White River City showed no sign of disturbance.

People had certainly noticed the ancient rune formation spanning the sky — that much was impossible to miss — but with the city’s internal situation already unstable, and out of a deep-seated awe for ancient power, the mutant fishfolk of White River City appeared to have made no unusual moves. Of course, that didn’t mean they wouldn’t find an opportunity to let the secret out eventually. Yue Yang had never once considered these mutant fishfolk trustworthy. And beyond the fishfolk themselves, how many people within White River City’s walls were secret agents of the Central Divine Hall or some other faction? Nobody could say.

But Yue Yang had already absorbed the core energy of the ancient rune formation, and gained a profound understanding of life’s true meaning from within the ancient treasury space. He was satisfied.

Not to mention that Liuye had walked away with a top-tier divine artifact — the Crescent Moon Necklace!

The harvest from this venture had been enormous. With the sky formation gone and the ancient entrance vanished, even if Central Divine Hall warriors came rushing here eventually, they’d find precious little trace to follow and be destined to leave disappointed.

“Haha, take your time searching — we’ll be well out of here.” Yue Yang could picture the frustration of whatever treasure hunters showed up later, and his mood lifted considerably at the thought.

He didn’t linger.

A brief word with Tianzhu and the others, then he turned back toward Windstill Swamp and Greenvalley City.

He spent one evening reuniting with the Southern Wilderness Demon King and Fengxian, then decided to return to the Sky Tower to take his leave of the Supreme, the Night Empress, and Fourth Sister. Tianhua Domain affairs had piled up too much, and it had already begun to delay his progress through the Trial Grounds. He knew full well that Ji Wuri wouldn’t seize the Divine Codex so easily, but watching him pull further ahead without doing anything about it wasn’t an option either…

But before any of that, Yue Yang first carved out time to enter the black hole’s sealed space, to tell Vivienne everything that had happened to him recently.

When Vivienne heard that Yue Yang’s Genesis Orb had ascended into a true Genesis Divine Pearl due to overflowing chaos energy, that his Grimoire had advanced to a Sacred Codex, and that he’d merged with the core of the ancient rune formation, she couldn’t help sighing at this young man’s absolutely heaven-defying luck.

When Yue Yang summoned his Sacred Codex for her to examine, Vivienne stared at it, visibly startled.

“Your Sacred Codex is very strange — it really isn’t like mine. Are you sure it’s actually a Sacred Codex? To me it feels more like a Divine Codex.” Vivienne teased him, though in truth Yue Yang’s Grimoire had always been a little different from anyone else’s even before the ascension, and the power it radiated now utterly outclassed Sacred Codexes of the same tier.

“It can’t possibly be a Divine Codex!” Yue Yang broke into a cold sweat. He knew all too well how terrifying Divine Codex power was. Besides, a Divine Codex was something that couldn’t come about through advancement — it simply didn’t work that way.

“If Divine Codexes weren’t created by ancient deities and couldn’t be formed through a grimoire evolving upward, I’d genuinely suspect that’s what this is. All right, I’ll stop teasing you, you absurdly lucky creature. Your grimoire is a Sacred Codex, no question about that — but not every Sacred Codex among a hundred is going to carry the same power. My estimate is that yours ranks in the top five, possibly top three. I won’t overstate it, but I’ve yet to come across a better Sacred Codex than this one… Its latent power hasn’t been fully released yet, either. If it ever runs at full capacity, calling it a minor Divine Codex wouldn’t be an unreasonable description.” Vivienne paused, then added with a smile, “A Sacred Codex is deeply tied to its owner’s gifts and abilities — your talent and capability are part of what shapes its power. So it being especially formidable isn’t strange at all, because you yourself are a little freak of nature.”

“That’s quite the compliment.” Yue Yang didn’t quite know how to receive that.

Vivienne then turned her attention to Yue Yang’s Genesis Divine Pearl, and the longer she looked the more she couldn’t bear to set it aside, sighing again and again. “If I had a divine artifact like this too, what world couldn’t be remade? What Heavenly Realm couldn’t be set right?”

Yue Yang genuinely wanted to help Vivienne, but the Genesis Divine Pearl could only be used by him — there was simply no way to lend it to her even if he wanted to.

On top of that, with his current level of strength, he didn’t dare tamper recklessly with a Genesis Divine Pearl brimming with chaos energy at the best of times.

