When it came to dealing with God-Slayer, none of the early work — the traps, the placements, the arrangements — involved the Southwest Divine Sovereign “Shafeng” that Yue Yang was impersonating.

Partly it was a matter of secrecy. However warmly Hei Zhou said the word brother, Shafeng was still an outsider.

And if the standard was absolute trust?

He trusted only himself.

In his heart of hearts, Hei Zhou probably could not manage a hundred percent trust even in Ji Wuri. Zhaoxi and Shuanghan were further out of the question; the present situation simply demanded that they join hands to bring down a common enemy, so they were cooperating. Allies were allies, but trust was trust. The man who actually trusted his allies and believed in his brothers was God-Slayer, currently still the first man of Mountain Beyond the Mountain — not Hei Zhou, who intended to take that position from him.

Beyond that, Hei Zhou felt that telling Shafeng every scheme and every arrangement would be playing the lute to a cow.

Anything requiring brains was best kept from that idiot.

Otherwise he might wreck the whole thing.

So Hei Zhou parked Yue Yang deep in the rear and let him eat, drink and amuse himself as he pleased. All he had to do was charge in at the end and serve as cannon fodder.

“Southwest Divine Sovereign, my lord has sent back good news. The enemy breaks today — this very hour!” The Western Divine Nation’s National Preceptor, Master Baoshu, had been left behind less to keep him company than to keep him quietly watched. On Yue Yang’s fourth day at Jiaoluo Waterfall, he announced at last that the Divine War had formally begun, and that the cannon fodder was to move out immediately.

“Good! I’ve been cooped up for days. Finally I can really cut loose. God-Slayer, your day has come!” Yue Yang, for his part, rolled out his I am a brain-dead lump of cannon fodder, please be sure to send me to the front to die performance.

Several days of staying in character had polished it considerably.

Best Actor was out of reach.

But Best Extra? He had that one comfortably won.

He could accept his boxed lunch with a completely clear conscience. Leading men are easy enough to come by; where exactly are you supposed to find a doomed extra who throws himself into feeding the scene the way Yue Yang does? Everyone alive wants to be the protagonist these days.

Watching him, Master Baoshu concluded that failing to send a man like Shafeng to the front as cannon fodder would be a crime against oneself. With intelligence like that, the man was simply too easy to fool. His admiration for his own lord swelled. Ten thousand years ago, Hei Zhou had deliberately spared the Southwest Divine Sovereign Shafeng and cultivated him in secret; Baoshu had never understood why, and now he saw that it had been a brilliant move set to detonate ten thousand years later. Masterful. Truly masterful. A stratagem budgeted that far in advance was without precedent in any age — one could only prostrate oneself before it.

And so, with Master Baoshu at his side, Yue Yang’s “Shafeng” moved out.

He arrived at the ambush ground.

One look.

And he saw God-Slayer.

Yue Yang had imagined God-Slayer a thousand times over. This first man of Mountain Beyond the Mountain — was he tall or short, fat or thin? What did he actually look like?

Now that he was looking at him, Yue Yang’s first impression was not that the man resembled anything he had pictured. It was that he was singular. Under heaven and above the earth, one of a kind — a man nobody could imitate and nobody could replace.

This was God-Slayer.

The first man of Mountain Beyond the Mountain, the Eastern Divine Sovereign God-Slayer.

His dress matched nothing else in Mountain Beyond the Mountain. He looked more like an ancient swordsman from before Yue Yang’s transmigration: a long blue-green robe washed pale with age, and a single band of purple silk at the waist, with no other ornament at all. A full head of black hair poured upward like a waterfall reversed, streaming and snapping in the wind. Sword-brows swept back to his temples; his eyes were bright as lightning. Proud and careless of it at once — devastatingly handsome. And with Lihen at his back, that plain, unadorned ancient divine sword that was nonetheless the foremost divine artifact of Mountain Beyond the Mountain, man and blade became one; his divine majesty did not so much as stir, and every living thing in the world was already subdued by it. Even Yue Yang, who had never lacked confidence, felt an ugly stab of envy. Just as well there were no pretty girls in the vicinity — he wasn’t at all certain he could have held his own against this old heartthrob.

Just what sort of man was God-Slayer? For that, there is a poem:

A frame like a towering pine, cloud-shod, astride the Great Void; Long hair surging skyward, eyes like lightning set to torch. On the flatland the hounds close in — cold-lipped, the master does not speak; Beyond the Mountain, who contends? An ancient sword: the god-slaying blade.

“Weren’t you lot supposed to be springing a trap on this coffin-faced God-Slayer? Why hasn’t anyone moved yet? Chiqiu, what the hell kind of work do you call this? If you’re not sticking the knife in now, what are you waiting for? Go! Everybody go, let’s flatten him! I’ve put up with this man for ten thousand years and I don’t want to wait one more second!” Yue Yang’s counterfeit whipped out the quasi-divine artifact Xuanya, howling as he charged God-Slayer with murder in mind. “I’ve had it in for you from the start! Of all the names you could have picked, you had to go with God-Slayer — do you not understand that calling yourself God-Slayer is a slap in everyone’s face? And another thing, why do you have to be this good-looking? You’ve snapped up every girl there is and left broke losers like me to die alone. Do you have any idea how much you have to answer for?”

The entire field broke into a cold sweat like a waterfall.

