The ancient relic’s main body would have to wait.

Yue Yang glanced at Chiqiu and his wife and decided he would rather not stand around being a third wheel. He flickered ten kilometres off to study the dragon pearl in his hand, so as not to be cringed half to death by the endless sweet nothings of a couple embracing in joy after coming back from the dead… As it turned out, Chiqiu and his wife weren’t what he had imagined. Nothing that needed censoring passed between them at all. On the contrary, they composed themselves quickly and came looking for Yue Yang, for his part, where he sat studying the pearl.

It wasn’t only that Yue Yang wanted to learn about Mountain Beyond the Mountain through Chiqiu.

Chiqiu wanted to understand this young man too — a riddle in human shape.

“You’re the inheritor of Taiyan and Bingli?” It was what Chiqiu had been guessing all along. How could he have known that Yue Yang was a transmigrator?

“Maybe.” Yue Yang neither denied it nor confirmed it. People could misunderstand however they liked. Sometimes a thing was better left short of the whole truth, or somebody ended up disappointed. Chiqiu suspected he was the two great gods’ inheritor, and there was no reason to correct him — Yue Yang wasn’t certain himself whether the mysterious existence in the endless world of the Sacred Grimoire was Taiyan or Bingli. The misunderstanding worked in his favour besides. If he came clean, he’d be an outsider, and he could forget about Chiqiu telling him anything that actually mattered.

“I knew it…” Chiqiu was beside himself, nodding hard. “Short of the two great gods’ inheritor, I can’t imagine anyone else in this world could be as extraordinary as you.”

“Ha. You flatter me.” Yue Yang, for his part, played dumb with everything he had.

Inwardly he was thinking:

Don’t go gilding Taiyan and Bingli’s faces for them. If those two really had a disciple, he’d be rubbish. How could he possibly compare with a transmigrator like me?

Naturally that could not be said aloud. He had to keep it bottled up.

Passing himself off as Taiyan and Bingli’s heir.

Had its benefits.

Benefits bigger than even Yue Yang could have imagined.

Because without a word of preamble, Chiqiu held out the Tunlong spear. Yue Yang — a treasure collector who let no treasure past him — was so bewildered that he actually, miraculously, declined it a few times. Had Princess Qianqian and the others seen it, they’d have suspected this Yue Yang was Ji Wuri wearing his face.

What on earth was this supposed to mean? Wasn’t Tunlong Chiqiu’s weapon? Why hand it to somebody without a word?

Yue Yang looked himself over. He hadn’t so much as given his mighty frame a quiver yet, so why was Chiqiu already down on his knees?

He didn’t understand.

He very much didn’t understand.

Chiqiu pressed the spear on him regardless. “I know you look down on it. It’s only a quasi-divine artifact, after all — that’s natural enough. But there’s Taiyan Divine Power inside Tunlong. If you mean to carry on the two great gods’ unfinished will and beat Hei Zhou and Ji Wuri, you’ll have to absorb that share of Taiyan Divine Power. Thin as it is, it’s still a great help. I’ve lost my summoning grimoire. What’s left to me is pseudo-god strength, and less than thirty percent of that. Even if I wanted to lend God-Slayer and you a hand now, the will is there and the strength isn’t… This is all I can do.”

“But this is your own personal weapon.” Yue Yang was declining politely on the surface, while his hand had hold of the spear and was not letting go.

“My strength is no longer enough to bring out its full power, and I’m no longer fit to be its master. So that Tunlong can reach its full might, I’ve decided to dissolve our spirit contract and give it back its freedom.”

Chiqiu’s eyes were full of feeling.

Like a father seeing a grown daughter off to her wedding, he stroked the spearhead gently, with the tenderness of a hand laid on a beloved daughter’s hair.

Reluctant as he was, Chiqiu smiled sincerely and dissolved the spirit contract binding him to Tunlong. The shaft shuddered hard, humming without pause, and gave off ten million rays of radiance, brimming with spirit…

It was free. No longer Chiqiu’s own weapon.

And yet it wrapped Chiqiu and his wife in that radiance.

And would not let go.

Its voice was low and mournful, exactly like a child about to leave on a long campaign bowing farewell to its parents — every note of it earnest.

Yue Yang watched, taken aback. A mere quasi-divine artifact held this much spirit? Divine artifacts and Sacred Artifacts both had spirit, divine artifacts especially, which possessed an undying will and chose their own masters — a choice no outside force could ever alter. Sacred Artifacts were the same, though their spirit fell a little short and their terms for choosing were not so strict; any weapon-bearer of great strength or great potential would be selected as master.

Set against true divine artifacts and Sacred Artifacts —

quasi-divine artifacts, whose raw power came close to a divine artifact’s in some respects, actually fell short of a true Sacred Artifact in spirit.

Much as a pseudo-god held something near to a god’s power and yet could never stand beside a true god… The gap lay in having neither summoning grimoire nor Sovereign Intent.

