Yue Yang spent three very pleasant days not thinking about anything in particular.

The pleasure was compounded when Hailan heard the news and came down from the Fallen Star Sea to reunite with him — the particular joy of a long absence ending. The one absence that couldn’t be helped was the Sick Beauty, who was out in the field running a death-class training expedition with her students and couldn’t make it back.

“Have you forgotten something?” Fengxian asked, during one of their reunions, leaning close to speak quietly in his ear.

“Hm?” Yue Yang blinked.

Forgotten something? He ran through his mental inventory. He’d defeated the Solar King. Vivienne had dealt with the Silent King. The Lion King and Golden Crown King were in the Demon-Suppressing Tower. The Eight Generals were dead or surrendered. Ming Rihao and Zhiguang had sorted themselves out. The Freedom Queen and the half-divine body had been brought back by Yue Yu for later examination. The outer Divine Codex spaces had been thoroughly searched. Sea Fatty, Ye Kong, and Snow-Hungry Wolf were recovering. Sky Tower was stable across the board. What was missing?

Even the biggest remaining loose end — that infuriating Jester — had become fertilizer for Duoduo’s flowers.

Wait.

Tianzhu, the Dragon Emperor, the Underworld Emperor, and Gray Wolf — fighting the Two-Faced King in the stone world. Now that he thought about it, he hadn’t seen Gray Wolf running around underfoot doing its insufferable devoted-pet routine for days.

“Oh no.” Yue Yang startled himself alert, grabbed Fengxian and the Southern Wilderness Demon King, activated the Three Realms Compass, and went straight back to the stone world.

The stone world looked exactly as it always had. No sign of battle remaining — though Tianzhu, the Dragon Emperor, and the Underworld Emperor all looked like men recovering from serious illness, which told Yue Yang that fighting the Two-Faced King had been genuinely brutal and they still hadn’t come all the way back. Gray Wolf alone showed no injuries. The glutton was currently being attended to by Steward Ye, Gold-Tooth, and others, eating with single-minded dedication, competing with the Wild Bull Brothers for volume. Zhongguan, Heitu, Baima, Fengji, and Keen-Eye Jinyun were all sitting in a circle nearby, killing time gambling.

Gray Wolf sensed Yue Yang first.

It swallowed everything in front of the Wild Bull Brothers in one enormous gulp, cheeks bulging, and came bounding across the space in a tail-wagging sprint of greeting.

Tianzhu and the others saw Yue Yang and went from exhausted to elated in an instant. Zhongguan’s group cheered. Gold-Tooth and Steward Ye teared up — Yue Yang had survived a battle against the Solar King and walked back through that door. The implications landed one by one. The Solar King had lost.

They had braced themselves for this possibility. Actually seeing Yue Yang standing there still made it feel impossible. Not just for Steward Ye and Gold-Tooth — even Zhongguan, Heitu, Baima, and the escorts found it difficult to fully absorb. The Solar King — master of the Sun God Palace, the equal of Ji Wuri, the acknowledged rival of the Central Divine Hall’s foremost figure — had been beaten by this young man?

“He’s dead,” Yue Yang said simply.

That landed even harder. The room went very still.

Defeated was already extraordinary. Dead was something else entirely. Coming from anyone other than Sky Tower’s new Prison Emperor, the claim would have been met with open laughter. But it was him saying it, and it landed as fact.

Tianzhu opened his mouth, seemed to want to ask for details, then caught the easy and relaxed expression on Fengxian’s face as she stepped forward — and closed his mouth. That expression confirmed everything the words had claimed.

The Dragon Emperor couldn’t speak at all. He threw his head back and howled. When that wasn’t enough, he started shouting: “Good! Good! You absolute madman!”

The Underworld Emperor extended a thumb.

