The Yinglong could be built, but the power source was a major problem.

The Heavenly Realm rune-diagrams and the ancient rune-diagrams engraved across every scale and whisker could of course provide some of the energy. But a peak war doll a hundred and eight kilometers long could not possibly run entirely off the energy absorbed by its rune-diagrams — and certainly not while fighting. Yue Yang, for his part, had thought of the solution long before the design stage.

Divine Stones.

Divine Stones had another name: “endless energy.”

So long as there was light, they could convert it into energy, forever, without ever running dry. They provided continuously, without limit, whatever was needed.

In all the world, there was likely no better core power source for a war doll than a Divine Stone… Even without them, Yue Yang could get the Yinglong to move. But with them, the Yinglong could sail and fight as freely as he liked.

Combined with the Heavenly Realm rune-diagrams and the ancient rune-diagrams, a Divine Stone could absorb and convert any kind of energy, and channel it to whatever the Yinglong required.

That included energy generated in the course of combat itself!

“Where do we get that many Divine Stones?” Princess Qianqian felt the plan was excellent, but hard to actually pull off.

Like the fabled art of picking up girls.

Anyone who learned that art could — with a single move — send the girl into their arms and love them heaven-shatteringly, until-death-do-us-part, forever inseparable. On the face of it, the girl-picking art was unbeatable. But if you thought about it calmly, it depended on who learned it. If the person who mastered the art was a girl themselves, what use was learning it?

So — for anything at all, you had to start with practical realities.

Divine Stones were splendid.

But right now they had none, so it was a moot point.

“We’ve been searching the God-Slaying Mystic Realm for days, without finding a thing, correct?” Yue Yang burst out laughing, in a way that puzzled everyone. “This whole time, we’ve all been making a beginner’s mistake. We assumed every secret was stored inside the God-Slaying Mystic Realm itself, and the only question was how to dig it up… I only realized last night that the God-Slaying Mystic Realm’s secrets — at least those on its outside — are not on its surface at all! The eight Divine Sovereigns are suspicious of one another, competitive with one another. Would they leave those secrets out in the open where anyone could see? Obviously not!”

“You mean the real secrets are hidden outside the God-Slaying Mystic Realm?” Princess Qianqian, at these words, could hardly contain her excitement. To keep her cool, she bit her own index finger, using a sting of pain to hold her feelings in check.

“I get it!” Luohua, being clever, grasped the point in a flash and jumped up, throwing her arms around Yue Yang. “Ay-ya, I understand!”

“Go!”

More impatient still was Princess Qianqian.

The moment the rouge-tiger-girl worked it out, she was off, with Hong personally guiding, out of Grimoire World.

Her body darting light as a swallow, she plunged straight into the eerie sky-blotting clouds… Then Luohua caught up, and then Yue Yu, and one after another they all came out, split into pairs, and scattered in every direction of the compass. They plunged into the vast expanse of black cloud that looked close on the surface but stretched impossibly far apart. Yue Yang did not follow. He only smiled, then turned and drifted back down onto the God-Slaying Mystic Realm to begin the Yinglong’s peak-tier creation.

By evening, when Yue Yang, exhausted, returned to Grimoire World —

What met his eyes was a mountain of Divine Stones, brilliant and shining.

The stones numbered, at his estimate, several hundred thousand — of every size and shape. The smallest, no bigger than a grain of rice; the next up, apricot-pit sized; larger, fist-sized; larger still, round as a ball. There were even irregular Divine Stone crystals the size of small mountains, stacked in layer upon layer, piled up to a full kilometer high.

Yue Yang, for his part, stared in wide-mouthed astonishment. “Where the heck did you all rob?”

Princess Qianqian gave a proud sweep of her hand. “The eight Divine Sovereigns generously emptied their purses. We couldn’t turn them down. To refuse further would have been impolite.”

