Up in the sky, an enormous flower bud came drifting down.
And opened.
There was no end anywhere to the beauty of it. If you exhausted every word in the world you would still struggle to describe that unfolding of life, that vitality out of nature itself.
Sea Fatty and the rest were instantly drunk on it, staring blankly at the sight, entirely unable to react. The Young Lord of Dawn and the Solar Divine General were no better off — not as far gone as Sea Fatty, but their minds slipped their guard all the same, and for a few short seconds there was nothing at all in their heads. They only knew that they were watching the gorgeous thing in front of them, and they forgot to attack and forgot to defend.
Out of ten million streams of lovely radiance, a soft pink little loli came bouncing out.
Over her body she wore a dress of what looked like pink petals, and in all the world there was nobody else with the same.
Ribbons like rainbows circled her, band on band, turning without stop. Her bare feet were jade as she set them on the ground, and the ground put out fresh flowers to hold them up — as though the spirit of the earth were afraid this filthy surface might dirty those little feet of hers, like lotus, like jade. On the wrists of her small hands, white as snow-lotus root, she wore fine silver bangles; and on them, besides a mysterious spirit pearl set in each, there were three tiny bells that made a clear, faint music as they danced and carried a man off until he thought no more about the world. And the most breath-stopping thing of all was her face, so exquisite that no human woman could possibly own it. She was still a small loli, not yet fully grown, and even so that face was enough to stop a man’s heart and enough to make his soul go willingly under.
On top of this little loli’s head, besides a string of thoroughly mischievous red berries lifted above her clear forehead, there were three flowers of a beauty beyond anything, three flowers gathered together at her crown, each a different size, strange and mysterious in a way no common mortal world could hold. Nobody could identify the stock of those flowers. Nobody could read what they said. Nobody could grasp what they meant.
Each of the three gave off a peaceful ripple, the energy spreading in ring after ring of light.
It was not a domain, and it was better than a warrior’s domain…
This.
This was the Flower Goddess form Duoduo showed when she walked in the world.
Her true body, of course, was not this little-loli Flower Goddess shape. She simply did not want to show her true Flower Goddess body anywhere outside the Grimoire World. Even in front of Yue Yang, her master, she usually came out in this adorable form, the better to wheedle at him a hundred different ways.
“Duoduo, it really is you! Brother Hai has missed you to death!” Sea Fatty wiped at a mouth with drool coming off it like a waterfall down a cliff and went flying toward Duoduo, wild with joy.
“You’re asking to die!” Ye Kong rewarded him at once with a flying kick that sent this damned fatty and his designs on a free hug ten thousand meters off.
Even the Tianra Prince, the hardest man there to anger, could not stand watching this disgusting damned fatty.
One chain of fire, and he was dragged back.
Ye Kong and the Liqie brothers closed in immediately and gave him a thorough beating, head, face and all. This damned fatty, who had probably started life as a fat cockroach, really could not go a day without a beating; miss a day and he would most likely itch all over. And his vitality was that tough, on top of thick skin and thick flesh and fat everywhere — probably the beatings were what had trained it into him.
While the beating went on merrily over there, Duoduo was bowing a greeting to Old Fox.
Old Fox hurried to bow back.
In the old days, when Duoduo was Yue Yang’s life-guardian war beast, he could just about have accepted a greeting on the strength of being a teacher. But now Duoduo had risen to Gold-Crowned Thorn Queen and past even that… How would Old Fox dare take her greeting with any airs about it? If word got out, it would be a wonder if every warrior in the Sky Tower did not laugh at him.
And Old Fox was not the only one bowing back respectfully. Even the barefoot girl the Wind-Breath Seabird had transformed into hurried into a deep bow, saluting this Flower Goddess, the only one of her kind above heaven or below it.
She was not Old Fox. Being a war beast of intelligence, she was far more sensitive to anything standing at the Divine realm.
If they had not known each other for a long time, she would never have dared be so informal.
An ordinary war beast goes flat on the ground before a divine beast — how much more before a ‘god’ who has gone a step beyond a divine beast into the Divine realm?
Appearing in the world in this loli form, Duoduo had shut her pressure off completely. If she released even one percent of it, never mind the Young Lord of Dawn gaping over there — even that nose-in-the-air Solar Divine General, who looked down on everything, would have wet himself where he stood. What is one paltry Divine General worth? At Mountain Beyond the Mountain, when the mysterious man of the true-god realm appeared, everybody but the God-Slayer went down, Hei Zhou and the other Divine-tier powers included.
“That is a Gold-Crowned Thorn Queen?” The middle-aged scholar standing across from Yue Yang cried out before he could stop himself.
And then, at once.
He shook his head, his face grave.
It took him a long while to admit it, with enormous unwillingness. “The Divine realm. This is already a god among flowers! This is a thing that simply cannot happen. She is your life-guardian war beast, and even if you contracted a summoning grimoire the day you were born, how many years is that? How did you cultivate her? How could she possibly ascend to the Divine realm? No, this is wrong. This absolutely cannot happen. And on her head there are three flowers gathered at the crown, which is how a cultivation realm unique to the Eastern Immortal Clan shows itself. She — she cannot possibly hold a realm like that!”
Yue Yang did not answer. The fact was sitting right there in front of them, and no amount of doubt from anyone else would change it.
About Duoduo ascending to the Divine tier.
He knew.
