The Sky Tower. The Falling Star Sea.
The lion-headed and man-faced leader, the leader with the rhinoceros nose and the protruding tusks, the three-headed and six-armed leader — several of the Heavenly Realm’s commanders had just been dressed down by that young man whose bearing was very nearly a god’s, and there was nowhere for them to look. When the young man waved a hand at them the way you wave off flies, they took it as a full pardon and withdrew on the spot, without even stopping to collect those pitiful sacrificial slaves.
They lifted into the air, turned into so many streaks of meteor, and shot away toward the horizon.
The slaves who had escaped death lay flat on the ground.
They paid their respects to the young man.
To creatures as wretched and as low as they were, this master really was a god.
To the young man’s left stood the handsome, elegant middle-aged man with the unhurried air of a scholar. To his right stood an old man in a black robe and a hooded cloak, with nothing showing but his face.
There was something in the way the two of them looked at Sea Fatty and Ye Kong — the look of a man about to smash, on a whim, something that was going to appreciate in value. A pottery vase, say. And underneath that, faintly, the pleasure of destroying a seed that had just begun to sprout. Standing on the left, standing beside that near-divine young man, receiving the slaves’ worship as well, the middle-aged scholar wore a smile and put a mild question to Sea Fatty. “We would be glad to go on talking with you, since I find the efforts of you lower-realm martial artists from the Sky Tower extremely interesting. Unfortunately time won’t allow us much more conversation. Before we set about destroying everything, I honestly don’t mind giving you a chance to leave something behind for this homeland of yours, this Sky Tower. So — do you have any last words?”
“I knew you were going to say that.” Sea Fatty sighed.
“A dog never stops eating garbage.” Ye Kong agreed with him.
“Very concise last words.” The middle-aged scholar kept the smile and the fine manners on the surface, and even made a show of applauding. In fact the murder in his eyes could not be hidden at all.
“I hear that over at the Central Divine Hall, besides that pretentious ass Ji Wuri, there are quite a few people who enjoy putting on airs.” Sea Fatty sighed over it.
“Light Hall Master Zhonghua, for instance.” Ye Kong nodded, right on cue.
“If it were Light Hall Master Zhonghua who came and postured in front of us, fine. He is a Hall Master after all, and he does have a certain amount of natural talent. He’d do a perfectly good job of frightening small ants like us. If he insisted on posturing, we could hold our noses and take it, because who are we — a couple of country boys who have never seen many quasi-divine-tier heavyweights.” Sea Fatty rubbed his chest with a fat hand, wearing the expression of a man fighting down nausea. “But some idiot who doesn’t even know what Sovereign Intent is, who got himself forced up to Sky-rank level seven on borrowed outside power — he comes and postures in front of me? Damn it, are you trying to make me sick to death?”
The handsome middle-aged scholar’s face changed at once.
Rage, and the intent to kill.
Both came blazing out of his eyes.
The young man standing between them stepped forward and waved a hand. “Don’t be angry. What they said happens to be true. You have not fully comprehended Sovereign Intent.”
At that, red came up in the handsome middle-aged scholar’s face.
His color changed several times, very fast, and settled at last into respect.
He bowed his head.
And he acknowledged it to the young man in the middle.
The black-robed old man on the right, who had not said a word until now, put out an arm that was withered and unnaturally strong, with fingers like the branches of an old dragon-twisted tree, and pointed at Xue Tanglang, sitting cross-legged and regulating his breath. “Since a fight can’t be avoided, let me handle that young one. I like interesting young people.”
The middle-aged scholar looked at the Tianra Prince. “Then I’ll get better acquainted with this young friend. That face of his really is enviable.”
The Tianra Prince smiled.
And he answered courteously, “Thank you for the compliment. I’d be happier if someone envied my strength.”
The young man in the middle swept his eyes over Sea Fatty and Ye Kong and the others, then let out a sigh almost too faint to hear, shook his head, and laughed oddly. “Even after I raised my guard, it turns out I still walked into it. There is no denying it — of everyone in the world, the Sky Tower’s martial artists grow the fastest, and they are the cleverest and the most resourceful… perhaps that is the reason the Sky Tower always manages to rise again out of its own decline.”
He had barely finished when the lion-headed and man-faced leader and the rhinoceros-nosed, tusked leader and the rest of the Heavenly Realm commanders, who had fled at top speed a moment ago, came falling very strangely back out of the sky.
And the Falling Star Sea had changed completely.
The sky and the sea were no longer one color.
Space shattered outward like a broken mirror, and when the dust had settled, the space around them had become a barren land, so vast that there was no telling where its edges were. The sky was a leaden gray. The ground had no life in it. There were no plants here and no animals, no living things of any kind — nothing but dead country.
No end to it, and no way out.
