The golden brass bell of the [Seven-Wolves Indestructible Dad-Belt] hung in the still air of Floor Seven’s snow-cleared plaza, its gentle chime fading into the warm scent of pine smoke and simmering bone broth.
At Gu Changsheng’s feet, beside the warm wooden dining bench, the twenty-five-year-old Chaos Demon King sat with his knees pressed together on the black-and-white stone tiles. The jagged obsidian armor that had once drunk the blood of ten thousand realms had peeled away like dry, burnt bark. This left only a thin young man wrapped snugly in his father’s dark-blue winter coat.
His shoulders trembled violently. His pale, scarred hands were pressed flat against his face, and his dark-and-crimson eyes—once wide and hollow with three thousand pages of abyssal hatred—were squeezed shut as hot tears leaked between his calloused fingers.
Above the broken dome of Floor Seven’s sky-vault, the pale, ink-stained face of the Chief Author stared down from Floor Nine’s Author’s Study projection in utter disbelief. His golden fountain pen rattled against his teeth.
“Get up!” the Chief Author shrieked, his voice cracking like cheap porcelain across the sky.
“Stand up and bite his throat out, you defective villain! I gave you three thousand pages of supreme misery! I made every sect elder spit on you!
