Windstill and the others didn’t recognize this Arbiter — who carried himself as though the entire room around him did not exist.

Yue Yang, though, noticed something.

When the Freedom Queen laid eyes on the Arbiter, her expression flickered.

She appeared to recognize the man for who he was — but she didn’t speak. It looked as though she’d rather not bring him up at all. The Arbiter, for his part, swept the room with his gaze, and let it linger longest on the Freedom Queen. The extra weight of time was barely a fraction of a second — Ming Rihao hadn’t even noticed it — but Yue Yang, whose Heavenly Eye of Wisdom missed nothing, caught it immediately.

This self-styled Arbiter was, without question, personally acquainted with the Freedom Queen.

The one thing Yue Yang couldn’t understand was: how did someone like the Freedom Queen come to be acquainted with someone from the Central Divine Hall? There had to be a secret behind that.

“Old Hao. Who is this one?” Yue Yang probed, seeing whether Ming Rihao knew him.

“I’ve never actually seen him. But I’ve heard people talk. That one should be the ‘Two-Faced King’ — one of the Four Kings under the Solar King of the Central Divine Hall’s Sun God Palace.” Ming Rihao waited until the scythe-bearing Arbiter had begun to drift forward, leading Windstill and the others onward, before he risked passing that whisper to Yue Yang mind-to-mind.

“Sun God Palace? Solar King?” Yue Yang had heard of the Central Divine Hall’s three top halls — the Sacred Hall, the Dragon Hall, and the Blood Hall. The Ji Wuri he had run into previously, who was the frighteningly strong figure who had joined Yue Yang’s Master Tianyu at the great Buried Sword Manor battle to seize one of the six divine artifacts — the Four Divine Armors — had become the current Master of the Sacred Hall. Aside from the top three, Yue Yang had heard of Light Hall Master Zhonghua, Dark Hall Master Wanmo, Fire Hall Master Ranfeng, and various other heavyweights. But the “Solar King” of the Sun God Palace, and this “Two-Faced King” who was allegedly one of his Four Kings — those he’d never heard of.

“The Sun God Palace is different from the three main halls. This is a force controlled by the Central Divine Hall’s Elder Council.” Ming Rihao, walking discreetly at Yue Yang’s shoulder, kept up his whisper.

“Tell me more.” Yue Yang was suddenly very interested.

“Compared to that Ji Wuri you know, the Solar King is at no disadvantage. He was originally a critical figure the Elder Council cultivated specifically to contest the Divine Hall Supreme’s absolute authority. The Solar King can’t match the Divine Hall Supreme himself, but he is absolutely at Ji Wuri’s tier, and because he holds serious power and has the Elder Council’s full backing behind him, he commands very real weight inside the Central Divine Hall. Under the Solar King are the Four Kings and Eight Generals. All of them are the Elder Council’s own personal guards, cultivated with intense care over tens of thousands of years. Their strength probably doesn’t match the three main halls, but compared to outer halls like Light, Dark, Wind, Fire, Water, and Earth, the gap is not large. On top of that, the outer halls’ masters, vice masters, and elders have had most of their major posts penetrated by Elder Council people. The only forces the Divine Hall Supreme controls one hundred percent in his own hand are the three main halls — Sacred, Dragon, and Blood.” Ming Rihao knew the Central Divine Hall inside and out — he must have put a great deal of work into intelligence-gathering.

“There’s also a Grand Hall Master under the Divine Hall Supreme, isn’t there? A very mysterious one, ranked even above Ji Wuri and the others?” Yue Yang asked further.

“Yes. There is a Grand Hall Master. He’s the Central Divine Hall’s third power.” Ming Rihao nodded with certainty.

“So the Central Divine Hall’s inside isn’t a single monolithic block.” Yue Yang felt a small flicker of relief.