On that eerie barren ground there was not even any wind. The air stood still, like water in a dead pool.
The middle-aged scholar’s face changed drastically. He took out an hourglass and stood it on its head, and discovered, appalled, that the sand inside it hung suspended at the top and did not stir.
“This is a dimensional world with no time in it? How did you open it? No — when did you set this trap?” The middle-aged scholar’s face was all disbelief. Even the black-robed old man’s composure slipped. To his way of thinking, fooling himself and his companion was already a considerable feat, and fooling his young master in the end was frankly unthinkable — because his young master was known throughout the Heavenly Realm as the steadiest, most careful and most meticulous of its young talents.
“It must have been laid earlier. The energy from that blood sacrifice became the source of power that let them in, and the trap besides.” The young man in the middle thought for a moment and nodded. “According to our intelligence, there is a power in the Sky Tower named Shui Dongliu. He is not strong, but he is extraordinarily good at research into space and teleportation, and he is resourceful and good at strategy. He is one of the important mentors who made the Yue family third young master what he is, and he is also the mentor of these several young talents in front of us. I think someone on the inside leaked the information, and Shui Dongliu turned our own plan against us — not only recalling his students from the Heavenly Realm safely, but luring us into this vast land where no time passes.”
“Bold guess, but there are a lot of holes in it.” Sea Fatty denied it flatly. “The Heavenly Realm is a world away and no information passes. How would our teacher know we were coming back from the Heavenly Realm? The timing and the location make no sense at all.”
“Quite so.” The young man guessed again. “But suppose one thing were the case. Suppose that Wind-Breath Seabird had in fact returned a good while ago. Then it makes sense.”
“You’re saying the Wind-Breath Seabird was lying in wait under the sea this whole time?” Sea Fatty sneered and threw it back at him. “She’s a seabird, not a sea horse.”
“No. But you have a sea horse.” The young man in the middle corrected himself. “The one actually hidden under the sea was your life-guardian war beast — the little hippo. It was the coordinate that let you come back out of the spacetime rift so precisely. As for the Wind-Breath Seabird, she made contact with Shui Dongliu early on. Perhaps a few days ago, at the point where our information leaked, she had already returned. Then, while Shui Dongliu and the others were setting the trap to draw us in, she used some skill or method to hide herself next to that little hippo of yours. There must be a connection between those two that cannot be broken. And you stayed inside the spacetime rift and waited, boldly, for the endgame. There is no other way to say it — your nerve is bigger than the sky. To lure us in, you spent at least two days inside a spacetime rift. And because you stayed inside it so long, the drain on your energy was enormous and your bodies went into collapse… and because you stayed so long, you ran into a legion coming down from the Heavenly Realm and fought a savage battle with it. Which is why you look the way you do.”
“Wrong.” Ye Kong gave a cold grunt at that and contradicted him. “Why would we stay inside a dangerous spacetime rift? Wouldn’t it be better to come out early and set the thing up?”
“That is the part of it I admire.” The near-divine young man smiled slightly. “If not for the blood sacrifice, you would have been teleported, without any question, to that Divine Tomb exit on the Light Continent. Your return would not have been a problem, but it would have left traces for anyone to find. To keep it out of sight — and at the same time to open an entirely new corridor through space and time, so the Sky Tower could communicate with the Heavenly Realm and bring back that genuinely powerful reinforcement, the Yue family third young master — you went looking for a new spacetime rift passage and were prepared to pay whatever it cost. And thanks to my subordinates’ idiotic cooperation, you succeeded.”
“Don’t count on it. We’ll wipe out every one of you, and then let’s see how you bring the Yue family third young master back.” The middle-aged scholar had been pushed past his limit.
He had never imagined it.
These few young people in front of him could be this cunning.
If the young master had not proceeded carefully and come to oversee the teleportation in person, these few young people would presumably have used those fools to pull it off. A humiliation like that was not to be forgiven.
Shock went through the black-robed old man’s eyes as well. If the young master had not been here, it would have been terrible: the Sky Tower had actually turned the Heavenly Realm’s own blood sacrifice around and used it to open a new corridor through space and time, and this unthinkable operation had become an accomplished fact. Looking at Sea Fatty and Ye Kong in front of him, the black-robed old man felt something close to the melancholy of old age.
Had he grown old?
Or were the young people of today simply monsters?
How many years had these young human martial artists of the Sky Tower even been alive? The oldest of them was probably not thirty. Never mind by the standards of a Heavenly Realm lifespan — by the human lifespan of the Sky Tower these were children with the milk barely dry on them.
And here they were, not only grown to a degree that made no sense, but cunning enough to turn the tables on the Heavenly Realm’s expeditionary army.
Even for Sky Tower growth, wasn’t this beyond belief?
