The moment they learned Ji Wuri had returned to Mountain Beyond the Mountain, Wind Ear Marshal and Griffin Marshal could no longer sit still.

They were burning with urgency, desperate to send word up the chain of command as fast as possible.

Right now, time was life itself.

Even Divine Sovereigns like God-Slayer and Chiqiu had to snatch this window to prepare their response. Otherwise, one step behind now meant every step behind from here on out. Without Ji Wuri’s help, Hei Zhou — Western Divine Sovereign though he was — might rival Eastern Divine Sovereign God-Slayer in raw strength and reputation, but he could not truly be counted the foremost of Mountain Beyond the Mountain… With that schemer Ji Wuri backing him, however, he could very likely gather the strength of the North, Southwest, and Northwest Divine Nations and declare all-out war. And the wavering Northeast Divine Sovereign Shalong would in all likelihood fall in on his side of the West Camp as well.

No matter what, Eastern Divine Sovereign God-Slayer, Southeast Divine Sovereign Chiqiu, and God-Slayer’s staunchest ally, South Divine Sovereign Tianchou, had to know in advance and make every preparation for the Divine War that could break out at any moment.

Once they had agreed on a time and place for the next council, Wind Ear Marshal and his party set off at once, leaving the meteor belt behind.

Griffin Marshal, captain of the Tange, did not even want the hovering mothership anymore.

He gave it to Yue Yang on the spot.

For one thing, the Tange no longer had enough crew to fly her, and even if she had, her speed was nowhere near what Griffin Marshal needed now. Rather than lug her around painfully, he might as well hand her to this young man Yue Titan in exchange for a favor. For another, in unloading this hot potato he was also making a modest overture: whether they could work together in the long run remained to be seen, but at the very least he could pull Yue Yang onto his side as an ally.

The West Camp, headed by the Western Divine Nation, was surely going to lay out its own terms to court this young man before long.

Earlier in the fighting, Guhai had already offered up the Tange as bait.

Griffin Marshal was absolutely not going to let the enemy have their way. Handing the Tange under his command straight to Yue Yang was one blow that stopped Guhai’s mouth and, at the same time, blocked the West Camp’s road to courting Yue Yang.

“Even if you give her to me, it’s useless — I can’t fly her!” To claim he didn’t like the Tange would be a lie, but the problem was that this behemoth took hundreds of people to move. Yue Yang, for his part, had come to Mountain Beyond the Mountain alone. Where was he going to find hundreds of people, hundreds of them experienced enough to fly a hovering mothership? And more importantly, this thing was an enormous target that pulled aggro like nothing else. Yue Yang most emphatically did not want Ji Wuri to notice him this soon. Now that he knew about Ji Wuri’s schemes, didn’t he need to work his own quiet counterplot from behind?

“We can!” Pelican jumped forward eagerly, throwing his whole chest into it. “We Star Pirates took a real tumble this time, but rounding up a thousand or so hands is easy enough. We’ve never flown a hovering mothership, but that’s not a hard thing — reach out, feel around, you’ll get it.”

“You make it sound so simple…” Yue Yang broke into a sweat. Operating a hovering mothership was absolutely a job that took skill. There were probably people who could just “reach out and feel their way to it” — but Pelican was definitely not one of them.

“There are indeed some of our brothers who received flight training. It’s just — ahem,” Raven did not finish.

To hijack the Tange, the Star Pirates had once undergone training by technicians secretly dispatched by the Western Divine Nation. That was only surface-level instruction; the ones who could truly fly the Tange were the ship’s original crew. The Star Pirates had learned just enough to keep the original crew from pulling the wool over their eyes. Actually taking the helm now would be like a duck being shoved up on a perch to sing.

Besides, the Star Pirates had been nearly wiped out in this fight.

Only a dozen or so survivors were left, and even those were rough hands of the Flower Duck sort.

To try to move a stranded Tange out of the meteor belt with such a thin skeleton crew was frankly the stuff of daydreams.

