"Yoo-hoo!"
With a carefree shout that sent terror rippling through every demon god in the Dark Outer Sea,
a golden fireball spun out of Alice's hand and plunged into the black depths.
By sheer bad luck, it landed right beside a demon god who'd just crept close, intending to scout out Teyvat's condition.
The demon god froze.
That golden fireball blazed with a sacred radiance, its Buddha-like aura towering and serene.
For a heartbeat, the demon god simply stared.
Then Alice's voice reached his ears.
His face changed on the spot.
He turned to flee, scrambling in blind panic—
Too late.
The golden fireball erupted, exploding into a tide of flame that vaporized everything in its path.
The instant the flames brushed the demon god, he evaporated—
even the embers of divinity left behind by his death vanished without a trace.
Alice hovered in place, glanced at the spot where the demon god had been, and stuck out her tongue.
Heaven and earth could testify—she really hadn't been targeting that one.
She hadn't even noticed him.
He was the one who'd wandered so close on his own.
She wasn't even halfway to the Dark Outer Sea's center. If he was lurking this close, he definitely didn't have good intentions.
If he wasn't eyeing Teyvat, why drift so near?
Without a shred of guilt, Alice continued flying toward the region nearest the Quantum Sea.
Today, she was here to detonate something truly outrageous—
an explosion so terrifying it would scare every demon god out of their wits.
Once they'd seen this, they'd never dare set their sights on Teyvat again.
Then she wouldn't have to keep worrying about this place every single day.
Strictly speaking, the Dark Outer Sea wasn't an actual sea—
no more than the Quantum Sea was.
Alice herself didn't quite know how to describe it.
The place was… strange.
Her colleagues were all monsters in their own right—yet whenever the Dark Outer Sea was mentioned, they collectively fell silent.
Even the concepts of the Quantum Sea and Imaginary Tree weren't clear to them.
They only knew one thing:
If they failed to guard the Dark Outer Sea, Teyvat faced annihilation.
The danger came from beyond worlds.
What exactly it was, even Alice didn't know.
By now, she had reached the boundary between the Dark Outer Sea and the Quantum Sea.
Neither of them looked remotely like a real ocean, but the border was unmistakable:
a transparent, impossibly solid membrane that was nearly impossible to pierce.
Once, Alice had tried blowing it up with a nuclear bomb she'd "borrowed" from another world.
The demon gods had been blasted half-senseless.
The membrane hadn't twitched. No ripple, no mark, nothing.
Its toughness was beyond anything she could measure.
This time, though… Alice was a little worried she might actually damage it.
She'd changed. She was a cultivator now—and she'd never unleashed her full power in a real fight.
She and Venti were about equal in realm. Her destructive power was immense, but Venti was annoyingly slippery, like a greased loach.
She could never pin him down.
As for Zhongli… don't even think about it.
They were all late-stage Refining Qi into Spirit, but if Zhongli wanted to beat both her and Venti together, ten moves would do.
In other words, Alice had never truly tested her full combat strength.
So she was genuinely worried: if she went overboard and damaged this membrane, would Teyvat be alright?
That thought flashed through her mind—
and vanished.
The next moment, Alice cheerfully pulled out a massive, hollow grenade.
"No risk, no reward!"
She looked at it with absolute conviction.
"If I want the demon gods to stop thinking about Teyvat once and for all, I have to go as hard as the Sect Master did."
"After they've tasted this, not a single one will dare make a move again."
Muttering to herself like she was hypnotizing her own conscience, Alice solemnly set the grenade before her.
Its casing was forged from a special type of spirit ore from Mount Shu's world.
Compared to other ores, its use was incredibly niche—
so niche most people wouldn't even consider mining it.
This ore naturally absorbed spiritual energy—even true essence—and stored it inside itself.
There, the energy would condense and collide, compressing tighter and tighter.
Eventually, when it hit a certain limit…
Boom.
Everything detonated in one catastrophic burst, unleashing all that stored energy in a single shot.
Just what kind of devastation it could cause… even Jiang Yan had never given a clear answer.
He'd only mentioned that once, some poor late-stage Return-to-Void cultivator ran into a vein of this ore while mining.
After that…
A vast swathe of land at the extreme eastern edge of the cultivation world simply ceased to exist.
That cultivator was blasted into the void and barely escaped with half his life.
So when Jiang Yan discovered such a vein under Mount Shu, he'd truly had a headache.
Thankfully, there hadn't been much of it.
Otherwise, he would've packed up the entire sect and moved.
He had no intention of living on top of a giant time bomb.
Someone had once proposed using the ore to forge defensive treasures.
Imagine: an armor that absorbed all incoming attacks, nullifying them.
In theory? Brilliant.
In practice… they'd conveniently forgotten that the ore exploded when it accumulated too much power.
A defensive artifact you wore on your body that could go off at any time—
How was that any different from hugging a live grenade with the pin pulled while brawling in close quarters?
Sure, the enemy might not hurt you.
But if you ended up blowing yourself to bits, what was the point?
So, from the moment Jiang Yan dug out the ore, his plan had been simple: seal it away.
