The Grimoire of Summoning’s ascension into a Sacred Codex had caught Yue Yang completely off guard.

The surprise lit up Liuye’s face beside him, genuine delight rising from the bottom of her heart on his behalf. With the Grimoire ascended to a Sacred Codex, when Yue Yang summoned Xiao Wenli and Duoduo again, he found both of them had gained noticeable improvements of one degree or another. Even the Five-Element Gold-Seeking Mice, which had no combat ability whatsoever, showed an entirely new transformation, as if some kind of artifact spirit were quietly brewing within them… could these five little creatures, with zero combat power, actually be evolving into Sacred-tier war beasts?

Yue Yang couldn’t make sense of what he was seeing.

The details would probably have to wait until he could ask the Night Empress, or perhaps Her Majesty Vivienne herself.

But even as things stood, Yue Yang felt entirely satisfied — it was as if a slice of good fortune had simply dropped out of the sky and landed square on his head.

The newly ascended Sacred Codex radiated unmatched power, far surpassing every Sacred Codex Yue Yang had ever encountered. Even Vivienne’s own Sacred Codex, the strongest he’d seen, seemed to fall slightly short by comparison.

Of course, the main reason Vivienne’s Sacred Codex had diminished in power was likely her sealed state, her combat strength badly weakened by it. If she could ever break entirely free of the black hole’s confines — or better yet, transform the entirety of that black hole space into a true world of ice and snow, restoring herself fully to her original peak condition — Yue Yang estimated her Sacred Codex’s power wouldn’t simply double from where it stood now; tenfold would likely be a conservative estimate. Even back when he’d first seen her Sacred Codex, compared to now, with her having half-mastered the black hole space and condensed half a world of ice and snow within it, the difference in that codex’s power alone was already substantial — several times stronger, at minimum.

With so many changes happening within his own body, and all manner of new power suddenly emerging now that his Grimoire had ascended, Yue Yang had no way of puzzling it all out at once.

If the sky-spanning formation hadn’t already been sitting there for three full days, with the odds of discovery growing by the minute and what little exploration time remained rapidly running out, Yue Yang would absolutely have set aside the treasure hunt entirely to head into the black hole space first and have a proper talk with Vivienne.

Or gone back to the Sky Tower to track down the Night Empress and Fourth Sister, to ask them about the deeper secrets behind a Sacred Codex.

“Never mind that for now — let’s hurry and find the treasure. If someone from the Central Divine Hall or some other major power catches wind of this and comes running, we’ll be the ones who lose out.” Yue Yang decided to set the Sacred Codex aside for the moment; it wasn’t going anywhere, after all, and there’d be time to study it slowly later. Besides, even consulting Vivienne or the Night Empress was no guarantee of finding the best answer — and Fourth Sister certainly wouldn’t be telling him much of anything regardless.

In truth, Yue Yang already understood that a great many of the things happening to him simply had no explanation at all.

Nobody knew. Nobody could possibly figure it out.

As for Yue Yang’s decision to keep treasure hunting, Liuye naturally deferred to him. The moment she heard “Central Divine Hall,” and thought about how three full days had already passed — with the Central Divine Hall’s countless agents everywhere, there was no reason they wouldn’t have noticed a phenomenon this massive by now. If someone on the level of the Solar King came rushing in, the situation could spiral out of control entirely… She nodded quickly, agreeing with his plan.

“The seal’s been broken, but I haven’t spotted any kind of portal.” Liuye really had stayed by Yue Yang’s side this entire three days. She wasn’t careless about it either — beyond constantly repositioning with the Barrier-Piercing Deer at intervals to avoid any surprise attack, she’d also carefully searched for the unsealed portal, or whatever entrance the ancient treasure might have, in whatever form it might take.

To her disappointment.

Three days in, she’d found absolutely nothing.

Yue Yang took her and circled the entire space where the central region of the sky-formation had once been.

He finally stopped, brow furrowed. There really was no portal or ancient entrance anywhere in the sky-formation — Liuye had searched it meticulously enough to be sure.

If it wasn’t in the central region, then where could it be? Around the formation’s outer edges? That didn’t seem likely either — this sky-spanning formation, woven from countless interlocking runes, was simply too vast. If the entrance or portal had been placed at the outer edge rather than fixed at the center, the sheer ocean of energy flowing through the formation would almost certainly have crushed it instantly; it couldn’t possibly have held up.

“Sweetheart, what do you think?” Yue Yang turned to Xiao Wenli. The little serpent-demon girl had an exceptionally sharp combat instinct, though that instinct wasn’t much use for treasure hunting — he was really just asking on a whim.

