The half-elf Xiao Nu watched as Pandora let her divine power scatter away. Bit by bit, it vanished before her eyes.

Her heart broke.

She wanted to stop Pandora’s farewell — but her struggling was useless.

No matter what she did, she couldn’t break through the protective ring Pandora had placed around her. In the face of Xiao Nu’s pleading, Pandora, who had made her peace with life and death, only answered with a smile.

The immeasurable Calamity god-force dissipated. Yet Yue Yang’s World had by now expanded to a span of ten thousand meters, and the Calamity god-force had no time to fade before the World devoured it in a frenzy. In ordinary times this would have been utterly impossible — but now, with Pandora dispersing her divine nature to end herself, her Calamity god-force kept turning into ownerless, chaotic torrents of energy that spread everywhere, and the World swallowed them with no resistance at all.

Yue Yang, who had been intently splitting apart the power of resentment and the law of Desire Valley, immediately sensed Pandora’s strange move.

He was slightly stunned, then instantly understood.

He flew into a towering rage!

Even if you want to sacrifice yourself for me, you have to ask whether I agree. Since when did you get to decide such a thing on your own? Does my life need someone else’s sacrifice to purchase it?

No!

Absolutely not!

“Stop. You don’t have my permission. Don’t you dare take this into your own hands! When did I ever say you could kill yourself? I didn’t — so you’re not allowed to die!” Yue Yang was furious beyond all limits, his hair bristling with rage. He abandoned his work of dissecting the resentment and the law, and rushed straight toward Pandora.

“Goodbye. I’ve already grasped the meaning of death and sacrifice. Goodbye — you must be happy…”

Pandora’s face and voice, her every feature, dissolved away within the divine light.

In her final second.

She still held herself in her most beautiful form.

She didn’t want the moment of her departure to feel to him like anything less than perfect. It had to be in her most perfect state that she bid him farewell — she had to leave while she was at her most beautiful, to give him an eternal memory of beauty.

Yue Yang charged over like a madman.

He plunged into the divine light, straining to throw out both arms as if to gather the dissolving Pandora into his embrace.

When he realized that his own actions would only hasten the scattering of her Divine Sense, he instantly raised his sword to the heavens in fury.

Scarlet Heaven Tempering.

Yue Yang had never before unleashed a Scarlet Heaven Tempering of such tremendous might. A single sword-stroke rose straight into the ninth heaven, cleaving heaven and earth apart, severing the law of Desire Valley from his own World in an instant, meaning to free Pandora from Desire Valley’s seal. Pouring everything into protecting the last remnant of Pandora’s Divine Sense, Yue Yang forgot the danger to himself. Pandora’s resentment, hoarded across a hundred thousand years, came crashing into his body like an endless, boundless flood. Yue Yang felt his very soul quake. His inner organs shook, on the verge of bursting, and a mouthful of fresh blood sprayed out, scattering into blossom after blossom of crimson.

Seeing Yue Yang throw himself in without regard for his own life, taking a grievous wound from the power of resentment, the dissolving Pandora could no longer keep her smile. A single divine tear slid silently down.

She had sacrificed herself for him — and he was risking everything for her…

Was this the true love the ancient gods spoke of?

Black Returning Burial!

Utterly heedless of the grievous wounds to his body, Yue Yang hoisted up the Black Returning Burial sword.

One stroke drove into the ground, sending the sword-aura deep beneath the ninth layer of earth, completely severing his own World from Desire Valley.

If Yue Yang had not tried to save Pandora, and had instead used the Three Realms Compass at this moment, there was every chance he could have escaped the binding rules of Desire Valley’s law. With the two swords out together, he had successfully placed himself within a special space — a World that was purely his own divine consciousness.

Escape Desire Valley, and the death prophecy could surely be broken.

But Yue Yang did not do so.

He did not leave. Instead he mustered every last ounce of his own strength and struck out with a third sword — White Frost Bloom!

Countless motes of pure, cleansing radiance flashed in his hand. The White Frost Bloom sword did the dissolving Pandora’s divine consciousness no harm at all — instead it wrapped that ceaselessly scattering ball of divine light and gathered it up. Yue Yang’s body blazed with Nirvana Flames. He didn’t know whether he could use the Nirvana Flames to bring Pandora back to life the way he had the Sky Fire Phantom — but he had to try.

Even if there was only a one-in-ten-thousand, even a one-in-a-hundred-million chance, he would not stand by and watch Pandora die before his eyes.

“Come back to life for me!”

Yue Yang roared like a madman.

To keep hold of Pandora, Yue Yang forgot everything else.

