By the time Yue Yang and Mingzhu came back to themselves from their shock, the three white-clad maidens had long since returned to the tent to rest.

Human Valley, Earth Valley, Heaven Valley — Yue Yang now knew the true meaning of all three, and yet in his heart he found himself only more perplexed. Was obtaining a Divine Codex truly so difficult? To ascend from human to god, to cross ten million barriers and trials, to pour out boundless sweat and effort — all of that was normal enough. But why should the trials of Human, Earth, and Heaven Valley be so far more difficult than even the extreme of what one might imagine? Human Valley’s true meaning — transcending the self and ascending to the divine realm — was already difficult enough, and after it came the even more inconceivable destruction and creation… The trial-ground merely meant to cultivate a few warriors of the divine rank, didn’t it? It wasn’t cultivating a Creator, so what need was there to set the difficulty this staggeringly high?

Could it be that every one who forged a contract with a Divine Codex had to be a figure on the order of a Creator?

Why, “creation” — the true meaning of Heaven Valley — was still only the ninth gate, not even the final trial.

He truly couldn’t imagine how Her Majesty Empress Vivienne, who back then had charged all the way through to the ninth gate, had ever passed these trials.

“My heart’s a bit in turmoil. I need to rest. Let’s each go back, think it over carefully, and tomorrow morning trade what we’ve each come up with. Goodnight.” Mingzhu felt no confusion at all about Human Valley’s becoming-human, transcendence, and ascension, but Earth Valley’s “destruction” and Heaven Valley’s “creation” had him turning it over a hundred times without arriving at an answer.

“…” Yue Yang had meant to say just leave it to me — but knowing Mingzhu would have to pass this gate himself sooner or later, he could only nod in agreement.

Come the next day, before Yue Yang could open his mouth, Mingzhu suddenly broke into a face full of smiles. “I’ve thought it through. Once I clear Human Valley, I’ll go back. To transcend the human body and comprehend the divine realm is already my greatest goal. As for the Earth Valley and Heaven Valley that come after, I won’t think about them for now. Bite off more than you can chew and you won’t swallow it — I’ve got enough self-knowledge for that. I’m sorry. I’d thought I could keep you company all the way to the very end, but now… perhaps this is fate. Fate has made its selection of us, and only the very best one can walk all the way to the end.”

Mingzhu’s eyes rested on Yue Yang, as though saying: You’re that last lucky one. I can’t compare to you.

Yue Yang broke into a heavy sweat. “It’s far too early to be saying this. For all we know I’ll get washed out at the very next gate.”

Seeing the look on him, Mingzhu couldn’t help laughing. He clapped Yue Yang on the shoulder and scolded him with a smile: “If you really do get washed out, then I won’t own you as a friend anymore. Besides, even if you did obtain a Divine Codex, I wouldn’t be jealous of you — what are you fretting over!”

“A Divine Codex isn’t so easily obtained.” Yue Yang, for the moment, didn’t want to think too far ahead, and shifted the topic with a question: “After clearing Human Valley — you really mean to go?”

“It’s already decided.” Mingzhu nodded.

“And after that? What do you plan to do?” Yue Yang pressed, unwilling to give up.

“Do some of the things I’ve wanted to do before but never had the time for!” Mingzhu said it very vaguely.

“Is that so… What is it you’ve wanted to do but never had time for? Oh, right — that secret you were going to tell me before, what was it? You’re about to leave — say it now!” Yue Yang looked at Mingzhu, brimming with hope.

“When it comes time to leave, I’ll consider whether to tell you. That depends on your performance.” Mingzhu smiled and shook his head, refusing Yue Yang’s request.

“You bastard, don’t force me to use force!” Yue Yang’s patience wasn’t especially good.

“You think I’m afraid of you?” Mingzhu, not the least bit cowed, glared right back at Yue Yang. The two of them pressed toward each other like fighting cocks, almost nose to nose, breath mingling, and a certain strange atmosphere stole quietly into being. Just as Yue Yang steeled himself to deal with this fellow — preparing to plant a “bite” square on Mingzhu’s face — the tent suddenly opened, and the sweet round-faced one poked out her lovely head, gazing over with curiosity.

Yue Yang and Mingzhu hastily sprang three meters apart.

The time-crosser let out a bluster of a laugh: “Ah, fine weather today — not a cloud for ten thousand miles, the blue sky washed clean, a fine day for a bit of debauch— ah, no, a fine day for reciting poetry!”

Mingzhu broke into a wild sweat. Big brother, could you kindly check the sky before you lie? A storm’s about to break any minute — the whole heavens are packed with black clouds like the end of the world. Where do you see a sky washed clean, not a cloud for ten thousand miles? Debauchery, perhaps — but how is this a fine day for poetry?

There was no helping it. Try as he might, he simply couldn’t play along with a fellow whose train of thought jumped the rails like this. He turned his back and pretended not to know the man, to spare himself the embarrassment.

The sweet round-faced one lifted her head to look at the sky, her own face full of confusion, and for a good while couldn’t make sense of it. In the end she gave up pursuing the matter and waved to Yue Yang and Mingzhu: “A storm’s coming. Won’t you two come inside and shelter from the rain?”

Yue Yang leaned in close to the round-faced maiden and, wickedly, produced his beauty-trap smile: “I’m quite dangerous, you know. Inviting me in to shelter from the rain — aren’t you afraid?”

“Oh, stop it — someone’s kindly letting you in out of the rain, and still you carry on like a big bad wolf. Go a single day without doing something wicked and your whole body feels out of sorts, is that it?” Mingzhu, exasperated at iron that refused to become steel, knocked the time-crosser flat and hauled him bodily inside — a display of violence that left the round-faced maiden sweating hard.

