“Never mind mastering the whole of the Fate Giant’s power, and never mind tapping that endless potential of yours. As long as you can command the power of a Fate Giant a thousand meters tall while your mind is clear, that will be enough to defeat Dongfang.” The Supreme, whose “Divine Sight” could see through most of the truth, gave Yue Yang her judgment.
“At the rate I cultivate, how long do you think it’ll take me to command the power of a thousand-meter Fate Giant while I’m clearheaded?” Yue Yang asked.
“Three years.” The Supreme thought about it briefly.
“And how much time do we have right now?” The moment he heard it, sweat broke out on Yue Yang’s forehead.
“Given how suspicious Dongfang is, three days at most.” When the Supreme said that, Yue Yang nearly fainted.
A task that needed three years at minimum — how could it possibly be done in three days? Even if he were the legendary once-in-ten-thousand-years freak of a genius, he still wouldn’t be capable of that, okay! This was way too hard. It was a cultivation mission that flat-out could not be done!
On any other day, Yue Yang would definitely have given up.
This wasn’t a question of effort or attitude at all. What could you do in three days? Even if he split every second into ten pieces and improved once per piece, three days still wouldn’t be enough to master a power that took three years. If he really did the math, Yue Yang had a feeling that once you subtracted the time he’d spent eating, having fun, playing around and resting, he might not have cultivated for three whole years since he transmigrated! And his cultivation counted his sleep too — in the dream world he trained hard with the Great-Loli-of-Sword-Qi, unlike other people, for whom sleep was just wasted time…
Going by that math, wouldn’t he have to start from zero all over again — from a good-for-nothing with nothing to his name, all the way to the quasi-divine realm he was at now — and spend that same long stretch before he could command the Fate Giant’s thousand-meter power with a clear head?
“…” Yue Yang badly wanted to say, cheerfully, That’s a piece of cake, I’ll have it down in half a day, but a boast like that just wouldn’t come out of his mouth.
“To buy you three days, Yeyu has already put her life on the line. To draw the enemy’s attention, she has abandoned her usual way of fighting and taken on the Central Divine Hall’s divine-realm powerhouses with an overwhelming show of force. If you can’t master the power of fate in time, she will die — one hundred percent. Because the ones besieging her aren’t only the three divine-realm powerhouses who once plotted against Princess Starlight. Dongfang and Tianyu are there too, and they will never let her leave the Sky Stairway alive now that she has ascended to the divine realm!” The Supreme’s words left Yue Yang nowhere to run.
Give it everything he had, and he would most likely still fail.
But if he didn’t even dare to try, if he just sat and waited for failure with his eyes open, could he still call himself a man?
The Supreme had only used the Night Empress as her example, but in truth there were also Xue Wuxia and Princess Qianqian and the others. If he failed, all of them would fall… And there was Her Majesty, holding up the Mirage and guarding the true entrance to the Ruins of the Gods, and Fourth Mother, who had been waiting all this time with little Shuang’er for him to come home. Not one of them would be spared.
If that happened, then even if he won in the end, years or decades later, what would any of it mean?
“I…” Yue Yang clenched his fists as hard as he could. To protect this happiness that had been so hard to come by, to protect everyone’s sweet smiling faces — three days, then. If there was hope, he had to hold on. This was time everyone had bought for him, and even a single second of it had to be treasured. He could not give up lightly. Hard to do? He could do it. He would do it!
“I can do it! I will do it! In three days, I’ll master the Fate Giant’s power. I won’t let everyone down!”
“Who am I?”
“I’m the Yue family third young master, the one the Sky Tower calls a freak of a genius! I’m the once-in-ten-thousand-years genius, the genius who’s pulled off countless miracles — no, even if I were an ordinary person, a good-for-nothing, as long as there’s hope, as long as I believe in miracles and believe in fate, I can take it into my own hands. I — I’m its master, not its slave. I’m the master of my own life. I can take charge of everything that’s mine. I can do this!”
Yue Yang threw back his head and roared at the sky, like thunder shaking the world.
His body trembled with the force of it.
It was not fear.
It was an eruption of will burning to its limit — a power of life that went beyond himself and stretched without end, awakening and rising to something higher…
Only now, looking into his eyes, did the Supreme feel truly satisfied and truly relieved, as though a weight had been lifted from her shoulders. Pushing him to grow was, in fact, a hundred times harder a task than the Night Empress’s fight to the death against powerful enemies.
The Night Empress could not fail. And the Supreme could fail even less.
If the Night Empress lost her fight, only the Night Empress herself would fall. But if the Supreme failed, the result would very likely be losing everything. Of those little girls at his side, perhaps only a few would be left. A blow like that might change his very nature, and he would never again be the Yue family third young master of today, so full of life and hope and always growing… If that happened, he might become a raving demon who drenched the Heavenly Realm in blood, until in the end the ancient great gods sealed him away so deep he could never come out again.
That was not the outcome he wanted, and it was not the outcome anyone wanted.
