Liuye came to with the feeling that she had lived and trained through a thousand lifetimes in her dreams.

A realm of understanding, knowledge, and energy — impossible to put into words — filled her mind like an ocean, so full it felt ready to spill over. She knew that if only her cultivation had been deeper, capable of holding more, what she had gained in that dream would have been tens of thousands of times greater still. That boundless, infinite world had been brought to her by Yueyang — woven together with the insights of everyone present, each contributing in their own way. Liuye had never imagined that something so vast could exist, a limitless expanse as immeasurable as the universe itself.

Master!

She sat up, urgent to check whether Yueyang was alright.

She wasn’t sure whether losing control and blacking out had somehow affected him.

“You’re awake?” Sick Beauty appeared before her, extending a slender jade hand with a cup of water. “Your potential is really something — you were out for a full three days.”

“Three days?” Liuye didn’t quite see what sleeping three days had to do with potential, though she had always held deep respect for Sick Beauty as her Mistress Wuhen. She accepted the cup without thinking, and asked in bewilderment, “I was unconscious for three days?”

“That’s right. The more you gain in a new realm, the longer your body needs to adjust and adapt. Three days of recovery means you gained more than most. Think about it — Bao’er and Xiao Nu woke up fastest, after just one day. Most of us, myself and Yue Yu and Xiayi included, were around two days. This proves you have more potential than we do.”

As Sick Beauty took the cup back, Liuye noticed something — a thread of crystalline energy, almost invisible to the naked eye, curling with remarkable delicacy around her own fingers. In an instant, Liuye felt something open in her heart, and realized she could communicate directly with Mistress Wuhen mind-to-mind.

“What is this?” Liuye noticed a similar thread of energy on her own fingers, though its shape was different from Sick Beauty’s.

“A Heart-Link.” Sick Beauty smiled softly and brushed the hair from Liuye’s forehead. “After our minds fully merged in that cultivation session, every one of us gained this ability. Yue Yu and I decided to call it a Heart-Link. The form it takes is different for everyone, but it really does allow mind-to-mind communication.”

“Mental energy?” Liuye discovered with delight that this energy was impervious to all physical barriers — governed only by her own will.

“Look.”

Rather than answer, Sick Beauty raised a delicate rose-tinted finger and pointed into the distance.

Liuye looked up — and only then noticed that the energy field from Yueyang’s Creation Domain still lingered, undispersed, and that she was still within it. The entire field was filled with ribbons of mental energy in every shape imaginable, each one distinct, some large and some small, some like flowers and some like flowing sashes, weaving together into intricately profound Heart-Link patterns.

Yue Bing, Yi Nan, and the others were still asleep, along with many more lying on the ground, yet to wake. They were still immersed in the energy field, their bodies making various degrees of adjustment following the breakthrough into new realms.

Liuye looked around and found that Night Empress’s Heart-Link was the most beautiful of all — like star after star strung together by threads of starlight, weaving the most resplendent pattern among them, its radiance so brilliant and dazzling it was almost too much to take in. Supreme’s Heart-Link, by contrast, was sword light surging into the heavens — so piercingly cold that even in its unconscious state, no one could bring themselves to look at it directly, much less harbor any irreverent thought. Supreme’s Heart-Link was also the only one attended by a grand, protective image. That image bore a striking resemblance to Supreme herself, yet sat cross-legged with palms pressed together and eyes closed, radiating an effortless divine authority that carried none of an ordinary woman’s softness. The moment Liuye’s eyes fell on it, her very soul trembled, and an instinct of reverent awe rose unbidden within her.

She didn’t know what the image within Supreme’s Heart-Link represented — but her most immediate, instinctive sense was that it was something sacred.

Unlike Supreme, Yueyang had no Heart-Link, and no protective image.

He simply lay at the center of everyone.

His entire being radiated an endless, boundless energy — vast as the cosmos and its rivers of stars — flowing unceasingly to all those still sleeping around him, helping them adapt more quickly to the changes that followed their breakthroughs.

