Chapter 1037: Entering the Sixth Gate — Demon Valley

Her Majesty and the Night Empress were, naturally, not going to accompany Yue Yang into the Trial Grounds. Against these two, even Yue Yang’s considerable skill at persuasion was entirely useless.

These two were nothing like the Drunken Cat Imperial Lady or Luohua — not the sort you could simply chase after on a whim.

Progress with them required patience and a certain respect for proper sequence.

Exchanging thoughts on his new insights and breakthroughs, on the other hand — that was perfectly fine.

The Night Empress heaped unending praise on the fortune of Yue Yang’s encounter with the sky-spanning ancient rune formation’s core, feeling it marked the beginning of yet another leap in his potential. Her Majesty found herself far more intrigued by Yue Yang’s account of the water giant inside the ancient entrance and the understanding of life he’d gained there. But despite a long and detailed conversation among the three of them, they couldn’t work out which ancient deity that beautiful, gentle water giant might have been — all they could determine was that the Crescent Moon Necklace she’d given Liuye had once belonged to the original Water Palace Master.

“With your current strength, the sixth gate’s Demon Valley shouldn’t be too much trouble. But the seventh gate — the ‘Life Valley,’ also called the ‘Human Valley’ — won’t be so easily overcome. That gate absolutely cannot be conquered by force alone.” Her Majesty suddenly offered this observation just as Yue Yang was preparing to leave.

“Your Majesty — you’ve been to the Trial Grounds?” Yue Yang stared at her in genuine astonishment.

“…No. I’ve only heard people speak of it.” Her Majesty denied it immediately, but Yue Yang was a hundred percent certain she’d been there herself, and had reached the seventh gate’s Human Valley at minimum.

“I’d like to go and have a look too — just haven’t had the time lately.” The Night Empress’s tone was entirely different from Her Majesty’s — she clearly hadn’t been to the Trial Grounds herself.

If Her Majesty had visited the Trial Grounds, it would have to have been before the Sky Tower’s spatial passages were sealed.

That would be at least six thousand years ago.

Which meant… how old was Her Majesty, exactly?

Was she even older than the previous Prison Emperor had been? One of the powerhouses from those three thousand years between Vivienne’s era and the Prison Emperor’s?

Yue Yang decided not to pursue that line of thought any further. If the answer turned out to be what it looked like, things would become considerably more awkward going forward — future visits to Her Majesty would require far more propriety than the casual style he currently got away with. Sometimes it was wisest to remain pleasantly ignorant.

Carrying his little sister Yue Shuang, who had fallen asleep at some point he hadn’t even noticed, Yue Yang took his leave of Fourth Sister and stepped out of the palace — only for the Drunken Cat Imperial Lady and the panda-girl Niunu to slip quietly up to meet him.

They’d known he was going in to see Her Majesty and hadn’t dared try to help, but they’d certainly been paying attention.

After a day of happy reunion, Princess Qianqian, Luohua, Inan, and Yue Bing — all in cultivation within the World Tree’s Sky Stairway — got word and came back together. The one who’d notified them was naturally Liuye, who’d entered the ancient entrance alongside Yue Yang and come away with the divine artifact Crescent Moon Necklace. Coming back with her was Yue Yu, the gentle eldest sister. A little later, Xiayi, Hailan, Bi Lv, Fengxian, and the half-elf Xiao Nu all returned to the Tianra palace from the sea peoples’ Falling Star Sea.

Normally, when Yue Yang went somewhere to train and press through challenges, he wouldn’t bring Sick Beauty — the waterlike Wuhen — along.

This time was different.

He made a special trip to the Ivy Academy to bring her back with him.

In the sixth gate’s Demon Valley, Sick Beauty might not be needed — but based on the way both Her Majesty and Vivienne had phrased their reminders, the seventh gate was the kind of challenge where more help was always better.

He said his goodbyes to Fourth Sister, to Her Majesty and the Night Empress, to Jun Wuyou, Old Fox, Elder Yuehai, and the rest of the elders — and for the first time, Yue Yang set out for the Trial Grounds with everyone in tow. At Greenvalley City, he and Princess Qianqian’s group linked up with the Southern Wilderness Demon King and Fengxian, who had been waiting.

Those two were formidable backup in their own right.

If only Xue Wuxia had woken up, Yue Yang would have had nothing left to wish for… but the snow girl was still asleep, and no one could say when she would fully integrate her divine nature.

“In the sixth gate’s Demon Valley, we don’t need to overextend ourselves. But hidden within that valley is a place called the Demon God Hall, and inside it is a figure called the Heavens-Splitting Demon Lord — an ancient-era powerhouse who made it his ambition to conquer the Heavenly Realm. We can’t afford to underestimate him. Xiao Wenli, Hong, Aman, Jiang Ying, Future, Duoduo — you six are the main combat force. Give everything you have. We take down the Heavens-Splitting Demon Lord together.” Yue Yang had no intention of bringing Princess Qianqian and the others into the direct fight with the Heavens-Splitting Demon Lord. Strength was part of the consideration, but more importantly — if they fell in battle, there was no coming back from that. Until he had a real sense of just how strong the Heavens-Splitting Demon Lord was, he wasn’t willing to risk any losses on his side.