Quasi-divine artifacts. Not weak in power.

But short on spirit.

Against Sacred Artifacts they won on power alone… just as a pseudo-god was stronger than an innate warrior who possessed Sovereign Intent, and yet no pseudo-god, however strong, would ever comprehend Sovereign Intent.

Now, seeing Tunlong erupt with spirit like this the moment the contract was dissolved, Yue Yang was startled — and then wild with delight.

If it kept growing this way, the Tunlong spear might evolve into a true divine artifact on its own.

What had given it so much spirit?

The Taiyan Divine Power?

Chiqiu’s careful nurture across nearly ten thousand years? Or some mutation produced by Chiqiu dissolving the contract of his own free will?

Yue Yang couldn’t work it out, but he knew it was a good thing — an enormously good thing… A weapon without spirit was rubbish however hard it hit. A true divine artifact was no different from a sovereign-tier expert: it too possessed an undying will, its own unique spirit-sense and spirit. That was a chasm of a watershed. Cross it and you had a real treasure. Fall short and you had rubbish.

“It seems I did the right thing. Ten thousand years buried in my hands, and the day I hand its freedom back, a weapon spirit this strong is born. I’ve been too selfish. I’m ashamed of it.” Watching the radiance blaze off the spear, Chiqiu was deeply moved, and mocked himself in the same breath, feeling he had wronged a divine weapon.

“Ahem.” Thick as Yue Yang’s skin was, even he felt a twinge of shame at that.

This had nothing to do with the weapon being freed or changing masters. The credit belonged to Chiqiu’s ten thousand years of nurture and his magnificent letting-go.

Strictly speaking, it hadn’t one cent’s worth to do with the transmigrator… Watching Chiqiu launch into self-criticism on top of everything else, Yue Yang felt his face heat. He could never in a thousand years be as magnanimous as this man. Let somebody try to lay a finger on his Taotie, or on Waning Crescent Moon, and he’d fight them to the death over it. Never mind the Metal Little Beast, or the Dragon Sisters’ Human Divine Soldier.

Letting go was a thing Yue Yang had never once considered.

Treating a divine weapon well, though —

that much he could manage.

For the first time in living memory, Yue Yang bowed to Chiqiu and his wife, accepted Tunlong as its humming gradually subsided, and made a promise. “If I can, I’ll turn it into a divine spear. I won’t let it sit idle and gather dust on a shelf. And if it doesn’t choose me as its master, I’ll find it the best master there is, one worthy of its new life. You have my word on that.”

“In truth, Tunlong was never mine to begin with. When the hundred gods came out of Heaven Beyond the Heaven, Taiyan and Bingli broke open the space of the God-Slaying Mystic Realm to strengthen us, and drew out the ten great divine weapons. Tunlong was one of them.” Chiqiu sighed faintly. “In the course of that war I was badly beaten several times. Tunlong was taken from me by pseudo-gods more than once and changed hands again and again, until at last Taiyan and Bingli wiped out every last invader and it came back to me… I was never a qualified master. In your hands it will shine again. I have never doubted your future. Enough — no more of this melancholy talk. Young man, you may not yet know what happened in those days. Before I bury my name and retire to look after nobody but myself, let me tell you all of it. There is only you now who can lend God-Slayer a hand.”

Yue Yang was delighted to hear it.

This was exactly the intelligence he wanted.

If Chiqiu hadn’t volunteered it, he could have exhausted every method in the world and not uncovered one ten-thousandth of it.

Which of the eight Divine Sovereigns would ever tell the truth? Hei Zhou’s West Camp were enemies — that went without saying. South Divine Sovereign Tianchou was the deepest mole of them all. Northeast Divine Sovereign Qingyun contended with no one and showed himself to no one. That left Eastern Divine Sovereign God-Slayer, fighting alone with nobody he could trust, who naturally wasn’t about to hand out secrets of that kind.

In the end there was only Southeast Divine Sovereign Chiqiu. Only he could tell it.

And Chiqiu laid out every secret of what had happened in those days.

In fine detail.

Some of it even Hei Zhou’s West Camp did not know — things Taiyan had entrusted to Chiqiu alone. He held nothing back, giving Yue Yang all of it, piece by piece.

As he listened, Yue Yang took his openings to raise questions, hoping to assemble the most complete picture he could as quickly as possible.

“The space inside the God-Slaying Mystic Realm — is there a secret passage there connecting Heaven Beyond the Heaven, Mountain Beyond the Mountain and Tower Beyond the Tower?” Yue Yang remembered the crucial point and asked at once.

