He spent another day in the Grimoire World.

When Yue Yang set himself to a task in earnest, he was without question a man of action, and one of extraordinary efficiency.

Having discovered this special material with the power of Law inside it, the time-crosser’s mind went straight to work. The stuff might be no great treasure, but if it were used to make constructs, armor, sparring arenas — even a dedicated “little black room” for cultivation — it would truly be a fine choice.

And so, with the sheer audacity that only the third young master of the Yue family possessed, he stripped his presidential-suite of a cabin bare, cutting away every part of it he could touch. Apart from the places in the hull he genuinely couldn’t lay a hand on, he sliced away everything else, bit by bit, with the Wheel of Apocalypse. Had time not been limited, Yue Yang would have found a way to open a great hole in the thicker portions of the hull and gouge out another thousand-odd tons of material besides.

“With runes inscribed on it, armor made from this material is really rather good.” Princess Qianqian, having changed into a full suit of deep purple battle-armor, felt that although the style was a bit stiff and old-fashioned, it was far sturdier than ordinary battle-armor and gave a wonderful sense of security. She couldn’t help voicing her praise.

“You didn’t lift a finger to help — an utter idler, the lot of you — while you watched me work myself half to death!” Yue Yang, however, complained on and on, faulting the rouge-tiger girl for her lack of loyalty.

“Isn’t Sister Yu still helping you?” In her heart Princess Qianqian actually wanted to help, but this truly wasn’t her specialty.

Neither the recasting and shaping of the material into armor, nor the inscribing of runes, was in her line at all. Those two tasks had always been Yue Yu’s and the Sick Beauty’s, assisting Yue Yang. In the old days, when Xue Wuxia had still been about, she — well versed in runes — would occasionally lend a small hand as well; but the one who worked best in concert with Yue Yang was the Sick Beauty, who had spent half a lifetime studying runes.

The Sick Beauty was not especially satisfied with this newly made suit of ultra-hardened armor; she felt there was a great deal of room for improvement. There was too little time now, and every aspect of it fell short of what she’d have liked. Given a more generous span of time, with repeated design and refinement, it could surely have been made flawless!

As for the armor itself, not everyone loved it the way Princess Qianqian did. Besides, Yue Yang had created the Moon Battle-Dress before, and in style and in supplementary functions alike it was far superior to this comparatively clumsy deep purple armor. Protective power and the like everyone simply disregarded. For them, the first requirement of battle-dress was that it be beautiful; the second, that it be able to transform; the third, that it possess all manner of supplementary functions… Whereas the deep purple armor was heavy and cumbersome in shape, wholly incapable of transformation, and — apart from a very few runes that could bend to accommodate the power of Law within it — far too many useful rune arrays were simply incompatible with it. This sent everyone’s initial enthusiasm straight into retreat. As for its near-eternal defensive power and the power of Law that could cancel out ten thousand times an enemy’s attack, they ignored that entirely.

They knew, after all, that against an enemy far stronger than oneself, no armor you wore would win you the fight. Better to wear the old Moon Battle-Dress.

Conversely, against an enemy of comparable strength, the deep purple armor could indeed keep you from losing — but it was too cumbersome, and winning wouldn’t come easily either. Especially if the enemy withdrew and you wanted to pursue: its great weight would inevitably be a burden. Far better to wear the Moon Battle-Dress and use its nimble, ever-changing supplementary abilities to defeat the enemy through tactics!

And if the enemy were weaker than you, then even against a whole swarm of them, the Moon Battle-Dress would let you thrash them soundly — so why wear the deep purple armor at all?

What’s more, the Moon Battle-Dress had been designed by Yue Yang according to each person’s individual figure and individual needs. To each of them, it was one of a kind. How could the deep purple armor possibly compare?