“Hm!” Sure enough, Xiao Wenli didn’t answer right away. She paused, deep in thought — her combat instincts were useless here, so now she was relying on pure reasoning instead.

“I wonder if it might be somewhere else entirely — not in the sky…” Duoduo, the Gold-Crowned Thorn Queen, cut in. She felt that placing an ancient entrance anywhere within the sky-formation itself would be difficult no matter where you tried, since the formation already formed a self-contained system, and linking it to another dimensional space would all too easily shatter the void from the sheer scale of energy involved.

“Not in the sky?” Something clicked in Yue Yang’s mind.

Xiao Wenli’s keen intelligence flickered, and a sudden flash of insight struck her — she pointed down at the water’s surface, suggesting the ancient entrance might be underwater, beneath everyone’s feet, rather than up in the sky. Her guess lined up perfectly with the thought that had just occurred to Yue Yang himself.

Yue Yang clapped his hands together, fully endorsing the theory.

There were several reasons the ancient entrance or portal wouldn’t be in the sky: first, the sky-formation itself might annihilate the ancient entrance and whatever world lay within it; second, even if it wouldn’t, the placement point itself simply couldn’t bear the weight — with the core already devoured by Yue Yang and the central region gone entirely, what other location could possibly support the structural weight of the entire sky-formation’s energy?

Third, everyone already knew the local legend of White River — an ancient tale about the Water God’s Palace having sunk beneath the waters in some distant era, with a floating continent later settling on top of it.

Even if this particular ancient treasure wasn’t the legendary Water God’s Palace itself, it was entirely possible the ancient entrance had been buried beneath that same floating continent.

And Yue Yang’s final theory: he suspected the ancient era’s supreme powerhouses had employed a yin-yang reversal approach. If the sky-formation itself couldn’t bear the structural load, then the support point for the ancient entrance would have been placed outside the sky-formation entirely — the two corresponding to one another while remaining physically distant.

The seabed.

Nothing there at all.

Not even fish or other seabed creatures anywhere in sight — it felt like a dead zone.

Undeterred, Yue Yang searched the seabed for nearly an hour, until finally, after using Waning Crescent Moon to split open a tall underwater mountain, he found exactly what he’d been looking for. The slash Yue Yang unleashed this time carried power on an entirely different level than before — a single strike split a mountain over a thousand meters tall, sitting on the seabed, clean in two.

The mountain split open, and a beam of light shone up from somewhere deep within.

With Xiao Wenli and Duoduo’s help, it took Yue Yang all of three minutes to level the entire mountain flat.

A whirlpool ten thousand meters wide opened up in the water beneath the sky-formation. Under Yue Yang’s will, all the water within the whirlpool was flung outward, exposing a massive, empty cavity.

Once the area had been leveled, a column of blindingly intense light shone up from the deep underwater trench.

Clearly, there was a separate rune-formation beneath the water, at least ten kilometers across — not a fragment split off from the sky-formation, but a self-contained, corresponding ancient entrance in its own right, an independent support point the ancients had placed deliberately outside the sky-formation itself.

Yue Yang couldn’t begin to imagine what level of power it would take to pull off something like this.

A placement like this was no less remarkable than the black hole seal itself.

The sheer ingenuity of it defied easy description.

“Should we head in now?” Liuye was practically buzzing with excitement. Yue Yang merging with and devouring the sky-formation’s core energy, his Grimoire ascending into a Sacred Codex — that alone had already been more than enough excitement for one day, and now they’d found this ancient entrance besides. What kind of treasure could be waiting inside? Did this ancient entrance lead straight to the legendary Water God’s Palace itself?

“Hold on a second. You two go ahead — Xiao Wenli, Duoduo, come with me!” Bingyin the Qilin girl suddenly appeared, grinning as she whisked both of Yue Yang’s two greatest helpers away with her. Without question, she was taking them into the sacred codex — and it seemed Duoduo, not just Xiao Wenli and Jiang Ying the chilong dragon girl, had now earned that same privilege.

“……” Highly suspicious. This little troublemaker Bingyin showing up right at the doorstep of a treasure vault and not going in herself? Yue Yang’s brow furrowed.

“Okay, see you later.” Liuye, for her part, didn’t overthink it.

The ancient entrance sat right there in front of them, and Bingyin hadn’t rushed to claim first dibs on whatever lay inside. There were a few possible explanations: maybe there was nothing inside that interested her; maybe she’d already slipped in and explored it herself during the three days Yue Yang had been unconscious; or maybe this ancient entrance was difficult to enter, and even if you managed it, claiming any treasure inside wasn’t easy either — probably destined to end in nothing but frustration, which was why Bingyin didn’t want to waste the time and effort.

