The white-clad maiden—tall and slender, her brow full of a valiant spirit—shook her head gently. “We should have stopped you, should have asked you to hand over the ancient relic. But we feared that if we spoke of it, you would only grow more distrustful still.”

Yue Yang was livid. “You never said there was a god waiting for me in there! A god! Did you think it was some ordinary little monster?”

Ren Tiange and the others, listening in from the side, nodded their agreement.

Indeed. There’d been a god sitting in there.

And they hadn’t said a word about it?

That was getting people killed, plain and simple!

The endearing round-faced maiden dipped into a little bow of apology. “That was our fault—we didn’t make it clear. But Elder Sister said you’d come to no harm, so I didn’t stop you either!”

“No harm? I nearly died!” Yue Yang honestly wanted to grab that round face by both cheeks and pull them out sideways. Cute or not, this was unforgivable! Even for someone playing up the adorable act, there were limits—did she really think a breezy little “no harm” settled it? A war against a god, and she made it sound as relaxed as taking a girl out for a picnic in the countryside! A hair’s breadth weaker in his will just now, and he’d be a corpse already! There was a god snoozing away inside the Tower Beyond the Tower, and they’d kept it a nice little secret—what fun, right? They’d nearly played the whole party to death!

“The Tower Beyond the Tower assessment is over. But this is not the end of the fighting in Human Valley—on the contrary, the true battle begins only now.” The maiden holding the silver grimoire wore a very grave expression.

“You’re not about to tell us we have to fight that god, are you?” Hauge gave a shiver.

“That is so,” the valiant maiden answered, without hedging.

“No. I’m leaving. Right now.” To Hauge this was simply throwing his life away. Fight a god? What kind of joke was that—could a swarm of ants beat an elephant? And here in Human Valley, no less, where you couldn’t even use your true power. With nothing but constructs, what were you supposed to fight with, in front of a god whose single finger was bigger than a mountain peak?

“Can’t we just… not provoke him?” Even a heavyweight like Ren Tiange was sweating from every pore now.

“If you want to live, you have to stop that god from destroying Human Valley—otherwise, every last one of you will die!” The valiant maiden delivered the warning without a shred of mercy.

“That god can enter Human Valley?” Hearing this, Hauge felt as though the sky itself were about to cave in.

“That god was always in Human Valley. It was only his godhood, his divine power, his divine consciousness, and the rest that were sealed within the Tower Beyond the Tower. Ordinarily this would be no cause for concern. But now he has already sensed the power of the ancient relic and has fully awakened. Before long, I believe, he will find a way to return to Human Valley proper and reclaim his true body. When that day comes, every living thing in Human Valley will perish—for he is an evil god, not a benevolent one!” The maiden with the silver grimoire looked at Yue Yang and let out a faint sigh. “The only means of stopping that evil god is the very ancient relic you hold in your hands. But this is all we know—we do not know how to use the ancient relic, nor how to turn it against that evil god!”

“You’re members of Human Valley too—you bear responsibility too. Can’t you at least help think of something?” Yue Yang was near the breaking point. How had this ended up on his shoulders again? He wasn’t some hired hand doing their labor for them—and at least hired hands got paid; he was free labor on top of everything!

“We, because of the restrictions of the Law, have no way to help. Our existence is limited to guidance, not to battle.”

The round-faced maiden looked at Yue Yang with deep sympathy.

Expressing that she wished she could help, but couldn’t.

“Once that evil god shows up, everyone’s finished—what’s the point of your ‘guidance’ then? Won’t you die right along with us?” Yue Yang was furious. Was this really the moment to be clinging to some dead-letter rule?

“If the evil god destroys Human Valley and it truly cannot be stopped, we will choose to teleport away from here, since there’d be no reason left to remain… Let us tell you a secret ahead of time! In Human Valley there is the ‘Tower Beyond the Tower’; in the Earth Valley there is the ‘Mountain Beyond the Mountain’; and in the Heaven Valley there is, higher still, the ‘Heaven Beyond the Heaven.’ If you wish to keep pressing forward, this step—Human Valley—must be crossed. And if you cannot get past even the Tower Beyond the Tower, the easiest gate of them all, then the Mountain Beyond the Mountain and the Heaven Beyond the Heaven are beyond hoping for. The Mountain Beyond the Mountain has at least ten times the resistance of the Tower Beyond the Tower, and the Heaven Beyond the Heaven, by rough estimate, is at least a hundredfold harder. Set against the Mountain and the Heaven that follow, this gate—Human Valley’s Tower Beyond the Tower—is in truth the very easiest challenge of all! You might say it’s merely a warm-up for the harder trials to come!” The maiden of the silver grimoire had let slip a secret that filled all who heard it with utter despair.

“Mama, I promise I’ll be a good boy from now on. I’ll never go wandering off again. The moment I get out of Human Valley, I’m going straight home—it’s terrifying out here!” Hauge was very nearly moved to tears.

Had he known the Trial Grounds’ tests would be this brutal—

—he never would have come.

Set against Human Valley, the Demon Valley’s difficulty didn’t amount to squat.

And set against the Earth Valley and the Heaven Valley, an evil god in Human Valley’s Tower Beyond the Tower counted as kid stuff… Was a man supposed to survive this at all? O great gods of antiquity—even if you wanted to test the generations after you, surely there was no need to set gates this impossible? A trial like this—who could ever pass it? Never mind a warrior; not even a god would dare boast to your face that he’d clear it for certain!

Yue Yang was left utterly speechless.

A long, long while passed before he sighed and asked, “So what exactly is it you want me to do? Stop beating around the bush—out with it!”

The three white-clad maidens exchanged a glance, and in the end it was the endearing round-faced one who spoke. “It’s very simple. Before that evil god descends, find his true body, find the way to use the ancient relic, and kill him—or seal him away once more.”

