To draw a perfect close to his reception career, Old Mao exercised his authority to its very limit and — in an unprecedented move — hired Yue Titan, a young man whose sole special skill was “handsome,” as an apprentice divine attendant. His subordinate Guoguo objected strenuously, and Yue Titan himself, wholly oblivious, remained dissatisfied even so. But between cajoling and pleading, Old Mao managed at last to get the divine contract settled.

Guoguo felt an impulse toward suicide.

Compare a man to a man, and one of them dies of spite.

He had served the Southeast Divine Nation faithfully and dutifully for decades and hadn’t managed to scrape his way to even apprentice divine servant. This kid shows up, and straight off he’s an apprentice divine attendant — and dissatisfied with it, no less. Truly, one hardly knew what to say!

But what could be done about it? Whose fault was it that he hadn’t happened upon a golden opportunity that came once in a thousand years? If only he had arrived at the Reception Terrace in the final hour of his lord’s reception career… Guoguo didn’t dare follow the thought further. Then again, on reflection, Lord Mao Podi had treated him well enough — as close as a son or a nephew, giving him a leg up at every turn. Had it not been for his lord’s regard back in the day, he’d likely never have had a day in the sun at all. Thinking this, Guoguo’s resentment toward Old Mao dissolved entirely — but toward this Yue Titan, this pretty-boy Yue who’d been lucky enough to have stepped in heaven knew whose dog turd, his jealousy and indignation ran extraordinarily deep.

Of course, clever as he was, Guoguo wouldn’t let too much of that jealousy show. For one thing, he had to spare Lord Mao Podi’s face and not leave his lord with no way to climb down. For another, doing so would be genuinely unwise — however unwilling he was, what of it? The matter was already settled. Kicking up a fuss now would only turn an opponent into a sworn enemy and touch off conflict and grudges on the spot.

“Take him to the Reception House to rest properly. In a couple of days we set out and return to the Southeast Divine Nation.” With the divine contract in hand, Old Mao’s mood was truly fine indeed.

“Yes, my lord.” Guoguo answered respectfully, but swept a cold glance over Yue Titan. “Follow me, then!”

“What rank are you?” This newcomer, Yue Titan, actually saw fit to remind him: “If your rank is lower than mine, then you’d best show a more respectful attitude!”

“Why, you—” Hearing that, Guoguo’s heels tangled and he very nearly stumbled flat onto the ground. You little punk, a newcomer — you’re about as significant as a pig on the butcher’s block. Not making you buy the drinks and carving a fat slice out of you is already mercy on my part, and you dare turn around and lecture me? Who the hell do you think you are? It seems there’s no getting around teaching you some manners!

“If you need anything, you may give him his orders. Of course, you’re still new, and there’s a great deal you don’t know, so you may also consult Guoguo — he’s a know-it-all in the finest sense!” Old Mao smoothed things over, warning Guoguo to mind himself and not vie with the newcomer, while also nudging Yue Titan to remember that a newcomer ought to be humble and learn from his elders.

“Yes, my lord.” With Old Mao standing right there, Guoguo naturally wasn’t about to fall out with Yue Yang, and heaped his face with smiles. “Lord Divine Attendant, please, follow me!”

“Now that’s more like it…” Yue Titan set off with a great swaggering stride, seeming less like a newcomer minding his manners than like a spoiled young lordling out on the town to flirt with the girls, treating Guoguo entirely as his own dog-footed lackey.

Old Mao took all this in and shook his head inwardly. Had there been any other choice, he’d absolutely never have picked this Yue Titan. But talent was scarce; the Reception Terrace these days was so deserted you could net sparrows at the door. Where was he going to find another “talent”? Besides, however young this Yue Titan was, he had a supreme power secretly backing him, and his future attainments could be counted on. Investing a little more in him now was hardly without prospect of return.

Were it not for the duties of his post — a reception envoy could not lightly leave the Reception Terrace — Old Mao would have escorted this peculiar newcomer to the Reception House himself.

Just who was that supreme power who had sent Yue Titan to the Reception Terrace?

Could it be the one directly above him…?

If the answer were yes, then hadn’t he just performed a great service?

Sadly, there was much in Yue Titan’s earlier words that was unclear; for the moment he couldn’t be certain, nor could he get a firm grasp on the details behind it. Never mind — that could wait. Perhaps the supreme power in the background wished to act in secret and didn’t want it made public.

In a fine mood, Old Mao watched Yue Titan and Guoguo depart. Whatever else might be said, at the very least his reception career had been brought to an utterly perfect close.

Three hours later.

Golden light flashed in the sky.