Whichever it turned out to be, it wasn’t exactly reassuring for Yue Yang.

Oh well. He could only hope it was reason one or two.

Yue Yang took Liuye’s small hand and leapt straight toward that column of light. Having come all this way to the doorstep, there was no reason not to step inside and have a look around… and worst case, if it turned out to be nothing, at least he could destroy it so the Central Divine Hall or anyone else couldn’t swoop in and claim an easy win.

With that admittedly self-serving thought in mind, Yue Yang dove straight into the beam of energy.

The instant they entered, some strange and irresistible force of law wrapped around the two of them. Both Yue Yang and Liuye were startled to discover that this force functioned something like a disarmament law — their weapons and armor were instantly stripped away and separated from them. If not for Yue Yang’s quick reflexes, pulling them back into the Grimoire World in time, the force would have flung them off into oblivion entirely.

Beyond weapons and armor, everything else on their bodies — including the contents of their storage rings — couldn’t remain within this kind of law either.

Yue Yang and Liuye scrambled to stow away their most important treasures as fast as they possibly could.

What clothing they couldn’t put away in time simply vanished before their eyes, swallowed by this harmless but bizarre force of law, reducing both of them to their most basic, original state — completely bare, not a single thread between them.

The force of law didn’t harm anyone — it simply rejected all physical items outright. Weapon- and armor-type objects in particular faced the strictest restriction under this law… Yue Yang found the whole thing more than a little exasperating. This wasn’t some weapon-ban law — it was just stripping anyone who entered of everything they carried. Fine, he could live with that. But did it really have to take the clothes too? If he’d brought Fengxian or the Southern Wilderness Demon King along on this little adventure, it wouldn’t have mattered one bit. But the one at his side right now was Liuye!

Thank goodness he hadn’t brought Yue Bing or Yue Yu along — that would’ve been even more awkward.

Yue Yang kept his grip on Liuye’s small hand. Standing there stripped completely bare admittedly did a number on his own dignity, but under the circumstances, it didn’t feel right to just let go of the girl now.

Liuye’s face had gone bright red, the blush creeping all the way down her neck.

Because her own strength wasn’t enough to withstand the pull of the energy beam, she had no choice but to keep one hand in Yue Yang’s grip just to avoid being flung straight back out of the column of light. With only one free hand to work with, she had no idea whether to cover herself up top or down below, utterly mortified — and yet she couldn’t bring herself to pull her hand free and run. A chance like this, to go on an adventure alone with him, was rare enough — she had no intention of being some timid coward who shrank back from it… No matter where he went, even if it meant the Upper Heavens themselves, or some realm higher still, she’d made up her mind to follow him all the way.

If she turned and fled now, what right would she ever have to claim she’d follow him to the ends of the earth?

Liuye bit down gently on her lower lip with her pearly teeth, fighting back the shame welling up inside her.

He needed her cooperation right now.

She couldn’t run.

She’d spent so long training that synchronized transfer technique with her life-guardian war beast, the Barrier-Piercing Deer — it hadn’t even had its chance to prove useful yet. How could she possibly turn tail and flee at the exact moment she was needed most?

Fight through it, Liuye. Find your courage.

“I— I’m fine, really!” Liuye’s head drooped like a little quail’s, nearly burying itself against her own chest, but she didn’t want Yue Yang to let go of her hand.

“This stupid place’s laws are really something else. Still, nothing in this world is too much for us to handle!” Yue Yang pretended not to notice the girl’s snow-white figure beside him, keeping hold of her hand as he plunged straight down through the column of energy, ready to cross through the ancient entrance together with her. He had no idea what lay ahead, but since he’d brought the girl this far, he figured he might as well let her see it through with him. A bit of bare skin along the way was, after all, just one of the small perks that came with adventuring — though obviously, a man secretly enjoying himself wasn’t about to go around announcing that to anyone.

“Mm-hm!” Liuye was deeply moved, tears welling up in her eyes.

Just as she’d thought. No matter the situation, he was never going to let go of her hand.

As long as she got to adventure alongside him, a little embarrassment didn’t matter at all.

This wasn’t something he could control anyway. Facing an awkward situation head-on, pushing through the difficulty, staying steadfastly by his side and giving him her fullest support — that was what truly mattered here.

A surge of emotion welled up in Liuye’s heart.

She forgot to cover herself entirely.

Raising a small fist, she declared her resolve to Yue Yang with a determined expression: “I’ll do my best!”

Yue Yang pretended he hadn’t seen a thing, quietly swallowing hard, a thought crossing his mind that he absolutely could not say out loud: this girl’s body had really filled out in all the right places now, curves where curves ought to be… this particular perk of life really was something else.

(End of Chapter)