Faced with the Guiding Saint who'd suddenly appeared on the battlefield without warning, Yumo instinctively summoned her Shadow power and dropped into a defensive stance.

Maya smiled bitterly and shook her head.

"Come on, no need to be so tense. I'm not here to fight you, you know. If you're gonna be this guarded around me, I'll be really hurt."

As if genuinely hurt by Yumo's reaction, Maya deliberately put on a wounded expression.

Too bad for her, Yumo had been getting jerked around for centuries and had finally grown a brain. She wasn't about to fall for such obvious manipulation. She took a deep breath.

"What do you want to talk about?"

"Hmm~"

Maya's eyes narrowed as she looked Yumo up and down meaningfully, then swept her gaze across the battlefield's wreckage with an expression of heartbreak. She pressed a hand to her chest, looking exactly like a parent who'd just discovered their child had been up to no good.

"So tell me Yumo, what exactly are you trying to accomplish here?"

"Nothing much. Just stirring up some shit."

Yumo shrugged.

"Oh, really?"

A cold glint flashed in Maya's eyes. The usually gentle Guiding Saint seemed to be showing real anger for the first time.

"Little Yumo, do you have any idea what the consequences of this will be? You're the Judgment Saint I worked so hard to cultivate. As the Mother Goddess's representative, the highest enforcer of Source Star law, and you're just running wild like this? You even broadcasted it across the entire Source Star, using Shadow power to cause destruction in front of everyone? you're making things really difficult for me. I don't even know how I'm supposed to explain your existence to the Alliance now."

Yumo snorted.

"And beyond just causing destruction... you actually killed so many of the Alliance's leaders? That's really going too far. Every one of them was an important pillar of the Alliance, and you just... killed them? I'm so disappointed."

As she spoke, Maya stepped right up to Yumo, meeting her crimson eyes with a look of displeasure bordering on fury.

"Honestly, I'm pretty pissed off right now."

The moment those words left her mouth, Maya's eyes suddenly blazed with golden light. A terrifying pressure crashed down from above, slamming into Yumo with crushing force.

No doubt about it, the oppressive aura from just Maya's glare was far more intense than anything Yaohuaba and the others had managed even after unleashing their full power.

Any ordinary person facing that gaze would probably collapse to their knees, trembling.

This was probably what they called a Saint's divine pressure.

Too bad Yumo couldn't give a damn about that level of intimidation.

The next moment, she casually waved her hand and rebelliously shattered the surrounding spiritual energy field, then fearlessly met Maya's stare.

"Guess I should've expected this from Mengxi's mom. You're really good at putting on an act. Now I know where that girl got her dramatic streak from."

Maya froze, a flicker of shock crossing her golden eyes.

But she quickly masked it with a confused expression.

"Ara! What do you mean by that?"

"You're not actually angry at all, are you?"

"Huh? What are you talking about?"

"I'm saying you're not angry at all. In fact, you should be pretty happy."

Taking a deep breath, Yumo spoke with complete seriousness.

"If they were all such important Alliance pillars, such crucial figures, then why didn't you come back to rescue them when they got into conflict with me? With your abilities, getting back here from the Source Star border would take what, a few minutes? But you only showed up now. You know what that tells me? That you never wanted to save them in the first place. Or maybe... you were planning to use me to get rid of these guys all along."

"Oh my~ you really do have quite the imagination. I was at the border making sure the abyssal demon hordes weren't about to go berserk."

"Even if that's true, where are your direct forces? Sky Nation is your territory, you've got millions of troops under your direct command... and yet not a single one showed up. Even the one who's supposed to guard the World Tree was nowhere to be seen. Just because you're busy doesn't mean everyone else has to be, right? Plus, the Alliance units stationed near Sky Nation just happened to be the ones with good relationships with Yaohuaba."

"..."

"All those people Yaohuaba mentioned earlier... all those powerhouses who participated in the siege back then just happened to be in the support forces. Ha... what a coincidence."

"How... how do you know that?"

"Please. The abyssal demon hordes intercepting reinforcements outside the sub-world are basically my eyes. How could I not know?" She pointed at her own eyes, her voice dripping with disdain.

"I see."

"Hmph. Early would've been too soon, late would've been too late, but you show up right when I've almost finished everyone off... and you're telling me it wasn't on purpose? Who the hell's gonna believe that?"

Yumo's voice was deadly serious and filled with killing intent.

The girl was clearly confident in her assessment.

Faced with such Yumo, Maya first looked stunned, then broke into a relieved smile. The anger vanished from her face, replaced by a genuine surprise.

"My my, you actually got smarter. How rare."

Now that she'd been caught, Maya had no intention of keeping up the act. She clapped her hands with what looked like genuine pride.

"I thought you were just throwing a tantrum and venting your anger. I can't believe you actually figured it out. Not bad. Not bad."

"Hmph. Stop treating me like an idiot."

Yumo replied dismissively.

Well, if you listened carefully, you could detect a hint of guilt in her voice.

Obviously, this incredible deduction hadn't actually come from Yumo herself.

The possibility had been suggested by Mengxi.

After learning about the Alliance's patrol arrangements for the Felder family engagement ceremony, Mengxi had suspected that Maya wanted to use Yumo to eliminate the troublemakers in the Alliance who wouldn't fall in line. As the Guiding Saint, Maya would have a hard time directly eliminating allies like Yaohuaba and Heinotim.

After all, doing so would not only damage her reputation but also destroy Alliance unity.

Originally, Yumo hadn't wanted to believe that the Guiding Saint was planning some kind of great purge. These guys were all top-tier Alliance leaders, important fighting forces against the abyssal demons. How could she just throw them away?

But Maya only showing up now, combined with Yaohuaba's earlier panicked reaction, had convinced Yumo that the suspicion was correct.

This Guiding Saint who always wore a gentle smile and was supposedly the embodiment of compassion probably had a blacker heart than anyone. Well, she'd have to, how else could she manage such a massive Alliance full of scheming bastards?

The moment she realized this, the chill in Yumo's eyes became even more bone-deep.

No doubt about it, Yumo was sick and tired of being manipulated.

So when she realized that her decision to flip the table was still being used by this Guiding Saint, Yumo was fucking livid.

The crimson Shadow power around her body surged wildly as she stared warily at the silver-haired woman.

"So what are you planning to do now?"

"Haha, no need to be so on guard. I don't want to fight my own daughter-in-law~"

After a playful laugh, Maya slowly raised her hand and snapped her fingers.

"Right now, I just want to tell you a few things~"

As she spoke, ancient golden runes appeared in Maya's eyes, and the space around the two suddenly began to warp under a shroud of golden light...