Several richly dressed, haughtily bearing reception divine envoys arrived, led by an awe-inspiring divine general clad head to foot in golden armor. Old Mao took one look and paled with shock, hurried forward to cut them off, and shouted sharply: “Ji Zhong! What are you doing here? This month is the Southeast Divine Nation’s reception month. Your Western Divine Nation’s turn doesn’t come for another two months. Coming here now to seize people by force — do you mean to shatter the peace covenant forged in common by the eight great gods, and make war upon our Southeast Divine Nation?”

“Mao Podi, you really have gone senile!” The tall divine general in the resplendent golden armor strode forward, looked down upon Old Mao from on high, and gave a cold snort. “The generosity of our Western Divine Nation — who among the people of Earth Valley doesn’t know it? Who hasn’t heard of it? Talent flocks to my lord’s banner, falling over themselves to come, every one of them signing a divine contract of their own free will. What need have we to seize your talent? Besides — do you have any talent to receive at all? You’ve waited out a whole month and not one has come, am I right? Hahahaha! Earth Valley is vast, but where in it will you find a single elite talent willing to serve your Southeast Divine Nation? And if there were one, he’d surely be rubbish and refuse. Let me, in my great benevolence, share a piece of news with you, you pitiful old thing: your Southeast Divine Nation will never receive another elite talent — not so much as one, you will absolutely never receive… Why? Because every talent has signed a divine contract with our Western Divine Nation. And it isn’t just you — apart from the Eastern Divine Nation, not one of the divine nations will see a single talent brought in for a hundred years. That’s what I came to say. Do you understand? You could squat here a full hundred years and never receive a single elite!”

“You’ve violated the divine covenant! You actually went into Earth Valley and poached them outright?” Old Mao’s face went red with rage.

“They came and signed with us willingly, of their own accord. We forced no one — understand? We have not violated the covenant, and we have not poached anyone. It’s simply that your terms aren’t generous enough to attract the elite. Hahaha!” The tall divine general named Ji Zhong reached out and shoved Old Mao aside.

“Ji Zhong, you bastard!” Old Mao trembled from head to foot with fury, yet there was nothing he could do about the man. It was an exploitation of a loophole, utterly contemptible — but on the face of it there was no flaw to seize upon.

“We started from the same place. Today I am a divine general. And you?” Ji Zhong spat contemptuously. “You have no standing to lecture me!”

“If it hadn’t been for you, back then—” Old Mao clenched his teeth and forced himself to stay calm.

“Hah — you still have the face to speak of ‘back then’? Back then, how many people died because of your cowardice, your incompetence, and your sham benevolence?” Ji Zhong swung his great hand with force, power erupting, and blasted Old Mao clean off his feet, sending him flying more than ten meters and slamming his body savagely into the ground. “You hate me? I hate you far more. If not for you, you useless thing, she would never have died. Go on living, you piece of garbage — because I intend to watch you suffer misfortune for the rest of your life. And right now, it’s only just beginning!”

“What is going on here?”

A voice, majestic as a god’s, rang out from the transport gate of the Reception Terrace.

Radiance blazed ten thousand feet high. Light and majesty more piercing than a god’s own descent filled the whole Reception Terrace in an instant, like the sun bursting forth.

Not only those several haughty, richly dressed divine envoys, but even the tall golden-armored divine general Ji Zhong dropped to one knee — nearly as reverent as if prostrating before the divine lord of the Western Divine Nation himself — to receive the newcomer. Old Mao at first took the newcomer for the divine lord of the Western Divine Nation, and was frightened out of his very soul, gripped by a terrifying compulsion to fall to his knees and beg forgiveness. But by virtue of his station as the Southeast Divine Nation’s reception envoy, and by his own capacity to resist in mind and will, he barely managed to withstand it, fighting desperately to hold back that surge of abject dread. Even so, he lowered his head and dropped his gaze, not daring to look directly at the newcomer.

Ji Zhong’s voice was brimming with joy: “I welcome the Young Lord! Ji Zhong has kept watch here a thousand years, all for this day — to receive the Young Lord’s sacred arrival!”

The newcomer’s voice was soft and gentle, clear as a spring, yet it pierced straight to the depths of the heart with ease, sharper than a keen arrow: “Better to use my new identity. All this ‘Young Lord’ this and ‘Young Lord’ that — never mind among our own people, but if outsiders hear it, we can hardly guarantee they won’t grow suspicious.”

