Deviant: No Longer Human

Chapter 847 - 847: Devil (5)

"Cough... Cough... Y-You are the Devil..." Victoria rasped, voice trembling within the fragile, humming bubble of displaced water.Mud squelched coldly between her toes as the crushing pressure of the lakebed pressed against her powerful legs.

It had been him all along.

It explained everything!

How she, the realm's strongest publicly known warrior, had been dismantled so effortlessly. How the ambush had began like a cruel script penned by indifferent gods.

Wang Xiao regarded her shocked, dripping form with a predatory smile. "I prefer to call myself a mere passerby... The Devil you seek is not me."

"??"

Victoria's mind reeled in the dense, inky-black depths. Before she could demand answers, he spoke again, voice echoed through the water like silk over steel.

"Shuangshuang, wrap it up."

SWOOSH!

The black waters erupted into a violent vortex, swirling and vanishing as if devoured by an invisible mouth.

In mere moments, the crushing depths were gone.

Victoria stumbled, suddenly standing on solid ground at the base of a fog-shrouded hill.

Rustle~

The black mist drifted lazily around them once more, innocent and serene as if the nightmare below had never existed.

"..."

Victoria stood speechless, water streaming from her soaked clothes.

A petite girl, barely half her height, approached Wang Xiao like a living porcelain doll, light cyan hair swaying gently, delicate parasol clutched protectively in her small hands.

"Good work," he murmured, patting Shuangshuang's head with surprising gentleness.

Victoria's lips quivered, a wave of pure depression washing over her majestic features. A girl this young can wield such power...?

She couldn't help but grumble, momentarily abandoning her warrior majesty. "... Did you drag me all the way here just to depress me by showing off your little monster's abilities?"

Shuangshuang, eyes mostly closed in quiet detachment, cracked one open and shot Victoria a suspicious glance for the interruption.

The taller woman simply shrugged shamelessly, her own voluptuous body had earned her enough envious stares over the years that she had long stopped caring.

Wang Xiao's faint smirk faded. "Jealousy doesn't suit you, Victoria."

Victoria exhaled sharply, forcing her thoughts back to the nightmare at hand. "What did you mean earlier... when you said you weren't the Devil? And why... why have you returned after so long?"

"Why haven't I returned for so long...?"

Wang Xiao echoed, blinking slowly.

Victoria's breathing quickened, her heart thundering like war drums before suddenly steadying. So it is true... The fear that had gripped her dried up, replaced by a storm of conflicting emotions.

She had believed he had forgotten this fractured realm and all it held. It seemed her suspicions were correct.

Yet suddenly his red eyes gleamed with that familiar teasing smile. "Wasn't it to build your mental resilience?"

"??"

Confusion flashed across Victoria's face, then fury as realization slapped like a thunderbolt. "You-!!"

"Haha..." Wang Xiao chuckled, utterly unbothered by her tightened fists and blazing glare.

He stepped forward, large hands seizing her slender waist with tight grip, pulling a startled gasp from her lips. "I brought you a gift."

He turned her gently. There, standing at their feet with wide, innocent eyes, was Eirene, blinking up at them like a lost doll.

"How did she get here?" Victoria demanded, mind still processing. She clearly remembered leaving the child with Xue Lan back at the castle.

"Well..." Wang Xiao's voice carried subtle amusement as the alpine wind whispered through the mist-shrouded hill. "I thought your hair color matched hers rather nicely. How about you keep her?"

As if on cue, Eirene looked up at Victoria with those big, pleading eyes.

The warrior woman hesitated, glancing sideways at him. "How can you just drop a burden on me like this...? And what happened to Eveline?"

Wang Xiao shrugged, the movement rippling with effortless power. "I sent her on a little vacation. To rethink her life choices."

"..." Victoria's instincts screamed that "vacation" was anything but simple.

Before she could press further, his tone turned strict, brooking no argument. "Do you want her or not?"

"...Fine." Victoria sighed, unable to refuse the small girl's silent appeal.

Little did she know the tiny "devil" had been thoroughly coached by Wang Xiao himself ... to act perfectly for this moment!