And yet, to actually give the Tange up — that was a step that not just Pelican, Raven, and Flower Duck, but even Winged Tiger, Wind Hawk, and Flamingo, with all their willpower and steel-hard control, could not bring themselves to take… This ship had been bought with the lives of tens of thousands of brothers, and, moreover, this was a hovering mothership. With it, Star Pirates could truly be called sky-soaring pirates.

Griffin Marshal was giving the Tange to Yue Yang.

In the eyes of the Star Pirates, that was as good as giving her to them.

Yue Titan, this young man, had limitless prospects. After the Divine War, if the East Camp took the final victory, he was very likely to ascend to godhood and become a newly risen power in Mountain Beyond the Mountain. Would a person like that trouble himself over a mere hovering mothership? For the Star Pirates to follow him aboard the Tange was, in itself, an excellent laundering process. Who knew — by the end of it all, they might even wind up marshals or generals themselves. No one wanted to think that far ahead, but one thing was certain: Yue Titan would in time possess far more than just one Tange. He would possess countless of them — countless territories, countless people, countless riches, an entire Divine Nation of his own —

“Right now we don’t have enough hands to fly her. Let us head back first, pull some brothers over to help, and while we’re at it, dig up some retired veterans from the fleet,” Winged Tiger and Wind Hawk exchanged a glance. Seeing that Yue Yang did not mind the Star Pirates flying his ship for him, joy welled up in their hearts.

“Two weeks. That’s all we need,” Flamingo was excited too.

“Don’t forget the appointed time,” the last to leave was Golden Eagle Great General. He handed over some classified files from the ship to Yue Yang — and, of course, certain intelligence that could not be made public.

Unlike Golden Eagle, Griffin, and Wind Ear, the ones who had been badly wounded and captured earlier — Lei Beast, Blood Panther, Berserk Bull, Ulna, and Meat Butcher, freed from their cells — had still not fully recovered.

They did not have the strength to make the long journey back to the surface from the meteor belt. They lacked Golden Eagle’s and Griffin’s abilities. Short-term living, even short-term combat, they could manage — but breaking free of the meteor belt and making it safely down to the surface was not possible.

Bearing serious wounds, they refused Winged Tiger’s overtures of reconciliation and chose the escape pods instead.

They meant to leave.

Before they went —

Lei Beast and Blood Panther, on behalf of the survivors, did offer a small word of thanks to Yue Yang.

It was not Yue Yang who had directly rescued them.

But Yue Yang had struck down Hungry Ghost and Big-Eared Bat, had by unknown means put an end to Evil-Eye Monkey, Long-Tongue Lizard, Slug, and the tens of thousands of mutant maggot-men, and had finally appeared on the battlefield in a way that startled the notorious Guhai and Wan’e into withdrawing — indirectly saving Griffin Marshal and Golden Eagle General, and, through them, saving the badly-wounded Lei Beast and the others in their cells.

For them to offer Yue Yang their thanks was hardly out of place.

“We’ll see each other on the battlefield.” Lei Beast still carried a heavy grudge against Raven and the Star Pirates, but he now understood the truth of the situation: the real enemy was the Western Divine Nation, pulling the strings from behind. The Star Pirates were only pitiable pawns.

“Anything above divine-general tier, I won’t pretend to promise. But at divine-servant and divine-envoy tier among the West Camp’s elite, I’d genuinely like to see who racks up more kills,” Raven threw down a challenge.

“You’re on,” Blood Panther replied, holding his anger down.

The survivors split themselves between two small escape pods.

They shot out of the Tange, arrowing straight for the surface.

Winged Tiger, Wind Hawk, and Flamingo — the three chieftains — departed one after another, hoping to pay handsomely and hire enough retired veterans from every corner to get the Tange moving again, to make her a warship of their own. Raven and Pelican did not have the raw power of the three, so they had to take a mid-sized escape pod, which was much slower than the small pods but held nearly a hundred times the seats and interior room.

