Ji Wuri got to his feet, half convinced he had imagined the whole thing.

If his own handprints had not still been pressed deep into the ground, he would honestly have believed it was a trick of the senses. The pressure was gone now and heaven and earth had gone back to normal. Ji Wuri raised his eyes toward the direction that supreme pressure had come from. Quiet. Not one sign of anything unusual. Had the mysterious man been the one who put it out?

Impossible.

Absolutely impossible.

If the mysterious man could produce a pressure like that, he would not have needed to lift a hand at all, and no amount of struggling would have saved Ji Wuri.

Perhaps it was some ancient power who had lain hidden in Mountain Beyond the Mountain for tens of thousands of years without anyone knowing — who had been woken by the mysterious man’s arrogance and by the destructive force of this Divine War, and had put out a supreme divine majesty in anger… If that was it, then the mysterious man, who had meant to run wild through Mountain Beyond the Mountain and thought himself above everyone, had very likely been cut down by that ancient god. Set against an ancient god whose divine majesty could crush every living thing in Mountain Beyond the Mountain, the mysterious man, however strong, was not worth the effort of a single finger.

The mysterious man might well be dead by now.

Suppose he wasn’t.

He had at the very least been badly hurt.

Which meant Ji Wuri was now completely safe, and no longer under the immediate threat of death from the mysterious man.

Wild with joy, his heart racing, Ji Wuri forced himself not to use the Divine Light Beacon — the teleportation divine light that is a marker unique to the Central Divine Hall — rather than expose his own identity and the Hall’s insignia. Even the Central Divine Hall would not want a newly woken ancient god turning up at its door with a grudge against its people.

Ji Wuri would have had to be a great deal more foolish than he was to bring that kind of trouble down on his own Hall.

He tore space open with great care, not daring to break it with a divine soldier, for fear that the woken ancient god would detect him.

One jump, then another… Moving this cautiously covered no more than a few tens of kilometers at a time and was hopelessly inefficient, but Ji Wuri would rather spend a year on the run than be spotted by that ancient god.

Only when he was nearly twenty thousand kilometers out did he judge the distance far enough.

Then he let himself be a little bolder.

Each jump covered several hundred kilometers, and he made better time.

There was no telling how many jumps it took. By the time Ji Wuri began to feel the mental fatigue of it, he had reached the area around Mountain Beyond the Mountain’s Reception Platform. Liuguang and Jingbu, who had gone separately to find Wuwang, had already finished the job. They and Wuwang — who had been posing as a Prophet’s envoy — had hurried to the Reception Platform and were waiting in the valley up ahead.

“Good. You’re back, and that’s what matters.”

Ji Wuri was delighted to see all three of them — Liuguang, Jingbu and Wuwang. “We did not come out of this Divine War with the final victory, but we did achieve part of what we set out to do. You all came out alive from a fight that could not be won. That makes me glad.”

Liuguang and Jingbu had gone into the war at Ji Wuri’s side, and knew perfectly well how hard-won it was to come out of that fight alive.

They bowed, turned into golden light and went back into Ji Wuri’s Grimoire World.

Wuwang had been outside the whole time.

He had been carrying out a secret assignment Ji Wuri had given him earlier.

Before he went back into the Grimoire World he handed Ji Wuri something, with a good deal of ceremony. One look at it and the pleasure showed plain on Ji Wuri’s face. He nodded and praised him. “Well done. This much forbidden power collected — you didn’t just complete the task, you went far past what I expected of you. With this, not only can Yuanji get back to the peak of his strength, but all of us can climb to a higher realm together. This is rare work. You did very well.”

Wuwang put on a show of modesty that did nothing to hide his pride, and said with a small smile, “It isn’t that Wuwang did well. It’s that the people of Mountain Beyond the Mountain are stupid. Those fools actually believed there was something in this world to be had without working for it. It was their own greed — that bottomless pit of wanting — that made us what we are.”

“Good. Mountain Beyond the Mountain is extremely dangerous right now, though, so the wisest thing is to leave quickly.” Ji Wuri nodded his agreement.

If the mysterious man had not turned up, he would have gone on scooping a good deal more out of this Divine War.

