The woman in red gave the man in white a look of utter exasperation.
“What do you mean by... greasy? Which obscure little sect's chant is that?”
“Ah, that's where you're missing out.”
The man in white was brimming with excitement, looking as if he had finally caught an opportunity to show off. He began to enthusiastically explain:
“These are all wondrous techniques cobbled together by mortals without spiritual roots in this era.”
“Even though their physical bodies are as fragile as paper, this power of ‘Science’ is actually quite fascinating.”
“We must learn to adopt the best and discard the dross.”
The small white porcelain bottle continued to spit out water spheres, each containing a small portion of powder isolated by compressed air.
“This highly enriched Uranium-235 is normally quiet and harmless when dispersed.”
“But if you compress it together past what they call... ‘critical mass,’ it starts charging up a massive attack all on its own.”
As he spoke, he manipulated the water spheres, causing them to hover and gather directly above the giant cauldron like candied haws on a stick.
The woman in red watched coldly with furrowed brows. She didn't move to stop him, but the skepticism in her eyes was almost palpable.
“In a moment, on my mark, put all of this powder into your furnace.”
The man in white pointed at the cauldron.
“Use your fire-control technique to ignite and compress it from all directions, forcing an ‘implosion’ so that the mortals' powder fuses into one in an instant.”
“Remember, it has to be simultaneous. No delay between sides.”
“Otherwise, the uneven pressure will turn this firecracker into a dud.”
The woman in red didn't even bother to reply, her hands flying as she formed hand seals.
A faint, dark-red halo gradually emerged around the body of the cauldron.
Seeing this, the man in white manipulated the small porcelain bottle to spit out another tiny water sphere.
Inside this sphere lay a silver grain the size of a rice kernel, its surface glinting with a cold luster.
“Plus this gizmo Pops gave us... the neutron source.”
He pinched the silver grain extremely carefully between two fingers.
“Once the Uranium-235 is compressed to a critical state, send this thing in.”
“It will... disrupt their balance and cause them to undergo fission.”
He paused, lowering his voice slightly.
“And then, one becomes two, two become four, four become eight.”
“This is the legendary ‘Chain Fission Technique.’”
By now, all the powder had fallen into the giant cauldron, and the woman in red's fire-control technique roared to life.
“It's just a pile of powder to begin with. What fission? Is it going to breed and multiply itself inside?”
Despite her words, the woman in red still poured her entire strength into fueling the giant cauldron, her face turning slightly pale from the effort.
The temperature inside the cauldron rose uniformly from all sides.
Dark-red firelight seeped out along the ancient patterns on the cauldron's body, making the massive vessel look like a primordial beast that had just opened its eyes from a deep slumber.
The man in white cautiously leaned in, poking his head over the cauldron's rim to peer inside.
Under the heat and the crushing pressure from all sides, the powder inside had begun to glow eerily.
It was an unnatural, blue-white luminescence, as if something were squirming restlessly deep within the powder.
“Can this ‘fission reaction’ really match the full-force strike of a Gold Core?”
The skepticism on the woman's face was almost overflowing, yet the fire in her hands did not weaken in the slightest; instead, it burned even hotter.
“I'm afraid it's far more than that.”
Seeing that the heat was just right, the man in white took two steps back with a confident grin.
“I heard that little monster Evans took one of these things right to the face at close range before.”
He extended a finger and lightly flicked the side of the cauldron, letting out a soft hum.
“I went to ask him about it a few days ago, and he gave me a detailed play-by-play.”
“Man, that scene... tsk, tsk, tsk...”
He shook his head with a lingering look of dread, but his eyes were unmistakably shining with excitement.
“Anyway, Pops said so himself, so nothing can go wrong!”
The man in white waved his hand grandly, carrying the air of a general commanding his troops on the battlefield.
But his cool facade lasted less than three seconds before he quickly pulled his hand back, hurriedly helping the woman in red fine-tune the distribution of the fire on the cauldron.
Standing on either side, the two of them worked together with surprising, unspoken chemistry.
The flames in the woman's palms split into eight streams, pouring into the cauldron from eight directions simultaneously.
Squeezed relentlessly by the eight walls of fire, the Uranium-235 powder inside began to collapse and gather frantically toward the center.
Its originally loose structure was compressed inch by inch until it became incredibly dense.
