On the way to Guiming Palace, Ash and Death Maniac remained silent all the way, as if the harmony before was just a show at the masquerade ball. Now that they have taken off the masks, they will naturally return to their respective positions.

They are observers and victims, conspirators and chess pieces, future minds and past bodies, and perhaps even kings and mounts.

Ash didn't know why he wanted to have a good relationship with Death Maniac. Maybe it was because Death Maniac cared about Sonia and he was a fan of Sonia's boyfriend, and common interests always brought them closer together; or maybe it was because when he stepped into the Broken Lake Prison like a duckweed, it was Death Maniac who appeared in front of him and dispelled the confusion and loneliness in his heart like a scorching sun.

So even if the Death Maniac told him "We will replace you", Ash still believed that there was still room for maneuver and that they could still get along. This was not because he was arrogant, but because he could not only see the Death Maniac's direct malice, but also feel the hidden kindness.

Until now, Ash also believed that Death Maniac truly cared about Sonia. Although he could also use conspiracy theories like "Death Maniac just wanted his future container to develop well", he didn't like to think so... In this world, there is always love without reason and sudden encounters.

But precisely because her kindness is undisguised, her malice is also unbridled.

Because she hated Vichy, and because "Silent Rain" was suitable for Vichy, she destroyed this spectacle, not caring at all about how much help this spectacle would bring to Ash and the others, as if she was just waiting to enjoy Ash's anger to please her resentful heart.

Ash then realized that although Death Maniac seemed to be able to communicate, she was actually the same kind of person as Youma and the others. It was not about their moral level, but that they were all "egoists".

They travel against time, and in the endless wanderings, they have witnessed the birth and death of worlds, and buried countless brilliant civilizations. In their eyes, life is like bubbles in the sea, they don't have to do anything, they will die on their own... All the good things in the world will disappear, and the only thing they can control is themselves.

It sounds very similar to Vichy... Maybe it's not that everyone will become like this after living for a long time, but that this is the only way to live long. For people like them, the only justice they believe in is their own will. In order to follow their own will, they dare to trample on all the laws of the world.

If you love someone, you want him to live; if you hate someone, you want him to die.

Sword Princess and the others are also showing signs of this now, but even the most self-centered Silver Lamp is still entangled in the hearts of all the people who died because of her. Although Vichy is an incurable solipsist, Ash can at least restrain her behavior with chains, inject emotions into her soul, and imprison Vichy in his arms like a cage. He knows that he will never be able to make Vichy reshape his moral values ​​in this lifetime, but at least Vichy has begun to care about his opinion.

He would become the second chain of Vichy.

Even so, Vichy still said some violent words from time to time to challenge his bottom line. Ash didn't know whether she said it unintentionally or wanted to test him, but as long as she said it, Ash would immediately bully her severely. At the beginning, the educational effect was quite good. Vichy consciously said and acted carefully, but recently she became unscrupulous again, actively posing the momentum of the ghost prophet to provoke Ash, and begging for mercy pitifully after being bullied, which always made Ash feel that there seemed to be a customized form of interaction between them.

But Death Maniac never had any chains, she was an unrestrained demon king who could do whatever she wanted. Ash didn't want to waste precious hell time, so he chose to remain silent.

Because if he continued to communicate with the death maniac, it would be hard for him to guarantee that he would not draw his sword and fight her to the death. Sometimes it was like this, friends who should have hit it off at first sight could become enemies at another time and place.

"We're here." Si Kuang said suddenly.

A dim light appeared in the deep sea ahead. Ash thought it was the light source inside Guiming Palace, but when he flew through it quickly and jumped out of the water with a splash, humid air rushed towards him.

He raised his head, his sight was unobstructed through the six-kilometer deep sea round hole above, and he could clearly see the upside-down sky outside. They seemed to have come to the bottom of a six-kilometer-deep abyss, but the abyss was not in the mountains, but at the depths of tens of millions of tons of sea water, and the wall was a waterfall formed by black sea water... Ash landed on the ground, stepping carefully on the soft sea mud, as if afraid of waking up the surrounding sea water.

This is the only island in the Deep Blue Hell...if it can be called an island even if it is not on the sea.

"Guiming Palace is finished." Si Kuang said calmly.