Didn’t a Sky Tower martial artist need several hundred years to climb to Sky-rank? How had these children crossed a chasm like that in a few decades?
“All of it comes from that even more unbelievable Yue family third young master.” The near-divine young man in the middle had seen the confusion in the black-robed old man and the middle-aged scholar, and explained in a low voice. “Sky Tower martial artists grow very fast. But even the Conquest Queen ten thousand years ago, or the Prison Emperor six thousand years ago, did not surpass their predecessors by very much. They grew fast themselves, and their effect on the people around them was nothing like this Yue family third young master’s. According to our intelligence, this third young master understood how to endure from childhood. He pretended to be worthless and put up with people’s contempt for years without minding it — and when the day came for everything he had stored up to be spent, his rise began to erupt like a burst well. He did not merely shoot into the sky himself. The companions around him, and the entire Sky Tower with them, have risen at a mad rate under his influence. In a few years he was able to break the three great powers of the Western Heavenly Realm — Xukong, Jiuxiao and Ming Yueguang — after they escaped the Prison Emperor’s Divine Hall seal. And then something still less believable: he annihilated the Nine Luminaries Empress and her entire clan when they attacked the Sky Tower in force. I even suspect that the Solar King, who disappeared while investigating a Sacred Codex in the Tianhua Domain, met his end at this man’s hands as well. It is because this Yue family third young master is so frightening that I agreed to Father’s plan to march on the Sky Tower, and accepted the marshal’s seat over the expeditionary army’s vanguard corps… and now that I am here, I find the situation a hundred times worse than I had imagined. Because of this third young master, the Heavenly Realm’s future can be summed up in one sentence. If the Yue family third young master does not die, if that man is not removed, the Heavenly Realm will never know a peaceful day.”
“Are you telling me the Yue family third young master is more frightening than the Conquest Queen ten thousand years ago, or the Prison Emperor six thousand years ago?” The middle-aged scholar thought back over what he knew of the Conquest Queen and the Prison Emperor, and could not stop a chill going through him.
“A Yue family third young master who has inherited everything the Prison Emperor had, and who is also the Conquest Queen’s disciple. You tell me.” The near-divine young man put the question back to him.
“Kill.” The murder in the middle-aged scholar’s voice was as cold as a blade’s edge. “Starting with you. Everyone in the Sky Tower connected to that third young master has to die. I will absolutely not permit a second Conquest Queen to appear in the Heavenly Realm. You mean to use a method like this to call the third young master back to the Sky Tower? Don’t count on it.”
“That is exactly what we were about to say.” Xue Tanglang’s eyes came open all at once, and the whole of that vast land filled up with the cold of his killing intent. “Anyone who stands in the way of the Sky Tower’s rise, anyone who stands in Yue Titan’s way, anyone who stands in our way, dies. Whether you are the last of the Nine Luminaries Clan or the Heavenly Realm’s expeditionary army, whether you are the Nine Luminaries Empress or the Solar King, whoever you are — if you dare to stop us, every last one of you dies without mercy.”
“Without mercy!” Sea Fatty, Ye Kong, the Tianra Prince and the Liqie brothers all roared it loud enough to shake the sky.
It was a hundred times more shattering than a volcano going off.
They let the energy out of their bodies without holding any of it back.
In front of a strong enemy, whatever that enemy’s standing and whatever realm he had reached — the moment he dared to block their plan, he died without mercy. Anyone who dared invade the Sky Tower, anyone who dared stop Yue Yang from coming home, had nothing coming but death.
Whatever it cost them, nothing was going to change the will burning in Sea Fatty and the rest of them now.
The middle-aged scholar and the black-robed old man were badly shaken by that killing intent.
The slaves were shaking from head to foot with terror.
Every one of them flat on the ground.
None of them daring to move.
Only the young man who was nearly a god still looked exactly as he had.
He looked across at Sea Fatty and the others with murder coming off them in waves, and sighed under his breath. “The Sky Tower martial artist’s unyielding fighting spirit is back, and so is his blood. Ten thousand years of decline, a martial spirit that was already finished — and the Yue family third young master dragged it back by force. He lit the way for these young people with victories. He cast their pride out of blood. The pride and the honor of the Conquest Queen’s age, all of it, has come back… perhaps that is what is truly frightening about the Yue family third young master. It is not that one man became a peerless power. It is that he affected every single person around him, and gave all these fallen martial artists their confidence back… it appears the Sky Tower’s rise really cannot be stopped. Why could I not see it sooner? If, at the very beginning… is this what fate has chosen? Am I standing on the opposite side of fate? Am I the one going against heaven here? Father, can you tell me the truth? Why does a man as wise as you insist on this expedition against the Sky Tower? Why do you insist on going against heaven?”
(End of Chapter 1225)