“Even if you escape, can those few friends of yours escape with you?” The Heavens-Splitting Demon Lord, disguised as the handsome swordsman Qian Chong, asked with a smile.
“They’re just illusions. The real ones left long ago.” Yue Yang waved a hand, and North the bull-headed man, Four-Limbs the four-armed creature, and the pudgy Fortune all vanished without a trace. The Heavens-Splitting Demon Lord’s brow furrowed slightly — this wasn’t someone being stowed into a storage space or a Grimoire World, but it also didn’t quite feel like illusions. Because if they had truly been illusions, there was no reason he should have been so easily deceived by this boy.
True and false, impossible to distinguish.
This young man had some strange tricks up his sleeve.
The Heavens-Splitting Demon Lord had been paying particular attention to Yue Yang from the start — and now, he found himself reassessing the young man’s worth yet again.
If he hadn’t been certain that this young man was still in the early stages of growth and couldn’t yet pose any genuine threat, he would have used his finishing move without hesitation and put him down on the spot.
While quietly keeping the situation under control, the Heavens-Splitting Demon Lord continued with his smiling questions. “Little friend, might you tell me — whose descendant are you exactly?”
His true body hadn’t yet recovered to its peak, but he’d been free of the Demon God Hall for several thousand years already. Throughout that time, he’d maintained various disguised identities among the challengers — the handsome swordsman Qian Chong was just one of them. Over thousands of years, he’d been playing both factions against each other, sowing discord between the Angel Alliance and the Dark Alliance for his own benefit. Though he’d never left the Demon Valley world, the accumulating years had given him considerable awareness of events in the Heavenly Realm outside, and familiarity with many powerful figures.
Toward a young man like Yue Yang, his curiosity was genuine.
A young person this age with this level of strength — which family’s descendant was he?
“Even if I told you, you wouldn’t know them. And it’s a long way to go check.” Yue Yang indicated he had no intention of acting as a guide.
“You and I are both once-in-ten-thousand-years geniuses of this world. Why not join forces? Once we’ve disposed of Ren Tiange, Ghost King Phantom, Skeleton King Golden Bones, and Flayer King Blood Shave, all the treasures go to you, the blood and flesh to me. Little friend — if you can enter into a mutual assistance covenant with me, I will personally escort you out of Demon Valley, and can even lend you my full strength to clear all ten gates of the Trial Grounds. In the future, once you obtain the final reward, swear to join forces with me and conquer the Heavenly Realm together. I, the Heavens-Splitting Demon Lord, am willing to share the world with you and whoever stands behind you — unchanged for ten thousand years, this oath as binding as a curse.” The Heavens-Splitting Demon Lord suddenly made a major concession, changing his approach entirely, indicating he wanted to ally with Yue Yang.
“Joining forces really is a wonderful idea — the two of us together would be combining strength with strength, and it’d cost our enemies dearly.” Yue Yang first nodded in agreement with the other side’s words, and just as a glint of pleasure appeared in the Heavens-Splitting Demon Lord’s eyes, he shook his head and laughed outright. “But if I agreed to that, I’d be a fool.”
“What?” The Heavens-Splitting Demon Lord’s expression immediately iced over.
“Heavens-Splitting Demon Lord, we’re both intelligent people — let’s speak plainly.” Yue Yang laughed. “First: conquering the Heavenly Realm is an extraordinarily stupid idea. A cultivator can think about it as a goal, use it as a demand on themselves, as pressure and motivation to advance their cultivation. But you should never actually try to do it — because the only result of trying is exactly what happened to you: getting sealed away by someone, stuck for tens of thousands of years. If you’re lucky, like you, you at least make it out eventually for a few laps. If you’re unlucky, you’re stuck in a sealed space for your entire existence, and the longer you live, the more miserable you get. You already know this without me saying it: regardless of how strong the Heavenly Realm’s warriors get, even if someone actually reaches a divine tier, compared to the ancient deities they’re still pitiful little insects. Think about it this way — the entire Heavenly Realm was created by ancient deities or even older primordial gods. What level of cultivation would it take to match beings who’ve existed for millions, hundreds of millions, billions, trillions of years — all the way to infinity? What does ‘ancient deity’ or ‘primordial god’ mean when the existence stretches that long?”