Fortunately, he had not let anyone down. Even facing the hardest, most challenging task in the world, he had met it head-on without fear.
With a spirit like that, with a drive like that and with persistence like that, he was bound to succeed in the end, because this would be one more of the countless miracles he created in his life.
A man who held his fate tightly in his own hands would never be cast aside by fate.
Because he was the master of his own fate!
“You’ll succeed. As long as you believe in miracles, as long as hope lives in your heart forever, you will never fail!” The Supreme opened her arms and gently held him close. With her whole heart and her whole support, she gave him endless comfort. “I’ll help you too, with the secret art your mother passed on to me. And everyone else — all of them will support you… You will succeed.”
Yue Yang raised his head and looked at the sky.
He was afraid that if he lowered it, the hot tears brimming in his eyes would spill over.
Through his blurred vision, he thought he saw, high, high up in the dome of the sky, a sweet smiling face gazing down at him. In that dazed moment he could not make out what she looked like, but she seemed faintly like the loving shadow he saw only now and then, in dreams.
Mom, is that you?
Have you been watching over me from the sky all this time?
The Sky Tower’s seventh floor. Dreamhaunt Valley. The Succubus Palace.
When Sea Fatty, Ye Kong, Xue Tanglang, Tianra Prince and the others reached the Succubus Palace in Dreamhaunt Valley, they found it had become a battlefield of blood and fire. Tens of thousands of the Heavenly Realm’s rank-and-file troops were surging up like the tide, hammering at the Succubus Palace’s mountain gate. Unlike the Thunder Fortress and other places in the Sky Tower, which had had no strength to resist at all, the Succubus clan, led by their queen and their four high priestesses, was fighting a battle to the death and refusing to fall back a single step.
That kind of fighting blood, that kind of spirit, made even grown men like Sea Fatty and Ye Kong feel ashamed of themselves.
There were hardly any races in the whole Sky Tower that dared resist the Heavenly Realm legions — even when the invaders were nothing but vassal rank-and-file, and not the Central Divine Hall’s elite corps.
In a battle whose war cries shook the heavens, countless Succubi and countless soldiers of the Heavenly Realm legions had fallen, and the fight had locked into a suffocating stalemate. Both sides had gritted their teeth and would not give an inch.
The Succubus clan was protecting its home. As for the Heavenly Realm legions, it was because behind them stood a Divine General.
The Tianyue Divine General.
He was a Divine General who had come here expressly to wait for the top-tier power “Tianfa,” a Sky Tower native of the Succubus Palace who had a Succubus Empress as her life-guardian war beast. Among the Eighteen Divine Generals, the Tianyue Divine General was certainly not the strongest, certainly not the cleverest, and not even the one Grand Hall Master Dongfang trusted most. But he was without a doubt the one most willing to put everything on the line.
To win more merit, to earn his lord’s regard and to pave a bright road for his own future, he had chosen the most dangerous target, the Succubus Palace — to destroy the home of that “Tianfa.”
Offending one of the Sky Tower’s top powers was not something anyone would try without a real taste for risk. Anyone who wasn’t a fool, and who collected even a little intelligence, could find out that Yue Titan was not the Sky Tower’s only powerhouse. The Human Supreme, Tianzhu, Tianfa, the Dragon Emperor, the Underworld Emperor and others had all advanced by leaps and bounds with Yue Titan leading the way, and had even fought their way up into the Heavenly Realm once… Tianfa might not yet have reached the level of a Divine General, but a name that big was not to be taken lightly. Whether it was the Ziwei Divine General, the strongest of them, or the Tianji Divine General, the best strategist, or even Grand Hall Master Dongfang himself, lord of the Eighteen Divine Generals, none of them had ever underestimated the strength of this “Tianfa.”
Unfortunately, the Tianyue Divine General had sent the vassal races under his command to attack for half a day, and Tianfa still had not shown up.
She must have received a call for help.
Why hadn’t she come?
The Tianyue Divine General was not arrogant enough to believe she was afraid of him. He was sure of something else instead: this “Tianfa” must have gone off to fight an even stronger Heavenly Realm power. Could it be that she meant to challenge one of the Heavenly Realm’s great powers?
If she really had that kind of strength, then perhaps he ought to think about pulling out…
“Look, look, there’s a golden beetle over there!” Counting on the blessings of the Ancient Forest and the Ancient Thorns that were still on him, Sea Fatty yelled and hollered at the Tianyue Divine General.
“Quit yapping!” Ye Kong gave Sea Fatty’s big behind a vicious kick and sent his whole body flying at the Tianyue Divine General.
On the far side of the field, Tianra Prince and Xue Tanglang shot up into the sky.
The Liqie brothers, meanwhile, rushed to where the Succubus clan was under the most pressure.
They knew their own strength and knew what they ought to be doing. This was not the best moment to gang up on a Divine General. They had to give the exhausted but still bloodied and fighting Succubus clan some help, and break the balance of this deadlocked battle.
