Chapter 469: The First Heartbreak 2
Now he stood ready to face the armies of those who had stolen his dearest friend, and his rage was the cold fury of mountains, patient and inexorable.
"Enkidu," he whispered, his voice carrying impossible distances across the battlefield. "My brother. What have they done to you?"
The words hung in the air like a prayer, like a curse, like a promise of retribution.
Across the nightmare landscape, the six contractor armies began their advance, their formations spreading across the volcanic plains like dark ink staining parchment. But something gave StarGazer pause in her calculated assessment of the battlefield dynamics. Her physicist’s mind, expanded by the Jade Emperor’s cosmic knowledge, processed information at superhuman speeds—but even she couldn’t predict what happened next.
Erlang Shen, the three-eyed god of war whose very presence bent spacetime around him, suddenly halted his celestial dragons mid-flight. The massive creatures, each one large enough to swallow mountains, froze in the air as if time itself had stopped. His third eye—the one that saw across dimensions and realms with divine clarity—opened wide, revealing depths that contained entire universes in miniature.
For a moment that stretched into eternity, the god’s expression shifted from focused concentration to something approaching surprise. Then, with a voice that carried across the armies like thunder rolling across infinite plains, he announced, "I sense him elsewhere. The true battle calls to me, where his chaos gathers like storm clouds."
He paused, his three eyes scanning the assembled forces below with the dispassion of a general evaluating chess pieces. "Fight well without me, chosen of the Jade Emperor. Your courage honors the celestial court, but my duty lies where the danger is greatest."
Without another word, he and his dragons vanished in a swirl of cosmic wind that left aurora-like patterns across the hellish sky, the very air sparkling with residual divine energy. The departure left StarGazer’s forces diminished but still formidable—her Taoist immortals and remaining celestial creatures adjusting their formation efficiently.
StarGazer herself stood motionless for a moment, processing this development with cold logic. "Curious. Either the Jade Emperor has calculated that our victory here is assured, or..." She paused, touching the edges of something vast and terrible. "Or his target appeared somewhere else. Doesn’t matter. We’ll win without him."
Miles away from the impending clash, perched on a throne carved from crystallised demon souls that reflected the tormented faces of his victims, the Greatest Imp observed the proceedings with theatrical boredom that somehow managed to be more insulting than active contempt. His perfect features—beauty that made mortals weep and angels fall—were arranged in an expression of supreme condescension as he examined his nails with exaggerated interest.
"How predictably tedious," he mused to his devoted succubus, his voice like honey poured over broken glass, each word carefully crafted to maximise its dismissive impact. "Gods and mortals, contractors and champions, all dancing to the same tired tune of honor and vengeance and righteous fury. Armies clashing in neat little formations, heroes making dramatic speeches, the usual pageantry of the weak pretending their struggles matter."