And the last reason — the greatest reason — was that if someone advanced and the Moon Battle-Dress could no longer support its wearer’s combat strength to the fullest, Yue Yang could still “upgrade and remake” it. One garment grew alongside you as you progressed, made by your beloved’s own hands, the crystallization of his heart’s blood, cherishing your body close against your skin; the other was armor of extreme defensive power with no great room for growth, clumsy and heavy, and not necessarily suited to you. Put that way, everyone’s choice needs no guessing.

“If you don’t want them, then I’ll just make a construct-mecha instead!” Even with Princess Qianqian demonstrating in person, the result had drawn no takers at all. Yue Yang was rather crushed — a full day’s creation, ignored just like that. Truly bitter.

“Ugly it may be, but for fighting, it’s armor that lets you attack with your mind at ease.” Fortunately he still had Princess Qianqian’s appreciation. Truly, a discerning eye that knows a hero when it sees one.

“That’s you. Not everyone needs to go charging into the enemy line the way you do.” Fengxian would absolutely never wear armor this cumbersome.

“Don’t take it to heart, Princess. This armor really is quite good-looking — and paired with the Tiger Prison Divine Sword, it’s a perfect match.” The Southern Wilderness Demon King covered her mouth and snickered on the sly. Much as she disliked this sort of ultra-defensive armor, she wasn’t about to crush morale.

“Hmph. Go on and be pleased with yourselves!” Princess Qianqian looked upon their determination to be pretty at all costs with utter contempt.

“Tiger-girl, you really are the best to me. Let’s make ourselves a matching couple’s set and infuriate the lot of them.” Yue Yang hastened to console her, lest the tiger-girl beat a retreat too.

“Is this a new armor Big Brother invented? So impressive! I want a set too!” The only one who always supported her big brother was that little lass Yue Bing. She’d been diligently training all this while, and the moment she finished her cultivation and caught sight of Princess Qianqian in the deep purple armor, her interest was piqued at once. She was still young and pure of heart, and cared nothing at all for maintaining a beautiful figure and beautiful clothes the way the grown-ups did.

“Bing’er is the best-behaved of all. I’ll be sure to make you the prettiest set!” Yue Yang was overjoyed, and turned to ask Inan, who had come along with Yue Bing: “Do you want one too?”

“No!” Inan’s aesthetic sense, it seemed, was rather sound; she refused outright.

“Refused so directly. How heartbreaking.” Yue Yang was at a loss for words.

“Hahaha…” Fengxian, the Divine Punishment Empress, could hardly contain her delight. Perhaps because she saw how few admirers Yue Yang’s creation had won, Corps Commander Lieyan — who rarely took part in these conversations or offered her own opinion — broke all precedent and volunteered that she’d like a set. And with her taking the lead, Bi Lv, whom everyone called the emerald girl, indicated she’d have a set made too.

“Oh, give over. You don’t even fight — a set for you would be pure ornament.” The Drunken Cat Imperial Lady stepped up to support her little husband, and at the same time ordered a set for the little panda-girl Niunu, instructing the Sick Beauty to design her a “mother-and-daughter set” of maximum adorableness.

After all that commotion, the final tally of those wanting this ultra-defensive armor — which Yue Yang named the Black Tortoise Battle-Armor — came to: Princess Qianqian, the white-tiger girl; young Yue Bing, who supported her brother and genuinely thought it looked splendid; Corps Commander Lieyan, who was too tall and found the Moon Battle-Dress awkward, and thus truly needed the Black Tortoise Battle-Armor; and the Drunken Cat Imperial Lady, who after much deliberation felt a set of Black Tortoise Battle-Armor might serve her better in certain kinds of combat.

After considerable effort, not counting his own suit, he’d at last secured five orders.

Yue Yang thought it over and decided to make a set for Aman as well, still in closed-door cultivation within the Hallowed Grimoire world.

There was a great deal of material left over. Yue Yang went on to make a ten-meter-tall construct-mecha he named the Nine-Headed Dragon — and found he still had plenty to spare. It wasn’t enough to build a sparring arena, but laid flat across the ground, it was more than sufficient for three small-scale training grounds.

Set foot upon it, and your strength was weakened a hundredfold.