“And how much time do I have to prepare?” Yue Yang asked.

“We don’t know. Perhaps a day, perhaps a month, perhaps a year… When the evil god will return to Human Valley is hard to predict. Apart from forcing a breakthrough himself with divine power, the quicker and easier path is for his followers to shatter the seventy-two Sealing Pillars. The instant those seventy-two Sealing Pillars are broken, the evil god can return to Human Valley at once,” the valiant maiden answered.

“I’m going to be sick!” Hauge could not bear the blow and collapsed on the spot.

“Whatever other bad news you’ve got, let’s have it all at once. When you’ve got this many fleas, one more bite doesn’t itch anyway!” Yue Yang had reached the point of throwing caution to the wind.

“As for those seventy-two Sealing Pillars—because the evil god’s followers have been destroying them ever since antiquity, only nine remain now!” Under Yue Yang’s glare, the round-faced maiden pressed her little fingertips together and answered timidly.

“Oh for the love of— is there any news in this world worse than that?” Yue Yang, for his part, felt he might faint dead away that very instant.

“There is.” The answer stirred in a man the powerful urge to run headfirst into a wall.

“Stop. Not another word, or I’ll go mad! Before I snap and go berserk on the lot of you—do something unspeakable and then finish you off—get far away from me and let me have some peace!” Yue Yang, for his part, finally blew his top. To hell with all of you—sure, there can be bad news, but there ought to be limits! How had every last scrap of bad news in the whole world suddenly landed on his head all at once? How was a man supposed to go on living?

“Then do get some good rest!” The three white-clad maidens weren’t the least bit offended. They even performed a small bow to Yue Yang before drifting gracefully away.

They were carefree enough about it.

After all, they wouldn’t be the ones dying in the end. If Human Valley was destroyed, at worst they’d simply cut and run, and set up shop somewhere else.

But could Yue Yang run? Set aside the prohibitions here in Human Valley—Star Diamond Castle was a great estate now, a going concern. Could he just abandon it?

And there was Young Lord Mingzhu, Chimu, Hauge, Ren Tiange, the Silver-Eyed Great Sage, the honored Principal, the academy instructors—friends and elders he couldn’t simply toss aside. If Yue Yang cut and ran, these people would likely be wiped out to the last soul under that evil god’s assault!

So while anyone else could flee—

—Yue Yang alone could not.

Because he, who carried the ancient relic upon him, was Human Valley’s last hope.

“Don’t look at me. I’m just a good-for-nothing rice bucket… Fight a god? I’ve never even dreamed of such a thing—truly, I don’t have it in me, and even if I did, I wouldn’t have the nerve!” The instant Hauge felt Yue Yang’s gaze swing his way, he made himself scarce. Taking on an evil god was well beyond anything his strength or his wits could manage!

“There’s nothing I can do.” Ren Tiange, too, wore a rueful smile as he gave Yue Yang’s shoulder a helpless pat. “Give us tasks and we’ll carry them out—but the main burden still comes down to you!”

“Haah…” The faces of Phantom, Blood Shave, and Golden Bones were as bleak and lightless as a widow who’d just buried her only son.

“What a fool I was—going off to hunt some ancient relic in the first place. If I’d never gone looking for the wretched thing, the evil god would never have woken, and I could’ve strolled through this damned Human Valley at my leisure and cleared the gate. Now look. I dug this life-threatening little object up myself. I asked for this misery, plain and simple. Screw it—turns out it wasn’t that nobody could find it, it was that finding it brings nothing but ruin. How the heck did I end up this stupid?” The blow had struck so hard that Yue Yang, for his part, had temporarily turned into this world’s very own broken-record mourner, sunk in remorseful self-pity.

With the crisis bearing down, the danger right at his brow—

—he no longer had the heart to worry over assessment scores. And the Heavenly Pride Academy, having lost half its students to Ji Wuri’s raid on the puppet factories, was forced to suspend the assessment for the time being and see first to the funeral rites of the fallen.

There had been students killed in assessments before, but never a loss this catastrophic.

Over three hundred had gone in. Barely more than a hundred came back—and every one of them wounded.

Worst of all, the bodies of the slain students couldn’t even be recovered. That would be a bitter, bitter thing to explain to their parents, and just now it was giving the Heavenly Pride Academy’s instructors terrible headaches.

Deep in the still of night, Yue Yang, for his part, kept vigil over the still-unconscious Young Lord Mingzhu in the students’ quarters.

Patiently, he waited for Young Lord Mingzhu to wake.

Meanwhile, at the Heavenly Pride Academy’s transport gate, a black shadow arrived at blistering speed, flashed into view, and was gone.

A second later, it had appeared amid the battlefield ruins of the Tower Beyond the Tower. Gazing at that charred-black ‘divine finger’ pointing skyward, scorched from end to end by the fires, the black shadow’s eyes betrayed an incredulous shock. Even for him, it was hard to imagine who could stand as a match for the owner of this finger—and harder still to believe that someone had actually cut the finger off…

Hm?

The black shadow seemed to sense something and made to teleport out of the Tower Beyond the Tower at once.

But a divine power vast as an ocean came settling down over him, wrapping the shadow’s whole body firmly within it.

An overpowering, unopposable will forced its way through the shadow’s mental defenses and cast its intent directly into his mind: I like a junior with a clever head and a wicked heart. Come—let us make a Divine Covenant. Fulfill the obligations set upon it, and I will grant you a single wish. Even should you wish to step into the divine tier—to become a true god.

To step into the divine tier. To become a true god.

This temptation…

was one that not a single warrior in all the world could ever refuse!

(End of Chapter)