“Of course it isn’t. Everyone wants power. It’s only the Divine Hall Supreme’s absolute strength that keeps the whole picture in place. As for the Divine Hall Supreme himself — that man isn’t ours to challenge; he’s obsessed with the ultimate martial way and rarely concerns himself with outside affairs. The Grand Hall Master’s name is supposed to be ‘Dongfang.’ He carries a serious grudge against the Sky Tower — the rumor is that he’s descended from the traitors of the Sky Tower’s own past — but toward the Heavenly Realm at large, and especially toward the various clans of the Upper Heavenly Realm, he’s fairly gracious. The noble circles up above call him the ‘Merciful Grand Hall Master.’ Ji Wuri and the others aren’t called Grand Hall Master externally — that title is reserved for the Sacred or Dragon Hall Master when speaking to outsiders. ‘Grand Hall Master’ as public epithet always means Dongfang. His strength is probably about equal to the Divine Hall Supreme’s, only a small notch below. He rarely handles internal politics or external affairs outside his own remit; compared to the outward-expansion Elder Council and the tyrannical Divine Hall Supreme, the Merciful Grand Hall Master Dongfang is much more popular with the clans and families. For us, he counts as a moderate — a fairly reasonable one, all things considered. His attitude toward the Sky Tower, though — that is no joke at all. He’s viciously hostile — he’s one of the war-hawks pushing to level the Sky Tower entirely. I’ve been strongly suspecting that in the war against the Prison Emperor, it was him and the Solar King and others who made a coordinated sneak attack on the Prison Emperor first. Otherwise, a Prison Emperor holding three divine artifacts would not have been so easy to grind us all down to death and dying.” Ming Rihao’s account was very detailed.

“What kind of strength is the Divine Hall Supreme at?” Yue Yang asked the final question.

“I don’t know. It’s been nearly ten thousand years since any outsider laid eyes on him. The people who see him directly are Ji Wuri and his tier, the Grand Hall Master Dongfang, and a small handful of Sacred-tier elders. The Divine Hall Supreme is a martial fanatic — he’s spent thousands of years in unbroken cultivation for a shot at the ultimate. Nobody actually knows how strong he is. What is absolutely certain is that he is beyond Sacred Sovereign…” Ming Rihao trailed off. Yue Yang immediately shot back: “Well obviously.“

If the Divine Hall Supreme was not beyond Sacred Sovereign, if he had not achieved absolute divine power, how could he possibly have held the entire Central Divine Hall in his palm?

One of the three main hall masters, Ji Wuri, was already brushing up against the divine realm.

Yue Yang’s real question was not the Divine Hall Supreme’s raw strength.

That was clearly not knowable via Ming Rihao alone. What Yue Yang actually wanted to confirm was whether the Divine Hall Supreme was Tianyu — the old bastard who had, back in the day, run off with a Four Divine Armor. Tianyu was Ji Wuri’s master. If the old man wasn’t dead, the current Divine Hall Supreme was very likely him. Specifics were murky, but “very likely” was the best Yue Yang could put on it for now.

Whether it was Tianyu or not, the Divine Hall Supreme’s whole tier was not something Yue Yang could contemplate right now.

There was no way to beat him.

Before challenging him, Yue Yang had to first take down the tier below — Ji Wuri.

Before Yue Yang had cleared the ten trials of the Trial Grounds, and before he had claimed the ancient reward at the end, he wasn’t in the business of challenging a martial fanatic who’d been cultivating for tens of thousands of years. That project was still very far away.

Later on — when Empress Vivienne came out, and once he had the Divine Codex from the Trial Grounds, and once his tiger girl, his snow-girl, and the rest had grown up — with people-many-over-people-few tactics —

Then he might be able to give it a marginal try.

Right now was still small-fry-and-level-up territory. No need to hurry, no reason to hurry…

“Do you know the Jester?” Yue Yang suddenly thought of something.

“If your Jester is a spindly bastard who dresses in every color of the rainbow, wears a devil mask over his face, and has a belly full of scheming? Then I can absolutely tell you — yes, I know him. That one made his name in intrigue. When he was still tiny, the Elder Council had already picked him out as one of the ‘Eight Generals’ to be cultivated. Back then he was a Sky Tower defector, and he ran an extremely nasty operation against the Sky Tower. I don’t know the details, but he is, without a doubt, one of the Solar King’s Eight Generals.” Ming Rihao then, with a small smile, gestured discreetly at the Two-Faced King up ahead. “Doesn’t the Jester bastard look pretty similar to him?”

“They could be printed from the same mold.” Yue Yang nodded, absolutely certain of it.

“They ought to be master and disciple. I remember, back when the Jester was young and weak, the Elder Council put in a lot of effort. In particular, the Solar King personally assigned one of the Four Kings to teach him. I was never sure who exactly. Today, seeing this one — it should have been this Two-Faced King given the task of raising the Jester.” Ming Rihao filled in a little more background on the Jester for Yue Yang.