But the realm of the three flowers gathered at the crown — how that had come about — he did not know. Whether it was taught by the Qilin Girl Bingyin, or handed down by the phoenix sisters, or the guidance of that Sword Spirit big sister who shows her head and never her tail… Duoduo did not say, and he did not ask. It was probably a small secret that was not convenient to share. Everyone has secrets, and if Duoduo wanted to tell him, she could; she would tell him in her own time. And it was not only him — in the Grimoire World nobody had asked, not even mischievous Bao’er, whose curiosity was so enormous it was very nearly bursting.
Duoduo did not raise a hand against the Young Lord of Dawn or the Solar Divine General.
Enemies at that level.
They were simply not worth a ‘Flower Goddess’ lifting a hand for.
If Ye Kong and Sea Fatty and Xue Tanglang and the rest had not all been Yue Yang’s good friends, and if Old Fox Shui Dongliu had not been Yue Yang’s teacher, she would not have come down in person at all. At most she would have sent out one thorn-flower clone, and it could have swallowed these small parts in a single mouthful.
“The enemy laid his arrangements early, and I still have to hurry out and help big sister Wuxia and the others clear away the invaders, so there’s no way for me to stay long.” Duoduo nodded slightly to Old Fox again, then showed Ye Kong and Xue Tanglang and the rest a brilliant smile, and gave her decision in a voice like a clear bell. “So these two enemies — I’ll leave them for you to deal with!”
“Don’t worry, one punch from your Brother Hai can knock that Young Lord of Dawn’s teeth out all over the floor. What would we need little sister Duoduo to lift a hand for? All you have to do is clap and cheer for us!” Sea Fatty, beaten into a pig’s head, sprang up and set his arms in a look-at-my-muscles pose.
“Would it kill you not to brag?” The barefoot girl the Wind-Breath Seabird had transformed into took Sea Fatty by the ear and walked him around in circles. Without a little family discipline you forget what pain feels like, don’t you?
“Ow, ow, ow! My ear’s coming off!” Sea Fatty started screaming like a pig being slaughtered.
Over on the other side the Young Lord of Dawn and the Solar Divine General exchanged a glance.
If Duoduo were going to fight.
Neither of them could feel the bottom of it.
Her arrival had been altogether too astonishing, far past anything either of them had imagined.
They had heard of the Gold-Crowned Thorn Queen’s terrifying combat strength, but having never fought one, they had no idea whether the stories were true. Going only by the presence she had come in with — never mind the Young Lord of Dawn, even the Solar Divine General, who looked down on everything, had no wish to trade blows with Duoduo.
But now, hearing her say she was not going to fight, that it would be that damned fatty and the others who took the field instead… the Young Lord of Dawn and the Solar Divine General were both secretly delighted.
Wasn’t this — wasn’t this serving the meal up to them? You could not ask to be brutalized this conveniently.
For that one moment, the Solar Divine General even had a suspicion.
Which was that the Gold-Crowned Thorn Queen of the legends had no attack power at all. Perhaps her defense was extraordinary, perhaps her healing was extraordinary; in any case, her not taking the field proved one thing, which was that this Gold-Crowned Thorn Queen who looked outwardly like a small human girl very likely had no combat strength — or else had not grown up at all yet and was still in her infant stage.
“How laughable. Do you imagine that filling the sky with petals will frighten anybody?” The Solar Divine General was contemptuous on the surface, and inwardly on guard, because the pressure Duoduo gave off without meaning to had put a secret chill in him. Nothing had been heard of the Gold-Crowned Thorn Queen’s power for several thousand years, but tens of thousands of years back the Heavenly Realm had always carried rumors of this queen of the hundred flowers, and running into a Gold-Crowned Thorn Queen — even one in her infant stage — is not a thing anybody can afford to go numb and careless about. Fortunately this Gold-Crowned Thorn Queen was very proud and had announced she would not fight, and the Grand Hall Master had been watching the battle the whole time. Otherwise he would have been weighing whether to withdraw at once and save himself.
“In my name, I grant you the power of the Ancient Forest.” Duoduo pointed lightly with her small hand, and several green points of light sank into Ye Kong and Sea Fatty and Xue Tanglang and the rest of them.
Outwardly nothing about Ye Kong and the others changed.
But from that instant they felt a divine power inside them that could keep them standing forever without falling, and that could draw the energy of the earth without stopping to restore them. If there were more than one ‘Earth Heart’ in the world, they would have thought they had been given A’Man’s.
Even though this divine power in its ‘Ancient Forest’ form was only a scrap of a thing.
And a temporary effect.
Still.
It was already enough to turn Ye Kong and Sea Fatty and the rest into Ultramen.
In fact the power of the Ancient Forest goes a very long way past those two effects, and has a great many other mighty uses besides. How could Sea Fatty and the others, at the realm they held now, discover all of it? The only ones who could truly command it were Duoduo and Yue Bing — and the rest of them had neither the time nor the leisure to feel their way through it. What they had to do now was turn into howling berserkers and charge the Young Lord of Dawn and the Solar Divine General, every one of them like a starving wolf gone mad.
Sea Fatty, who had taken the worst beating of the lot, was out in front of everybody.
He charged at the Young Lord of Dawn with a lecherous grin all over his face, and out of his mouth came a warmth fit for a man who has just spotted an old bunkmate. “Sweetheart! Your Uncle Hai’s here. You’ve been itching for it something terrible, haven’t you? Don’t you fret — your Uncle Hai’s coming right now to see to it!”
(End of Chapter 1249)