Victoria reached down, taking Eirene's small, warm hand. The child smiled sweetly, and Victoria felt a strange pang in her chest. She had never even broken through her own maidenhood, let alone raised a child

A heavy sigh escaped her. 'How in the heavens did I end up with a daughter out of nowhere?'

"I have more if you want," Wang Xiao added, twisting the knife with wicked thought.

"!!!" Victoria's ears practically perked up in outrage. "No!" She glared at him with fiery fury, face flushed. "What the hell is wrong with you? Can't you take care of your own offspring instead of distributing them like festival sweets? Why have so many if you can't even raise them properly?!"

Wang Xiao said nothing at first, merely glancing back at Shuangshuang. The petite girl shook her head quietly, no need for a mother; she was already too grown in her own quiet, scarred way.

He shrugged and tapped Victoria's back reassuringly, his voice lowering as he explained Eirene's abilities. "It's quite simple, really. The girl can move through time. She alters the state of anything she touches, air, space, even the land itself, to a past or future moment, containing the effects to a chosen area. That is how she teleports... and how she makes dead trees bloom in eternal winter."

The more Victoria listened, the more serious her expression became, her warrior instincts warring with awe. "...Isn't that too much?"

She had always known he was monstrously powerful, and that his bloodline carried echoes of that power, but this?

"Still not want more?" Wang Xiao teased, his voice filled with wicked amusement.

"!!" Victoria shot him a look of pure frustration, cheeks burning. "Are you ever serious about anything?"

Her gaze suddenly drifted past him to Shuangshuang. The petite girl's crystal-like eyes, clear as first dew on mountain blossoms, caught the light, her stoic little face far too adorable for its own good.

Victoria's eyes narrowed with newfound interest.

"...Can I have her instead?"

"!!"

Whoosh!

Shuangshuang's face paled like fresh snow. She took one frantic step back, but it was too late.

Victoria lunged forward with surprising speed for her size.

"Where are you running, girl? I won't eat you!" Victoria called, half-laughing, half-desperate.

"..." Wang Xiao watched the scene, utterly speechless. This was precisely why he rarely brought Shuangshuang out. The girl was simply... too damn adorable.

With her delicate, doll-like features, short stature, and flowing dress that fluttered like cherry blossoms in the alpine wind, she awakened an almost primal urge in others to squeeze her cheeks or pull her into a protective embrace, despite her slender, non-chubby frame.

Such incidents had grown increasingly annoying, even frightening, as she matured.

Wang Xiao had hoped she would outgrow the unwanted attention.

Instead, she had withdrawn completely, avoiding all interactions save for him.

She preferred the solitude of ancient mountains and forgotten peaks, a rare creature even among the strange races he had encountered across realms.

He simply called them "creatures" when he couldn't be bothered to name their race. He had done the same with many other species over the eons.

SPLASH!

Just as he anticipated, Shuangshuang unleashed a sudden cloudburst, dousing Victoria in a torrential downpour that flooded the misty hillside.

The warrior woman sputtered as the petite girl darted behind Wang Xiao for shelter.

Eirene, meanwhile, clung to his leg, floating serenely in the newly formed puddles.

"Isn't this a little too overreactive?" Wang Xiao raised an eyebrow, water streaming down his form without bothering him in the slightest.

"Nn... I don't like her!" Shuangshuang shook her head vigorously from behind him, clutching his waist in a tight, possessive hug.

"Who do you even like, then?" he asked, a headache already forming behind his eyes.

"You!" she answered instantly, pressing closer.

Despite her antisocial nature, her scent was as intoxicating as ever, delicate snow lotus and quiet rain.

Wang Xiao sighed inwardly. If only her behavior matched how she smelled...

"Let's go meet the others..." Wang Xiao sighed, stepping backward.

In an instant, the world obeyed. The swirling black mist dissolved like morning dew under dawn's first light, the flooded hillside drying as if the deluge had never occurred.

The alpine air grew crisp and still once more.

Victoria stood stunned, words catching in her throat. If he could erase the mutating mist so effortlessly, why had he allowed this fractured realm to suffer for so long? Yet he gave her no chance to voice the accusation.

