Yueyang returned from the Black Void Space and spent another day in quiet cultivation.

The Dream Realm.

“These are three sword techniques I’ve newly comprehended.”

During his meditation, Yueyang demonstrated the three swords — Black Returning Burial, White Frost Bloom, and Scarlet Heaven Tempering — to the Sword Spirit in the dream realm.

The sword qi Yueyang could now condense had taken on a fledgling divine authority. Nowhere near the Sword Spirit’s effortless precision, certainly — but the leap from before was enormous. He could genuinely split heaven and earth with it now, wielding power without limit.

The Sword Spirit looked on. She offered no evaluation, and quietly faded away.

Perhaps she silently acknowledged that he was teachable. Perhaps his comprehension still hadn’t reached the standard she required, and he was not yet ready to learn the swords that came after. Yueyang kept his composure evenly — no wild elation, no discouragement. In truth, the more he grasped this god-like power, the more clearly he recognized how little he had actually mastered. Fourth Elder Sister’s knowledge inheritance had pointed out that for one who reached the ultimate heights, conjuring an entire world from a single thought was not beyond possibility. Where Yueyang stood now, measured against that knowledge inheritance, or against the supreme realms the predecessors had left behind in the World Tree — the distance was still vast. The clearest proof of that was Vivienne and Supreme themselves, both so far beyond him that he could only look up, and up again.

“You seem a little different today,” Yueyang noted. He’d noticed that his sparring partner, Big Loli, seemed vaguely deflated — this was the first time she hadn’t been a step ahead of him.

“…” Big Loli touched the tip of the little cowlick on her head with one finger, and it curved downward.

“That pouch at your waist looks familiar,” Yueyang said, catching sight of a strange little bag hanging from her hip. Big Loli shot him a slightly flustered glare and tucked it against her chest, which forced Yueyang’s curiosity to a somewhat awkward stop. He let it go. Whatever she was keeping in there, she was effectively his anyway — let her hold onto it.

For a long time, Yueyang had nurtured a quiet wish: that when he finally caught up to Big Loli, he would give her a proper beating to repay every time she had gotten the better of him.

Now that he had finally caught up, he found he couldn’t summon the energy for it.

He sat down beside her and studied her carefully — and realized that at some point, without anyone noticing, Big Loli had changed quite a bit. Not in appearance, not physically, but in spirit. There was a quality about her now that hadn’t been there when the Sword Spirit first created her from sword qi. Far more alive than before. More… real. Could she be something other than sword qi after all — perhaps a spirit being born from that small cosmos pouch?

When she’d first appeared, her somewhat violent tendencies had kept her from being quite as disarming.

Now?

She was enough to slay a shut-in like Yueyang on the spot, purely from adorableness.

He spent a good while trying to tease information out of her, but Big Loli knew his tricks and had all her defenses up — not a single secret slipped. When he said something amusing, she’d scrunch her cute little nose and narrow her eyes into crescent moons, laughing silently to herself. When he said something that annoyed her, she’d reward him with a fist, her violent nature entirely intact.

It was also on this day that the training took on completely new content.

Big Loli performed an energy-channeling method Yueyang had never seen before — something she called Crown Convergence. She placed her hand on top of his head and poured her full energy into his body. Yueyang instinctively prepared to return the energy to her in the manner of dual cultivation — but Big Loli refused. A flash of light flickered from within her, and she recovered completely in an instant. While Yueyang was struggling to process her enormous energy, Big Loli planted something within his heart — an energy source he couldn’t fully comprehend, something that seemed impossibly faint, and yet somehow completely inexhaustible.

This energy source felt like nothing so much as a seed of the World Tree.

Tiny now. But one could feel that when it grew — it would fill an entire world.

When Yueyang withdrew from the dream realm and returned to the Grimoire World, he found the interior space had completely transformed. A vitality that had never existed before had been born there — and from this moment, the Grimoire World could truly be called a world.

That halo-type war beast — World — had begun to change as well. It no longer expanded only in two dimensions, forward and back and left and right. It was growing in all ten directions now — the eight cardinal directions plus up and down.

It was still very small. But the energy it contained was not diminishing — it was rising.