To make it up to Her Majesty, Yue Yang, in an unusually generous moment, produced the precious vial containing the ancient divine blood and offered to give her this treasured thing entirely. Vivienne delighted him with a warm embrace and a resounding kiss, but declined the gift all the same. “I’ll accept the sentiment. The ancient divine blood is genuinely remarkable, and it would benefit me greatly — but I am the proud Conquest Queen. If I rely on outside force to accelerate my growth, conquering the Heavenly Realm loses its meaning. I want every living thing to bow before me through my own power alone.”

Yue Yang had a feeling that if he offered the divine blood to the Supreme instead, she’d say something almost identical.

Why were powerful women always so impossibly proud?

Couldn’t they let the men who pursued them have it even a little easier?

Of course, those words could never be said aloud. If they were, Vivienne would certainly laugh and scold him for his antiquated thinking. She was the Conquest Queen, after all — if she had no principles whatsoever, that would be the genuinely strange thing.

“The ancient divine blood is a fine thing, no argument there, but neither of us should be using it yet. Perhaps there will come a day when it proves necessary, but that day is not now.” Vivienne’s expression turned serious, and she gestured for Yue Yang to put the divine blood away. “Neither of us — especially you — has come anywhere near our limit. You’re still growing at an extraordinary pace. What need is there for ancient divine blood? Once we’ve both reached the absolute peak of our potential, with no further room to advance — that’s when we might consider it. Though I believe that with our innate gifts and potential, we’ll both reach the divine state entirely through our own efforts, forming our own unique and absolute divine nature as a matter of course. Your future especially has no ceiling I can see. So let’s say for now: ancient divine blood is our finest reserve resource. When the time is truly right, it’ll be there.”

“Agreed.” Yue Yang felt the same — what you built yourself was always finest, and leaning on outside force never felt as satisfying as growth you’d earned.

“With your current strength, the sixth gate’s Demon Valley shouldn’t be too difficult — but the Heavens-Splitting Demon Lord sealed inside the sixth gate’s Demon God Hall is something you should still be careful about.” After their long conversation, just as Yue Yang was preparing to leave, Vivienne suddenly remembered something and made sure to bring it up.

“The Heavens-Splitting Demon Lord…” Yue Yang felt a chill pass through him at the name. He’d already reached Perfect Innate Sovereign tier five, and even at that level he needed to exercise caution.

How powerful had the Heavens-Splitting Demon Lord grown, sealed inside the Demon God Hall all this time?

Given that even someone as proud as Vivienne had specifically taken the trouble to remind him, Yue Yang’s guard went up considerably.

These ancient entities sealed away for tens of thousands of years — whether the ancient Demon Sovereign, the Peerless Emperor Wushuang, or now the Heavens-Splitting Demon Lord — not a single one of them was to be taken lightly. If it weren’t absolutely necessary to defeat the Heavens-Splitting Demon Lord in order to claim the Demon God Hall’s inherited treasures, Yue Yang genuinely had no desire to antagonize an opponent like that.

Back at the Sky Tower.

Yue Yang stopped at House Yue’s castle first, paying his respects to Jun Wuyou, Old Fox, and Elder Yuehai, touching briefly on the situation in the Heavenly Realm and mentioning that he planned to head back into the Trial Grounds to press through the next gates. After a solid month of resource and personnel coordination, Wuyue City in the Jade Domain, Greenvalley City in Tianhua Domain’s Windstill Swamp, and the Sky Tower itself had all entered a three-way flourishing arrangement — the hardship plaguing the Tianhua Domain had eased considerably, and there was no longer any need for Yue Yang to stay on as a glorified supply runner. Setting out for the Trial Grounds now was exactly the right moment.

Jun Wuyou and the others agreed it wasn’t right to keep taking up Yue Yang’s time — at the end of the day, this young man’s growth was what mattered most. How high the Sky Tower could ultimately rise depended entirely on how far Yue Yang grew. The higher his future ceiling, the better the Sky Tower’s prospects — that was simply a given.

“No need to rush into anything like a formal wedding ceremony, but you ought to bring Qianqian and the others along with you. Otherwise they’ll just be out here worrying themselves sick over you.” Jun Wuyou raised this point specifically.

“The Trial Grounds only gets harder the further you go — especially in the later gates. Bring all of them along. Even if they can’t all help at every moment, at some point, one of them is bound to give you exactly the boost you need.” Old Fox’s greatest concern was Yue Yang. He’d never been into the Trial Grounds himself, but he could well imagine that in the most grueling moments further ahead, without all the help he could possibly muster, Yue Yang going up against a quasi-divine-tier opponent like Ji Wuri would be putting himself at a real disadvantage.