“Yes, Young Lord. Then Ji Zhong makes bold to presume.” The golden-armored Ji Zhong presented a divine contract to the newcomer with both hands. “To conceal the Young Lord’s identity for the time being and facilitate your movements, Ji Zhong has provisionally arranged for you the identity of an apprentice divine attendant… From now on, in public, the Young Lord may say he is a junior kinsman of Ji Zhong’s own house. Your proof of identity in Earth Valley and your personnel placement in the Mountain Beyond the Mountain are all likewise in good order. Please look them over.”

“With you handling it, I’m at ease.”

The newcomer accepted the divine contract and laughed lightly: “Who could ever have guessed that I, Ji Wuri, have already arrived in Earth Valley? The evil god, that Yue family kid, Heaven Opener, Heaven Defier, Ranfeng, Wanmo, and everything within Human Valley — all of them are chess pieces in the palm of my hand. Ha! Fight away, all of you. You’ll never leap beyond Human Valley’s bounds. And the next place I, Ji Wuri, mean to conquer is right here — the Mountain Beyond the Mountain!”

Ji Zhong and the others stood respectfully at his back, a devout, fanatical light shining in their eyes.

By this point Old Mao had gone cold all over with terror, rigid as wood and stone. He could not move a muscle.

No one spared him — this ant — so much as a glance, not even his mortal enemy Ji Zhong. Every one of them followed close behind that godlike man, transforming into streaming light that filled the sky and cutting away through the air.

“Huff… huff… I must report this to the divine lord!” Old Mao clambered up from the ground, and even after a long while could not calm his fear.

“Light of Oblivion.“

Behind him — at some point unknown — there towered a humanoid war-beast whose gaze looked down in contempt upon every living thing in the world. As Old Mao turned in horror, its long, slender palm pressed against his forehead. White light flashed, and Old Mao’s eyes went vacant as he collapsed unconscious to the ground. The humanoid war-beast, its eyes a purple-gold, spat scornfully upon Old Mao’s body and mocked him in human speech: “And this counts as a powerhouse? Humans truly are a garbage race! Here in Earth Valley I finally don’t have to sit moldering inside a grimoire the way I did in Human Valley. To celebrate this hard-won freedom, I think I’ll happily kill ten thousand human powerhouses!”

The humanoid war-beast, its combat strength unfathomable, nudged Old Mao’s head with its foot.

It could have crushed it like an eggshell.

But it did not.

Perhaps it felt there was no point killing an ant like this; perhaps it was because the death of a Southeast Divine Nation reception envoy might easily touch off an incident — and besides, Old Mao’s memory had already been washed clean into oblivion. The purple-gold-eyed humanoid war-beast lifted its leg in disdain, turned into a raging gust of wind, and vanished in an instant without a trace.

Yue Titan, lying quietly at rest on the big bed in his room at the Reception House, suddenly opened his eyes, a thread of a smile appearing at the corner of his lips: “In this life, there’s no place we won’t meet again. Well — this makes things a great deal more interesting!”

Whether it was because of Ji Wuri’s arrival, or because the trial required it, that mysterious existence in the boundless world — the one utterly devoid of feeling — flinging him here to Earth Valley’s “Mountain Beyond the Mountain” was in either case a stroke of good fortune. Had he not learned of the situation here, then even upon returning to Human Valley he’d have had to guard against Ji Wuri at every turn and exhaust himself hunting for him. Now it was perfect: he could open hostilities with him right here in the Mountain Beyond the Mountain — simple, and no bother — with none of the bound hands and tied feet of Human Valley.

Only — who was that mysterious existence within the boundless world?

And how could that fellow possibly have the power to fling him out of the boundless world and dump him here in Earth Valley’s Mountain Beyond the Mountain?

Was it done deliberately, to stop Ji Wuri? Or was this a chance encounter — and did that mysterious great power truly mean for him to come here in search of some ancient relic?

Yue Yang thought about it for a good long while and simply couldn’t puzzle it out.

At last he slapped his own head. Truly stupid. Rather than rack his brains like this, better to go and ask Empress Vivienne!

As it happened, he’d comprehended creation, destruction, and eternity within the boundless world, and had grasped his way to a feeling for the divine realm. Go and ask her, then… Had that mysterious great power not flung him out of the boundless world — had he fully comprehended and absorbed the boundless world’s unnamed divine power inside it — he’d likely have ascended straight to the divine realm! And were that so, it might not necessarily have been a good thing, since what the sword-spirit imperial-lady asked of him was to lay a solid foundation, not to break through.

A slight cast of his senses told him that Guoguo — that jealous, spiteful fellow next door — was already fast asleep and snoring. Yue Yang immediately returned to the Grimoire World, and after sharing the good news with Yue Yu, Princess Qianqian, and the others, went at once, unable to wait, into the black-hole sealing space to seek out Empress Vivienne.

(End of Chapter 1134)