When Yue Yang woke, he found he was back in the Grimoire World, lying in bed.
There was only one person beside him: Sick Beauty.
She was slumped against the side of the bed, fast asleep.
There was no telling what she was dreaming about, but a sweet little smile sat at the corner of her mouth. Yue Yang stroked her small face with something like tenderness, tucked back the few strands of black hair fallen across her forehead, got out of bed carefully and lifted her, boneless and soft, into his own warm blankets. Sick Beauty seemed to register it without waking. She only shifted a little, adjusted her position, slid a pale hand around Yue Yang out of pure habit and made a small sound through her nose, exactly the way she did any other time she slept beside him.
Awake, she was gentle as water, and every word and gesture was the model of a good wife and mother. She minded her image in every particular and rarely stepped outside what was proper.
In front of Princess Qianqian and the others, that went double.
Once she was deeply asleep, though, it was another matter entirely.
Yue Yang got a sweet, artless side of her that might have belonged to a completely different person. Asleep, Sick Beauty loved to cling — arms and legs wrapped around him, and sometimes she would lie across him with her small head tucked into his chest and sleep there all night. It didn’t feel like her. It felt more like Bao’er, that carefree little girl who spent all day running wild. And that, in fact, was what Sick Beauty was really like.
In the daytime she was setting an example for everyone, and that was why she worked so hard at being the capable wife at home.
At night there was only the two of them.
And she went back to her own nature. If Yue Yu or Princess Qianqian were around, Sick Beauty was guaranteed to sleep more quietly than anybody, and there would be none of that artless clinging that left Yue Yang unable to get out of bed.
“Be good. I’m going to take a bath. I’ll be right back.” Yue Yang, for his part, kissed Sick Beauty lightly on the forehead and gently unwound her hand. One thing had puzzled him all along: she was plainly not conscious, and yet she seemed able to hear him. If he gave her a promise, or needed her to do something, she would cooperate from inside her sleep. He didn’t even have to speak — a gesture was enough. It was more remarkable than telepathy. The most incredible part was that if Yue Yang asked Sick Beauty about it the next day, she absolutely would not remember. Not the faintest impression of it.
He opened the door, meaning to go out and take a flying-dragon dive into Mirror Lake in front of the house.
And there was Yue Yu’s flushed face, lovely whether she was cross or pleased.
There it was, right in front of him.
They both jumped, both caught up at the same moment, and both looked at each other and smiled.
Yue Yu put out a pale, slender finger, feigning anger, and crooked it to rap him on the head as punishment for startling her. “You. You. Never mind that you keep everyone worried all day long — even when you’re only walking somewhere you go tearing along like the house is on fire. Who’s competing with you? A grown man, and still acting like some little brat.”
“I just woke up, my head’s still a little fuzzy, I didn’t notice you were out here.” Yue Yang was quick, and caught her hand without thinking.
“Let go—” Yue Yu jerked free as though she’d touched a live wire, and shot him a reproachful look.
“Where’s tiger girl and the rest?” Yue Yang changed the subject in a hurry, to head off the awkwardness.
“Bingyin says a seal has split open over at the God-Slaying Mystic Realm, and the evil god Weiguang is getting ready to squeeze through there. Qianqian and the others are going to go take a look.” Yue Yu’s words gave Yue Yang a bad fright. Take a look at what? The evil god Weiguang simply could not be matched by force. Jiuxiao’s master, the mysterious man, had been hard enough to fight, and by Qilin Girl Bingyin’s estimate Weiguang was above him. Princess Qianqian and the others were rushing to the God-Slaying Mystic Realm right now — and set aside for the moment whether they could even get there before Weiguang squeezed out. Even if they could, there was no way for them to stop him.
“Why didn’t you stop them?” Yue Yang did not want anything happening to them. He couldn’t bear the thought of any of them losing a single hair.
“Duoduo and Jiangying are with them. And they’re only going to look. If they can’t win, they can still run.” Yue Yu ended up doing the comforting instead.
“Not a chance.” It took Yue Yang a long moment to produce even that much.
He used to think the same way.
Suppose you couldn’t win.
You could always grease your heels and run for it, couldn’t you?
But the conclusion he had drawn from the fight with the mysterious man was that even if you wanted to run, you couldn’t. Meet someone at the Sacred Sovereign level, and if you can’t beat him, running is not worth thinking about. You die. There is no question about it.
In that fight the mysterious man had been too arrogant at the start. He went in without using any of his three forms — beast, demon or god — and fought the opening with a single finger… Suppose instead he had come out in the god form from the first move, holding the Three Divine Mirror, the Five Divine Bell and the Black Radiance, and killed with everything he had. Not one person on that field could have withstood the attack.