But the moment to leave had arrived.

Nobody even knew whether someone as strong as the mysterious man was alive or dead.

An evil god named Weiguang trying to squeeze out through the seal on the ancient passage was frightening enough. Worse than that, for reasons nobody could explain, the Divine War had gone and disturbed an unknown ancient god who had been sleeping… What Ji Wuri hoped for now was that the ancient god, having finished the mysterious man, would turn his attention to the evil god Weiguang.

However much profit was on the table, he absolutely could not stay here wading through this muddy water any longer.

Wuwang seemed to have more to report, but one look told him Ji Wuri had made up his mind to go.

He turned himself into a shaft of golden light at once.

And went back into the grimoire.

Ji Wuri put away his brilliant, dazzling Sacred Codex, streaked across the sky like a meteor, and flew straight for the teleportation gate on Mountain Beyond the Mountain’s Reception Platform.

And just as this Grand Hall Master of the Central Divine Hall was about to become a beam of light, pass into the gate and leave Mountain Beyond the Mountain — two tiny fragments of ancient relic true bodies, set beneath it, gave off a dazzling many-colored radiance and formed a curtain of light.

It spread.

It covered everything within a thousand meters.

The golden light that was about to carry Ji Wuri away stalled, and he showed his true body again, drifting down — part startled, part suddenly understanding — onto ground that had already converted, fast, into a Shenmie domain.

“So it’s you.” Ji Wuri finally understood who had been scheming against him from behind.

“That’s right. It’s me.”

A faint, drifting voice, as though it came from the dark vault above the ninth heaven, sounded at Ji Wuri’s ear. From the tone of it, this might have been two old friends meeting. But Ji Wuri’s face turned grave on the instant — graver and more serious than when he had been fighting Yue Yang. “Why would you do this? I have never once thought of taking your place among the Great Powers of the Heavenly Realm. Hasn’t our cooperation been pleasant all along? Why scheme against me? And do you really think a scheme at this level is going to work?”

The owner of that drifting voice did not answer.

The sky changed.

Electric light crackled and flickered across it.

Inside the space that had already become a Shenmie domain, a terrible black hole was torn open by force, pulling everything toward it.

Countless arcs of current and the twisted law-force of the Shenmie domain collided with the power inside that black hole, and destructive, mutating ripples came off its edge without a moment’s pause.

A strange man came drifting out of the nothingness — black lightning coiling all over him, a whirlpool of divine power forming impossibly at his back even inside the black hole, a black halo of light ignoring both the hole and the Shenmie domain’s law-suppression. His body was like a still more terrible black hole, taking in the light of the world outside him without stopping. He looked more like a black hole that devours everything in the world than the torn one did.

His words were spoken first, then carried out by an undying Sovereign Intent. Once the sound reached Ji Wuri’s ear, though, it lost that escort, and before it could fade it was pulled forcibly back into the black hole space and into his body.

Which was what produced that impossible, faint, drifting sound, as though it came from the dark vault above the ninth heaven.

His face could not be made out.

Neither could the shape of him, and his true strength could not be seen through at all.

Of all the people Ji Wuri had known in his life, this man was the most mysterious. He was even more mysterious than his own master — the mysterious man, who had been all but invincible today, right up until the woken ancient god overwhelmed him.

This person’s name was, of course, Jiuxiao.

Beyond the name, Ji Wuri knew nothing more about him. He had turned up a few things before, and he did not trust any of them — he strongly suspected they were false information the man had put out deliberately to mislead him. Among his own generation in the Heavenly Realm, Ji Wuri had several rivals he thought worth guarding against. But the one he guarded against most, the one who was like a friend and more like a lifelong enemy, was this man he worked with constantly and never stopped watching: Jiuxiao, one of the Three Great Powers.

“A scheme doesn’t have to work to be worth making. Years ago you knew perfectly well it wouldn’t work, and you schemed against me anyway — set me against the Prison Emperor, made me fight to the death against that war-god of a man with three divine artifacts in his hands. Every time I think about those few thousand years sealed away, I can’t help wanting to pay you back.” Jiuxiao, standing at the center of the black hole, spoke slowly.