“You are, by human standards, practically a god yourself — you’ve lived for tens of thousands of years. But to those ancient beings who’ve existed for millions of years, hundreds of millions of years, even longer than that, your tens of thousands of years is nothing more than a brief afternoon nap. How does that hold up?”
“Speaking of the Heavenly Realm — to those ancient deities of unimaginable scope, it’s like a house we humans built, and we’re just ants hopping around in the back garden. You say you want to break down this house, or take it over and become its master — do you think the people who built it would stand for that? If they didn’t crush you under one finger on the spot, that would already be remarkable mercy. So, Heavens-Splitting Demon Lord, my honest advice: if you’ve done something foolish once, don’t do it a second time. Conquering the Heavenly Realm and claiming dominion over it isn’t something a truly intelligent person does. Even if you managed to move into the house while the owners were away — what then? You’re still just a slightly larger ant, baring your teeth and thinking yourself formidable, when actually you’re still just a tiny creature that someone could crush with one finger. Don’t you find that a little pathetic?”
“Put the idea of conquering the Heavenly Realm out of your mind entirely.”
“Now, if you said your real ambition was overthrowing the Central Divine Hall, I’d actually see some possibility in that — because the Central Divine Hall is just an anthill in the grass of the back garden. If it got destroyed, the owners of the house probably wouldn’t even care. But claiming dominion over the entire Heavenly Realm — that’s slapping the house’s owners in the face, something that absolutely cannot be done.”
“And finally: Heavens-Splitting Demon Lord senior, just because I’m young doesn’t mean I’m easy to deceive. I’m young, yes, but I’m not stupid. If you had enough strength, why would you need to ally with me? If you could escape your seal completely, why would you be inviting me to fight Ren Tiange and the others alongside you? I know that individually, none of them match you — but what’s left you helpless is that you still can’t freely leave the Demon God Hall. The sealing force is still constraining you, even as you put on this impressive surface performance. Am I wrong? Because if not — why would you seek an alliance with a junior as young and inexperienced and laughably underpowered as me?”
By the time Yue Yang finished, the Heavens-Splitting Demon Lord’s expression had changed.
Changed drastically, in a way that was not at all flattering.
A long silence.
Not a word.
He simply stared at Yue Yang, staring with such fixed intensity it seemed as though he were trying to bore two transparent holes clean through him.
A glare that could kill? That would require a gaze like Aman’s — Death Gaze and Bloodpupil combined into a dual killing technique — which no second person in the world possessed. So Yue Yang stood there perfectly composed, utterly unbothered, letting the man stare as long as he liked.
The Heavens-Splitting Demon Lord suddenly clapped his hands together with conviction. “Well said. Since breaking out of the Demon God Hall, I swore to myself — never again, not ever, would I do something as idiotic as trying to conquer the Heavenly Realm. Back then it was ignorance — only after being sealed did I realize there were realms beyond realms. Cultivation has no end. I genuinely have no interest in conquering the Heavenly Realm now. That’s also why I haven’t left Demon Valley in thousands of years.”
Yue Yang immediately corrected him. “Not quite. You haven’t left Demon Valley not because you don’t want to, but because you can’t.”
The Heavens-Splitting Demon Lord stopped, momentarily at a loss, then smiled again. “If I wanted to leave, I could — but it would require paying a minor price.”
“A ‘minor price’ like the divine sense you spent tens of thousands of years of bitter cultivation condensing — in other words, that Golden Sword Giant who looked so formidable on the surface but has been trapped inside the Demon God Hall’s space all along and can’t leave. Well then — if you’re prepared to tell me you can enter the divine realm without your divine sense, I’ll agree that what you’d have to pay is indeed a minor price.” Yue Yang slapped him in the face without the slightest hesitation.