But the hundred-thousand-year flood of resentment energy engulfed him utterly in an instant, and struck him down.

Blood gushed wildly from his mouth. In the instant before he blacked out, Yue Yang roared once more within his heart, and instinctively summoned that Sacred Grimoire he had never once succeeded in calling forth… He himself didn’t know why, at such a mortal juncture, he would still try to summon a Grimoire that could not be called out even at his peak. It had nothing to do with reason — it was pure instinct, the instinct to cling to hope!

Hope!

It will surely succeed!

A person can never be without hope — as long as there is hope, it will surely succeed!

Let her live again, live…

Yue Yang sank into a deep world of darkness. He fainted and collapsed to the ground.

The whole of Desire Valley changed. An indescribable divine light shone down, as though a god of heaven had descended.

Far more oppressive than the Goddess of Misfortune Pandora, far more severe and biting, it made every living creature in Desire Valley faint in an instant. Some especially fallen, deeply sinful tree-people were annihilated outright beneath that divine majesty, not even a soul left of them. The law of Desire Valley collided with this divine majesty, producing ripples invisible to the naked eye. The two sides tangled within those ripples, locked in a deadlock impossible to break — for a time neither could gain the upper hand, neither able to overpower the other. The divine light bloomed upon Yue Yang’s body, a hundred times more dazzling than the sun, so bright it was impossible to make out whether a Sacred Grimoire truly existed within.

Yet the clear cry of the Phoenix’s heavenly song rang out across the entire World.

Two clusters of Nirvana Flames pierced out from within the divine light and sank into Yue Yang’s body, restoring his grievously wounded, ruined body at incredible speed.

The torrent of Pandora’s hundred-thousand-year resentment energy surged and burst forth. Together with the “World” that the Calamity god-force had swollen to bursting, it formed an aberrant energy capable of destroying all of heaven and earth! And immediately after, the power of Desire Valley’s law triggered its greatest backlash as well.

If these three forces detonated, then never mind Yue Yang, Xiao Nu, and Pandora’s remnant Divine Sense — the whole of Desire Valley would be destroyed in a single instant.

A sword appeared.

A hundred zhang tall, its blade a deep, narrow black. Lightless, and utterly whole.

Standing upright between heaven and earth, it could devour ten million kinds of things. There was nothing it could not do — when it turned upon itself, it could reverse the very laws of heaven and earth, and nothing in the world could withstand it. This was the true Returning Burial Sword! Yue Yang’s own Returning Burial Sword held considerable might too, but set against this sword it was purely the difference between a mound of rock and a mountain’s summit. If Yue Yang’s Returning Burial Sword was a river, then this Returning Burial Sword now was a great lake — no, a boundless ocean!

One stroke — and the Calamity god-force, the hundred-thousand-year resentment, and the running law of Desire Valley were brought to a halt.

One stroke — and the three were completely separated.

A stroke profound beyond profound, wondrous beyond wondrous, split apart the three forces that had begun to detonate. The grueling task that might have taken Yue Yang a full year to complete was wholly accomplished with this one stroke.

Returning Burial was still at work when Frost Bloom appeared once more.

Millions upon millions of times more radiant and dazzling than Yue Yang’s own Frost Bloom sword — the purest, cleanest, most frigid energy in all the world, taking the form of the Frost Bloom sword.

Pandora’s hundred thousand years of resentment, like a clay ox sinking into the sea, dissolved entirely within that pure radiance, gradually transforming into attributeless chaos energy. The Frost Bloom sword — which drove out evil, shattered filth, cut down demons and slew fiends — swept through the air, melting away a hundred thousand years of resentment, then struck once more into the ball of divine light that was Pandora’s scattering Divine Sense. This stroke bore Pandora’s ball of Divine Sense up, sweeping it along its path, merging it into the fresh blood Yue Yang had sprayed into the air. Then it gently pierced the brow of Xiao Nu, whose expression had gone blank and still. Xiao Nu’s body trembled faintly, and then blazed with divine light.

The Frost Bloom sword vanished.

Of the hundred thousand years of resentment, only a single cluster of chaos remained.

And the Returning Burial Sword, too, at the very instant the Calamity god-force was fully transformed, vanished from between heaven and earth. A second, larger cluster of chaos energy followed the first, surging into Yue Yang’s body. The World outside Yue Yang’s body shrank at incredible speed, contracting from its ten-thousand-meter span back down to a hundred meters, blending together with the range of his domain.

The Creation World Bead, without needing Yue Yang’s conscious command, flew out on its own.