Ash looked up and saw the palace built on the trench in front of him - it was more like a giant fortress than a palace - with only broken walls left, more dilapidated than any palace he had seen along the way.

Death Maniac once said that the core defense wonder of Guiming Palace, "Guiming Ocean Current", connects the defense barrier with the sea, and it is said that the Deep Blue Hell will not be breached unless it dries up. But now it seems that there is no need to evaporate the sea at all, as long as the Guiming Palace is isolated from the seawater, it can be broken - compared to evaporating the sea, creating an island in the deep sea of ​​6,000 meters is indeed much simpler.

"It's meaningless to simply cut off the contact between Guiming Palace and the seawater, because Guiming Palace can still be connected to the seawater from the bottom of the sea, but it was still broken." Si Kuang pointed at the thick vines in the sea mud and said calmly: "The super-large-scale grass and wood miracles hollowed out the Guiming Palace from the bottom. Whether it is in the sky or in the ground, the "Guiming Ocean Current" is completely disconnected from the seawater."

Vines entangled the palace complex like tentacles, preventing it from touching the sea mud, and the sea water surrounded the palace complex like a wall, preventing it from touching a drop of water. This hell fortress, regarded as the "deep blue pearl", condensed the essence of the water arts of the hell demigods for thousands of years, but in the end, it died of thirst in the deep sea like a salted fish.

It seemed that it was just a design flaw of Guiming Palace that was targeted and cracked, but the problem was that it was incredible that it could be cracked - wouldn't the demigods inside resist? According to speculation, most of the demigods in Deep Blue Hell were gathered in Guiming Palace. One demigod could change the map of the earth, and a group of demigods was enough to turn hell upside down.

But they could only watch the fall of Guiming Palace... The fall of Guiming Palace was not the beginning of the war, but the end of the war.

When Ash and Death Maniac approached Guiming Palace, the first thing they saw was the silhouettes of monsters on the wall. Most of them were common virtual creatures such as Shadow Evil Dragon, Fox Lantern Dragon, and Fish Slayer Dragon, but there were a few guardian spirit creatures such as Resentful Brilliant Dragon and Bronze Dragon. Although they were silhouettes, they looked more like traces of being killed by the sun.

"It seems that they don't want to escape anymore and want to defend Guiming Palace to the death." Si Kuang took a glance and said, "The Heavenly Wonder "Planting Wings" of the Lord of the Eagle-Headed Cat Palace allows the magician to directly extract the essence of virtual creatures and transform them into virtual wings to temporarily strengthen himself. Guiming Palace is the largest shelter for virtual creatures. In addition, when everyone retreated to Guiming Palace, there must have been many virtual creatures following them. They should all have been sucked to death, leaving only these traces of resentment. "

"They..." Ash's lips moved slightly, but he stopped after saying one word.

"When these tribes accept the protection of magicians, they are destined to sacrifice in the face of life and death. They have basically signed a master-slave contract and it is impossible for them to resist." Death Maniac said: "Otherwise, why would they take the initiative to become the guardian spirits of mortal magicians? Aren't they just hoping that the magicians will treat them better after entering hell?"

Ash was silent for a moment, then asked, "Will Sword Princess and the others' guardian spirits be in trouble?"

Death Maniac shook his head: "Their guardian spirits have all undergone transformation and evolution. Other demigods can tell at a glance that these guardian spirits are pets of owners, so they will basically avoid them. Anyway, there are so many creatures in the virtual world, there is no need to touch other people's pets, and demigods don't want to offend anyone."

The two walked into the atrium and saw the knowledge crystals left over from the death of demigods everywhere. Ash roughly estimated that at least 20 demigods died here. Several huge storage pools were temporarily built in the center to hold a large number of source crystals. These were strategic materials that demigods usually had to carefully calculate, but now they were placed here for everyone to use at will. Ash walked over and saw that although most of them had been consumed, there were still hundreds of source crystals left.

The Deep Blue Demigods really tried their best, even if it cost them everything they had, they wanted to defend the last fortress. Unfortunately, they didn't spend all these resources until they died. Was it because they couldn't escape, or were they reluctant to leave home?

"What happened to them?"

"The Forsaken." Death Maniac paused and added: "Thousands of Forsaken."

"Why?" Ash put the gem into the refining bottle and put the source crystal into the soul heaven, like a funeral procession collecting corpses. "Why were they attacked by the Forsaken?"

