God-Slayer, trapped fast inside the net of love, suddenly looked at Hei Zhou.

Pain lanced through Hei Zhou’s heart.

Like a sword going in.

He raised his head without meaning to and looked toward God-Slayer.

What he found was that God-Slayer’s gaze was full of killing intent — a formless power of the sword-way that passed through time and space, disregarded his body-guarding divine power, drove straight into his heart, and then began to erupt outward from inside it.

“God-Slayer, what do you think you’re doing? Your heart-sword — this is not the moment for us to be tearing each other apart! We have to join hands and break the enemy, come through this together! Your heart-sword can’t kill me. Crippling me will only make the situation worse! Stop. Stop it now!” Hei Zhou was in agony, and roared it out at the top of his voice. He could feel a sword stabbing its way out of his own heart, and every beat of that heart drove the injury a fraction deeper.

Had God-Slayer not been trapped in the net of love, unable to fuse the strike with the sword-way divine power outside it and reduced to firing the heart-sword across open space, Hei Zhou would very likely have been flat on the ground already.

Hei Zhou forced the pain down.

And with a violent effort, dodged a heavy chop from Tianchou’s Yinxue.

All the while waving frantically to signal God-Slayer to lift the heart-sword, or they were damned past all redemption and the whole army would go down together.

God-Slayer was silent for two or three seconds, and at last abandoned the attempt to kill Hei Zhou with the heart-sword. Along with releasing it, he also turned it on Tianchou once to harass him — but Tianchou was extraordinarily cunning, saw at once that matters were going badly, and had already split into dozens of afterimages, giving the strike no chance to lock on. God-Slayer’s heart-sword detonated one of those afterimages with a roar.

Tianchou’s true body was untouched.

God-Slayer sighed faintly. This cross-space heart-sword was not what he did best; in force and in precision alike it fell far short of the Lihen in his hand.

Hei Zhou felt his heart lighten and go back to normal, and was enormously relieved.

Had God-Slayer persisted with the heart-sword, he might not have held out long before Tianchou and Yuanji got what they wanted. Though in truth, even without it, Hei Zhou was in constant peril under the two of them and his position was desperate.

The golden shadow flickered.

It was Yuanji, the First Heavenly King of Heaven Beyond the Heaven of former days, standing perfectly unhurried in front of Hei Zhou.

To Yuanji, Hei Zhou was no more than an interesting quarry. Not an easy one to run down — and the harder he was to catch, the more thoroughly it stirred Yuanji’s interest.

Standing in front of Yue Yang was the mysterious veiled humanoid war beast whose eyes could draw a man into the twisted halo behind its back.

It stood there without moving, staring at him unblinking.

Ji Wuri watched with considerable interest.

He wanted to understand this Chiqiu.

How had this Chiqiu deceived him?

What had the man comprehended over these ten thousand years, and what had he acquired? Had this Chiqiu turned up some ancient treasure or some ancient secret inside the God-Slaying Mystic Realm, so that his strength advanced enormously and put him far outside Ji Wuri’s calculations? And back in those days, what secrets had Taiyan and Bingli told God-Slayer and Chiqiu, beyond the last words that were already known?

Taiyan above all — why would he have hidden the Taiyan Divine Power inside this Chiqiu’s Tunlong spear?

All of it, every part of it.

Ji Wuri wanted to know.

Hei Zhou could not possibly escape Yuanji’s hands, still less with Tianchou there as well and that Black-Hole Star-Devouring Nether Frog watching, which could swallow his divine power without effort. Ji Wuri did not so much as glance at Hei Zhou; he left him to Yuanji to run down at leisure, entirely untroubled.

What held his attention now was the “Chiqiu” standing in front of him, who had turned out to be beyond anything he had imagined.

Under the stare of that mysterious veiled humanoid war beast, the Yue Yang currently disguised as Chiqiu was abruptly whisked away by that uncanny radiance with a rush of air, into the same World of Terror where Shuanghan was being tormented. From the outside it looked like a twisted halo; but once Yue Yang had been drawn inside, he discovered that the interior was in fact an enormous world, boundless and without limit, and that the only way to see out of it was a single opening about the size of a mirror. Through that opening he could see Ji Wuri and the whole of the scene outside.

That opening was precisely the twisted halo behind the mysterious war beast’s back.

And from inside it.

One could see out.

“Ha! And here I actually thought you had Sovereign Intent. Who’d have guessed it was bluffing after all. A fraud is a fraud!” Ji Wuri was delighted, and laughed and laughed.