It absorbed the two clusters of chaos energy into itself, compressing them into a single point of infinite smallness, like the very origin of the universe.

The power of Desire Valley’s law, which had backlashed from the earlier collision, now fully reclaimed all of heaven and earth. Without a single thing left to oppose it, it was as if the collision had never happened — as if it had never joined with the resentment, never been stirred by Pandora’s will. Swiftly it returned to calm, restored to the state it had been in when Desire Valley was first created.

“My head hurts!”

When Yue Yang came to, he found himself back in the Grimoire World.

Xiao Nu was sprawled across his chest, deep in a sweet dream, the corners of her lips curled up in a smile, as though she were dreaming of something wonderful.

He hadn’t died — and he was back in the Grimoire World? He remembered that just before he fainted, he had instinctively summoned the Sacred Grimoire. Could it be that the Phoenix sisters had come out to save him?

Yue Yang sent out another probe of his senses, and was so astonished he nearly dropped his jaw. The Creation World Bead was glittering brilliantly. Somehow it had gained dozens, nearly a hundred times more chaos energy than Yue Yang himself possessed — and it, too, had shrunk down to an origin point of infinite smallness. The World had shrunk as well, but it was greatly different from before: somehow it had merged together with the Creation Domain. This thing that had never once obeyed his commands now felt as though it were one with its master, following his will entirely.

The Yue Yang of now could no longer even tell whether it was a battle beast or a domain. Perhaps this was the beginning of a personal, innate divine nature — his own godhood!

What shocked Yue Yang most was not the changes within himself.

It was Xiao Nu.

The Xiao Nu of now possessed a divine power Yue Yang couldn’t comprehend — purer even than the divine power of divine envoys and Divine Generals. It carried a certain divinity, wondrous beyond measure. Yet it seemed to be no combat type at all.

What on earth was going on?

Had Pandora been reborn within Xiao Nu’s body?

Then what of Xiao Nu? With her so-fragile body and soul, how could she possibly accept Pandora’s divine nature? Had she already been annihilated?

“Wah, Master’s awake! Xiao Nu was so scared this whole time — everything’s fine now!” The moment Yue Yang stirred, Xiao Nu, sprawled on his chest, woke as if she’d sensed it. First she adorably rubbed her big eyes, still a little drowsy — but the instant she saw Yue Yang, her spirits soared. She laughed and cried out with joy, and even patted her own chest to show how frightened she’d been. One look at her and Yue Yang was reassured: this little girl hadn’t changed one bit. She was still his own adorable little handmaid.

“What happened to your forehead?” Yue Yang deliberately didn’t mention Pandora, and spoke only of the mark of divinity between Xiao Nu’s brows.

“Eh?”

Xiao Nu ran over to look in a mirror, and cried out in surprise: “My forehead’s hurt? Ah — it doesn’t look like a scar, though. Oh no, I can’t rub it off no matter what I do!”

Yue Yang had no energy left to retort.

That was a god’s special mark. The unique emblem of divine nature and divinity — an ordinary person couldn’t get one even if they wanted to! While Xiao Nu was scrubbing at it with all her might, a pulse of consciousness that seemed to slumber deep within her soul reached Yue Yang’s mind. Yue Yang understood at once: it was Pandora — she hadn’t died! At the very least, she had not perished in both body and spirit. Her Divine Sense still lodged within Xiao Nu’s body.

What was going on?

Yue Yang asked with his mind, but even Pandora herself wasn’t quite sure: “I don’t know. I thought I’d died too, but after I woke I found I’d merged into one with Xiao Nu. Perhaps this is what the ancient gods meant by ‘eternal life’!”

At a consciousness-pulse like Pandora’s, Yue Yang broke into a bit of a sweat: “You’ve merged into one with Xiao Nu and that’s really all right? Or should we think of some way to get you back out?”

Pandora was delighted: “It’s fine. I’m afraid of loneliness, and being together with Xiao Nu is the best outcome. Besides, there’s no Goddess of Misfortune in this world anymore — only a lovestruck fool named Pandora. Once Xiao Nu’s body has adapted to the divine power, I’ll come out again and talk with you! And when I wake — if you don’t mind that I’m a fool — then teach me what it means to be in love!”

And with boundless sweetness, she sank into slumber.

Yue Yang could feel that even in sleep, her heart brimmed and overflowed with happiness.

Perhaps, across a hundred thousand years, this was the very thing she had chased and never grasped. She had been lost once, and once gone mad; she had grieved once, and once been consumed by resentment. Yet after coming to understand life and death, she finally obtained the thing she had always longed for — the happiness that even death cannot take away!

(End of Chapter 849)