Yueyang cupped it in his palm.

And felt, in that moment, as though he held the entire world in his hand.

When the World was fully formed, perhaps that would be the moment spoken of in legend — the birth of a Divine Aspect. There are still greater heights far ahead. I need to push harder — my growth can still be faster. Yueyang’s drive to cultivate burned with new intensity. If not for everything pressing in on him from all sides, he would have gone straight back to the Sky Stairway to train in focused seclusion with Xue Wuxia and Princess Qianqian for years.

Through this period of quiet cultivation, Yueyang had sunk deeply into comprehending the elevation of thought that Vivienne’s Sacred Sovereign realm had brought him.

The distance to fully assimilating everything Vivienne possessed was still considerable — but he had taken an enormous stride forward. At the Innate Sovereign level, he had pushed past the absolute limit and made an almost incomprehensible leap toward the Sacred Sovereign threshold. No one before him had ever done this. Even Vivienne hadn’t managed it. The Prison Emperor would never have been capable of it. Yueyang, who possessed only the strength of an Innate Sovereign, had already placed one foot across the Sacred Sovereign’s threshold — something no Innate Sovereign in history had ever achieved. An advanced growth that was simply impossible for anyone else.

The collective breakthrough beneath the World Tree’s Sky Stairway had been like an airdrop straight to the summit of the world.

No wandering through the fog of the middle path. Just standing at the peak, looking out.

As long as his actual power continued to rise and catch up to the realm he could already see, everything would fall into place naturally — no need for the agonizingly slow groping in the dark that other cultivators spent lifetimes on. Now, he had only to open his eyes and the entire world lay beneath his gaze. Only to spread his arms and the heavens were his to soar through.

All of this, Yueyang said nothing about — but he knew, with complete clarity, that it owed everything to the groundwork the Sword Spirit had laid for him from the very beginning.

And to Fourth Elder Sister’s knowledge inheritance.

Without them, Yueyang might still have succeeded eventually — but never with this speed. Never at this pace.

His own efforts played their part. Xue Wuxia and the others’ support and assistance played their part too. But the one who had truly given him the most — always hidden in a place no one else could see, watching over him in silence — was the Sword Spirit. It was she who had granted him the Innate Body-Piercing Invisible Sword Qi. She who had given him the richest, most expansive foundation imaginable. And it was she who, at the most critical moment — when Supreme and Night Empress had offered their full support — had driven a single sword through the Sky Stairway World Tree, connecting it to everything, allowing the realms and Laws of countless predecessors to pour into his body. That was what had forged the one-of-a-kind perfect Innate Sovereign that existed in the world. That was what had forged the one-of-a-kind him.

I will not disappoint you. Yueyang clenched his fist and tilted his face toward the sky, the vow forming silently in his heart.

“…”

Perhaps it was only his imagination. For just a single instant, he thought he could feel the Sword Spirit, somewhere impossibly high above the nine heavens, turning back to look at him — and smiling.

When Yueyang opened the bedroom door and walked out into the main cabin, three full days had passed since he’d gone in to see Vivienne.

Luohua, Lieyan, and Bi Lv — all three women looked up as he emerged.

Every one of them went still, their eyes filling with a disbelief they couldn’t quite contain.

In the instant the door opened, they had the overwhelming impression of a god stepping out. If his presence hadn’t been so achingly familiar, their faces would have drained of all color from sheer shock.

The Heavenly Realm dragon-woman attendants on the ship, sensing Yueyang’s aura the moment it touched the air, had already gathered in the front cabin — every one of them, on their knees, weeping. They felt it in their bones: the ancestral Dragon Emperor, spoken of in their clan’s oral tradition passed down from generation to generation, had truly returned. He was here, standing before them.

“You’re really Yueyang?” Bi Lv still couldn’t quite believe it.

“What kind of look is that?” Yueyang only then realized — in his elation, he had completely forgotten to conceal his aura. The presence that had emerged from his communion with Vivienne’s realm, even released unconsciously, radiated with a Law-like authority that pressed on the hearts of everyone around it. He pulled his aura back in quickly, and with the Camouflage Talent he had always possessed, achieved an effect that no ordinary person could replicate on such short notice. In an instant he was back to normal, wearing the appearance of a Sky-rank Level 3 cultivator to absolute perfection, not a crack in it.