The mysterious man lost for three reasons. First, he was too full of himself. He thought his baseline strength would flatten everyone easily and never expected a freak like Yue Yang, so he never got to bring out what the Three Divine Mirror, the Five Divine Bell and the Black Radiance could do. Second, Qilin Girl Bingyin robbed him outright and made off with the Three Divine Mirror — and right after that, four Divine Sovereigns, God-Slayer, Zhaoxi, Qingyun and Shuanghan, paid with their lives to seal the Five Divine Bell. One tragedy stacked on the next. Third, the treasure he had been keeping at the bottom of the chest, the Black Radiance, one of the Five-Color Divine Radiances — he never got it out before Yue Yang’s Fate Giant stamped him flat.
By the time he wanted to use the Black Radiance, the god form was gone and he couldn’t even hold the demon form, so all he could do was blow himself up in the beast form and use the Black Radiance to save his own life.
And then, of all things, the Phoenix Sisters took the Black Radiance off him…
There are not many people whose lives turn out as tragic as the mysterious man’s.
Not many at all.
Even that tragic fellow back on the Longteng Continent — the one whose body was taken by the ancient Demon King, and whose identity Yue Yang, for his part, then stepped into — was not as tragic as this. His title of Tragic Man could honestly be handed over to the mysterious man now.
“Oh — right, my Black Radiance. That girl Bingyin made off with it. My heart is cold. Cold right through.” Yue Yang, for his part, suddenly remembered the details of the dream and started beating his chest and stamping his feet. It had taken a great deal to track down where the Black Radiance had gone, and before he could get his hands on it Qilin Girl Bingyin had snatched it. Honestly. What had possessed him to let that little bandit move in?
“Bingyin was only curious. She took it to have a look. Here — isn’t this it?” Yue Yu produced something out of her storage bracelet, and it was exactly what Yue Yang had been dreaming of: the Black Radiance, one of the Five-Color Divine Radiances.
“Whoa!” Yue Yang forgot himself entirely in his delight, threw his arms around Yue Yu and planted a hard kiss on her.
“Little Third, you—” Yue Yu, embarrassed and annoyed at once, had no time to scold him before Yue Yang caught her small hand and asked, in high excitement, “I was just dreaming, and in the dream Bingyin ran off with my Black Radiance. Now the Black Radiance is back, which proves the dream wasn’t a dream. But if that wasn’t a dream, does that mean this is the dream? Sis, tell me — am I dreaming right now? It makes no sense. If this isn’t a dream, how could that little bandit Bingyin possibly give back a treasure she’d already stolen? Extremely suspicious. Yes. Yes. I must be dreaming right now. This is a dream. This is a dream. But it’s such a realistic dream…”
Yue Yu didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at this little third brother of hers.
She held the laugh back.
She went up on her toes and rapped him on the head with a crooked finger.
Yue Yang looked up, startled, and Yue Yu gave an enormously satisfied little snort. “Well? Did that hurt? If it didn’t hurt, that proves you’re dreaming. It didn’t hurt, did it? Then let me put a little more into it.” The transmigrator was completely undone by that lovely laughing face — this gentle older sister of his so rarely let any mischief show — and it was a good while before he rubbed the top of his head, stupidly, and muttered, “That’s not right. Why does it feel like that hurt a bit?”
“You clearly didn’t feel it properly.” Yue Yu raised her hand to show she was going to rap him harder, so that he would feel it properly this time.
“No need for that. Even if it is a dream, you can’t go bullying me. If you knock me stupid you’ll have to keep me for the rest of my life.” Yue Yang, for his part, had caught on.
“Who’s keeping you for the rest of your life? If you go stupid, I’ll starve you every single day. Or I’ll give you a little bowl and send you out to beg in the street, in freezing weather, in rags, shivering from head to foot.” Yue Yu started laughing before she finished, picturing this little third brother of hers holding a little bowl and begging in the street, pitiful and ridiculous, and couldn’t stop.
“…” Yue Yang, for his part, heard that, and his heart broke with an audible crack. He went and squatted in the corner of the doorway, gloomily drawing circles.
Off in the distance, someone had spotted him.
Bao’er was out on the lake astride a water-type swan war doll, less practicing than playing, and she came racing over on it in tremendous high spirits. If she had flown it, that would have been fine, but she insisted on making it run — and a swan war doll is not built for running. She had it going like a horse anyway, and not slowly, and watching her made Yue Yang and Yue Yu both dizzy on her behalf. All they could hope was that she wouldn’t fall.
Whump!
Bao’er fell, exactly as expected.
She was quick on her feet, though. The instant she went over she jumped clear, used the momentum to spring toward Yue Yang, and spread both arms in midair. “Big villain, catch me!”
There was nothing Yue Yang could do about it. He handed the Black Radiance to Yue Yu and got both hands on the mischievous little girl.
He had her across his knee and was getting ready to smack her backside as a punishment.
The swan war doll, still carrying momentum from the fall, flipped upright, wings beating to correct itself, and came staggering forward fast. Yue Yang let go of Bao’er in a hurry and put out a hand to stop the thing before it hit them.
He stopped the swan war doll cleanly.
And with a deft push it shot upward and flew straight into the sky, and an accident was avoided.