Mage Manual

"Right now the Heavenly Kingdom is divided into three regions centered on the Ancient Battlefield, the Sky Garden, and Wind, Flower, Snow, Moon. There’s no specific functional division; every region has resource production capability, but since the Ancient Battlefield really isn’t livable, we only build palaces in the Sky Garden and Wind, Flower, Snow, Moon. The total land area of the Heavenly Kingdom is four hundred thousand..."

Ash spread his Void Wings and cruised through the sky, while Weiser and the others flew ahead of him like tour guides, introducing all kinds of information about the Heavenly Kingdom.

At first glance the Heavenly Kingdom looked almost no different from earth: an azure sky, boundless land. The only difference was that there were no sun, moon, or stars, and the land was divided into three regions: the "grassland" where the Sky Garden was located, the "Shallow Sea" beneath Wind, Flower, Snow, Moon, and the "Gobi Desert" formed by the Ancient Battlefield.

Ash suddenly stopped and looked toward the Shallow Sea, just in time to see a shimmering-scaled fish leap out of the sea, gliding along the surface like a streak of moonlight.

Diya happily introduced, "That’s a ’Moonlight Carp’. If it grows up, it might evolve into a Moonlight Technique Spirit, but there’s only one big bone in its whole body, and if you just cook it simply it tastes amazing... Let’s eat one tonight!" As she spoke she stretched her hand out from afar and grabbed the Moonlight Carp into her hand. The fish kept struggling and flopping, utterly unaware that thanks to its excellent performance in a diving event it had earned the honor of becoming a Divine Lords’ dish.

"It’s already able to nurture Life, huh..." Ash sighed.

"Otherwise what did you think we’ve been busy with these past few days?" Weiser clasped her hands behind her waist and crossed them, grinning proudly. "We’re still not in full Status yet. Once we adjust the Heavenly Kingdom’s environment to form a grand ecological cycle with the World Secret Domain, creating a positive feedback loop, our home will be more beautiful than any country."

Within the Phase Heavenly Kingdom, the Divine Lord was almost omnipotent, except in one regard: creating Life.

If you wanted the Heavenly Kingdom to become vibrant and full of life, you either had to purchase Life from outside—like introducing a large herd of Lala-fats for grazing—or you had to use the World Secret Domain as a foundation to construct a grand ecological circle.

Don’t be fooled by the fact that there’s no Life in the "Ancient Battlefield," "Sky Garden," and "Wind, Flower, Snow, Moon." That’s because they’d been carried out of the Heavenly Kingdom by Six-winged Angels as tactical weapons. Like when a City is designated as a temporary war zone, as the Commander you’d definitely evacuate the population and important assets inside—these World Secret Domains’ original resources and living creatures had all been relocated by the Divine Lord.

They’d originally planned to wait for the Angels to return, then move the resources back into the Secret Domains. Who’d have thought that this descent to earth would turn into a poverty-relief charity mission... Speaking logically, if not for this start-up capital, Sonia and the others really wouldn’t have been able to raise the Heavenly Kingdom within ten or even eight years. After all, the World Secret Domains on earth had already been completely stripped clean. Fortunately, the four Divine Lords sent Angels to invest in them; even Ash felt that those were the real angel investors.

But although the World Secret Domain could nurture Life, it basically only produced Technique Spirits. If you wanted to use the World Secret Domain to foster natural Life, that required the Divine Lord to put in serious work. It wasn’t as simple as adjusting the environmental variables to match the Secret Domain; you had to let the Secret Domain participate in the Heavenly Kingdom’s ecological circle.

Simply put, the three Secret Domains were like living springs. If you wanted to use those springs to irrigate the Heavenly Kingdom, you had to build river channels so the spring water could flow in all directions. The Ancient Battlefield’s spring water was muddy and full of silt; Wind, Flower, Snow, Moon’s spring water was clear and fresh; the Sky Garden’s spring water was turbid with all sorts of impurities... How to reduce the loss of spring water, how to maximize its effect—this was an eternal topic for which the Divine Lords could exhaust their whole lives.

Once the Secret Domains joined the ecological circle, the circle would begin to generate Technique Spirit–derived resources. For example, Moonlight Carp was a derivative of the Moonlight Technique Spirit. According to the remnants of knowledge Ash had obtained from Death Mad, a single Secret Domain could produce about twenty kinds of Technique Spirits and derive a hundred types of resources—and that was just from one Secret Domain’s ecological circle. If two Secret Domain ecological circles intersected, third-tier or even fourth-tier derivative resources would appear, and the degree of ecological prosperity would be impossible to estimate.

In the Supreme Heavenly Kingdoms like the one Death Mad and the others had, the number of various derived plants and animals far surpassed earth. In the later stages, even their profit from burying worlds almost couldn’t keep up with the internal resource regeneration of the Heavenly Kingdom, which was why they could squander endless resources in pursuit of the slightest increase in their Void Wings.