Only now did Yue Yang learn that the Jester had at that time been merely Innate tier three.

To be, at Innate strength, singled out by the Central Divine Hall’s Elder Council and the Solar King for that kind of special attention — the Jester was clearly no ordinary talent.

The confusing thing to Yue Yang was that despite all that grooming, the Jester’s actual strength wasn’t especially high. All these years later, he was still — in Yue Yang’s estimation — only Sky-rank tier-four peak. Hadn’t even brushed the threshold of Perfect Innate Sovereign. The Two-Faced King, his supposed teacher, was Perfect Innate Sovereign tier-six at minimum. The gap was enormous… Some of that was potential-cap, yes. And there was probably something else at work too — some hidden ability of the Jester’s that wasn’t yet in plain sight.

I’d love a proper look at him right about now.

At Yue Yang’s current level, he could probably read straight through to the Jester’s true secret. Yue Yang sighed to himself. Next time I run into the Jester, I have to kill this schemer, whatever it takes.

Someone too clever must never be allowed too long a life. Especially not one with the entire Central Divine Hall behind him.

Meanwhile, the scythe-wielding Two-Faced King, drifting through the air, halted at the central region of the Still Sea and waited for Windstill and the rest to catch up.

His hands moved through a strange rotation.

The quasi-divine dark scythe cut open the space around him — and the Still Sea, which had been perfectly, absolutely still, opened up like a block of tofu being sliced. Several equal-sized sections were cut away. When the final circular incision was made, light burst out of it — as though a door in space itself had been thrown open, connecting to some spatial passage beyond. Windstill and his people stared in dumb disbelief. The Still Sea had been carved open — without triggering an energy blowout.

What kind of control was that?

Tianzhu, the Dragon Emperor, and the Underworld Emperor exchanged a chilled look. Even they, at their level of control, could not have managed that.

Ming Rihao frowned faintly. Cutting the Still Sea itself was no great difficulty for him — but holding it open like this, and letting everyone step through at leisure, was a different order of skill. Without a specialized ability, doing this at all was a punishing amount of effort.

He glanced sideways at Yue Yang. Well? Can you do it?

Yue Yang gave a nonchalant lift of the shoulder.

Didn’t answer.

I have a teacher who specialized in spatial teleportation, but I don’t think I owe you that fact.

Ming Rihao got one look at the smugness on the kid’s face and briefly wanted to sock him. But then again — this kid was a monster of some kind, it would be more unusual if he didn’t know how. He let it drop.

“Everyone enter. Hold your breath. Do not touch anything with your energy.” The Two-Faced King’s tone was frosty, the tone of someone warning a colony of ants not to step outside the anthill. Windstill and the others found it deeply irritating — but they were national-ruler-tier and the Two-Faced King was on a level where they couldn’t even match his little toe. Bearable irritating had to be borne. And in any case, touching the Still Sea with a bit of energy was something even a fool wouldn’t do.

They passed through the spatial door at the center of the Still Sea, and Yue Yang discovered that his party had been transported into a strange spatial corridor.

The corridor sat between the Still Sea and somewhere else.

Not small.

At a guess, at least ten football fields across.

At the far end of the corridor stood the abducted Lady Zhiguang and the enemy assassin party — except for the fake Revenge Domain Emperor, there were also more than a dozen Sky-rank heavyweights Yue Yang did not recognize. Excluding Yue Yang and Ming Rihao from the count, the enemy had overwhelming strength — they could have flattened Windstill’s whole party at will… And if they held that decisive edge, they could just rush the group and start fighting; why all this stagecraft? Yue Yang turned it over in his head and couldn’t quite piece it together. All he could figure was that in scheming against Windstill and against the Titan Young Lord that Yue Yang himself was playing, there had to be another target on the board — this wasn’t merely about Yue Yang’s party.

Yue Yang’s bold guess got a partial confirmation soon after.

A third party — a man — walked directly through the Still Sea and into the spatial corridor, ignoring everyone. Even the frostiest one, the Two-Faced King, only spared him a glance. The man walked straight over to the Freedom Queen…

Who is this newcomer?

(End of Chapter 957)