Blood sprayed from his nose.

Shafeng swung Xuanya back on pure reflex and carved a gash across the chest of the “Shafeng” behind him, deep enough to show bone.

That “Shafeng’s” face changed. Clutching the bloody wound across his chest, he pointed and swore. “You idiot — I am you! You’ve wounded me, which means you’ve wounded yourself. Who is this vicious? Would you butcher your own self?”

“No. You are you and I am me. You are absolutely not me!” Shafeng hadn’t finished speaking when blood burst from his own chest, the same gash opening across his body, the same depth to the bone.

“Hahaha — I love this kind of self-mutilation!” The “Shafeng” who had climbed up out of the ground bore the same wound on his chest, blood running freely down him, and he threw back his head and laughed like a madman.

“This is impossible. I am me. You are not me, you’re not—” Only now did Shafeng notice the injuries scattered across his own body. Breastbone, heart, jaw, skull — exactly the wounds he had dealt his enemy. Had he really been beating himself all along? But there was only one of him. How could there be three? Where had the other two doubles come from? And how could anything this uncanny be possible — strike a double, and the main body takes the wound?

“If we’re going to mutilate ourselves, what are we waiting for?”

The two “Shafengs” raised the Xuanya in their hands and began stabbing and hacking wildly at their own bodies.

Pain shot through Shafeng.

He rushed them, knocked both doubles flying with heavy punches, and wrenched the weapons out of their hands… Three Xuanya. How was that possible? There was only one Xuanya in the world, taken from the hand of a Divine Sovereign whom Taiyan had killed during the hundred-god invasion out of Heaven Beyond the Heaven — a treasure without equal. How could there be three of it? Yet here they were, three identical Xuanya, with no way to tell the true from the false… Shafeng examined them closely and still could not say which was his own, because all three answered to his mind, and all three felt as though they had been at his side for ten thousand years.

The two “Shafengs” got up and went straight back to mutilating themselves. Grief and rage boiled in Shafeng past describing, and he roared. “Stop it! Aren’t you supposed to be me? I would never mutilate myself. Don’t think you can fool me — every one of you is a fake!”

“If we’re fakes, why are your wounds the same as ours? And if we’re fakes — then what about them?”

The two “Shafengs” broke into a low, sinister chuckle, exactly the way Shafeng himself always did.

A chill went through him.

He looked back.

Behind him, where the two Shafengs had pointed, stood a whole crowd of himself — a hundred at least… Every one of them rushed in and seized him fast, and a dozen more reached out to summon the grimoire, shoving each other aside and shouting, “Don’t let him keep the grimoire to himself! This one’s useless — better that one of us takes over as master!”

Fought over by so many of himself, the summoning grimoire began to warp in a way that should not have been possible.

The grimoire’s body twisted slowly, going black and dull.

And then, with a roar —

it dissolved its own contract and became a fallen, masterless grimoire.

“My grimoire!” The cry tore out of Shafeng in anguish. The injuries had not broken his will; he was a Divine Sovereign, and however badly his body was hurt it would recover in time. The self-mutilation had been an irritation, nothing mortal. But this — too many doubles, all of them fighting over the grimoire, the struggle failing and rebounding, and the grimoire destroyed at the end of it — this brought him real despair. Without a summoning grimoire, could he still be counted a true god? No talent, no life-guardian war beast, not even a grimoire world to escape safely into at any moment. What was the point of being alive?

“Better gone. It’s only fair if nobody has one. Why should you alone have a grimoire?” one “Shafeng” said, clapping and laughing.

“Right, right. With the grimoire gone there’s nothing left to fight over.” Another “Shafeng” agreed heartily.

“It was only got through an ancient secret art and Taiyan’s help before he died, anyway. It was never really ours. No loss.” A third “Shafeng” made his impassioned case.

“All of you shut up!” Shafeng was in agony. That was a summoning grimoire.

Without it he was nothing but a pseudo-god.

The eight Divine Sovereigns of Mountain Beyond the Mountain each held their own ground. Stripped of his summoning grimoire, reduced back to a pseudo-god, would there be a single place left here where his word counted?

What were these inexplicable doubles? Were there really this many of himself inside his own body? And even if there were — who had let them out?

Could it be that arrogant brat?

Shafeng lifted his head and looked around, and found Yue Yang sitting on a rock. When had he gotten there? One leg crossed over the other, foot swinging at his leisure, whistling on and off, not once turning his eyes in Shafeng’s direction. The sheer insolence of it was beyond bearing.

“I’ll butcher you!” Shafeng emptied a belly full of rage onto Yue Yang’s head.

“Southwest Divine Sovereign Shafeng, whose IQ is a matter of some concern — you may now die.” Yue Yang extended a single finger and, like a great judge on the bench, pronounced sentence of death.

“Ridiculous!”

Shafeng had never once believed this arrogant brat could touch a hair on him.

The brat had a fine hand for tricks, but no real strength behind it — otherwise he’d have seized his chance to ambush long ago, instead of waiting until now to run his mouth.

Kill him!

Just as Shafeng’s heavy fist reached Yue Yang’s face, he discovered that at a point one inch from the brat’s nose, time and space seemed to have been drawn out into ten million years and ten million kilometres. One inch — and yet he could never cross those ten million years and ten million kilometres… And that wasn’t even the uncanniest part. What truly frightened Shafeng was that the hundred-odd copies of himself behind him all charged in at once — and not to swing at the brat. They came at him. Hands seizing hands, arms dragging at legs, bodies locking around his body, pinning him fast.

God above, why?

Why were these doubles doing this to him? Weren’t they his own doubles?