The man in white squatted down, peering through a small hole at the bottom of the cauldron while muttering under his breath.
“Almost there... just a little more... Yes! Hold it right there!”
Fine beads of sweat broke out on the woman's forehead, but the flames in her hands remained perfectly steady.
Midway through, the man in white stole a cautious glance at the woman, his expression suddenly turning a bit subtle.
“Hey, you stubborn woman?”
The woman in red ignored him, her gaze locked onto the cauldron as the eight streams of fire flickered evenly under her control.
The man in white waited a breath, then spoke up again tentatively, his voice much softer.
“Wife?”
The woman's hands faltered for a fraction of a second.
It was only for an extremely brief instant, but the man in white caught it. A small smirk crept onto the corner of his mouth.
The powder inside the cauldron had now been compressed into a dense, fist-sized sphere.
A blue-white glow radiated outward from the center of the sphere, looking as if stars were burning within.
The neutron source was positioned directly above the sphere, waiting to be dropped at the final moment.
“Once this full-force Gold Core strike comes down... our battered spiritual bodies probably won't survive.”
The man's voice suddenly grew quiet, as if he were speaking of something of little consequence.
“We won't die.”
The woman in red interrupted him coldly.
Under her control, the eight streams of fire slightly adjusted their angles, locking down the glowing sphere from all sides.
“That's a long time from now...”
The man's tone softened.
“And if they really tear the sky down this time, who knows what kind of mess the New Era will turn into.”
He looked up at the woman in red, an indescribable emotion swirling in his eyes.
“Tell me, how long will it take for us to remember that we're husband and wife next time?”
The glow inside the cauldron grew brighter and brighter, the blue-white light leaking through the seams of the vessel and casting flickering shadows across their faces.
“We might just lose straight out, vanishing into nothingness and never remembering at all.”
The woman's voice remained as icy as ever.
“We recover our memories later than the last, and the past grows more and more blurred.”
“And look at the City of the Sky Lake. So many there...”
She gestured with her chin toward the floating islands in the distance.
“...have long since ceased to exist as conscious minds, haven't they?”
The playful smirk on the white-clad man's face finally vanished.
He frowned, his tone turning uncharacteristically serious.
“Hey, hey, don't say such depressing things!”
He reached out to take the jade bottle, pouring a drop of cool liquid into a groove on the cauldron's body.
The liquid spread rapidly along the patterns like a thin protective film, temporarily suppressing the violent energy fluctuations inside the cauldron.
“I just feel like,” he muttered softly as he worked, “that our divorce back then was a bit impulsive.”
The woman in red's eyebrows twitched slightly. She pursed her lips and remained silent.
The white-clad man's tone suddenly became lively again, as if he had hit upon a brilliant idea.
“How about this? In the next era, once we remember, we get remarried?”
“Come on... let's make a deal. Next time, whoever remembers the past first has to propose to the other. Deal?”
He tilted his head to look at the woman in red's face, a placating smile hanging on the corner of his lips.
However, before his voice could fade, the light inside the cauldron flared up without warning.
The neutron source, compressed to its absolute limit, finally dropped into the dead center of the dense sphere.
A muffled thud echoed from deep within the belly of the cauldron, sounding like a beating heart.
The woman in red shot him a cold glance—one that contained three parts indifference, three parts disgust, and three parts of something undefinable.
Of course, the white-clad man felt that... hidden at the very bottom was probably one part tenderness, which she kept fiercely guarded.
“When,” she said, pausing between each word, her voice incredibly clear amidst the scorching wind, “did I ever agree to a divorce?”
The white-clad man froze instantly, his hands still holding the seal, looking as if he had been struck by lightning.
The light inside the cauldron began to flash violently, blue-white light intertwining with dark red flames to produce a piercing hum.
Inside the sphere compressed to its limit, atomic nuclei were fracturing one after another, releasing unimaginable energy.
The chain reaction had begun and was spreading outward at an exponential rate.
The white-clad man opened his mouth, closed it, and opened it again, looking like a fish flopping on dry land.
“Then...”
Before he could finish, the light inside the cauldron completely overwhelmed the external flames.
It was as if a miniature sun were rising right before his eyes.
The powers of Science and magic collided at this moment, neither prevailing over the other.
They simply bit and tore at each other, burning until the dark red cauldron became completely translucent.
“So... up until now, we actually never got divorced?”