“If we carried more weight around here, we’d be trying to talk the Supreme and the Night Empress — and that Majesty of yours — into going with you into the Trial Grounds too.” Jun Wuyou shot Yue Yang a conspiratorial wink.

“Ahem, ahem — mind your words, now, mind your words!” Elder Yuehai hurriedly feigned a coughing fit and steered the conversation away from that particular topic.

If the one residing in Tianra’s imperial palace ever found out that Jun Wuyou, that shameless old man, had been coaching Yue Yang in suggestions like this, she’d probably come crashing into the Daxia imperial palace in a fury — and at that point, Jun Wuyou could run to the ends of the earth and it wouldn’t do him any good.

Nobody had ever spelled out to Yue Yang just who exactly that “Majesty” was — the one who spent her days resting inside the Mirage Palace and had barely held court since ascending the throne. But Yue Yang understood well enough that it wasn’t simple. When Fengkuang, Old Fox, and Elder Yuehai got teased or slighted, they’d be annoyed, certainly — but it would never prompt the Night Empress to step in personally and deliver a lesson the way she had when the Purple-Gold Marquis showed even the slightest disrespect toward Her Majesty. If Her Majesty hadn’t been magnanimous enough to tell the Night Empress to hold back, the Purple-Gold Marquis would never have survived that encounter to go on and square off with Yue Yang later.

The Purple-Gold Marquis had withstood two strikes from the Night Empress?

Had he really?

What a joke. The Purple-Gold Marquis could cultivate for another thousand years and still not survive two moves from the Night Empress. Those two consecutive strikes were nothing more than an expression of the Night Empress’s fury — and a demonstration of what it meant to disrespect Her Majesty.

In all of existence, the one person who could get away with showing that “Majesty” disrespect was probably Yue Yang alone.

And the only person who could barge uninvited into Her Majesty’s private chambers in the dead of night and walk away intact was probably this shameless little scoundrel as well.

After seeing the old men.

Yue Yang already understood what they were suggesting, though he felt it would be rather difficult to pull off. The Night Empress would be manageable enough — but convincing Her Majesty to come along with him into the Trial Grounds? That would probably be harder than sneaking into her bed for a nap. The Supreme was even more out of the question. Without the ability to climb a million stairs on her own, she’d refuse to join him in the Trial Grounds — that breath of pride didn’t even need to be spoken aloud to know it was there.

He paid a visit to the Tianra palace and spent time with Fourth Sister, sharing everything that had happened.

Yue Yang kept stealing glances at her, hoping she might illuminate some of the mysteries he was still puzzling over. Fourth Sister simply smiled without speaking, and went to the kitchen to make him dinner.

Fine. He’d have to go bother Her Majesty instead — harassment tactics weren’t free, might as well use them. Yue Yang scooped up his little sister Yue Shuang, who immediately refused to climb down from his arms, and headed over together to find Her Majesty. The female official guarding the palace doors stared at him wide-eyed — barging in unannounced was one thing, but showing up with a child in tow to see Her Majesty? What sort of strategy was this? Did he really think bringing an adorable little girl would get him past the doors?

“Her Majesty is resting!” The official on duty stepped forward to block him per protocol.

“Ah, Her Majesty works so tirelessly — truly admirable. I certainly didn’t mean to disturb her. My little sister and I only came to say a quick hello. If Her Majesty is resting, we promise to bow politely at the door and be on our way!” Yue Yang, if he could be outmaneuvered by something like this, wouldn’t be much of a transmigrator.

“Since when did someone who barges into people’s private chambers at midnight become so polite? This really doesn’t seem like you.” The Night Empress’s voice drifted out from inside — apparently something about this was enormously amusing to her. She was trying very hard to hold back her laughter and failing. Without giving Yue Yang a chance to respond, she added with a voice like ringing bells, “What brings our Third Young Master here today? There’d better be a reason — let me guess. Either the ancient treasure hunt yielded a spectacular haul, or your cultivation has had a breakthrough of some kind. Judging by that self-satisfied look on your face, I’d wager it’s both. Congratulations are in order!”

“……” Yue Yang had a sudden uncomfortable feeling that sometimes, women being too clever was genuinely inconvenient.

Fortunately, as the first and cleverest girl in Peerless Twins, Su Ying had once observed, women grow a little dimmer after they marry and have children.

With that in mind, he still had hope after all — at worst, he could get all these too-clever women a little dimmer, one by one.

(End of Chapter)