But for Ash and the others, all that was still very far away. The fact that Sonia and the rest could make the Heavenly Kingdom itself nurture Life had already exceeded Ash’s expectations—when Death Mad and her group first raised their Heavenly Kingdom, they’d also spent several months just to get a preliminary ecological circle up and running.

"We have to thank Death Mad and the others’ knowledge." Sonia directly revealed the answer. "Even though there’s only a small portion of data on Heavenly Kingdom management, at least we’re not starting from zero. After studying for a while we found a direction, which is why we could get everything operating this smoothly so quickly."

"Death Mad and the others’ knowledge?" Ash was stunned.

"Mm." Sonia glanced at him. "If it weren’t for Big Sister Death Mad, we wouldn’t have been able to oppose the Divine Lord at all, let alone解除 the seal on Hell and rescue you... You need to properly thank her."

Ash fell silent for a moment, a gentle expression appearing on his face. "Yeah."

"Can you tell us now?" Vishi asked. "What exactly did you do in Hell?"

"And you’re not allowed to hide anything from us again!" Diya puffed her cheeks and tugged on his ear. "Ash, do you have any idea how excessive what you did was? Disappearing without a word right after such an important night—we doubted, when we first got our memories back, whether you’d abandoned us because of... technical issues..."

"I won’t hide anything ever again," Ash surrendered, raising his hand, his face full of apology. "It’s a long story. Are you ready to listen?"

"Our home is very big too." Weiser blinked and smiled softly. "We can walk slowly, and listen slowly."

From the first time Death Mad appeared in Shattered Lake Prison, to the Time Continent’s close contact with them wearing different identities in the amnesia cabin, to the Divine Fire Trial where Ash met the Observer and Weiser met the Lord of Mirrors, and then to the World Snake devouring the Level Six of Hell... This time Ash didn’t cut anything out. He honestly sorted through the entire relationship between the End Times Five and them.

"So you really did go to save the world."

Vishi walked along the sandy beach of the Shallow Sea and sighed. "And no matter whether you succeeded or not, you had to die—and be forgotten. No one would know your achievements, no one would know your sacrifice... If you’re that into charity work, how about considering donating your Supreme Void Wings to me instead?"

"Using the Bonds System to integrate everyone’s power and obtain an Ultimate Power far beyond Seven-winged..." Weiser muttered. "Using quantitative change to trigger qualitative change—so this is the true meaning of the Bonds System..."

"So," Sonia’s eyes went slightly unfocused, "Death Mad and the others... perished together with Uroboros?"

"More or less." Ash said softly, "But Hell still can’t be unsealed yet. The Magic radiation from their battle will probably take several years to disperse. I’ll wait until I master the power of the Supreme of Magic before considering unsealing Hell."

"Did Big Sister Death Mad tell you why she wanted to save you?"

Sonia stared into Ash’s eyes. "Why did she abandon the reincarnation plan she’d held on to all this time, and give up everything just to get you out of Hell?"

"Because of you."

Ash took Sonia’s hand and said seriously, "And because of me."

"Uwah—"

The Witch suddenly pounced onto Ash, crying so hard her tears fell like pear blossoms in the rain. She even raised her little fists and hammered him. Ash, half amused and half helpless, cupped her face and used his thumbs to wipe away the tear tracks. "What’s wrong, who made our dear Her Majesty angry?"

"You did!" Diya gave a fierce sniff, coughed out a snot bubble, and pouted so hard you could hang a kettle from her lips. A few stray colors appeared in her hair tips. "I thought you were forced to leave, but it turns out you left on your own—You promised you wouldn’t leave me! You promised! How could you choose to abandon me? What do you take me for, dead weight?"

Hearing this, Weiser and the others’ expressions also turned a bit unfriendly—Ash wanting to play the lone hero was indeed admirable, but the fact that he didn’t share any intel with them and just left without a word was indeed an act of abandonment. And he even chose to do it right after the Bride’s night; to put it harshly, you could call it pulling up his pants and running.

Only now did Ash realize how serious this was. Back then he really hadn’t thought about it so much, he’d just felt that silently leaving had incredible style. He’d never considered what consequences he’d face if he came back alive. After thinking for a moment, he took out a little notepad from his Space Ring, scribbled a note, tore it off, and handed it to the Witch.

"No matter what you show me this time I’m not going to forgive you that easily..." the Witch muttered as she took the note, then saw the words written on it:

"This voucher entitles the holder to forcibly demand Ash’s participation in Witch’s Paradise once. Maximum concurrent users: 4."

"Witch, I’m sorry." Ash said with great sincerity. "Can you forgive me?"

"No!"

"Then how should I express my apology?"

"You need to give me at least twenty... thirty... fifty! Give me fifty of these and I’ll forgive you!"