The Tianyue Divine General became a streak of golden light and in an instant had moved more than ten thousand meters away, easily slipping the four-sided attack from Ye Kong, Sea Fatty, Xue Tanglang and Tianra Prince.
Looking at the disbelief on Sea Fatty’s face, he gave a cold laugh. “I am not that idiot the Solar Divine General. That man, who looked down on everyone from on high — his status, his standing and even his strength all came to him from his grandfathers and his father. He was a nobleman’s son who inherited everything and never understood what cultivation was. I am nothing like him. I climbed up step by step, feet on solid ground, from the very bottom. Do you understand? In the Heavenly Realm, I started out even lower than you did, and I had it even harder… I understand every thought in your heads, because I climbed up the same way — and I did not even have a boss like Yue Titan to show me the way!”
“Hey, hey, hey, I’m the boss here, okay? Yue Titan is this great young master’s little bro. That’s a fact the whole Sky Tower admits! If you don’t believe me, go ask around somewhere nobody’s listening!” Sea Fatty was bragging again.
“Idiot, nobody would mistake you for a mute if you kept your mouth shut!” Ye Kong sent the punch-begging jerk flying with one blow.
“…” Xue Tanglang frowned. This was without question a tough, dangerous enemy. Unlike the Solar Divine General, the Divine General in front of them seemed to have none of that arrogance that looked down on everyone.
A Divine General with no weakness, and a careful one at that.
This fight looked like it would be hard!
Tianra Prince also sent everyone a secret message, warning them to stay on their guard.
Instead of mocking Sea Fatty’s bragging, the Tianyue Divine General actually clapped his hands in praise. “Hai Dafu, I have collected information on you. You really were a bragging coward once. But under Yue Titan’s influence, you changed. You were reborn as a fighter so ferocious that you could fairly be called insane. It is only that, being cunning and utterly shameless, you habitually hide behind your fat body, your seedy looks and your punch-begging words and deeds, deliberately showing openings to lure your enemies into a trap. Listen, Sea Fatty. If the act that fooled the Solar Divine General worked on me, that would be far too laughable. I pulled that same act myself, back in my day, and I pulled it off better than you! Be that as it may, you and your companions are opponents worthy of praise. So young, and already this strong — I was nowhere near it at your age… I know what you want to do. But let me be plain: until the divine blessings on you fade, I will not fight you. I am not a fool!”
Ye Kong heard him out and said nothing for a long time.
Sea Fatty wanted to attack again, but Ye Kong held him back.
His face carried a sincerity never before seen in him when facing an enemy, and he spoke slowly to the Tianyue Divine General before him. “You understand us. You know everything about us. Then why did you still come to the Sky Tower? Why make yourself our enemy? You must know what kind of man the Yue family third young master is. He’s a man who makes miracles. He’s the new Prison Emperor, and he’ll be the new King of Conquest who sweeps across the Heavenly Realm. Why did you still come?”
The Tianyue Divine General thought for a moment.
Then he tilted his head back and looked at the sky overhead, as if afraid a pair of eyes up there might be watching him.
He checked again and again. At last, as if he had made up his mind, he spoke with the same sincerity. “To be honest, I sympathize with what you are going through. If it were my home being invaded by outsiders, I would fight to the death as well. But I came here because of a power of fate I cannot defy. I had no choice! If I had not come, everything that belongs to me in the Heavenly Realm might cease to exist… I do not have the strength to command my own fate. I live under another man’s roof, and I have no such right. For my own survival, and for my family and friends, I must do things I cannot possibly fight against. That is my answer. If I die in battle, I will have no regrets, because it is the end I have earned. Of course, I personally think the chance of defeat is very small — because you may not yet know how terrifying Grand Hall Master Dongfang is!”
He paused.
Struggle and hesitation rose in his face.
But in the end, the Tianyue Divine General chose to say it. He dropped his voice as low and as soft as it would go, until it was nearly a thread, and slipped it into the ears of Ye Kong and the others. “Grand Hall Master Dongfang has a talent that, combined with his Divinity, can command even gods. Under the laws of his game, no one can escape the fate of becoming a piece — not I, and not you. The Prison Emperor of old was in fact defeated by his game. You have no chance of winning. The only hope is that Yue Titan. He is an existence who can devour the power of fate… But he is too young. He has not had enough time to grow, and that is his fatal weakness. If he had a hundred more years, everything would be different. But Grand Hall Master Dongfang will not give him that time.”
“As your enemy, it seems ridiculous for me to say this. But for the sake of our having both struggled against fate, I will give you one piece of advice: find somewhere to hide, quickly. The Grimoire World, or a sealed space — anywhere you can escape the fate of being a piece. Only if you can hold out for a hundred years, until Yue Titan has grown up, will there be any hope.”
Before the Tianyue Divine General had finished speaking, a cold, merciless voice rang out across the sky. “No one can escape from my board — including the Yue Titan you speak of. Do not waste your efforts.”
(End of Chapter 1264)