Seeing Yue Yang resolve to open the little casket, Fengxian couldn’t help feeling a touch nervous.
She couldn’t stop herself from reaching out a small hand.
She gripped Yue Yang’s arm tightly.
Ordinarily, what everyone saw of this Divine Punishment Empress was her lofty, all-commanding, thunderous presence; only very rarely did she wear such a maidenly look. Luohua and Qianqian rather wanted to sneak a laugh, but afraid of ruining the mood, they could only bite it back. Yue Yang hurried to give this Divine Punishment girl some comfort, turning his hand to clasp her slender fingers. Whether she was called the Divine Punishment Empress or Fengxian, she was still a woman who needed his tender care… Being formidable before everyone didn’t mean she wasn’t a soft-hearted woman. Yue Yang knew for himself that when the two of them were alone together, this Divine Punishment girl could be gentle as water, tender beyond measure—she simply never let that side show easily!
At the clasp of their two hands, Fengxian had already sensed Yue Yang’s comfort.
A great warmth welled up in her heart, gentle and glowing.
Forgetting her surroundings, she loosened that small hand, wrapped her arms around Yue Yang’s waist, and made to offer up a sweet, fragrant kiss—only to suddenly startle awake to the fact that everyone was watching. At once she changed her intent, planting only the lightest kiss on his lips, then pressed down her bashfulness and, feigning nonchalance, drifted around behind Yue Yang.
Still clasping his waist tightly, she rested her little face against his back.
This served two purposes: one, to hide her shyness—
—and two, because she was brimming over with love, her heart long since stirred, her feelings past all restraint, unwilling to let go now.
Yue Yang reached an arm back to half-embrace her slender jade waist, a gesture of reassurance, then bent his whole attention on the little white jade casket in his hands.
Princess Qianqian, the beauty Luohua, Yue Yu, little Inan, the Southern Wilderness Demon King, and the other women were all anxious to see the result, and crowded in around him. They waited as Yue Yang, using his own unique small Law-power, gently lifted the casket’s lid, then poured in the purest Innate True Qi to rouse and guide the treasure within. The instant the little white jade casket opened—before the Innate True Qi could even guide it—a stream of divine power came gushing out like a spring erupting from deep in the earth.
The moment this divine power reached the outer world, it turned into a sheet of resplendent radiance.
Dazzling, glorious.
Supreme, unrivaled, boundless…
In an instant, this sheet of glorious divine light engulfed the entire Grimoire World.
Everyone bathed within the glorious divine light, their spirits emptied to a pure void, as though returned to the primordial womb, newly born and innate, thinking nothing and wanting nothing, aware only in their hearts that their bodies were being ceaselessly purified and sublimated within this divine light.
This wondrous, tranquil sublimation was not merely on the plane of the spirit but, more so, of the body. Every living being in the whole Grimoire World—including the slumbering Xue Wuxia and the life-guardian war beasts who never left the Grimoire World—received the same bathing in divine light, the same purification and sublimation. Of them all, the ones sublimated most within this glorious divine light were none other than Yue Yang, who had opened the little white jade casket with his own hands, and Fengxian, the casket’s original owner.
Yue Yang, at Supreme tier-5, and Fengxian, of the same rank, ascended together within the divine light.
That Yue Yang would ascend—
—surprised no one, for even in the battle with the evil god he had shown signs of an impending breakthrough; only, his heart at the time had been too worried over the gravely wounded “Young Lord Mingzhu” for him to reach the state of clear emptiness, and so his progress had been hindered.
But that Fengxian—who stayed cooped up in the Grimoire World day after day and never once stepped outside—could ascend so easily, that truly astonished Qianqian and the others.
Most unbelievable of all, after Fengxian climbed to Supreme tier-6 together with Yue Yang, the divine light erupted once more, blazing more than tenfold, countless streams of divine power converging upon her body—and she, having only just ascended before everyone’s watching eyes, gave a delicate cry and broke through yet again.
Countless bolts of Divine Punishment Lightning were born above Fengxian’s head.
Spreading toward the sky.
Piercing straight into the heavens.
Fengxian in that moment was as if crowned with a Crown of Divine Punishment, a divine majesty rising of itself upon her face, striking awe into the very firmament.