“What about Ika?” Sharp-eyed Jiang Ying noticed Yue Yang hadn’t mentioned her name.

“Her — I want to leave her in the Demon Valley to push through the gate there.” That was Yue Yang’s plan: Ika and the dragon sisters Yao and Yu would work through the Demon Valley’s challenges, with the Chaos Phantom in support. If at all possible, Yue Yang was even considering bringing Yao and Yu into the Demon God Hall alongside him, to draw on their human divine soldier power against the Heavens-Splitting Demon Lord.

Compared to the Demon Valley itself, the Heavens-Splitting Demon Lord was without question the true challenge.

As for Princess Qianqian and the others, Yue Yang decided to hold them in reserve for the seventh gate’s Human Valley. By the time he reached the seventh gate, he himself might well be battered and wounded from the fight with the Heavens-Splitting Demon Lord.

Arriving at the seventh valley in those conditions — if circumstances allowed, Princess Qianqian and the others should be able to give him real assistance.

Either way, preserving as much strength as possible for what came later was absolutely essential.

Because further ahead still stood someone far more formidable than the Heavens-Splitting Demon Lord.

Ji Wuri. That was the true rival.

One day’s rest in Greenvalley City, during which Yue Yang also brought along the Metal Beast, the Starweave Scorpion, Taotie, and the giant Titan-loli little En. Gray Wolf, however, Yue Yang left behind with Ye Kong, Sea Fatty, and Snow-Hungry Wolf — Tianhua Domain’s situation still wasn’t fully settled, and with Gray Wolf around, even if they found themselves in a tight spot against a powerful enemy, they should be able to keep their lives.

It was a pity the Night Empress and the Supreme couldn’t come to the Trial Grounds alongside him. With those two, Yue Yang would have had absolute confidence in taking down both the Heavens-Splitting Demon Lord and Ji Wuri.

Oh well. Some difficulties had to be overcome on your own — that was what real growth meant.

Before setting out, Yue Yang didn’t forget to write Mingyueguang a letter. Learning from the incident where a love letter had been intercepted by her friends, this time he wrote it entirely in ancient runes. Unless one happened to be a genius fluent in ancient script, there would be no reading his outrageously shameless love letter through eavesdropping again.

It had been several months since he’d cleared the fifth gate’s Beast Valley.

If he hadn’t known that even Vivienne — who had set the fastest completion record of anyone — had needed at least half a year to clear the seventh gate, he genuinely couldn’t have felt so calm about letting Ji Wuri maintain his lead. Counting on Captain Cook to slow Ji Wuri down? Well — that joke had a rather cold punchline. The Celestial Domain Emperor cut an impressive figure across the Southern Heavenly Realm, running his piracy operation with flair and near-monopolizing the whole of the Southern Heavenly Realm’s shipping lanes, but stacked up against Ji Wuri — billed as the Central Divine Hall’s greatest genius and the Divine Hall Supreme’s most promising successor — he fell well short.

Yue Yang suspected that during the Six Divine Artifacts war, at least one of the Four Divine Armors had ended up in Ji Wuri’s hands, or his master “Tianyu’s.”

Ji Wuri had entered the Trial Grounds to pursue the Divine Codex. Would he have brought that piece of divine armor along with him? That was genuinely hard to say.

If Ji Wuri had already earned one of those divine artifacts’ recognition, then even with the Prison Emperor’s Divine Seal, the Prison Emperor’s Divine Staff, and Princess Qianqian’s Prison Emperor’s Divine Sword combined, taking down a Ji Wuri clad in divine armor and wielding quasi-divine-tier power would be no easy thing.

“Forget Ji Wuri for now — the snow girl’s still not awake, and the Prison Emperor’s Divine Staff still needs its dragon head and divine pearl before it’s complete.” Yue Yang put the distracting thoughts aside.

“And I still haven’t fully fused with the Prison Emperor’s Divine Sword!” Princess Qianqian’s resentment was barely contained. Learning about Liuye and the Crescent Moon Necklace had sent her into a silent fury — how had Liuye stumbled into the favor of such a benevolent ancient deity when she herself had never had the luck? She didn’t think back to the fact that if not for the previous Prison Emperor’s dying will — which had bequeathed use of the Divine Sword to his descendant — that sword would already be in Yue Yang’s hands.

“Easy, tiger. I’ll find time to help you look into it…” Yue Yang had been worried Princess Qianqian might refuse his help out of stubbornness. Now that she’d seen Liuye with the Crescent Moon Necklace, she seemed to have softened her original insistence — which was, without question, a good thing.

“Hmph. Go deal with your important business first!” Princess Qianqian huffed, tucked the sword under her arm, and went back to working on the fusion herself.

