The air in the distant valley smelled of hot iron, sour sweat, and fear on the verge of becoming vapor.
Hundreds of cultivators — what remained of a dying era's arrogance — packed the cracked stone bleachers. At the center of the jade platform, a young master raised a flaming sword, screaming declarations about the new order he and his kind would build now that the old ones had vanished.
The scream died before it finished.
Two beacons of cosmic beauty descended from the sky without any warning. The blue-haired goddess floated serenely, her pearlescent dress swaying without any wind, a sweet and compassionate smile drawn on her divinely soft face. Beside her, the golden-haired goddess crossed her arms beneath her monumental bust. The dark silk dress was split up to the top of her thick thighs, and the woman's bare heel swung in the air in pure, predatory impatience.
The young master lost his sanity at that very instant. The flaming sword lowered, forgotten, as saliva dripped from the corner of his mouth, his glazed stare devouring the golden warrior's curves.
"Come down here, fairies... A real master is going to teach you your place in this new era. My tents are big enough for bo—"
The perfect pout on the golden-haired goddess's full lips twisted in pure revulsion, as though she had stepped in rotten mud. She vanished. And reappeared a centimeter from him.
The bare heel touched the jade platform with a light crack.
The entire arena imploded. Two hundred meters of dense jade sank ten meters into the earth with a thunderclap that made the entire valley tremble. The young master tried to raise his sword, but the steel melted and crumbled into rust before it even grazed her skin. With a brutal boredom, the woman in gold gave a simple flick of two fingers against the center of the man's forehead.
The skull disintegrated into a scarlet mist and bone flour. The kinetic force traveled down his spine, bursting the chest and pulverizing the ribs and vertebral column into a wet paste that stained the bottom of the crater. The invisible shockwave continued in a straight line, tearing through the northern bleachers and splitting a hundred-meter fissure in the mountain behind.
Bodies flew through the air like shredded straw dolls.
Panic exploded in the valley. Deafening screams tore through the air. Men and women trampled one another, desperate to flee the calamity in the torn dress.
The golden-haired goddess walked slowly through the middle of the carnage. Her bare heel crushed fallen skulls with the same ease one treads on ripe grapes. An elder in tattered robes dragged himself through the jade dust just ahead of her. The old man's legs had been obliterated by the shockwave, leaving a thick trail of dark blood on the ground. Catching sight of the woman approaching at a slow, unhurried pace, the man's despair converted into a hysterical and indignant fury.
"Demons!" the elder spat, his voice thick with pain, raising his dirt-covered face. "We did absolutely nothing to deserve this annihilation! What justification is there for this massacre?! Where is the justice?!"
The golden-haired goddess stopped. She tilted her head to the side. Her bare heel rested in the pool of blood. With a genuinely thoughtful air, she raised her right hand, pressing her scarlet-stained index finger just below her lower lip. She looked up at the ceiling of clouds in silence for two seconds. Then she lowered her face toward the crawling old man, opening a wide, soft, almost childlike smile.
"Hmm..." she murmured, shrugging. "You know, you're actually right. We don't have any reason at all."
The elder blinked, a pathetic spark of hope and relief igniting in his tear-filled eyes.
"But my hands were itching anyway," she finished, the smile widening until her canines showed.
Before the old man could process the answer, she brought her arm down. The woman's open hand plunged directly into the center of the elder's chest. There was no resistance. The skin, the ribs, and the lungs yielded like wet paper. The pale fingers passed through the cultivator's torso from side to side, driving themselves into the stone ground beneath him. She yanked her arm back with a brusque jerk, and the old man's body collapsed hollow in the dust.
As the goddess shook her wrist to flick off the excess blood, the blue-haired woman raised one of her pale hands, her peaceful smile unchanged before the brutality of her equal.
"The ground needs washing every now and then, Sister Méi," the melodious voice floated out, sweet and terrifying.
The water hidden inside the bodies of every cultivator still running through the valley boiled simultaneously. Bodies convulsed in agony. Skin reddened, blisters burst, and eyeballs popped from their sockets with wet hisses. Scalding steam began to escape through mouths, nostrils, and ears. Strong men fell to their knees vomiting boiling blood. Women screamed as their own insides cooked within their flesh. The nauseating smell of cooking rose in a thick cloud, mixed with the stench of urine and panic.
The golden-haired goddess laughed softly, licking a drop of hot blood that had splashed onto her lower lip. Her full chest rose and fell in pure, satisfied boredom.
The massacre lasted minutes that felt eternal. When the last gurgle died, the valley was a steaming cauldron: pools of coagulated blood, cooked bodies curled like fetuses, and exposed bones gleaming in the middle of melted flesh.
The two cleaned their hands with silk handkerchiefs with the composure of those who had just finished serving afternoon tea.
The woman in gold raised her eyes to the sky. A lazy, coaxing, and suddenly tender smile surfaced on her lips.
"My heaven..." she murmured, her guttural voice shifting into a blind devotion. "We're done. The space is clean."
The blue-haired woman tilted her head, her oceanic irises blazing with the same deep reverence.
"We're ready to come back," the other answered.
The air behind them tore open with a hollow, dull sound. A silver and black rift opened in the vacuum, its edges trembling as though the very fabric of reality were being cut by invisible threads.
The two floated toward the passage without looking back. Not a single drop of blood stained their flawless skin.
They disappeared through the portal, leaving behind nothing but bones, boiled blood, and the sweet stench of an era that had just been erased.
---
Hundreds of kilometers away, on a misty peak protected by absolute matrices, a courtyard of white stone and bamboo rested in an unreachable silence.
The golden goddess landed gracefully on the flagstones. Her milky jade skin glowed, perfectly clean. The smile on her full lips still overflowed with the carnivorous euphoria of someone who had just crushed thousands of ants.
The blue goddess glided through the air beside her, emanating a lethal peace that contrasted obscenely with the carnage still simmering in both their memories.
They moved toward the man in the charcoal-gray robe waiting at the center of the courtyard, with the urgency of those finally returning to the only place that matters.
Goddess Méi threw her arms around his broad neck. The voluptuous body rubbed against the man's chest with a scandalously and shamelessly needy coaxing.
"My heaven..." she purred against the skin of his jaw, her voice vibrating with warmth and lust. "They were so weak. So loud. I cleared the space for you."
The blue-haired woman nestled against his other side. Her small, delicate pale fingers gripped the sleeve of his dark robe, and the girl pressed her soft, innocent face against his shoulder.
"The silence has returned, husband," she whispered, her sweet voice melting in pure submission. "The dust will no longer disturb your ears."
The man slid his large, warm hand along the golden goddess's waist, pulling her full hip against him with a heavy, unshakeable possessiveness. The thumb of his free hand traced Goddess Wǎn's jaw with a lethargy that concealed an abyss of infinite Hunger.
"Good," the god murmured, his deep voice reverberating in the flesh of both women, the darkness in his irises taking on a warm, predatory gleam. "There is still much space to fill."
The world could keep bleeding. For that family's altar, all that mattered was keeping the furnace lit.
---