Raven and Pelican needed to bring more Star Pirates back with them. They could not sweep off as breezily as Lei Beast.

Aside from Flower Duck and the few Star Pirates who had already been with Yue Yang, one who unexpectedly chose to stay was Guoguo.

Even Yue Yang could not quite work this one out.

Wasn’t Guoguo the one who resented him the most?

Not only that, but Guoguo was plainly a shrewd sort who cherished his own skin. To pass up the chance to leave and remain aboard the Tange was strange indeed.

“I’ve got nowhere to go right now. Once we reach the meeting place and rejoin my lord, I’ll be off,” was the excuse Guoguo offered on the surface. In truth, being the smart man he was, he knew that Mountain Beyond the Mountain likely had no more safe haven anywhere — a Divine War was about to break out, and staying down on the surface of Mountain Beyond the Mountain very possibly meant a dead end. Staying aboard the Tange might look dangerous, but was in fact very safe. Setting aside the Divine Sovereigns, the likes of Guhai and Wan’e — cattle-tier monsters as they were — could do nothing against this Yue Titan brat. Half the Five Great Villains and half the Five Sense Generals had been slaughtered by him. So no matter which way you looked at it, staying here was the safest option going.

“Suit yourself.” Yue Yang had just taken over the Tange and had his hands full. He could not be bothered with him.

The moment Yue Yang took charge of the Tange —

He did nothing but head straight back into Grimoire World with Yue Yu, Princess Qianqian, and the others, and pored over the top-secret files Golden Eagle Great General had handed him.

Half a day of digestion and cross-referencing, and Yue Yang finally had a bit of a grasp of the hovering mothership’s construction.

Hovering motherships, large or small, were all built in what was called the God-Slaying Mystic Realm.

And not just anyone had the standing or the ability to make them.

The vessels had been designed and invented by two fallen ancient gods, Taiyan and Bingli. They took God-Slaying Mystic Metal — a special substance that had existed from time immemorial — and, guided by divine power and divine mind, shaped it into the form of the hovering mothership. Because those two ancient gods, Taiyan and Bingli, had only ever designed and researched hovering motherships, the eight Divine Sovereigns who later inherited their legacy could likewise only use divine power to make hovering motherships, and could not make anything else at all… Over the tens of thousands of years since, both Hei Zhou and God-Slayer had tried thousands and thousands of new experiments, none of which had ever succeeded.

Which showed just how peerless the great wisdom of Taiyan and Bingli must have been.

Because divine power and divine mind varied in strength, the hovering motherships the eight Divine Sovereigns could make also varied in size.

God-Slayer and Hei Zhou were the strongest. The two of them could make super-massive hovering motherships — the Western Divine Nation had the ten-kilometer-long Dragon Eagle, and the Eastern Divine Nation had one just as vast, called the Kunpeng. The lesser Divine Nations, like the Southeast, could only manage hovering motherships around the size of the Tange.

“Since that’s the case, why don’t we build our own super-massive hovering mothership as our future mount?” Sick Beauty had the deepest interest of anyone in this kind of research.

“Not only will we build the biggest hovering mothership — we’ll build all sorts of other things. Weapons, armor, war dolls, castles… Everything, everything, we can put to use,” Princess Qianqian had grown quite fond of this God-Slaying Mystic Metal, whose inner Law-force could reduce an enemy’s attack power a hundredfold.

“Mm, that’s a nice thought — but it’s only a thought!” Yue Yang cautioned against too much optimism.

“Haven’t you already made armor with it?” Princess Qianqian huffed.

“Yes, I can — but the efficiency is terrible.” Yue Yang, for his part, poured out his sorrows. “Just making a few pieces of armor and one war doll was enough to leave me utterly wrung out. And Tiger-girl, you want castles too? Might as well just kill me and get it over with. Have you all not stopped to think? If hovering motherships were so easy to make, why would the eight Divine Nations, after tens of thousands of years, still have so few of them? Why wouldn’t they all just churn out more? The reason is that making them isn’t easy. Even for the ones who go around calling themselves gods, making a single hovering mothership must cost them enormous effort.”