Looking at Yueyang lying there asleep, Liuye felt the corner of her mouth twitch upward involuntarily. She found it quietly, genuinely amusing — though she reined it in and kept herself from actually laughing.

Yueyang’s grimoire had changed significantly. Now three meters long and a meter wide, the runes across its surface shimmered with light, and that one-of-a-kind world within it continued to absorb energy steadily. Seeing this, Liuye felt genuinely happy for him. She’d heard him grumble plenty of times about how slowly his grimoire progressed — always on the cusp of advancing to a Diamond Grimoire, and yet somehow never quite getting there. Well, he could put that worry to rest now. How could his grimoire be anything but a Diamond Grimoire at this point? It seemed a little different from a typical Diamond Grimoire advancement, but then again, this was Master — with him, anything was possible.

As for the changes in Yueyang’s grimoire, Liuye didn’t probe further.

She let Sick Beauty help her gently to her feet, then turned to take one last look at Xue Wuxia.

She had to admit — the eldest young lady of the Xue family was worthy of the title of First Mistress. Among all the Heart-Links wound around Yueyang’s body, Xue Wuxia’s was at once the most beautiful and the most wondrous — composed entirely of runes. Spinning endlessly, each rune was a variant of ancient script that Liuye couldn’t read a single one of. Yet she had an intuitive sense: those runes were Mistress Wuhen’s secret language for Master alone, and only he could ever truly read their meaning.

With a Heart-Link like that, Master would never mistake Mistress Wuhen for anyone else.

And no one could ever imitate her.

“You have your own irreplaceable gifts, you know. Your purity, your kindness — and the courage to push through every obstacle. None of that can be replaced.” Sick Beauty’s Heart-Link was connected to Liuye’s, so she naturally knew what was passing through Liuye’s mind. She spoke gently, in comfort.

“Yes. Thank you, Mistress.” Liuye’s jade cheeks flushed crimson.

Was this Mistress Wuhen’s way of accepting her?

She didn’t dare let herself think too hard about it, and hastily pulled her Heart-Link back, afraid that Sick Beauty might read the shy thoughts she was trying to hide.

Of course Sick Beauty knew exactly what was going on in this little one’s heart — she simply chose not to say so. She gave Liuye’s soft cheek an affectionate pat. “Go take a bath. Bao’er and the others are all splashing around at the hot spring. Don’t rush the cultivation — we’ll wait for Yueyang to wake up first.”

Liuye gave an obedient nod.

But before she left, she couldn’t help sneaking one last glance back at him.

She leapt into the air, intending to travel the way she always did — using the aerial movement technique Yueyang had taught her. But she was startled to find her body a hundred times lighter than usual. The moment she rose off the ground, she moved with pure thought — no need to consciously guide her body, energy flowing through her automatically. A thousand meters, and she was there in an instant, without any effort at all. It was no slower than riding the Penetration Deer or using a synchronized spirit-linked teleport.

The strange sensation that the sky had somehow gotten lower, and the world smaller.

What…?

Liuye landed at the hot spring ten kilometers away with her heart still full of astonishment. She had estimated it would take at least a minute. It had taken ten seconds. If she’d ridden the Penetration Deer or used teleportation, it would have been even faster.

Not a teleport. Pure flight — drifting through open air — and yet faster than anything she’d managed before.

What had happened to her body?

A pink, bare little figure flung itself into Liuye’s arms, and Bao’er’s clear, bright voice rang out warmly in her ear: “Liuye-jiejie, you’re so beautiful! Bao’er wants to become a Divine Envoy too — but I’m still not quite there!”

“Whose fault is that for not training seriously? Even Xiao Nu is ahead of you!” Xiayi called out from the bubbling hot spring.