“Let me out of here—” Yue Yang the extra was beginning his promotion to supporting player.

“Of the four humanoid war beasts, Liuguang and Wuwang are the two sent out most often. But the genuinely strongest of them is Jingbu.” In a gap in his pursuit of Hei Zhou, Yuanji stopped and turned an appreciative eye on the mysterious veiled war beast. This humanoid war beast, which resembled a masked man, was called Jingbu. His outward appearance was thoroughly unremarkable, but in strength he was the strongest of them all, excepting only Yuanji, who was a life-guardian war beast rather than one of the Four. His speciality, the God-Seizing Eyes, could drag any enemy of divine tier or below by force into a World of Terror that was boundless, unceasing in its suffering, and never for one moment at peace.

Inside the World of Terror, any life possessed of emotion and of senses suffered without end.

Tormented to the very limit.

By contrast, for an elemental life form with no emotion at all, or for the special class of war beast with neither a body nor external senses, the World of Terror was merely a cage they could not leave, and carried no killing power whatever.

For a human being, rich in feeling, the World of Terror was simply hell.

No human powerhouse who entered it had ever got out again.

Every one of them had been tormented to death.

Seeing Chiqiu netted into the World of Terror inside the twisted halo as easily as that, Ji Wuri felt faintly disappointed.

He shook his head and decided to set the matter aside for the moment, taking no further interest in what went on in there. Let Chiqiu and Shuanghan be tormented inside for ten days or half a month, and then they could talk. He glanced over at Hei Zhou and found that his uncle was already struggling to hold on and was close to defeat; his mind was set at rest, and at the same time he was bored. The one thing that still kept him wary was God-Slayer, trapped in the net of love. This first man of Mountain Beyond the Mountain was certainly trapped — but there was still no way at all to attack or injure him, and if one grew careless there was the backlash of his divine sword to worry about.

Ji Wuri looked down at Qingyun, lying on the ground and barely breathing.

And suddenly summoned a humanoid war beast in the form of a wise old man with crane-white hair and a child’s complexion, and gave a cold order. “Kumu. I don’t understand this. After you personally acted to restrain him, why is Qingyun still able to speak? Listen — I don’t need an explanation now, I only want a result. Deal with Qingyun immediately. I really have no wish to hear him open his mouth again. In all my life there have never been two creatures more nauseating and more repellent to me than the bleeding-heart do-gooder and the upright gentleman.”

“Yes, master. Everything as you wish.” The war beast in the form of a wise old man made a deeply respectful salute to Ji Wuri.

This humanoid war beast in the shape of a wise old man was called Kumu.

He was one of the four great humanoid war beasts Yuanji had just named.

Along with Wuwang, who had gone in disguise as the Prophet’s envoy into the mercenary and Star Pirate camp; Liuguang, who had countered Shuanghan’s freezing power a moment ago by converting it into flame, and who was still flying at tremendous speed across the sky, unwilling to stop and show his true face; and that utterly mysterious masked man Jingbu, who drew men in with the force of his eyes — the four of them were known collectively as Ji Wuri’s “Four Greats.”

Of the four humanoid war beasts, Kumu’s strength was not inferior to Wuwang’s or Liuguang’s, and stood below Jingbu’s alone.

In that old man’s shape.

He was the nemesis Ji Wuri had established specifically for Northeast Divine Sovereign Qingyun.

He was also an important adviser to Ji Wuri’s schemes. With intelligence far exceeding that of an ordinary humanoid war beast, he produced conspiracies and stratagems in endless succession, and both in laying out a design and in adapting when one went wrong he had Ji Wuri’s deep trust. The design for Mountain Beyond the Mountain, though it was Ji Wuri who settled it, had Kumu’s hand in it too. Unfortunately, wisdom of that combative sort could not be applied to the comprehension and breakthrough of cultivation; and so the most intelligent and most senior of all the war beasts had fallen below Jingbu instead, and even the rising talents Wuwang and Liuguang showed signs of overtaking him.

Kumu paced slowly over to the barely-breathing Qingyun’s side and tapped the ground twice with the staff he leaned on.

Then spoke, with counterfeit compassion. “Sovereign Qingyun, I personally hold your character in very great admiration. But my master genuinely cannot bear an upright gentleman of your sort — so, my apologies. If there should turn out to be a next life, be a bad man in it. Whatever you do, don’t be a good one. Because a good man is fated to be bullied by bad men, and that is a truth that has not altered in all the ages.”