Squinting in the blinding white light, the white-clad man's voice was almost swallowed by the roaring din, but he still screamed with all his might.
“We're still husband and wife right now?”
The woman in red let out a cold snort. Though it was faint against the roar, the white-clad man heard it with absolute clarity.
“In the next era,” she said.
“In the next era, once we remember, we'll talk.”
The light swallowed her face, her voice, and the faint, almost imperceptible curve at the corner of her lips.
“Haha, then it's a promise... Wife!”
The white-clad man closed his eyes and yelled into the light, though it was unclear who he was addressing.
“In the next era... we will be husband and wife again!”
Blinding white light swallowed everything in an instant.
A massive, blazing sphere of light slowly rose directly beneath where the high-altitude floating island had been.
Because the energy was too concentrated, it did not even explode.
Instead, like a colossal lotus formed of pure destructive energy, it bloomed silently in the dead void.
Only then did the sound follow.
It was not a sharp, explosive bang, but a low, continuous rumble that sounded like the earth itself groaning.
The terrifying infrasound swept across the ground, crushing everything in its path.
The very void shook violently, and everything capable of movement buzzed and vibrated.
“Rumble—”
The shockwave, carrying debris and dust, expanded outward in a ring, throwing up towering waves several dozen feet high on the clear water's surface!
The small boats moored along the waterways were tossed into the air like toys, shredded to pieces mid-flight.
Then, as if triggering a domino effect.
Within the circular City of the Sky Lake, nearly a hundred hidden core nodes—along with the artifact spirits quietly watching over them—erupted in a frenzied chain of sympathetic detonations.
Looking from afar, inside the entire city.
In the span of a single breath, countless bright, scorching, hemispherical mushroom clouds densely sprouted across the ground.
The residual force swept through and flipped the marble buildings like dry leaves, and the crisscrossing waterways were instantly vaporized under temperatures of several thousand degrees.
Even the dense layers of shriveled white bones resting at the bottom of the channels were instantly reduced to nothingness under this egalitarian, mighty power.
The entire Earth-Eye Lake was boiling completely!
As the City of the Sky Lake shattered, the translucent shield around the floating island began to flicker erratically before rapidly dimming.
The floating island was blasted upward by the shockwave, but thanks to the shield's final remnants of power, it ultimately avoided major damage.
Once the light faded slightly, only a bottomless crater remained at the epicenter of the explosion.
The white-clad man and the red-clad woman were nowhere to be found.
Yet, in a corner at the bottom of the crater, beneath an inconspicuous grayish-white fragment, a lump of dark red metallic residue, its shape barely recognizable, was slowly cooling.
On another patch of scorched earth beside it, a thin, white porcelain fragment, nearly carbonized, clung to the soil.
They lay very close together.
So close that... they were practically stuck together.
...
Meanwhile, high above, inside the floating buildings of the City of the Sky Lake, the violent shockwave from just now had caused quite a panic.
Piercing alarms shrieked madly, and various red emergency lights flashed frantically. Expensive consoles and instruments lay shattered on the floor, leaving a complete mess everywhere.
In one of the chambers, several elite guards clad in heavy exoskeleton armor, holding large-caliber firearms, exchanged bewildered looks.
The massive explosion and alarms outside had naturally reached this room as well.
However, the door to this room was tightly locked, and they did not have the authorization to open it from the inside.
Thus, despite their panic, the guards could only grit their teeth and remain at their posts, continuing their guard duty.
Curiously, their assignment—the target they were guarding—in front of them was merely a seemingly ordinary elevator door.
“What on earth is happening outside...”
Just as the guards were staring anxiously at the sealed alloy door, trying to gauge the situation outside through the walls,
“Ding—”
A crisp electronic chime suddenly rang out inside the sealed, alarm-blaring chamber.
Two guards tensed, chambering rounds with a sharp click.
Their cold barrels instantly swung around, aiming dead-center at the elevator door.
However, there was no monster or demon inside the elevator.
There was only a solitary, extremely kind-looking old man dressed in a somewhat faded long robe.
The old man slowly raised his head, seeming to feel the aura of the grand array fracturing inch by inch outside, even through the thick alloy armor plating.
He murmured with a sigh,
“The suppression of the All-Heaven Stellar Array has been lifted...”
“They did well.”
Rate on N.U.