Over there, Xiayi, Liuye, Tianzai, Bao’er, Yue Bing, and the other girls came clustering around in high spirits, competing to be the first to tell the good news. One said she’d found some Divine Sovereign’s super hovering-mothership factory in the depths of the cloud sea. Another said how she’d used Heavenly Realm runes to break open a seal and cart the Divine Stones out. All talking at once, none of them willing to give ground — Yue Yang listened until his head spun. Making the peak war doll all day had already left him exhausted. Now, on top of that, he was nearly hypnotized on the spot by their chatter and might have collapsed to the floor for a snoring sleep.

Everyone was very excited, and the accounting was chaotic.

But one thing was for sure: they had found the expected target — Divine Stones — and reaped a huge harvest.

The eight Divine Sovereigns had, of course, left seals inside their factories, but the region rarely saw a soul, and hovering motherships — finished or not — were behemoths no one could just haul off.

Moreover, before the eight Divine Sovereigns had turned openly hostile, they had ostensibly kept the peace.

Ordinarily, none of them would stoop to stealing from one another.

Each hovering mothership represented the will and might of a Divine Sovereign; no other Divine Sovereign would presume to plate his own face with another’s gold.

Which meant that, aside from the Divine Stones, everything inside the super factories was left undefended. Led by the Divine Punishment Empress, the girls, once they’d located a target deep in the cloud sea, joined forces with Sovereign Intent and divine artifacts to break the seals. Then they hauled and hauled and hauled everything back into Grimoire World, arriving at the astonishing spectacle Yue Yang had just beheld: precious Divine Stones stacked up like a mountain!

They had swept the eight Divine Sovereigns’ ten-thousand-year store of Divine Stones bare.

That was one day’s yield.

No wonder they were so proud!

“If the eight Divine Sovereigns come to the God-Slaying Mystic Realm and see they’ve been robbed, they’ll probably fly into a rage!” Yue Yu worried a little that the eight Divine Sovereigns, in a state of shared fury, might gang up on her little brother.

“They’ll never know it was us…” Tianzai comforted her without much thought. “We already framed someone else on the way out.”

“Whoever protests too much, protests too much,” Yue Yang slapped his own forehead. He’d clearly underestimated this girl’s mischief-loving heart.

“Hee-hee, we’re not going to admit it anyway.” Tianzai was a little devil at heart. Small wonder that when the Heaven Devil Hall came for her all those years ago, Her Majesty wouldn’t step in — clearly her Majesty knew this girl was not going to be raised by ordinary teaching.

“Don’t worry. After the Divine War, who knows how many Divine Sovereigns will even be left standing!” Princess Qianqian was closest to Yue Yu, and of course spoke to soothe her.

“They’re just a bunch of pseudo-gods. What is there to fear!” the Divine Punishment Empress professed contempt.

“Yes — let’s go! We’ll challenge pseudo-gods!”

“Knock their teeth out…”

Because of the poor example the Divine Punishment Empress was setting, many of the little girls had grown quite violent lately. Thankfully they never turned that on Yue Yang.

Yue Yang did not correct them in their high spirits. He only exchanged a look and a smile with Sick Beauty. Everything was in place now — all that was still missing was that ancient relic. Nobody knew when this mysterious ancient relic would appear. Perhaps, when it did, the mystery of Taiyan and Bingli’s fall would unravel with it.

As Yue Yang created day after day, guided by divine mind through his domain, the Creation Divine Pearl, brimming with chaos-energy —

Was quietly evolving.

He was so absorbed he was quite oblivious to it.

But in the depths of his exhausted, dream-thick sleep, Sword Spirit — whom he had not seen in ages — made an unprecedented appearance, and watched him spar with the Great-Loli-of-Sword-Qi. She said nothing, but her simply being there was an enormous encouragement. Yue Yang was instantly full of drive; his state was a hundred times better than usual. Even the “Yellow Dragon Abyss,” his fifth sword — always so difficult to fully release — burst forth spontaneously and comfortably.

Steeped in cultivation within the world of the mind, when Yue Yang awoke the next day he felt sharp, in high spirits, and unusually clear-hearted.

When he next stood upon the God-Slaying Mystic Realm —

He tried to recapture the sensation of the dream.