“You scared me half to death!” Luohua, delighted and startled in equal measure, flung herself into his arms and showered him with several indignant little punches.

“Another breakthrough.” Lieyan sat heavily down on the floor.

Comparing yourself to others really could drive a person to an early grave.

Three days. He’d been gone for three days and already he’d improved again — by a shocking margin.

Forget catching up to him. Even looking up at him from below was becoming impossible to manage. The blow to morale was genuinely hard to take.

Yueyang settled onto the sofa with Luohua in his arms and gestured for Lieyan and Bi Lv to come over. “There’s been a development. I have a new plan — come help me think it through.”

Lieyan shook her head clear and pulled herself together.

This kid was an unprecedented freak of nature across all of Sky-Reaching Tower history, in a class entirely his own — had she not seen enough of his miracles already? What was there to compare herself to? With that thought, Lieyan’s spirits made a sharp recovery and she stepped over briskly, planting herself across from Yueyang to listen. Bi Lv’s eyes were alive with something bright and complicated — fixed on Yueyang, reluctant to look away.

Luohua caught it, and felt no jealousy.

He was her husband.

The stronger he grew, the faster he advanced — the prouder it made her.

What none of the four of them knew was that in a private room far below the airship, the steward who had been sharing drinks with Yanzao had, at some point, let his cup fall from his fingers. Wine soaked through his robes. He didn’t notice.

“Mr. Qian?” Yanzao had only just recovered from his own shock, but immediately composed himself and gestured discreetly for the steward to get a grip.

“Ah — forgive me.” The steward, still somewhat dazed, asked in a hushed voice: “Just now… did I sense a god descending?”

“With her ladyship’s standing, such things are not unusual,” Yanzao replied, his own heart hammering with barely suppressed excitement. To have a master like this is truly beyond anything. What had just happened was unquestionably the descent of a divine being. An aura that vast — it wouldn’t just have been felt in the surrounding area; the whole of Redemption City had probably registered it to some degree. His master’s affairs were not his to speculate on. His job was to follow orders — and right now, that meant stringing along this steward the Redemption City Lord had sent to curry favor.

“Is that so? I, lowly as I am, failed to bow when a god descended — what a terrible breach of etiquette!” The steward immediately dropped to his knees and performed three solemn kowtows.

“Please do not speak of this matter too freely — to do so would be contrary to her ladyship’s wishes,” Yanzao said, a note of warning in his tone.

“I would sooner die ten thousand deaths than forget this divine instruction!” The steward bowed respectfully to Yanzao — who until recently had been a lowly informant of no particular standing — and added apologetically: “Please tell my lord that City Lord Qianhu and I remain at his disposal at all times. Should the exalted one see fit to make use of us, we are willing to serve as horses and oxen, pledging our lives to her cause.”

“Mr. Qian’s warm-heartedness and City Lord Qianhu’s sincerity will not go unnoticed by my master,” Yanzao replied, naturally offering just enough hope to keep the door open. They were coming to him of their own accord — easy to make use of without any cost. He was confident his master wouldn’t stand on ceremony with people like these. But without knowing what the master’s plan was, he couldn’t say too much. If he did, the steward and the Redemption City Lord would probably celebrate across the whole city for three days straight.

By the time the steward rushed back to the City Lord’s manor, Redemption City Lord Qianhu was already pacing like an ant on a hot griddle, wringing his hands and wearing a path into the floor. He wanted desperately to go to the airship and see for himself — but was terrified of offending a divine being.

The steward came shouting good news before he’d even made it through the door.

The City Lord felt as though a light had appeared in the middle of the darkest night — a wave of relief washed over him, lifting what felt like half his weight, and he rushed forward to meet the steward, voice trembling with urgency: “Quickly — quickly, tell me — has a divine edict been received?”

If he ever found out the truth of the matter, he would likely have a stroke on the spot and topple face-first to the ground.

As it was, he was beside himself with joy — utterly and completely willing to serve this so-called god, Yueyang, as ox and horse, body and soul, from this day to his last.