"The gorge you saw earlier," he continued calmly, "the Devil was never there to kill you. It was there to ensure no one fell inside."

"You knew about it?" Victoria's eyes widened in shock.

"I placed that Devil there myself," Wang Xiao replied, gaze lifting toward the leaden sky as distant memories stirred. "If anyone fell into that gorge, they would die. Your powers would be useless there... Even mine."

He did not elaborate further, To be precise, he had not placed that Devil there today.

The groundwork had been laid many years ago, long before his descent into the Netherworld.

The precise mechanics of universal omniscience and foresight were... complicated, even for one such as him.

Explaining the full truth in one breath was too complicated, the ancient pact struck that day with the other Great Lords, when their cataclysmic battle had finally reached a weary stalemate.

Their strength had grown so immense, so anomalous, that unleashing it fully in any plane, including the Netherworld, would shatter reality itself.

True combat demanded the endless void beyond all worlds.

Yet even there, none wished to go all out and risk annihilating existence. Worse still, such cataclysms would alert... 'those above'.

So they had settled on a quieter accord: they would continue their eternal games and rivalries within the Netherworld, but under heavy self-imposed limitations.

It was like owning a Bugatti with no open road to unleash its full fury. So you and your rivals buy modest Toyotas instead, racing through sleepy neighborhood streets to see who reigns supreme.

Such self-imposed restrictions were no novelty to beings of their caliber.

The more power they unleashed without restraint, the more they devolved into hollow, emotionless deities, adrift in an infinite void where curiosity, joy, rage, sorrow, and the very taste of existence turned to colorless ash.

Sheer omniscience rendered all things predictable and dull; true feeling demanded deliberate diminishment.

They had to shrink themselves to a mere fraction of their transcendent might, entering the universe as humbled observers and participants alike, tasting the bittersweet nectar of limited curiosity once more.

Only then could curiosity bloom anew, fresh and raw as it did for ordinary souls. In this restricted form, Wang Xiao explored the world like a stranger in a strange land, reveling in the unknown.

When others wondered why he "failed" to remember or foresee certain events, it was not ignorance, it was choice.

He deliberately sealed parts of his awareness, refusing to act as a spoiler to the grand game, preserving the thrill of uncertainty.

Thus he wrecked calculated havoc, toyed with women, and indulged his daughters, not out of base weakness, but because these things still carried genuine curiosity and meaning in his diminished state.

Sometimes, in quiet moments, Wang Xiao wondered: did those primordial hands that tore through the primordial sky and birthed existence do so with cold reason... or was it all simply the eternal, restless motion of being itself?

Yet one question stood in the quiet recesses of his mind: What of the entity he had glimpsed while sifting through the shattered fragments of his memories from graveyard of gods that gave him chills?

How did those primordial hands, vast and world-shaping, fit into the grand puzzle alongside that enigmatic being?

He sensed the answer lay hidden there, particularly with the one enigmatic being who had birthed the Enforcers into existence in his memories.

Wang Xiao knew it was all real. He too had been slated to become one of the Enforcers in the graveyard of gods after staring into that ominous fountain, yet somehow, he had been spared.

The question like a shadow across the void: why?

And that answer, he suspected, pointed directly toward... Yin Yue.

The soul he had dragged back from the clutches of death... had returned in the fractured form of split personalities.

But the time to solve such mysteries had not yet come. Some veils, even for one such as him, were best left undisturbed until the board was properly set.

For now, Wang Xiao had sealed his entire merged universe and Netherworld afterward, hoping it would buy him time to lay his own intricate chess pieces undisturbed.

But the others had not remained idle.

The massive gorge tearing through Xianthera was the direct consequence, a rift leading straight into the domain of the Obsidian Great Lord, the most mysterious and reclusive of them all.

Even Wang Xiao knew little of that shadowed figure.

He would not venture there unprepared.

Not until he extracted deeper truths from Xue Hanqin regarding the first primordial ascendant and the mystery of why only select bloodlines could rise to such forbidden heights of... Great-lord.