He was genuinely impressed. Thoroughly. The Two-Faced King — the weakest of the Solar King’s Four Kings — had required Gray Wolf’s full divine beast power as the main fighting force, Yue Yang’s domain deception to transport him directly into Gray Wolf’s Grimoire World, and then a full day and night of hard fighting from Gray Wolf, Tianzhu, the Dragon Emperor, and himself combined to finally bring down. Without Gray Wolf sending the critically wounded out of the Grimoire World for emergency recovery when their lives were in danger, even Tianzhu probably wouldn’t have made it to the end.

And the Solar King — who outclassed the Two-Faced King by an unquantifiable margin, with three other kings in support — had been killed outright by this young man.

The most aberrant figure in Sky Tower’s entire history. That was the only description that fit.

“The Windstill national ruler, Blue Wolf, and Luoluo are all dead,” Yue Yang said to Steward Ye, summarizing briefly. “Blue Wolf left behind a Heart of Repentance. The Windstill national ruler left a Heart of True Love.”

“Young lord Titan — have mercy on us humble people!” Steward Ye and Gold-Tooth dropped to their knees.

“I can remove the curse from you — that’s easy enough, just a moment’s work. But I have no time to be your domain ruler. Ask Tianzhu or the Dragon Emperor.” Yue Yang had precisely zero interest in administering the wreckage of Tianhua Domain. The curse removal was trivial — he could do it himself or let the Ghost-Eater absorb it — but Tianhua Domain in its current state was a mess of competing factions, starving civilians, and structural collapse. He had neither the time nor the inclination. He had better things to do — like getting back to the Sky Stairway World Tree to continue pursuing Wuxia. And after that, the next target was Ji Wuri. Whatever happened, Ji Wuri had to be intercepted before he cleared the Trial Grounds.

“Don’t look at me,” Tianzhu said. A cultivation obsessive to the core — every hour of training mattered.

“I have enough trouble with my own people,” the Dragon Emperor said, shaking his head.

“No interest in being a ruler,” the Underworld Emperor said, declining flatly.

All three of them meant the same thing: the time ahead needed to go toward cultivation. With enough power, territory followed naturally. The celestial realm was vast beyond imagining — who could manage it all? Tianhua Domain was large and complicated, and the starving population alone was a headache.

Yue Yang muttered uncharitable things about their collective lack of loyalty, but forcing the assignment on them was a bit much. They were, after all, his seniors.

He turned back to Gold-Tooth and Steward Ye to offer some comfort. “The Revenge Domain Emperor survived. And Dugu Changfeng — Lone Wind. Let them take up the domain emperor and national ruler positions. If that doesn’t feel secure enough, I have another suggestion: Ming Rihao, the Ming Clan’s commander. His power is more than enough to stabilize the Revenge Domain Emperor’s position and give Tianhua Domain a proper foundation.”

Before he’d even finished the sentence, Steward Ye and Gold-Tooth had arranged their faces into expressions of profound bereavement. “Young lord Titan — they’ve all left.”

Yue Yang’s brow went up. “Left?”

Gold-Tooth kowtowed through his tears. “The Revenge Domain Emperor said his hatred had blinded him to many wrongs. He’s renouncing it, going into self-imposed exile to travel and cultivate. Dugu Changfeng went with him. As for Ming Rihao — when he left the stone world with a certain giant woman, he said he was returning to rebuild the Ming Clan’s homeland. He said Tianhua Domain would recover under your rule…”

“That useless miserable uncle,” Yue Yang said with feeling. “He’s off the wedding gift list permanently. He can spend his whole life hugging that muscle woman for all I care.”

“Young lord Titan…” Steward Ye and Gold-Tooth looked like they were prepared to sit down and simply expire if he didn’t help them.

“He has no time to manage you,” Fengxian said, stepping forward suddenly. She had a smile on her face that had, over the years, left an incalculable number of people helplessly captivated. “But that’s fine — I do. Do you know who I am? I’m his wife. Divine Punishment. Tianhua Domain — I’ll take it over. You’re all under my administration now.”