“Since you clearly understand everything, very well — let’s negotiate. If you help me free my sealed divine sense, I will offer you the greatest reward I can give: helping you complete all ten gates of the Trial Grounds and claim the final reward, the Divine Codex.” Faced with someone as perceptive as Yue Yang, the Heavens-Splitting Demon Lord had no choice but to acknowledge the truth.
“There’s nothing to negotiate. The moment your divine sense is freed, you’ll kill me and call that the greatest reward.” Yue Yang shook his head. He never trusted enemies.
“I could kill you right now if I wanted to.” The Heavens-Splitting Demon Lord let out an angry snort.
“If I heard you say that outside Demon Valley, maybe I’d be a little worried. But this isn’t just the Demon Valley world where the sealing force keeps constraining you — this is the Demon God Hall’s own space, where you don’t dare unleash your full power. You haven’t even revealed you’re the real Heavens-Splitting Demon Lord here. What gives you grounds to kill me? I’m not the Boar King, and I’m not Ren Tiange, who you could deceive.” Yue Yang spread his hands, indicating he had no fear of death.
“In all my years, I’ve never seen a young person as sharp as you. If only you weren’t standing on the opposite side.” The Heavens-Splitting Demon Lord let out a deep sigh.
“I’d rather not be your opponent either. A senior as formidable as you isn’t someone easy to tangle with.” Yue Yang occasionally spoke genuine truths.
“Young man — must you really refuse to cooperate with me?” The Heavens-Splitting Demon Lord’s expression cooled, the question direct.
“Well, if I said I wanted to go back and think it over for a few days before giving you an answer, would you believe me?” Yue Yang laughed. “Alright — I know you have some kind of finishing technique. If you use it, there’s a real chance you put me down. But I think you have no need to use it.”
“And why is that?” The Heavens-Splitting Demon Lord asked, a note of genuine puzzlement in his voice.
“Because if you fail to kill me, things become very troublesome for you afterward.” Yue Yang pointed toward the third secret gate. “If you fail to kill me, I’ll go in there and pull Ren Tiange and the others out. Without the blood sacrifice of those supreme powerhouses, the seal won’t loosen. And without the loss of their great leaders, neither the Dark Alliance nor the Angel Alliance will fall into the chaos you’re counting on to profit from — your plan to exploit the situation falls apart, and the day you truly break free of the Demon God Hall gets pushed further and further away…” Yue Yang laid out the stakes in thorough detail.
“That’s a sound argument.” The Heavens-Splitting Demon Lord smiled, a faint thread of cruelty and bloodlust woven through it. “However. I still want to test whether you can actually escape my Demon Lord’s Six Strikes.”
Yue Yang went quiet.
Didn’t speak for a long moment.
The Heavens-Splitting Demon Lord felt a flicker of puzzlement — this young man didn’t look particularly frightened. What exactly was that expression about?
Yue Yang finally let out a long sigh. “Say what you will, you still want to fight. This proves two things. One: I’m smarter than you, and I see further ahead. Two: you’re stubborn, you don’t listen to anyone’s advice, and you’re overconfident — which sounds like ‘having a strong personality’ if you’re being charitable, but is really just being incorrigible. The truly great failures in life are usually people with exactly this kind of character flaw.”
The Heavens-Splitting Demon Lord looked surprised. “Even if it’s a character flaw, that’s my problem — what are you sighing about?”
Yue Yang answered with complete seriousness. “I’m reminding myself. That I must never become someone like you. Because in certain ways, we do share some similarities. The last thing I want is to be still incorrigible and stagnant after tens of thousands of years, just like you — so I’m making a specific mental note: a person should stand firm in their own convictions, but only when they’re actually right. Never be like you — rigid, overconfident in your own strength, until it clouds your judgment entirely.”
“……” The Heavens-Splitting Demon Lord was completely at a loss for words. This young man — he was genuinely infuriating, using their standoff as an opportunity for personal reflection and growth? What kind of person did this in the middle of facing an enemy? Who on earth had taught someone this twisted?
(End of Chapter)