The moment he heard the voice, the Tianyue Divine General’s face changed on the spot.

Sea Fatty, Ye Kong and the others stood rooted where they were, struck dumb.

So this is Dongfang? The traitor who betrayed the Sky Tower ten thousand years ago? A rotten bastard like that is actually a divine-realm powerhouse?

And he’s got a talent this insane on top of it? Is there any damn justice in the world at all? A guy this powerful, this much of a freak — never mind that he didn’t lift a finger to protect his own home, he actually chose to be a traitor everyone spits on and led outsiders back to invade the place he came from and wreck it! What kind of person does that? Is this guy some kind of psycho?

The Tianyue Divine General dropped to his knees at once.

Sweat poured down his face, and his eyes were filled with boundless terror.

His whole body was trembling. His mind was on the brink of collapse.

With a reverence that bordered on worship, he knelt low in the direction the voice had come from and pressed his forehead to the ground.

“Tianyue, I gave you your chance because of your effort. Remember one thing: in this world there are many people with strength, and even more who long for a chance. If anyone is unwilling to be a piece and wishes to leap off the board, then he is destined to become a discarded piece. What is more, this world will never lack for suitable pieces. Every second, countless pieces long to enter the game and willingly serve the one above who moves them! This is the last chance I will give you, and the last warning: if you do not have the ability to move the pieces, then be an obedient piece. A piece has no thoughts of its own. No piece with thoughts is a good piece, and once a piece has thoughts of its own, the day it becomes a discarded piece is not far off…” The voice from the far edge of the sky was very soft, yet it exploded in Tianyue’s heart like five thunderbolts striking his head. He was too frightened to move a muscle. All he could do was stay bowed in that most submissive of kneeling postures, hoping to please his lord and calm that devastating fury.

The voice from the edge of the sky laid no restriction on the Tianyue Divine General at all.

The moment it finished speaking, it vanished without a trace, as if it had never been there.

But the Tianyue Divine General’s face had changed, and so had his manner. He had become frenzied and bloodthirsty.

He slowly rose to his feet. When he looked at Sea Fatty, Ye Kong and the others again, his eyes held the savagery of a wounded beast. “I, Tianyue, am a suitable piece. Every enemy who stands before me must die!”

“Have you lost your mind?” Sea Fatty yelped.

“Yes. I have lost my mind, and you are the ones who drove me to it! I was a suitable piece, without a thought of my own, but you made me — a piece that has been a puppet for a thousand years — have thoughts. That is very dangerous. It nearly destroyed my whole life and my whole family! Now I will say this to you one last time: speak your last words. You have only ten minutes left to live!”

When the Tianyue Divine General finished, he gave both hands a shake.

On the ground below, every one of the Heavenly Realm’s vassal rank-and-file locked in the fierce battle suddenly welled up with a strange red light. It rose off them like steam off a fire, and yet it was as seductive as a flower.

The faces of these Heavenly Realm rank-and-file took on an expression of extreme, blissful joy. One after another they stood stock-still, like so many statues with twisted faces. Even when the Succubus clan’s warrior women struck them down and cut off their heads, the heads that fell to the ground showed not the faintest trace of pain, only endless thrill and pleasure.

It was a bliss beyond words.

It was wilder and more abandoned than the height of pleasure between a man and a woman.

If only one of the Heavenly Realm soldiers had worn that look, Sea Fatty and the others might have thought the Succubus clan had used some soul-snaring talent. But every single one of the Heavenly Realm soldiers wore it, and the scene was so eerie that it chilled them to the bone. In less than three seconds, every one of the Succubus warriors had realized something was wrong. Even those who had been killing with bloodshot eyes went cold all over at the sight of it…

“Fall back! This must be a sacrifice!” The Succubus Queen hurriedly ordered her whole clan to retreat.

“Go, get out of here! Head for the Sky Tower’s fourth floor — someone there will meet you!” Tianra Prince did not care about leaking military secrets anymore. This one could not be kept hidden for long anyway, and the most important thing was to let everyone know as fast as possible. Especially since that Dongfang had a talent that made heaven and earth his board and all things his pieces — not even a whisper could get past him, so hoping to hide something as big as moving the entire Succubus clan was pure fantasy. Besides, when Duoduo brought this plan to Dean Shui Dongliu in the first place, it had been meant to be carried out in the open. No one had ever thought of hiding it from the eyes and ears of the Heavenly Realm legions.

“Not one of you is leaving. You are all going to die!” The Tianyue Divine General raised both hands high. The red light on the Heavenly Realm rank-and-file below blazed up fiercely, and thousands of red beams linked them to his hands. Countless streams of life energy converged in his palms and above his head.

Nearly ten thousand of the Heavenly Realm’s rank-and-file were like night-blooming cereus flowers opening, and withering in the same breath.

In the end, drained of every drop of life energy by the Tianyue Divine General, the Heavenly Realm soldiers turned into dried corpses and rotten bones and toppled to the ground, their skulls and withered limbs scattered everywhere.

With the life energy of ten thousand men in his hands, the Tianyue Divine General did not greedily swallow it all the way other Heavenly Realm powers would have. Instead, he wrung that blood-red, seductive ball of life energy into several clumps and hurled them one each at Sea Fatty, Ye Kong, Xue Tanglang, Tianra Prince and the Liqie brothers.