Chiqiu confirmed it, though the answer left the transmigrator somewhat deflated. “There was, once. Inside the God-Slaying Mystic Realm. But Taiyan and Bingli sealed the passage, and paid with their lives to do it. Back then, with the hundred gods losing, they stopped at nothing — they went all the way to Tower Beyond the Tower and joined forces to release the evil god who had been sealed there since ancient times. Weiguang. You may not know it, but Weiguang was a terrible evil god called the King of Gods. Without that ancient seal, everything from Tower Beyond the Tower to Mountain Beyond the Mountain, and Heaven Beyond the Heaven besides, would surely have been destroyed at his hands. To seal Weiguang again, Taiyan and Bingli…”

“You’re the two great gods’ heir. You may be able to pass through their sealing will and get inside.” At the end Chiqiu offered him a thread of hope.

“I’ll give it a try.” Yue Yang knew perfectly well he was no heir and a complete counterfeit, but for now all he could do was chance it.

Who knew — maybe Taiyan and Bingli were fretting over having no heir at all.

Or maybe that mysterious existence was one of the two of them.

If that were so.

Then things got very simple indeed.

The God-Slaying Mystic Realm and the space inside it — Yue Yang decided that once the fighting was done he’d go back and explore it. Treasure aside, a link joining Tower Beyond the Tower, Mountain Beyond the Mountain and Heaven Beyond the Heaven was a first-rate prize. With a passage like that, Human Valley, Earth Valley and Heaven Valley would all be his to roam at will.

As for the evil god Weiguang, there were still six months. Yue Yang had no time for him.

Once Hei Zhou and Ji Wuri were dealt with, he’d find a way back to Human Valley.

As for Heaven Valley, if the hundred gods were all dead already, clearing it shouldn’t take too long… Naturally that plan sat dead last on the list.

“For thousands of years I’ve meant to withdraw, but I couldn’t bear to watch God-Slayer hold the whole thing up alone, so I gritted my teeth and stayed. Now my divine power is gutted and my grimoire is gone. I am past being any use. All that’s left is to retire to the fields with the woman I love and wander heaven and earth as I please.” And not content with giving Yue Yang Tunlong, Chiqiu drew two parts out of the bare three-tenths of divine power left in his body, condensed them into a sphere of divine power, and held it out.

At first Yue Yang wouldn’t take it.

Chiqiu only laughed aloud. “I’m not contending with gods any longer. One part of divine power is plenty to range across heaven and earth on. Don’t worry about me. Besides, every scrap of my divine power was cultivated, not borrowed from outside — it isn’t gone forever. It only takes a very long time to come back. Some hundreds of years, or a thousand, before it runs full again. That’s all.”

He reached out and clapped Yue Yang hard on the shoulder, as though setting the burden down deliberately on this junior’s back.

Then he gathered his beloved into his arms and shot skyward.

Became a streak of divine light.

And was gone without trace.

If not for Tunlong in his left hand and the sphere of divine power in his right, Yue Yang would not have believed Chiqiu could be so open-handed a man.

“He gets to wander free and easy, and here I am, press-ganged into the ranks, with no choice now but to fight for my life.” A hand that takes is a hand that softens. Yue Yang sighed and groaned over it; the spear and the sphere weren’t easy things to have accepted. He had originally planned to skulk about and pick up what he could in the middle of the fighting, and that looked unworkable now. Standing by to watch Hei Zhou finish God-Slayer would, however he framed it, be a poor return on what Chiqiu had entrusted to him.

Never mind. There were treasures in it either way. Call it running an NPC quest.

Thinking of it that way, Yue Yang cheered right back up.

A quasi-divine artifact with monstrous spirit in it, a future divine artifact, handed over just like that. Had his luck gone up in flames along with his little cosmos today?

Yue Yang had meant to keep playing Shafeng and make mischief with the face, but he couldn’t be bothered with the role now. He dropped back into his own body in a hurry and rushed off to the Grimoire World to share the good news, and before Princess Qianqian or any of the others could get a word out he held Tunlong up. “Look! We’re rich. Another treasure in hand.”

“You’re joking. You killed Chiqiu as well? Over one spear?” Princess Qianqian had grave doubts about Yue Yang’s character.

“…” It had never once occurred to Yue Yang that this was the picture his tiger girl carried of him.

“I’ll give you a chance to explain.” Yue Yu knew her Xiao San better than anyone. If he really had killed Chiqiu, he wouldn’t have come straight back — he’d have done something first to pull everyone’s attention elsewhere. But Tunlong was a free weapon with no master’s contract on it, which didn’t look like a present either, and that made it hard not to suspect a certain someone’s well-documented enthusiasm for killing people and taking their things.

In the end the magnificent big sister decided to give her little brother his chance to explain.

Yue Yang was almost overcome with gratitude.

Big sisters really were the best. A little brother with a big sister looking after him is a treasure; a little brother without one isn’t worth a blade of grass… But when he laid out what had actually happened, even Yue Yu had her doubts. “That can’t be right, surely? Is Chiqiu really so magnificent as all that? He’s no kin of yours and owes you nothing. I find it hard to picture. Xiao San — you really didn’t kill anybody?”

Even his big sister didn’t believe him. This — this was no way to live.

The transmigrator crouched down in the corner in dejection and drew circles on the floor.

(End of Chapter 1173)