The cruelty of it nearly drove Shafeng mad on the spot… What made it hopeless was that no matter how hard he forced his divine power, trying to blast the doubles off him, nothing came of it. Every double was identical to his main body. Wound one and all were wounded. Exhaust one and all were exhausted.

A hundred of himself holding himself down. There was no breaking free.

All Shafeng could do was watch, wide-eyed, as the arrogant brat in front of him — wearing that maddening, infuriating, utterly unanswerable smile — rose slowly off the rock, produced some treasure shaped like a jade seal, and cracked it down on the crown of his head as casually as a man cracking a chestnut…

One blow.

Outwardly Shafeng was unmarked. Inwardly he felt a splintering agony run through his soul, and the first faint signs of his divine power coming apart.

Divine majesty bore down like a mountain. Shafeng found even drawing breath extraordinarily hard.

A sealing power had shown itself, and it made the soul shake.

Shafeng began to be afraid.

A sealing power like this — never mind himself as he was now, he doubted Hei Zhou or God-Slayer could withstand it. He might not even last until space shattered and sealed him inside it; this irresistible sealing power might annihilate him outright first… And then, in the middle of his panic, Shafeng saw a woman swordsman spring out. The war armour she wore was made of God-Slaying Mystic Metal, of all things, and the weapon in her hand was a divine artifact he himself could never have obtained — a divine sword whose divine nature was strong enough to devour heaven and earth.

“This is the Divine Sovereign you were talking about? He doesn’t even have Sovereign Intent. This counts as a god? A pseudo-god after all. Never mind — killing a pseudo-god will do for a warm-up.” The woman swordsman leapt, and hundreds of millions of threads of lightning, ice and flame converged on the divine sword in her hand until they took the shape of an enormous dragon’s head, which came devouring down.

A single stroke.

And Shafeng felt his soul cut open by the divine sword’s power.

Body, soul, divine power — every part of him crippled, every part of him near collapse.

Now he regretted it. He still did not understand how the fight had turned out this way, but he understood one thing. He really was going to die…

“He took my full-strength stroke and he’s still standing? A pseudo-god indeed. An old monster who’s lived ten thousand years really is no small thing.” Her words gave Shafeng the urge to weep. And as he opened his mouth to beg for his life, at the edge of his vision he saw that a golden celestial dragon had condensed, at some point, in the arrogant brat’s hand.

“Yellow Dragon Abyss!”

Those were the last words Shafeng’s mind ever heard. The golden celestial dragon reared and struck, and his divine sense scattered and went out.

His body turned to fine powder and blew away on the wind.

All the energy, all the divine power, and every imprint of knowledge learned and left behind across a lifetime —

condensed inside the golden dragon’s mouth into one small dragon pearl… And when the golden dragon returned into Yue Yang’s body, that small dragon pearl dropped into his outstretched palm.

This was the might of Yellow Dragon Abyss. And it would be the only proof that Southwest Divine Sovereign Shafeng had ever existed in the world.

Pop.

A summoning grimoire burst out of the empty air and turned into a battered, discarded book.

It fell at Yue Yang’s feet.

And the hundred “Shafeng” doubles who had been pinning him down scattered without a trace, gone like phantoms, as though they had never been there at all. Chiqiu swallowed with difficulty. Even Taiyan and Bingli, meeting and cutting down the enemy during the hundred-god invasion — surely they had not made it look this easy? Who was this young man?

Was the boy even human?

Shafeng was a Divine Sovereign, whatever else you cared to say about him. How could he be killed just like that?

And the worst of it: one stroke, and the boy had turned him into a dragon pearl. A whole life lived for nothing. Every scrap of divine power he’d cultivated and everything he’d learned in his life had, in the end, all been labour performed on this boy’s behalf.

“You head back first — I still have to turn into Shafeng and join the war. With this dragon pearl I don’t have to worry about being seen through, at least for now.” Yue Yang, for his part, closed his hand around the pearl and waved. A phantom settled over him and disguised him in Shafeng’s image, the face indistinguishable from the real Shafeng’s. Even Chiqiu, standing right beside him, could not find a single flaw anywhere on him.

“You are forbidden to come home looking like that. And be careful of Ji Wuri — that one isn’t so easy to fool.” Princess Qianqian awarded Yue Yang a punch, plainly displeased at the sight of him wearing Shafeng’s face. But she knew it was how he meant to get inside the West Camp, so she said nothing more, and turned and went back, guided through by Xiao Wenli.

“Now then. Do I get used to Shafeng’s divine power first, or do I dig out the ancient relic’s main body?” Yue Yang, for his part, had always been a greedy creature.

He meant to join the war.

But he couldn’t bear to leave the ancient relic’s main body either. If he hadn’t been worried that the moment it was in his hands it would teleport him straight out of Mountain Beyond the Mountain and back to the endless world of the Sacred Grimoire to turn the task in to that mysterious existence, he’d have started digging long ago.

As it was, staring at the ancient relic’s main body sitting right there in front of him and unable to lay a hand on it, Yue Yang felt like a kitten was clawing at his heart…

All Shafeng’s fault.

Even dead, the man caused trouble.

If he’d never brought the ancient relic’s main body out, none of this would be happening.

Shafeng, wronged badly enough to nearly climb back out of death, was in no position to point out to the transmigrator that if he hadn’t brought the relic’s main body out, the transmigrator might have gone on searching for who knew how long — and the ancient relic might have stayed lost in Mountain Beyond the Mountain forever. But dead men can’t argue their case. Tragic Shafeng had to go on being slandered after death. And at any rate, he wasn’t the first dead man Yue Yang, for his part, had found something to complain about.

(End of Chapter 1172)