Steward Ye and Gold-Tooth couldn’t quite bring themselves to look directly at her. If they had previously believed Lady Zhiguang represented the outer limit of feminine beauty and bearing, that belief had just been quietly retired. Lady Zhiguang beside this woman was a sparrow beside a great swan — not the same scale of thing at all. And Fengxian’s power was in another category entirely — it read deeper than Tianzhu, deeper than the Dragon Emperor and Underworld Emperor. If she were willing to take Tianhua Domain, it was more than they had dared hope.

The only question was whether Yue Yang approved.

“You hate dealing with things,” Yue Yang said, genuinely puzzled.

“I’ll just hold the title. I’ll come up to check in every so often. Otherwise I’m with you, as always. Besides — a domain ruler with enough capable national rulers under her doesn’t need to do much herself. Know how to delegate.” Fengxian was entirely untroubled by the prospect.

“I’ll take a national rulership,” the Southern Wilderness Demon King added, raising her hand, then raising her pipa and sending a cascade of music into the air that floated down over everyone like warm rain — the kind of sound that made people forget what they’d been worried about. She stopped playing and blinked at Yue Yang with deliberate mischief. “The name Windstill Nation doesn’t suit it anymore. From now on it’s Gentle Breeze. I want every citizen to feel hope rising in their hearts, and I want that hope to spread like a gentle breeze into every corner.”

“You just want what’s left in the Windstill national treasury,” Fengxian said.

“A person can have more than one motivation!” the Southern Wilderness Demon King said, looking caught and adorable about it.

“Your future subjects have my sincere condolences,” Fengxian sighed.

“Likewise,” the Southern Wilderness Demon King replied serenely — meaning: you’re managing an entire domain and you’re questioning my fitness to manage one small country?

Steward Ye and Gold-Tooth exchanged a look.

Someone was better than no one. In the celestial realm, a domain or country without a powerful backer behind it was a target. These two women were formidable in their own right — and they were Yue Yang’s wives, which meant his backing came with them. His actual ambitions clearly lay far above anything as small as Tianhua Domain. Having Fengxian and the Southern Wilderness Demon King here was, under the circumstances, the best possible outcome.

When Zhongguan quietly sent them a private message confirming that Fengxian was in fact Tianzhu’s younger sister, and the Southern Wilderness Demon King was the Dragon Emperor’s daughter —

Steward Ye and Gold-Tooth broke into expressions of uncontained delight. They were all family.

They dropped to their knees at once, bowing to Fengxian: “Your Imperial Majesty, Divine Punishment Empress!”

Then to the Southern Wilderness Demon King: “Your Majesty, Queen of Gentle Breeze!”

The ceremony was simple. But it established the relationship.

“Good — then let’s go home!” The Southern Wilderness Demon King turned the full warmth of her smile on Yue Yang — the kind of smile that made cold things thaw and dormant things stir. “I wonder if I might have the honor of inviting young lord Titan to visit my royal city of Greenvalley as a guest? My birthday is coming up soon, you know. One drop of divine blood is absolutely not sufficient as a gift. A hundred treasures, minimum, before I’ll even consider smiling about it.”

“I’ll just give you myself,” Yue Yang said, unable to resist reaching out to pinch her small nose.

“I’ll have to think about whether to accept,” she said, raising a small fist in mock outrage — but didn’t bring it down. She couldn’t bring herself to actually hit him.

Everyone else found something fascinating to look at in the other direction.

Gray Wolf loaded them all into the Grimoire World one by one. Yue Yang activated the Three Realms Compass and brought the whole group back to Greenvalley City — a city that had been absent from his life for what felt like much longer than it had actually been.

Greenvalley itself had barely changed in the interval. But everyone who returned to it knew, without needing to say so, that the world around it had changed completely. Changed in the way that happens when a fulcrum shifts — the whole balance of things tilting, finding a new center.

The world had turned upside down.

And the young man who had turned it was home.

(End of Chapter)