Unfortunately… Klee had seen it.
And then Klee told Alice.
And that was that.
Ore that blew up when fed energy?
Obviously it was top-tier explosive material.
Others couldn't predict when it would blow.
But Alice and Klee were different.
They were born demolitionists, with talent that surpassed all others when it came to explosions.
Once Jiang Yan saw how seriously Alice begged, he'd reluctantly let her experiment.
One experiment later…
Alice had found her destined weapon.
As long as she held a piece of this ore, she could feel when it was nearing critical detonation.
Why?
Alice's answer: demolition genius intuition.
Jiang Yan didn't bother digging deeper. He just waved his hand and gave her all the unwanted, dangerous ore.
On one condition:
Take it far, far away before blowing anything up.
No one dared help her forge it. Cloud Retainer outright refused to share a room with Alice as long as she carried any.
So Alice had learned artifact forging herself, painstakingly shaping the ore into what she envisioned.
Namely—
The giant grenade before her. She had hundreds just like it.
To everyone on Mount Shu, Alice was a mad genius wandering around with an armful of live grenades, ready to "surprise" people at any moment.
But none of that mattered now.
What mattered was that today, she would finally see exactly how strong this thing really was.
She looked up at the membrane again, pressed her lips together, then retreated several hundred li on her sword.
"This distance… should be enough, right?"
"Teyvat, you'd better hold. I'm doing this for you!"
Chuckling, Alice carefully set the grenade down in the Dark Outer Sea.
She drew a deep breath. Golden Buddha-flame bloomed in her hand as murmured chanting rose softly around her, echoing in the soul.
She ignored it completely.
She might be using a Buddhist divine art—the Parting-and-Union Divine Radiance—but that didn't stop her from calling monks a bunch of bald donkeys.
The Buddha-flame sank into the grenade.
Alice's expression didn't change as she continued channeling true essence.
Her instincts said she could keep going for quite a while.
"If Klee finds out I snuck off to the Dark Outer Sea to set off a super bomb without her, she'll probably be mad and ignore me for an entire hour…"
"I really am a terrible mom."
Grinning, Alice stared absentmindedly at the grenade, mind wandering to Klee.
Klee…
She was already close to the late Refining Essence stage.
Two or three months ago, she'd only been at the early stage.
Jiang Yan had said that while Refining Essence into Qi was only the first major realm, each minor step still took a long, long time.
Klee…
In just two or three months, she'd leapt through realms.
It was a good thing—but her talent put real pressure on Alice.
At this rate, Klee would probably transcend her tribulation and ascend long before she did.
When that day came…
Alice shook her head and forced a laugh.
"What am I thinking? My sweet girl getting stronger is something to celebrate. How could I get melodramatic about it?"
"Honestly…"
She sighed softly, lost in thought.
She didn't know how long had passed when, all at once, a sharp instinct stabbed between her brows.
Alice snapped back to herself and looked at the grenade.
Without hesitation, she cut off her energy flow and shot backward at the fastest speed of her life.
In a blink, she'd pulled back over a thousand li.
Even then, she didn't feel safe. Layers of defensive barriers flared around her in quick succession.
She couldn't help it.
This grenade felt… beyond expectations.
For the first time, it made even her uneasy.
"This is bad… Teyvat can take this, right?"
Heart pounding, Alice stared at the energy turbulence building inside the grenade. At a thousand li, the view was still perfectly clear to a late Spirit Transformation cultivator.
"It's coming…"
Her pupils contracted.
The spirit-ore grenade vanished from her sight, replaced by pure, blinding white. If she couldn't still see her own hands, she might have thought she'd set off a flashbang instead.
A few seconds later, the sound hit—
a deafening explosion that shook the entire Dark Outer Sea.
The shockwave rippled outward. Even distant Inazuma trembled faintly.
Violent energy tore everything apart.
Space, demon gods, the Dark Outer Sea itself—
all flattened beneath the explosion.
Alice stared, wide-eyed, at the destruction.
If she was right, that whole section of the Dark Outer Sea now looked like the ruined Stormterror's Lair—
no, worse.
The epicenter had become a gaping spatial rift. Nothing remained.
"Savage… I'll need to adjust these grenades."
Wiping cold sweat from her brow, Alice was just starting to relax when a surge of spiritual power slammed into her.
She froze, looking toward its source—
And her scalp tingled.
The unbreakable membrane she'd tested with a nuclear bomb—
Now had a hole.
Alice felt countless terrifying gazes sweep through the gap.
Now she'd really done it.
Face paling, she streaked toward the rift, unleashing the aura of her Mount Shu elder's token. The prying gazes recoiled instantly, forced back.
With that brief reprieve, she hurried to repair the tear.
Fortunately, the world itself was already knitting it back together. Soon, the indestructible barrier re-formed, whole once more.
Alice wiped her sweat again.
"That was close. Never doing that again. If the Sect Master finds out, he'll definitely scold me…"
Her words trailed off as she glanced downward.
Not far below, a figure cloaked in vivid crimson was sinking into the depths of the Dark Outer Sea—
As if they had slipped through the crack at the last possible moment.
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