“No, Xiao Nu doesn’t need to be a Divine Envoy,” said the half-elf Xiao Nu, bashfully retreating further into the spring until only the top of her head peeked out. Though the rest of her was submerged, her rather… formidable assets were quite impossible to conceal, shifting in and out of view beneath the water in a way that left Liuye feeling a sudden, involuntary pang of inadequacy. She was used to the sight by now — but seeing it again in this context, somehow it struck her all over again just how extraordinary the scale of Xiao Nu’s situation truly was.

“Divine Envoy?” Liuye’s first instinct was to ask Xiao Nu what on earth she’d been eating — but she caught herself before the words came out.

In fairness, compared to Bao’er’s fresh, girlish figure, and Xiayi who notoriously took personal offense at any mention of being flat-chested, Liuye had little reason to feel insecure. Xiao Nu was simply a category unto herself — not a fair comparison. The only one truly beyond all competition in that department was Tianfa.

Xiayi tossed Liuye a mirror. Liuye looked — and let out a startled cry.

“Is that… me?”

She almost didn’t recognize the face looking back at her.

A face of pristine, radiant beauty wearing an expression of faint surprise — and in the eyes, an transcendent, supreme-grade will flickering like light on water. At the center of her brow, a Divine Envoy mark glittered like an inlaid diamond, leaving absolutely no doubt: the person in this mirror was someone who had ascended to the Divine Envoy realm. But how? My cultivation only just barely crossed into the Innate realm. The Innate Sovereign realm is still a distant dream — how could I possibly be a Divine Envoy? Is the mirror broken?

Yue Yu appeared behind Liuye without a sound.

A faint, intoxicating fragrance drifted from her — the scent of a maiden’s untouched purity, so distinct that even the still-bewildered Liuye caught it immediately.

Liuye sensed that something about Yue Yu had changed in a strange, fundamental way, though she couldn’t pinpoint what.

And it wasn’t just Yue Yu. Now that she looked, Sick Beauty from earlier, and Bao’er, Xiao Nu, and Xiayi before her — all of them were different. Renewed in some way that made everything feel slightly unreal. Am I still dreaming?

“Don’t question it. This is just one of many things we’ve gained through Xiao San and Supreme and Night Empress. I’m certain there are more abilities waiting to be unlocked. Liuye, don’t be overwhelmed — just keep the Divine Envoy mark hidden for now. Strictly speaking, we’re not true Divine Envoys yet. Our realm was carried here by Supreme and the others, and by the guidance of countless predecessors within the World Tree and this Sky Stairway. If we couldn’t reach the Divine Envoy realm even with all of that — we’d have no business calling ourselves cultivators. But while our realm has arrived, our actual strength is nowhere near there yet. To use one of Xiao San’s analogies: we now have a flying war beast, but we don’t know how to ride it. We can’t get off the ground — we can only stand here and look up. But as long as we keep training, we’ll grow into the realm we’ve been given. We don’t need to worry about potential or bottlenecks anymore — Xiao San and Supreme have already cleared the path for us. All we need to do is put in the work ourselves, not be a burden to him, and let him focus on his own advancement.” Yue Yu wrapped an arm gently around Liuye’s shoulders and patiently walked her through everything she’d woken up needing to understand.

“Right! Xiao Nu is going to work really hard!” The half-elf Xiao Nu pumped her small fist — and stood straight up out of the hot spring.

“Wah — so white, so big—!” Bao’er shrieked before she could stop herself.

Everyone froze.

It took a long moment for anyone to recover. Yue Yu and Liuye both averted their eyes. Xiayi landed a firm knock on top of Bao’er’s head. “You absolute idiot, where are you looking? Don’t you have your own?”

The half-elf Xiao Nu turned red to her ears, buried her face in her hands, and sank back into the water at speed, hiding until only the tip of her nose was visible above the surface.

To cover her own moment of fluster, Liuye quickly shed her clothes and slipped into the hot spring.

Beside her, Yue Yu was about to do the same — and happened to glance, quite unintentionally, at Liuye’s chest.

She froze.

Jaw. On. The. Floor.