings serve him.

That was far cheaper than painstakingly killing someone, gambling on the chance of drawing their abilities, and then spending even more resources to raise those abilities’ levels.

At the very least, for a Reincarnator to obtain the Six Eyes and the Limitless Cursed Technique, then strengthen them at the Goddess’s Abode to the point where they could perform Domain Expansion, would conservatively cost around a hundred thousand Dimensional Points at double-A level.

And even that would still fall far short of Satoru Gojo’s own cursed energy reserves.

As Bai Cangshu pondered, he began to hear the murmuring of certain voices.

They were the sounds of souls.

"Why…"

"Why…"

He heard them clearly. They were unmistakably questions, one after another.

Bai Cangshu paused slightly, lifted Sage’s head, whose consciousness was already beginning to blur, and looked toward the indistinct figures.

"Hey, Sage, hear that? They’re asking you."

"Why… why did you kill me…"

Bai Cangshu teased Sage without the slightest psychological burden, but the latter had little reaction left.

His nerves were close to snapping. He had died too many times, and the agony of death had come too frequently. Some boundary in his heart was on the verge of collapse.

The smile on Bai Cangshu’s lips deepened. Perhaps he had discovered another way to destroy immortality.

An endlessly repeated cycle of death could gradually cause immortal beings to perish mentally. Once their spirit and will were gone, all that remained was an indestructible shell.

Of course, in his view, this method could only kill those with fragile minds.

"Why…"

The questioning voices grew more numerous and louder.

Bai Cangshu suddenly stopped killing and tilted his head toward the distance.

There was no such thing as sound in the black-and-white Spirit Realm. So-called sound was actually a kind of fluctuation.

Now, those spiritual fluctuations echoed toward him across an unknown distance.

"Why…"

It was the same question, but the voice was far more immense, as though hundreds of thousands of voices were asking, demanding an answer together.

Bai Cangshu looked back at Sage’s surroundings. More than a thousand corpses lay scattered around, which already looked absurdly exaggerated, but the number was certainly nowhere near that scale.

He recalled Fubuki’s account: when the Spirit Disaster had erupted in Seasoning City that day, the vast majority of the city’s residents had ultimately either died or gone missing.

Bai Cangshu’s heart stirred. Grabbing Sage, he swiftly moved toward where the fluctuations were coming from.

Strange howls occasionally sounded from the surrounding buildings, but he did not care.

Behind him, those thousands of indistinct figures followed Sage’s body toward the same destination.

The Spirit Realm was an extremely counterintuitive place. Distance, space, and direction were all utterly chaotic; the laws of physics from the real world completely failed here.

Following the fluctuations, Bai Cangshu did not know how far he traveled. Then suddenly, he felt himself pass through a barrier.

The black-and-white world faded away like a thin film.

He entered a bright world filled with sunlight.

Beep! Beep!

He suddenly appeared in the middle of the road, making the driver of an approaching car slam on the horn and curse angrily.

Bai Cangshu turned and saw an enormous neon sign—New Seasoning City.

By the roadside, he saw quite a few people wearing cloaks. They were handing out flyers. A gust of wind blew over, and Bai Cangshu caught a flyer drifting toward him.

The Supernatural Bowl-Cut Cult grants you eternal peace.

Another flyer flew over and landed directly on Sage’s face. Sage’s breathing immediately began to calm, little by little, and then little by little… disappear.