“Whatever. However you do it, you figure it out. I want my castle.” When Princess Qianqian was being reasonable, she was very reasonable. When she turned savage, she was a tiger-girl who wouldn’t hear a word from anyone.

“Girl, being a stubborn brat is an illness. It needs treatment!” Yue Yang, for his part, had barely gotten the words out when Princess Qianqian’s fist sent him flying.

“If God-Slaying Mystic Metal can be used to make hovering motherships, it must be usable for other things too. And on this we’ve already succeeded once. What we need now is to find the best way to guide it. I feel there has to be some mystery in this. Two great gods like Taiyan and Bingli would never have come up with a method so clumsy…” Yue Yu propped a hand under her chin and fell into deep thought.

She was always Yue Yang’s most reliable helper.

Whatever the difficulty, she wanted to share the burden with her little brother.

The Divine Punishment Empress had studied a piece of God-Slaying Mystic Metal for quite a while when she suddenly set it down, drawing everyone’s collective attention as if she had discovered some grand secret.

Who could have guessed that this Divine Punishment Empress would only stretch out an inviting, lazy stretch — so sultry it was fatal — and say, “I’m sleepy. I’m going back to get my beauty sleep. You lot keep researching — I’ll cheer you on in spirit. Oh, and if you do figure out the castle, put me down for one!”

Everyone flopped over on the spot.

You have got to be the most comfortable Divine Punishment Empress there ever was. None of us is as clever as you!

The Divine Punishment Empress’s shameless retreat to bed struck a heavy blow to everyone’s morale. Half a night’s research yielded nothing whatsoever, and everyone decided to head back and rest. In the end, even the ever-energetic Princess Qianqian was yawning with boredom, and she decided to set it aside for now — sleep her fill, eat her fill tomorrow, and then decide whether she felt like helping Yue Yang work out this God-Slaying Mystic Metal that had defied ten thousand years of study… Sick Beauty had been coaxed back to bed by Yue Yang, and only Yue Yu was left. After tidying up the wreckage of the room, she quietly stayed behind and sat down beside Yue Yang, softly comforting him:

“Third brother, we’ve already succeeded. We just haven’t found the best way. God-Slaying Mystic Metal is a special substance. It must have been created by the ancient great gods, and for a thing like that, we cannot use ordinary logic. Perhaps it doesn’t need so much troublesome research at all, because gods create things by a single thought — if you too are a ‘god,’ then for you it can also be done by a single thought. Whatever you want to make, you make. No external force is needed at all…”

At first Yue Yang was not listening for anything in particular.

But the more he listened, the more he felt a spark leaping in his mind.

Yue Yu’s last, unconscious words of comfort struck him like a bolt of lightning. A wisdom-light exploded in his brain, sudden as an epiphany poured over the crown of his head.

He shot to his feet in his excitement, forgetting everything else, and threw his arms tightly around Yue Yu. He kissed her — hard — and then, not sated, kissed her several times more. Only then did he release her, leaving her frozen in place like a wooden chicken, while he snatched up in high spirits the piece of God-Slaying Mystic Metal that had sat on the desk all night. He fired up his talent, called up his Creation Domain, lifted his Sovereign Intent, and gathered that ultra-strong divine power of his — the divine power that had long since surpassed ordinary divine-realm bounds — and wrapped it around the God-Slaying Mystic Metal in his hand.

Not by forcing a change. By guiding, by following the grain of it, by riding its own current.

And this time, unlike when he had made the armor or the war doll, Yue Yang was working with pure divine mind as his guide.

One thought.

A brilliant, dazzling light burst out of Yue Yang’s hands — as bright as the searing sun, or like heaven and earth splitting open in the first moment of the universe’s birth.

(End of Chapter 1157)