“Thank you. I would still rather be a good man — even if it does nauseate the lot of you.” Qingyun managed a faint, weak smile.

“A blind man could see that’s pure jealousy! Being a good man is excellent — you get handed good-guy cards. And being an upright gentleman is better still; you get beautiful women sitting in your lap as a fringe benefit!” Yue Yang had turned up at some point still holding Shuanghan, who was burning from head to foot like a roast turkey, and he delivered his criticism with great severity. “Speaking as an upright gentleman who welcomes a beautiful woman into his lap at any hour and guarantees to keep his hands to himself, I express severe protest and strong condemnation at their irresponsible words and conduct!”

“Would you put me down—” Shuanghan got his protest in first. What he was protesting was the fact that Yue Yang was still carrying him about by the scruff. Rescuing a man was all very well, but you cannot treat a person like a piece of luggage.

“Sorry. I assumed you were enjoying it.” Yue Yang’s answer very nearly burst a blood vessel in Shuanghan’s head. Who on earth enjoys being carried about like a handbag?

“Put me down!” Shuanghan had no strength left. Had he possessed any, he would certainly have fetched a shovel and buried this damnable creature alive.

“Are you sure?” Yue Yang was a hundred times more long-winded than Tang Sanzang.

“…” Shuanghan had coughed up so much blood by now that he was in danger of going anaemic.

“If you wanted me to put you down you should have said so earlier! Behaving like that is very apt to give people the wrong idea!” That one left Shuanghan wanting to die — wanting to find a rope on the spot and hang himself from the nearest branch.

Once Shuanghan was set down.

The mysterious humanoid war beast Jingbu came hurrying over, and with one glare Shuanghan screamed and was sucked helplessly back into the World of Terror inside the twisted halo. Regrettably, though, Yue Yang, standing right beside him, still had a grin all over his face and did not shift by a hair, as though Jingbu’s glare were nothing more than a hanged ghost rolling its eyes at him, and had no effect whatsoever.

Ji Wuri’s expression.

Turned grave in an instant.

Even the golden shadow Yuanji, the most swaggering and arrogant of them all, drew a cold breath.

To be able to disregard the pull of Jingbu’s God-Seizing Eyes, to walk out of a boundless World of Terror without difficulty, and even to carry out a Shuanghan who had been sealed inside it — anyone who still doubted that this Chiqiu had comprehended Sovereign Intent was a fool. But then, if he had possessed Sovereign Intent all along, how had he allowed Jingbu to draw him into the World of Terror in the first place?

Had he wanted to go in and have a look round? Take in the scenery, sample the life of a prisoner?

What was going on in this Chiqiu’s head?

To behave as strangely as that?

It defeated everyone.

And he had actually dared to challenge Ji Wuri to his face. Bear in mind that even God-Slayer was caught in the trap and could barely defend himself; and in a situation that dangerous, this Chiqiu still dared to go head to head with Ji Wuri without yielding an inch. Even supposing he had some special ability and did not fear Jingbu’s eyes, was he not afraid of the Love-Thread Spider-Demon’s love-threads? Not afraid of the Black-Hole Star-Devouring Nether Frog? Not afraid of the Drunken Muddle-Worm, or of Liuguang, who could turn ice and fire into one another at will?

And even if he feared nothing at all — how could he possibly beat Yuanji, once the First Heavenly King of Heaven Beyond the Heaven?

Hei Zhou looked at this “Chiqiu” in front of him.

His thoughts churned and shifted.

He felt he could see less and less into this former comrade-in-arms of his. And not only Hei Zhou; even God-Slayer, trapped in the net of love, frowned and said nothing. This brother’s strength went so far beyond what he had imagined that God-Slayer felt he was looking at a stranger. What confused him, though, was that inside that strangeness he could somehow also feel an inexplicable familiarity.

Call the man his brother, and he was nothing like him.

Say he was not.

And yet there seemed to be a connection of a kind no outsider could possibly have.

“You are not Chiqiu either. Who exactly are you?” South Divine Sovereign Tianchou, the most wary of Yue Yang of anyone present, asked what was in all their minds.

“Actually, I’m an actor.” Yue Yang answered feebly, exactly like Stephen Chow facing down a great director’s reproach: three parts coy, three parts timid, three parts brave, and one part shy.

The entire field went down flat.

Dear god, boy, how long are you going to keep playing at this? Could you be serious for a moment? This is a Divine War, and we have reached the final moment of our lives!

(End of Chapter 1188)