“Ji Wuri. You don’t want my place among the Great Powers of the Heavenly Realm because you have a better target in mind — and because there’s a girl of genius you’re badly wary of, Ming Yueguang, whose gifts are no less than yours and may well be greater, standing across the road to your success. Until you get past her, you need Xukong and me to move that beautiful stumbling block out of your way. Of course our cooperation has been pleasant. And poor Xukong and I were a pair of fools, used by you over and over. My dear friend, Ji Ge, Ji Wuri — what do you take me for? A born idiot? If I hadn’t needed to fit in with Grand Hall Master Dongfang’s plan, I would have come looking for trouble the moment I got back from the Sky Tower. Why would I have waited until today?”

“Impressive. You held your patience all the way to today, just for revenge.” Ji Wuri’s expression changed at first, then he burst out laughing and clapped his hands in praise.

“You ought to know my patience has always been good.” Jiuxiao gave a mocking snort. “Especially when I’m perfecting a plan to pull some lofty, self-important rival down off his altar. The preparing and the waiting may take a little longer than usual. But I enjoy it.”

“Ah — you, who came running back from the Sky Tower as sorry as a dog pulled out of a river. Have you recovered completely yet?” Ji Wuri met him point for point, his lip curling in sarcasm.

“I trust I won’t disappoint you.” Jiuxiao was not angered in the slightest. His heart was as still as water.

Ji Wuri and Jiuxiao stood facing each other.

And Yue Yang, for his part, was dreaming.

He dreamed that the golden dragon, having swallowed the self-destructing beast-formed mysterious man in one gulp, looked like something that had eaten a fire-breathing chili pepper. Its belly swelled up, a pillar of flame shot out of its mouth, and every scale on its body blew off and scattered across the sky.

But anything at all can happen in a dream. One second the dragon scales were flying everywhere, and the next second all of it had gathered itself back together.

The enormous golden dragon was as good as new.

It even swam back over.

Wagging its head from side to side, it spat out an enormous dragon pearl for him.

The pearl very nearly crushed him… The strangest part was that before the golden dragon faded, it painfully coughed up a ball of Black Radiance, and hiding inside that Black Radiance was the mysterious man’s soul. The guy had plainly died, and yet in the dream he was still alive. And the bastard was announcing with great satisfaction that he would have his revenge — that once his divine power came back, he would take the Black Radiance and slaughter the whole Sky Tower.

Yue Yang, for his part, was angry. It was only a dream, none of it real, and he was furious about it anyway.

And in a dream, of all places.

Nothing he did was under his control.

He wanted to put a foot down on this old man who couldn’t be killed by any means, the way you step on a cockroach. The thought had barely formed when something strange happened. The old man hid inside the Black Radiance and ran, and ran fast, and Duoduo and Xiao Wenli couldn’t catch him. Yue Yang, for his part, was frantic. That was one of the Five-Color Divine Radiances he had spent years hunting for — Black and Green are each one of the five — and he had been getting ready to collect the whole set and put it together. How had it ended up in this old man’s hands? There was no justice in the world!

Yue Yang, for his part, was hopping with impatience, and since this was a dream he had no way to chase anything. His body was heavy as lead and would not move at all.

He was complaining to himself that nobody nearby was waking him up.

It happened all at once.

He heard a cry like the music of heaven.

It was deeply familiar. He felt as though he had heard that indescribably beautiful heavenly cry somewhere before, and he could not for the life of him say where… Then two adorable little lolis, both of whose faces he knew and neither of whose names he could produce, came back carrying the Black Radiance and set it down in front of him, very obediently. He was so pleased he wanted to kiss them both — and before he could, a big loli whose face he also knew, who looked extremely annoyed, whose name he almost had, whose name came all the way to his lips and got swallowed again, reached over and mischievously snatched the Black Radiance away.

If he caught that girl, he was going to smack her backside raw. It was infuriating.

Yue Yang, for his part, made up his mind. As soon as he woke up inside the dream, he was going to settle accounts with her.

Smack her backside.

See if she dared act up after that.

But he had been dreaming this for a good long while now. Why wouldn’t he wake up?

(End of Chapter 1206)