The Crown Prince, still dangling from the gargoyle’s stone grip, offered a pathetic, muffled groan. His limbs swayed with the movement of the gargoyle, making him look less like a prisoner and more like an ill-fated wind chime. “Perfect,” Yaolan muttered, assessing the amber light around his collarbones. It pulsed with a concentrated, albeit undeserved, spiritual purity. An ideal conduit. She reached out with the grounding peg, intending a precise extraction. Zang Weiming flinched, his eyes darting frantically. “My… my masked enchantress? Have you come to rescue me from this foul beast? Your tender touch, even through a disguise, is enough to –” “Tender touch?” Yaolan cut him off, a flicker of irritation crossing her brow. “This isn’t a rescue, Crown Prince. Your aura is interfering with my power flow. Hold still.” She jammed the copper peg against his throat, not gently, but with the practical force of a carpenter driving a nail. A faint, high-pitched whine escaped him, like a kettle at boil. “Ah! Such passion! Even in your methods, you are… uniquely compelling!” Zang Weiming tried to wriggle, his voice strained. “A warrior’s affection! I understand! You wish to reclaim me from this rock, to show me the error of my past judgment!” Yaolan ignored his increasingly unhinged declarations. The copper peg was merely a guide. With a focused grunt, she drew back her fist, infused it with geometric logic, and then punched the amber halo directly. Not *at* him, but *through* the shimmering ring of light that encircled his neck. There was a sickening, wet *crack* that echoed strangely in the distorted air, a sound like glass shattering inside a damp cave. Zang Weiming shrieked, a genuinely undignified sound. “My… my divine halo! My unearned spiritual endowment! It’s… it’s gone! My birthright, you’ve shattered my heavenly design!” Indeed, a fragmented ring of solidified amber light, roughly the size of a bracelet, floated free from his neck, leaving behind a faint, bruised outline on his skin. It pulsed erratically, still warm with the echo of fate. Zang Weiming looked utterly bereft, his previously confident gaze replaced by wide, horrified eyes. “Excellent,” Yaolan said, snatching the halo out of the air. It felt unnervingly vibrant, almost alive. “Far more robust than I anticipated. A true celestial battery.” She swiftly threaded the ring onto the central spindle remnant, where the six chalk-inscribed nodes hummed. The halo clicked into place, its amber glow intensifying, radiating pure, untamed plot energy. With the detonator set, Yaolan backed away, her gaze sweeping over the scene. Mo-Mo still lay sprawled across the cosmic scribe, a mountain of glowing ink-carp blubber. The entity beneath was mostly hidden, but the remaining red strings of fate twitched feebly, struggling against the crushing weight. Just as Yaolan prepared to activate the sequence, a low groan emanated from the periphery. Lord Shenjue, still partially obscured by debris from the archive collapse, pushed himself up. His golden robes were torn, and a faint stream of golden blood traced a path from the corner of his mouth. His eyes, though weary, were fixed on Yaolan. He saw the pulsating halo, the humming nodes, the imminent detonation. He saw the remains of the celestial entity struggling beneath Mo-Mo. A peaceful smile spread across his face, tinged with a profound, almost ethereal sorrow. “My Yaolan,” he whispered, his voice raspy but resolute. “You stand against fate itself. This… this must be our final stand. The culmination of our defiance. I understand now. You need a sacrifice. A powerful anchor to truly sever these threads.” He pushed himself forward, dragging his fractured form toward the crushed entity. He intended to grapple the grotesque entity, to ensure its complete annihilation with his own body, to merge his failing divine core with the blast. He closed his eyes, already picturing their names etched into the annals of defiant lovers, his heart swelling with tragic intent. “For you,” he murmured, reaching out to the squirming mass beneath Mo-Mo, his body radiating a final, desperate surge of Supreme Deity power. Yaolan stared, not with tender appreciation, but with pure, unadulterated horror. “Shenjue! What in the Void are you doing?!” she shrieked, her voice cracking with an edge of absolute fury. “Get out of my blast radius, you imbecile! You’ll ruin the geometric coherence! My calculations were precise!” Before Shenjue could react, before his tragic lover’s sacrifice could fully manifest, Yaolan launched herself forward. She didn’t embrace him, didn’t cradle him. She tackled him. It was a vicious, no-nonsense tackle, hitting him squarely in the chest with the force of a battering ram. The impact knocked the last breath out of his lungs, sending him sprawling several yards away, tumbling through the shattered masonry like a discarded doll. “Stay down!” she yelled, scrambling back to her array, her focus entirely on the imminent explosion, not the Supreme Deity she had just assaulted. She slammed her palm onto the central node. A blinding, formless light erupted. It was not fire or lightning, but pure, absolute geometric force, expanding outwards in a perfectly spherical wave. The red threads, which had defined the realm for millennia, simply ceased to exist, whitewashed out of reality. The remnants of the Loom of Fate, the pulverized cosmic architect, even the lingering romantic miasma – everything was erased, replaced by an infinite, sterile white. Yaolan blinked, shielding her eyes. The light slowly receded, revealing a pristine, utterly blank expanse where the archives had been. Not a speck of dust, not a single red thread. Just… nothingness. She looked around, her eyes scanning the bleached landscape. Shenjue was groaning somewhere in the distance. Zang Weiming was still suspended, dazed and halo-less. But something was missing. Yaolan’s voice, usually so sharp and commanding, was small, almost a whisper, as she peered into the blinding light. “Wait, where is Mo-Mo?”

The World-Severing Blast