A single thought.

The fifth sword of the Innate Body-Piercing Formless Sword-Qi — Yellow Dragon Abyss — shot out.

It took the form of a colossal golden dragon, radiant across its whole body, head thrown up, roaring, alive as a living thing. It aimed straight at the vault of heaven, and once it reached the ninth height, it whirled down again, coiling counterclockwise around the pillar of energy erupting above Yue Yang’s head, and plunged… Its ten-thousand-fathom majesty subdued all eight directions. Even the Divine Punishment Empress and the others, watching from a great distance, felt their hearts shaken and had the illusory sense of dropping to their knees to worship.

Even with intimate closeness to Yue Yang, without a shred of hostility —

Even at great distance —

Its unassailable divine majesty was still such.

They dared not imagine what mental impact an enemy in its direct path would suffer.

The golden dragon plunged into Yue Yang’s body and became nine little dragons that shot out from his person. They gathered in his Sacred Codex, borrowing the codex’s brilliant radiance to fuse back into one, then soared aloft with a dragon’s roar…

Roar!

That singular dragon-cry, with its supreme dragon-majesty, swept across the God-Slaying Mystic Realm around Yue Yang like the shockwave after an explosion.

The God-Slaying Mystic Metal, which was said to be destroyable only by divine power itself, under the golden dragon’s roar —

Fell apart in earthquakes.

Even melted, like ice under sun, into faint smoke.

And under Yue Yang’s will, was transformed en masse and reshaped into brand-new forms… Ordinarily, Yue Yang’s single thought could reshape only within a hundred-meter range. Now, within ten thousand meters, nothing did not renew under the golden dragon’s divine majesty.

Princess Qianqian and the others were struck dumb for a long time, unable to come to their senses. This — this was the might of Yue Yang’s single sword?

This was the true might of the fifth sword, Yellow Dragon Abyss?

“Did it work?”

Yue Yang himself could hardly believe it. He lifted both hands and simply looked at them.

Had the Yellow Dragon Abyss really come forth so smoothly? A day ago it was still unimaginably hard. And even if he could bring it out in the space of will, that did not mean he could realize it smoothly in reality.

He looked around him again. Nearly a hundred sparkling dragon-scales floated at every height around him.

Ordinarily, in one thought —

He could create at most a single scale for the Yinglong. Now, one sword had birthed a hundred…

Yue Yang was so happy he wanted to laugh out loud. But he found he couldn’t move a single finger. His whole body slipped down of its own accord, and he collapsed onto one of the huge dragon-scales floating at his feet.

“Third brother!” Yue Yu was nearly frightened to death. In an instant she and Dawn Angel fused. The angel war-blades unfolded like wings, and she was the first to fly over. She lifted Yue Yang and held him tight in her arms, calling to him without pause, terrified something had happened. Yue Yang tried to speak, to reassure her, but found he did not even have the breath to talk. His whole body was in a severe state of drained collapse. Even a smile at her was a great effort.

“He’s all right. That last sword was too powerful. He couldn’t quite control it yet and forced it out anyway, so he’s slightly overdrawn.” The Divine Punishment Empress had had a fright as well, but on examination she found the fellow was only badly overdrawn, not harmed in the slightest. Only then did she let her heart settle.

“You blockhead!” the rouge-tiger-girl raised her fist to strike, but seeing Yue Yu’s worried face, she lowered her hand and let him off — for now.

“This dragon-shaped sword-qi really is terrifying. I think even a pseudo-god who took a hit like that couldn’t hold up… So many dragon-scales — why don’t we take the chance to play hopscotch on them?” The most heartless among them were Tianzai and Bao’er. They had been a little worried at first, but seeing Yue Yang was all right, and finding themselves surrounded by shining dragon-scales, they merrily started up a game.

“Hey — can you two settle down?” Yue Yang, for his part, was furious, but at the moment he did not even have the strength to curse. Otherwise he’d have grabbed the two of them and spanked their little bottoms red!

(End of Chapter 1163)