Sea Fatty and the others all leaped clear of the attack.

But the blood-red, seductive clumps of energy clung to them like a disease in the bone, and no matter how they twisted, they could not shake them off.

These eerie clumps of energy were extremely fast and homed in on their own. The instant one struck Sea Fatty, Ye Kong or any of the others, it set off an uncanny contamination.

The contamination did no harm to their bodies, but the blessings of the “Ancient Forest” and the “Ancient Thorns” that Duoduo had given them drained away like an ebbing tide. With this life sacrifice, the Tianyue Divine General had successfully wiped out the blessing of Duoduo, the Flower Goddess. The only price he had paid was the lives of nearly ten thousand of the Heavenly Realm’s rank-and-file.

“You’ve gone completely insane!” Sea Fatty’s sigh was barely audible. In truth, he had guessed how it would end the moment the other man began to move.

“I am now a piece without a single thought of my own. To win, I will use any means and sacrifice anything! This is what I am. This is what I must do!” A flicker of hidden pain crossed the depths of the Tianyue Divine General’s eyes.

But very quickly, savagery and bloodlust rose up in its place. “Die! Without the blessing of a god, you will not last three minutes in my hands!”

On the same seventh floor of the Sky Tower lay Blazing Fire Island.

This Sea Clan territory, where Yue Yang and Hailan had first met, was the place that held the new Sea Empress’s most precious memories.

It was here that she had met the most important man in her whole life. And because of him, she had been lucky enough to win the recognition of her father, the Sea Emperor, and receive his inheritance, rising from a lonely, friendless illegitimate daughter to the Sea Empress whom the whole of the Sky Tower’s Sea Clan revered as its sovereign! From the day she met him, her life had changed completely, and she had set out on the road of the Sea Emperor — a road she had never dared to imagine, not even in her dreams… And Blazing Fire Island, she knew, was his lucky place too.

Here he had obtained the once-in-ten-thousand-years “Ten-Thousand-Year Earth Mother Spirit Liquid,” which sped up his already unbelievable growth even further.

Even by the time he entered the Trial Grounds to cultivate — even after he had finished the trials and come out again — the potential of the Ten-Thousand-Year Earth Mother Spirit Liquid sealed inside his body still had not been fully absorbed.

Never mind the family and friends she had found here, and never mind the treasures and ancient secrets she had gained here. All she had to do was remember how she had once clung to his leg and begged him, pleading with him to grant her just half an hour more of happiness, and she knew she would never forget this blue, blue sea and this fire-red island…

She liked it here better than the Falling Star Islands, high up on the Sky Tower’s tenth floor, and better than that splendid Sea Emperor’s palace.

Blazing Fire Island.

A little island full of gratitude in her life and in her memories, and a warm little home that brought a happy smile to her face whenever she thought of it.

But when Hailan and her companions reached this beautiful island, where her fate had once turned toward luck and happiness, they found that it really had become an island of blazing fire. Every building and every sight on it was burning in raging flames. The great fleet of many-decked ships that had once floated around it had become tens of thousands of burning hulls. Thick black smoke, like one terrifying demon’s maw after another, was devouring the sky above this beautiful sea, and the ocean, once as blue as a gemstone, had been stained blood-red by the firelight.

Just like Hailan’s eyes now.

“Hahahahaha! At last, at last I have waited for you! What is wrong with the people of the Sky Tower? Are you all a bunch of blockheads? You would risk coming here for a few buildings, a few dead things? Is there anything in this world more important than your own life? Forget it. I had better not dig too deeply into the reasons. There is a good saying: never try to understand the mind of a fool, because it is a riddle with no answer!” A Divine General who had been hiding in the thick smoke and raging flames saw the three women — Hailan, Bi Lv and Commander Lieyan — flying in, and he leaped out of the fire and smoke at once, threw back his head and laughed wildly, drunk on his own triumph.

“…” Hailan did not look at him. She only gazed through a blur of tears at the flames soaring into the sky from the island, beyond saving now.

“My name is Tiantong. If you obediently let yourselves be taken, then this Divine General may spare you a little suffering. If you are not obedient enough, I do not mind showing you what Heavenly Realm torture really is!” The Divine General who called himself Tiantong cracked his knuckles, looking as insufferably smug as an emperor’s father-in-law whose daughter has just been crowned empress.

“Ugh, I’m so ticked off! Your grandpa’s gonna tear your bones out while you’re still alive!” Commander Lieyan hadn’t called herself “grandpa” in a long time. She really had to be furious.

“Pfft. You?” The Tiantong Divine General saw that this little chick calling herself “grandpa” was one of the pair of twin sisters standing behind the Sea Empress. She looked like a soft, frail little girl, and her fighting strength was as pathetic as a scrawny chicken. She really did not know what was good for her. Did your grown-ups never teach you what it means to be afraid?

“Transform!” Commander Lieyan clad herself in the Black Tortoise War Armor Yue Yang had made especially for her, and in an instant she was back in her giantess form.

In her hands she raised the Prison Emperor Seven-Star Pillar, the one Yue Yang usually lent everyone for training, and brought it crashing down right on top of his head.

The Tiantong Divine General was left gaping, and before he could react in any way at all, her unstoppable blow had hammered him straight down into the ground.

(End of Chapter 1265)