For a girl like Yue Bing, whose strength was advancing by leaps and bounds, a training ground like this was like giving a tiger wings — precisely the training environment she needed.

By the time he’d laid the deep purple material down and turned it into a small training ground, Yue Yang realized that without noticing it he’d been in the Grimoire World for two full days. With no idea what was happening outside, he hurried out to take a look.

Yue Yang put away the Five-Element Gold-Seeking Mouse, which had been sounding a warning in the cabin for half the day already, and opened the cabin door.

Poking his head out, he found Guoguo’s face blacker than the bottom of a pot.

“Where the hell have you died these past two days? I knocked and you didn’t answer. If the lord hadn’t stopped me, I’d have thought you were laid out stiff in there — I was about to call the guards to break the door down!” Guoguo was in a foul mood, because his luck at gambling these past two days had been wretched. He’d lost a good deal of money at the tables at the revelry, and just as he’d finally charmed a girl and was getting a room, someone had challenged him to a wager on the spot. He’d won at first and then lost, and at the final moment the man had turned the whole thing around — and he’d had to watch, wide-eyed, as the woman in his arms threw herself into another man’s embrace. Truly galling enough to do him internal injury.

“Have we reached the capital?” Yue Yang looked out the ship’s window. Outside was nothing but a vast expanse of white cloud; he couldn’t see the ground at all.

“Not yet. The Gannet seems to have changed course a little along the way — we stopped at ‘Whitewater City,’ and we’re still en route now. But the lord says to get yourself ready. It shouldn’t be long before we’re back at the capital. And stop sleeping like a dead pig!” Guoguo had spent these two days gambling to win his money back and hadn’t paid much attention to anything outside; he had no idea what stretch of the route the Gannet had reached.

Wooo…

A strange horn call issued from the depths of the vessel.

The sound was truly faint. Had Yue Yang not possessed hearing of such extraordinary sharpness, he could not even have judged where it came from.

A horn call. There, and then not there.

Stranger still, the horn sounded for only a few seconds before falling silent again — and at last it was as though nothing at all had happened.

Guoguo cocked an ear to listen, his face full of bafflement: “Was that sound just now an alarm? Someone’s boarded the Gannet? How could that be possible! It’s most likely a false alarm — or else I misheard. A sky-hanging mothership in flight can’t possibly be boarded!”

Hearing it, Yue Yang’s heart gave a jump — but having lived through countless brushes with death, his expression didn’t change at all. Instead he asked with a smile: “If there’s an alarm, what can we do about it right now?”

Guoguo was thoroughly impatient, and waved a hand again and again. “False alarm. This is a false alarm. What you need to do is nothing at all — go back in there and lie down like a corpse! Yawn. I’m a bit tired myself. I’ll go grab another nap first, and when I get up I’ll go sweep the tables clean…”

The alarm had sounded and it was no concern of his — so this was the perfect chance to slack off. It had nothing to do with him anyway!

Yue Yang adopted an attitude of what doesn’t concern me, I hang up high, and went back to his room to go on resting. Let the heavens split and the earth crack — so long as the enemy didn’t come knocking at his own door, it was fine!

He returned to the Grimoire World, took a thoroughly refreshing bath together with the lovely Luohua, rested a full two hours, and came back out clear-headed and in fine spirits. He picked up, at random, a copy of Chronicles of the Eight Gods of the Mountain Beyond the Mountain lying on the table and began to read. He hadn’t gotten two pages in when suddenly the alarm horn began to blare again, piercing the ear, loud enough to shake the entire ship… And a moment later Guoguo was pounding frantically on the door, crying out in alarm: “Get up, quick! The Gannet has been boarded! The alarm’s sounded — the ship’s alarm horn is sounding!”

Yue Yang slowly closed the book and shrugged his shoulders. The alarm had sounded, yes — but the best moment had likely been missed.

Two hours ago, had someone been a little more cautious, the situation might still have been salvaged.

And now?

Now it was already too late.

(End of Chapter 1138)