"Ouroboros needs to empty Hell before he can finish devouring it."

"I thought hell was over the moment the World Devouring Serpent ate it."

Death Maniac was silent for a moment, then suddenly asked, "Do you think the Void Realm has consciousness?"

Ash glanced at her, "Does the Source Angel count as the consciousness of the Void Realm? If not, then it doesn't exist."

"The standard answer is no," said Death Maniac. "The Void is just a huge chaotic system. Even if there is occasional preference or aversion, it is only a brief peak of the chaotic system. Therefore, the Void cannot resist the devouring of Ouroboros, just like grass cannot resist being eaten."

"But the reality is that it has consciousness. In the area where its consciousness is patrolling, the world is like an octopus that is constantly struggling. Ouroboros cannot devour it even if it wants to. It must purify its consciousness first."

Ash immediately responded: "The magician is the consciousness of the virtual world?"

"I like this statement more, but the audience is more inclined to believe that 'mages are parasites of the virtual world.'" Death Maniac said: "In the process of stealing the virtual world, magicians naturally establish a close connection with the virtual world beyond imagination. The biggest evidence is that the development of magic will directly affect the environmental changes of the virtual world - magicians are like the external brain of the virtual world, absorbing nutrition from the virtual world while transmitting knowledge to the virtual world."

"The Void Realm can ignore small parasites, but large parasites above the level of demigods have seriously affected the health of the Void Realm, so the Chaos System has evolved a mechanism called Disaster to clean up demigods. However, it is precisely because of the existence of large parasites that Ouroboros cannot completely devour the Six Hells, and the Void Realm still controls this world."

Ash felt a great sense of absurdity in his heart - the "magician" who was the focus of the disease that the virtual world wanted to kill as soon as possible became the vanguard of resisting Ouroboros. Ouroboros was like a cannibalistic doctor, treating the virtual world while feasting on the cured parts.

He said: "I thought Ouroboros had the ability to directly eliminate all the demigods in Hell..."

"Hilsa is the most delicious fish I've ever eaten, but it's too bad it has too many bones." Death Maniac said calmly, "Are you picking out the bones to eat the fish meat, or are you beating the fish to remove the bones?"

Ash immediately understood. Ouroboros could indeed kill all the demigods in the Six Hells directly, but it could also destroy or severely damage the Six Hells. The Forsaken were its tools to find faults and eliminate all the demigod troublemakers who refused to die obediently.

The Death Maniac glanced at him, took a deep breath and exhaled a round of smoke rings, and said, "Take out the twenty-sided dice."

Ash was startled, and after searching the warehouse for a while, he finally found the "Pleasure Prince's Twenty-Sided Dice". This item was used during the training of operators, so that they could gain experience in magic even if they were arranged to have fun. However, after Ash was in Senluo, he no longer interfered with the training plans of Sword Princess and the others, so this item was naturally forgotten in the depths of the warehouse.

Now as soon as he took it out, he saw the dots on the dice light up one after another. After a few seconds, all twenty dots on the dice lit up. At the same time, phantoms of magicians, weathered elf warriors, indifferent human archers, crazy two-headed ogres, desperate orcs appeared around him... The last scene of their lives reappeared in front of Ash, and there happened to be twenty demigods, and they appeared with numbers from one to twenty.

"Roll the dice, and you will gain the magical experience of one of the demigods. All of the experience will be stored in the dice, up to a maximum of twenty digits. You can absorb it yourself, or share it with others."

She paused, then continued, "You are the Four Pillars God of Touch. If you have a candidate in mind, just tell the dice directly. The dice will probably listen to you."

Ash was startled, then he looked around at the phantoms of the magicians around him, and finally focused his sight on the elf magician No. 16. He put the dice to his lips and silently recited, then threw the dice. The dice bounced in the air a few times until "16" appeared at the top, and then the dice suddenly froze.

Ash watched this scene and suddenly asked, "Can the power of the Four Pillar Gods still interfere with the Six Hells?"

"If you count on them, you might as well count on the Supreme Star to defeat Ouroboros." The Death Maniac watched the phantom of the Elf Magician being sucked into the dice, dyeing the number "16" into a faint blue. He turned his head and snorted coldly, "She is really a soul demigod. You really love her."