Those bolts of Divine Punishment Lightning did not dissipate; instead they formed a thousand-meter-tall Divine Punishment Goddess, drinking in more than eighty percent of the divine light, coming into being from nothing, from the void into the solid… The process of its birth was wondrous beyond measure, so that all the words in the world could scarcely describe it, and the women watching, beholding so glorious and rare a sight, all sighed within their hearts, feeling that to witness such a wondrous scene of birth left this life truly without regret.
At the same time, a longing quietly rose in each of their hearts.
That one day, someday—
—they too might be so.
The thousand-meter-tall Divine Punishment Goddess, formed wholly of Divine Punishment Lightning and divine light, swooped down, turned into a shaft of purple lightning-light, and sank into Fengxian’s brow. Fengxian’s delicate frame shuddered violently, and in an instant she was elevated to the realm of Supreme tier-7.
Two ranks in a row, and still the divine power lingered. Drawn on by the divine light—now dimmed by well over half, less than twenty percent remaining—Fengxian spat forth a bolt of deepest purple lightning-light from her mouth.
That deep-purple lightning-light, as if alive, moved like a swimming dragon.
In a flash it bored into Yue Yang’s heart, fully rousing his Heart of the True Dragon.
“Ha!”
Yue Yang felt a divine power flooding his chest, one he had to expel or burst—and as his throat opened, out spat a golden divine dragon wreathed in purple lightning, a sight even he found unbelievable. That golden divine dragon coiled in purple lightning was tiny, no thicker than a child’s arm, yet vivid and lifelike, as though a true living thing, not at all like something formed from divine power and divine light.
With full and stately majesty it wound around Yue Yang’s body, passed in through Fengxian’s brow, and out through the center of her back.
Then it passed through the Southern Wilderness Demon King—who with the True Dragon’s blood in her body had helped rouse Yue Yang’s Heart of the True Dragon—flew out from the center of her back, and sank into the clear, pure brow of the nearest, Princess Qianqian…
Having threaded through them all at blinding speed like this—
—it shot back out from the center of Yue Yu’s back and returned to Yue Yang’s Heart of the True Dragon.
In the instant it returned to Yue Yang’s heart-world, everyone felt some deeply mysterious and deeply gentle force binding them all together.
Yue Yang had ascended to the peak of Supreme tier-6, and just as he was about to break through and elevate further, the transmitted knowledge in his mind suddenly burst into sudden enlightenment. He sank into the dazzling bloom of one riddle of inheritance after another and could not pull himself free, so that his breakthrough, on the contrary, stalled. Fengxian, by contrast—linked through the heart by the golden divine dragon—erupted once again, and in a mere few dozen seconds actually climbed anew to Supreme tier-8, the divine power within her surging forth together with that newborn Divine Punishment goddess-nature, resonating and crying out in unison above her head, as though this linking by the golden divine dragon could win her a supreme, transformative elevation.
And it was not only Fengxian. Qianqian and the others, bathed in the divine light now dimmed to less than two-tenths, and then linked by the golden divine dragon, all collectively rose a rank as well.
Bao’er, who had almost no combat power to speak of, rose several ranks at once.
Of course, having been at the Innate realm before this—
—she now only reached the Heaven tier.
Even after rising several ranks, the realm of Supreme was still far, far off for her.
The divine light emanating from the little casket gradually dispersed. Apart from the near-eighty percent absorbed into the bodies of Yue Yang and Fengxian, and one part going to the women, the last remaining part was converted into the life-energy of the many war beasts and of every blade of grass and every tree in the Grimoire World.
You might say the entire Grimoire World bathed in the divine light and was elevated—not one thing failed to benefit.
When the divine light had wholly scattered—
Yue Yang looked down inside, and only then discovered that there was but a single object within the casket.
A jade pendant marked with a phoenix pattern, white as tallow, its veining strange and inexhaustible in intricacy, faintly radiating a pale, colorful divine light—examined closely, like a faint rainbow, half-seen, half-hidden.
Anyone with no eye for treasures would likely have looked down on this seemingly ordinary little jade pendant, but in Yue Yang’s wisdom-seeing Heavenly Eye, this was a treasure that even divine artifacts could not rival. In his life Yue Yang had seen countless treasures, but ones as precious as this phoenix-patterned jade pendant were exceedingly, exceedingly few. By his reckoning this pendant was on a par with the black jade necklace left to him by Sister Fourth Lady—and if there was any treasure that surpassed it, it could only be the immortal robe, immortal shoes, and immortal pendant worn by the qilin girl Bingyin, which could transform into the “Qilin Treasure Armor”…
An immortal artifact of the Eastern Immortal Clan!