She just liked squabbling with him.

When it came to things that actually mattered, she not only avoided getting in the way — she gave him her fullest support.

In short, this fierce girl was exactly the type whose words were thorns but whose heart was warm. Winning her over wasn’t easy, but there was no need to worry it couldn’t be done.

Back into the Trial Grounds. The sixth gate: Demon Valley.

Entering the Demon Valley, Yue Yang brought only Ika.

This place was subtly different from the previous gates. Unlike the fifth gate’s Beast Valley, where a Rebirth Gate greeted you the moment you stepped in, and unlike the fourth gate’s Desire Valley, with its pervasive illusions and temptations everywhere, Demon Valley looked nothing like what Yue Yang had imagined — no blood-red sky, no lava-covered ground, no scorching air, no fields of bones. None of that existed here.

The passage into Demon Valley resembled the grand gatehouse of an imperial palace, only on a colossal scale.

A full seven or eight kilometers long, with a vaulted ceiling a hundred meters high.

At the far end stood a palace of magnificent golden splendor.

Ascending the steps before the palace, Yue Yang found a grand reception hall containing a massive sand table, laid out to map the full terrain of the Demon Valley world.

He stopped to study it carefully and found that the valley’s power was divided between two main factions. One was the Angel Alliance, marked by a holy sword and angel emblem; the other was the Dark Alliance, marked by a blood-red scythe and demon sigil. Any challenger entering this gate was required to join one of the two factions. If a challenger’s chosen faction won the major decisive battles, and the challenger themselves accumulated enough personal points to meet the threshold for clearing the gate, they could pass through successfully.

On the surface, the sixth gate’s Demon Valley looked considerably easier than the fourth and fifth.

In practice, fewer than one in a hundred challengers ever cleared Demon Valley.

Within the sixth gate, similar to the Beast Valley before it, challengers were not permitted to engage in direct combat themselves — though neither were they required to raise a war beast the way Beast Valley had demanded. Instead, a challenger simply designated one war beast to join one of the two factions on their behalf, sending it out to continuously hunt and kill opposing faction challengers or native inhabitants to accumulate points, with passage possible once the point threshold was reached.

The one critical difference from Beast Valley: in Beast Valley, a war beast received three chances at resurrection — a single death wasn’t fatal to one’s chances. In Demon Valley, if a designated war beast was killed in combat, the challenger immediately lost a minimum of one hundred points, and any war beast that wasn’t a life-guardian type was permanently dead with no possibility of resurrection, requiring the challenger to designate a different war beast to continue…

Yue Yang looked at the point system and broke into a cold sweat. Killing a single Sky-rank tier five enemy war beast earned exactly one point.

In other words: one death meant losing at least one hundred points, and recovering from the deficit would require killing at least a hundred enemies.

What was more, inside Demon Valley, a war beast’s owner could also be targeted and attacked.

Strangest of all — killing only the war beast’s owner earned zero points whatsoever. To fully eliminate an enemy and collect the reward, you had to kill the war beast first, then the owner — only then would the enemy be completely removed.

“Well? Interesting enough for you?” Yue Yang smiled, turning to Ika, whose small face was entirely serious.

“Mm!” Ika gave a single solemn nod. She was not the type to ever take anything lightly.

“Which faction do we join? Someone as righteous and kind-hearted as me obviously ought to join the Dark Alliance and work as a mole from within.” Yue Yang gave this answer to a native inhabitant manning a challenger registration point.

“I’m sorry, but due to an excess of challengers choosing the Dark Alliance over the past several thousand years, everyone from the hundred challengers ahead of you onward has been required to join the Angel Alliance…” The response left Yue Yang at a complete loss for words. If it worked like that, what was the point of choosing? They might as well have come straight out and said the only option available was the weaker faction.

“Is remaining neutral an option?” Yue Yang noticed that a handful of native factions had apparently maintained neutral status.

“If you’re willing to remain in this world permanently.” The native inhabitant indicated that neutral was technically available on that condition.

“……” Yue Yang went cold. Stay here permanently? He’d rather just die.

“Neutral, then?” the other side asked, probing.

“No — look at my life-guardian war beast, she’s a Battle Angel. Angel Alliance is obviously the natural choice, and I’m exactly the kind of upright, justice-loving, beauty-rescuing hero who belongs there. Oh, and by the way — could I ask what faction my friend Ji Wuri ended up in?” Yue Yang asked.

“Ji Wuri is your friend?” The native inhabitant’s expression shifted the moment the name left Yue Yang’s mouth, eyes turning on him with the same loathing one might reserve for a murderer or executioner. “That crazed, evil being chose the Dark Alliance. He slaughtered without end, turning Demon Valley into a sea of blood — and he left half a month ago!”

“What the…” Yue Yang was, once again, left speechless. Ji Wuri had chosen the Dark Alliance? How did that square with the Central Divine Hall’s supposed commitment to justice?

(End of Chapter)