Ash used his mind to look deeper into the dice, and he could sense the vast spiritual knowledge inside. He naturally would not absorb it at this time, so he put away the dice and asked, "Why are you telling me the correct use of the dice now?"

"Because at least twenty dead demigods are needed to use the dice once." Death Maniac crossed his arms over his chest, "Not enough people have died in the Desolate Hell."

"You still have a lot of props like dice?"

"Of course, as the number of buried civilizations increases, various tools will naturally be invented to improve the efficiency of bone-breaking and marrow-sucking."

"You won't give it to me?"

"Do you think that everything you drew from Aurora's Magician's Manual was deliberately arranged by us?" Si Kuang shook his head: "We only interfere at critical moments. The rest of the time it really depends on luck. You randomly draw from the huge reward pool we prepared for you. Things like dice and refining bottles are all drawn by you."

Ash said: "If I draw now-"

"After Ouroboros arrived, the reward pool was closed." Death Maniac shook off the ash from his cigarette. "If each timeline is an isolated island, the reward pool is the treasure hidden in another deserted island. The props you draw by yourself are like catching treasure with a fishing rod. It will not attract any attention. But if we force it on you, it will be smuggling that will leave traces. Every time we smuggle, it will attract the attention of Ouroboros, so we have been carefully controlling the frequency of smuggling."

"Now Ouroboros has surrounded your world, like an isolated island being blocked. Neither fishing nor smuggling is possible."

Ash nodded and stopped asking. He pushed open the door of Guiming Palace and saw that it was filled with various magic resources, magic seaweed, demon stone, magic pearls... Although most of them were water magic, they could all be transformed into attributeless knowledge essences after entering the refining bottle.

The refining bottle can assist the condensation of the prison wings, and the twenty-sided dice can extract the magical experience of the demigod. Just these two items can make Ash and his friends' training progress by leaps and bounds. The Doomsday Five not only have more corpse-collecting props, but have also buried civilizations from many timelines... Even if they only rely on resource piling up, they can infinitely approach the theoretical limit of a magician.

However, the more Ash learns about the power of the Final Five, the harder it is for him to imagine the horror of the World Devouring Serpent. Can the stars he places high hopes on really save this world that has already been bitten?

Ash sighed inwardly, gathered his thoughts, and explained, "I plan to have the four of them share the soul knowledge in the dice equally. It is impossible to advance to the Lord God level based on the level of magic alone. Strengthening their weaknesses as much as possible is more in line with their survival needs."

"Why are you telling me this?" The Death Maniac glanced at him, "But Vichy's soul faction is not a shortcoming--"

Ash looked incredulous: "Are you asking me to only give the soul knowledge to the three sword ladies and not to Vichy?"

"You were the one who said you wanted to strengthen your weaknesses."

"Then I'll give her my share, okay?" Ash couldn't help but said loudly, "Are you satisfied with this?"

Si Kuang's face turned cold: "Try to use this reason in front of Sonia and see if she is satisfied?"

The two looked at each other for a moment. Ash took a deep breath to suppress his anger, turned his head and continued to search: "I'm not asking for your advice."

"Then don't say anything." The death madman relit a cigarette, "I'm not interested in listening to your nonsense anyway."

The only sound in the huge palace was the sound of rummaging through boxes. The demigods moved most of the accumulation of Deep Blue Hell to Guiming Palace. Ash only needed to accept it all, just like a garbage collector picking up garbage in the wasteland. The greatest significance of Soul Heaven to him was its almost unlimited capacity. He was really a real garbage can.

"Why haven't the Forsaken appeared yet?" Ash suddenly muttered to himself.

"It will only appear if you wait too long." Death Maniac said casually: "After a while, it may appear——"

"But can't you actively summon tens of millions of Forsaken to besiege me?" Ash opened a doomed treasure box and said faintly, "Then I will have to hand over 25% of my soul again."

Si Kuang was startled and stared at his back with wide eyes.

"Actually, there's no need to go through so much trouble. When my exploration time is almost over, just ask me and I'll give it to you." Ash added the calamity to the back of his hand and said coldly, "Just think of it as the price I pay for my naivety."

The dead man was silent for a long time without responding a word. He just took a puff of his cigarette quietly, and half of the cigarette instantly turned into ash and fell to the ground.