“If only I had a power like a god’s — facing a driving storm like this, one word, ‘Stop,’ and it’d all fall calm. Wouldn’t that be splendid.” Yue Yang indulged in a bit of fantasy.

“Dream on!” Mingzhu felt daydreaming was practically this man’s special talent.

“You actually could, you know…” The leader of the three white-clad maidens, the one holding the silver grimoire, who had been sitting in quiet meditation all this while, suddenly spoke with a smile: “If you could do that, then you would truly have passed Human Valley’s trial. If you can’t, then even if you succeed in clearing it and leaving Human Valley, you’ll be no more than a warrior who succeeded on the surface but in fact failed the challenge of the self.”

“What?” Yue Yang had only been talking off the top of his head just now; he hadn’t expected her to respond like this.

“Human Valley’s boundless restrictions — no talent, no domain power, no aid of any kind. How could anyone possibly quell a storm?” Mingzhu felt it was impossible too.

“The truth is, the reason Human Valley imposes restrictions like these is to constrain the one being tested to the greatest possible degree — to turn a powerful trial-taker into a person of the very lowest station, so that in the weakest, most powerless of circumstances, they must learn to surpass the self. If that mind-set is never elevated, never transcended — for so much as a single day — then the trial-taker remains forever a human, and not a god!” So the valiant white-clad maiden explained.

“Even if the mind-set is elevated, there’s still no divine power to stop a storm with!” Mingzhu still found it hard to picture.

“That is because you are still ‘human’ at present. If you surpass the human and ascend to god, then even the sternest Law will no longer restrict you — all the powers of Human Valley will instead move in accord with you, and return to your command!” The gentle, serene leader spoke a line that sent a violent tremor through both Mingzhu’s heart and Yue Yang’s.

Something went off with a boom in Yue Yang’s mind, as if he’d grasped some inkling of truth. He was just about to shift into a state of comprehension—

When suddenly he saw Mingzhu’s body convulse violently, his whole person swaying, tottering, as though he might collapse to the ground at any instant.

Yue Yang hastily pressed down the sea-churning surge of thought within him and rushed over to steady Mingzhu. In the very instant his hand touched Mingzhu’s body, a power suddenly burst forth from within Mingzhu.

Heaven above and earth below — including the howling, driving storm outside — all at once fell frozen still.

Boundless, inexhaustible power formed a ring of invisible shock waves that spread out in a frenzy, and everywhere they passed they carried some unknown will and majesty. Even the restrictive power within Human Valley was shaken to shatterment.

Amid those countless space-fragments, like shards of a broken mirror, Yue Yang’s hand was violently repelled by that unknown majesty, and his whole body was flung with a boom more than a hundred meters away.

The three white-clad maidens, however, seemed to have long been prepared: a shield-canopy of light, holy beyond all measure, rose up over the surface of their bodies. Utterly unmoved by the spatial upheaval, they remained as calm as ever.

From Mingzhu’s body poured countless strands of soft white light, for all the world like moonlight. It seemed as though some seal, congealed by an arcane art, had come undone.

Whoosh.

Countless strands of white light spiraled and gathered, forming a vast pillar of light above Mingzhu’s head that shot straight up through the ninth heaven and reached to the very vault of the firmament.

And at that same moment, the grimoire that could not possibly have manifested here in Human Valley floated forth of its own accord from Mingzhu — and it was, astonishingly, an exceedingly rare Sacred Codex. The instant the Sacred Codex came into the world, countless sealing powers all burst asunder — and even Mingzhu’s body burst into ten million points of radiance. These points of radiance gathered together like darting fish, forming a mass of light soft as the bright moon.

Within the mass of light, there seemed to be a woman.

Her form was like a sprite beneath the moon: golden hair like a cascade, willow brows like crescents, long lashes interlaced, seeming to slumber deeply with eyes closed, not yet aware that the world was undergoing every kind of change.

When she slowly opened those star-bright eyes — glancing and glimmering, dazzling as the constellations — the dumbstruck Yue Yang felt a window open in his own heart as well. Only, at present, his body was wholly bound by the supreme majesty the woman naturally emanated, unable to stir, still less able to open his mouth and cry out.

Beneath that singular arcane seal and that wondrous domain-concealment, there had been, all along, a peerless beauty such as this.

Pointed of ear, bare of foot, her whole body wreathed in holy radiance, the beauty seemed to want to reach out and embrace Yue Yang.

But the supreme majesty she could not control would only push Yue Yang further away. And the Law’s power within Human Valley was beginning to recoil against her. It would not harm her — but it would surely fling her beyond the restrictions, for she was now no longer within Human Valley’s Law, no longer suited to remaining in such a place!

The beauty, coming back to herself, marshaled nearly the utmost of the willpower she could presently command. A bright moon rose; within her domain, wondrous moonlight combined with the supreme majesty of the seal to bring the shattering, ceaselessly self-healing space-fragments to a complete standstill. In that single second, she flung herself toward Yue Yang, her exquisite little face wholly given over to anguish — but before she could gather her arms to hold the Yue Yang in her embrace tight, before she could press those cherry lips to his, the frozen space resumed its motion once more under Human Valley’s powerful Law-restriction.

“The truth is, I am…” The beauty had no time to speak that secret of hers before the restrictive power flung her beyond Human Valley.

The shattered space closed up in an instant, whole as before.

Yue Yang, who had been standing frozen in place, at last recovered the power to move.

He reached out his hand, and with his palm, gently caught a single pearl-tear the beauty had left behind as she departed.

Within that tear-drop, still faintly warm, there lingered a wisp of will, faint as though there yet not — the last message its owner had left for Yue Yang: I’m not really so savage. If I hit you, if I cursed you, it was because I feared you would too easily forget me…

(End of Chapter)