Though Yue Yang did not know this treasure’s name, nor could he see through the secret hidden within the phoenix-patterned jade pendant, he grasped it at once: this was an immortal artifact!
Unlike a divine artifact, the existence of such immortal artifacts seemed to be more about inheritance, guidance, and enlightenment.
It was not a treasure or lethal weapon meant to be used in battle!
“The phoenix pattern on it seems to hold some deeper meaning. Can you make it out?” Princess Qianqian gazed thoughtfully at the pendant in Yue Yang’s hand.
“Perhaps it’s…” The Southern Wilderness Demon King suddenly ventured a bold guess.
“Could it be a guide-map to the Ruins of the Gods? A revelation our earliest ancestor recorded upon the jade pendant and left for us?” Fengxian was still not quite accustomed to a body that had risen three ranks straight to Supreme tier-8, but the excitement and joy in her heart left her spirit in fine form; discomfort notwithstanding, she paid no mind at all to the change in her body.
“If it really is, then that would be wonderful!” Even Yue Yu, ever even-tempered, was moved to cheer aloud in her excitement.
“Put the pendant on her.” The Sick Beauty took Yue Yang’s hand with one of hers and Fengxian’s with the other… As Yue Yang’s first woman, in doing this she was in truth extending a kind of recognition and acceptance to Fengxian—for Fengxian could not marry Yue Yang in the Sky Tower, given that Xue Wuxia, Qianqian, and Luohua all counted as juniors of her juniors. Were she to wed openly and formally, the Fourth Lady and the people of the Yue family wouldn’t even know what to call her. Fengxian didn’t care about station or title, but if everyone could give her even a small ceremony—even one like today’s, with Yue Yang fastening upon her with his own hands the phoenix-patterned jade pendant that symbolized inheriting the earliest ancestor’s legacy—that would be the greatest recognition and acceptance!
The little white jade casket was her dowry.
It was also the inheritance of the women of her clan.
Passed down generation to generation.
And to take out this phoenix-patterned jade pendant—besides benefiting everyone—was, still more, a symbol of the earliest ancestor’s direct lineage.
Now, with Yue Yang fastening it upon her by his own hand, how could her heart not be full to overflowing? And with all the women around her giving their blessings together, clapping in congratulation, Fengxian lost every trace of her former Divine Punishment Empress’s majesty and shed tears on the spot, so moved she could hardly speak.
Yue Yang fastened the phoenix-patterned jade pendant upon Fengxian with his own hands.
That swan-like neck, long and graceful, that tallow-white skin, set off the phoenix-patterned jade pendant in delightful contrast.
Seeing the beauty’s tearful, tender grace, Yue Yang could not help drawing her gently into his embrace, and amid the cheers and blessings, kissed the sweet, fragrant crimson lips of the beauty…
“How wonderful—I’ll definitely do this too someday! No—I’ll be even more romantic!” Bao’er raised her little fist, adorably fantasizing about her own future days of happiness, her small face full of yearning. But her attention suddenly shifted elsewhere. “Hm? Why isn’t this big scoundrel wearing any clothes? Oh dear, oh dear—where are my clothes?”
“…” At her clamoring, the women, startled awake from their warm bliss, only then discovered they hadn’t a stitch on—their clothes had all melted away in the divine power and divine light, dissolved into nothing. Even some silver- and gold-grade treasures had been shaken to dust in the energy-resonance of the repeated ascensions.
“Bing’er, don’t look!” Yue Yu came to her senses, mortified—but instead of minding herself, she first conjured clothes to bundle up little Yue Bing.
Her Grimoire manifested, and she merged with the Dawn Angel that had evolved from the Angel’s Blade.
Shielding her body.
With a beat of its wings, she instantly whisked little Yue Bing back to their room.
The other women, coming to their senses too, hurriedly donned their Moon Treasure Armor and, each swallowing her shyness, left one after another.
Bao’er, dragged off by Xia Yi, feigned bashfulness and bowed her head, covering her eyes with her soft little hands—yet all the while kept her small face turned to the side, peeking through the gaps between her parted fingers. She said nothing aloud, but inwardly she was secretly shaken: So that’s what it looks like… it’s really… so big, so scary…
(End of Chapter)