Thank the heavens they had only summoned him at the very last moment.

Otherwise the whole thing would have collapsed.

Hei Zhou especially. He patted his own chest and privately thanked his stars. If he hadn’t handled it carefully and kept that idiot Shafeng waiting in the rear, then with that ruinous intelligence of his, one open mouth would have blown it — every trap, every deployment, every plan, all of it dead in the water. He had met plenty of dumbasses in his time, but never one of this sort. This wasn’t ordinary dumbassery. This was a thoroughgoing, top-to-bottom, super-invincible ultimate specimen of the breed, capable of driving a man to madness, to fits, to fainting, to death by rage and then back out of the coffin again. He had never seen it in Shafeng before; at the critical moment, the man turned out to be this dumb, and one had to admire it. How stupid do you have to be to stand in front of God-Slayer and shout at the mole disguised as Chiqiu to get on with the stabbing?

Un—be—lievable.

Hei Zhou conceded defeat.

Even so, he did not suspect Shafeng of using the moment to tip God-Slayer off. First, an idiot of Shafeng’s grade would never do such a thing. Second, if Shafeng were actually capable of doing such a thing, he wouldn’t be this much of an idiot. And third, nobody in the world except an idiot of Shafeng’s grade would shout his own side’s mole into the open in front of everybody — that wasn’t espionage, that was raw, unadulterated stupidity. And a man of insufficient intelligence might say absolutely anything. He was cannon fodder. How high could the standards possibly be? If his intelligence were any good, would he be cannon fodder at all?

God-Slayer flicked Yue Yang’s attack aside with a single finger.

He tumbled a hundred metres backward.

He twisted in the air, shot straight over to Ji Wuri wearing Chiqiu’s face, and roared at him in fury with every eye on the field watching: “Weren’t you supposed to be assassinating God-Slayer? So why did he just flick me away with one finger? Why haven’t you made your move yet? I want an explanation!”

“I have already succeeded. God-Slayer is wounded — three-tenths of his strength gone at minimum.” Ji Wuri-as-Chiqiu appeared unwilling to speak with the “dumbass Shafeng” Yue Yang was playing, as though idiocy might be contagious; the instant he saw Yue Yang flying toward him he retreated, and only when Yue Yang closed in a second time and left him no option did he shrug one shoulder and spread his hands. “God-Slayer can flick you away with one finger. My guess is that your strength is simply too poor. Would you consider that a reasonable explanation?”

“Reasonable my ass!” Yue Yang’s Shafeng turned on him instantly, Xuanya lashing out. “My guess is that you’ve defected and never laid a hand on God-Slayer at all!”

“Tedious.” Ji Wuri flickered a kilometre clear.

“Brother Shafeng, the one we are here to fight is God-Slayer.” Hei Zhou hurried forward to head him off — by all means fight, just don’t derail things.

“Of course God-Slayer has to die, but this man has gone over to the enemy and now he wants to scoop up first merit as well. I won’t have it!” Yue Yang struggled hard against him, and Hei Zhou only barely got him under control. Fortunately God-Slayer merely watched, cold-eyed, without seizing the opening — otherwise there was no telling how it would have gone.

“This wouldn’t be because you’re annoyed at seeing him wearing Chiqiu’s shape, would it?” Shuanghan, who seemed to have a decent grasp of “Shafeng’s” temperament, ventured the guess boldly.

“Impossible! So he was born with a face that sneers at you — I keep my eye on the greater cause! Chiqiu’s dead. I let that hatred go long ago. Ha, would I hold a grudge against a dead man ranked eighth in strength? Not possible. I’m not that sort of person!” Yue Yang denied it at once, while his face wore an expression of pure how on earth did you guess.

“…” Hei Zhou, Shuanghan and Zhaoxi were sweating buckets.

“Haah.” Ji Wuri sighed low and explained patiently, “Naturally I can change back to my own shape. But this shape of Chiqiu’s is still useful!”

“Useful? That’s an excuse! I think you’ve gotten addicted to being Chiqiu. Feels good being handsome, does it? If you’re going to shapeshift, why not take my shape instead? You’d be adding to my glory and confusing the enemy at the same time — two birds, one stone. But no, you insist on wearing Chiqiu’s face. Do you think I don’t know what’s going through your head? This is bare-faced showing off! Explanations are useless. Now I’m going to make you understand what happens when you cross me, Shafeng — until I’ve beaten that Chiqiu face of yours into a pig’s head, the hate in my chest isn’t settling!” Yue Yang gave magnificent voice to the jealousy in his heart and to his colossal prejudice against Chiqiu.

“He isn’t Chiqiu, the shape is just operationally necessary!” Shuanghan couldn’t help snapping back — could you possibly manage to identify your own enemy?

“I don’t care. He’s not allowed to wear Chiqiu’s shape. Seeing Chiqiu’s shape makes me feel awful, so I’m going to cut him!” Yue Yang scooped up Xuanya and moved to do exactly that. Shuanghan’s eyes rolled back in his head; what he genuinely wanted, in that moment, was to reach out and slap the idiot clear into the ninth heaven.

“Imbecile.” Ji Wuri gave a cold snort.

His form moved a thousand times faster than lightning.

An afterimage flashed.

And the man himself was already gone without a trace. He had meant to stay and watch the battle from the sidelines, but this Southwest Divine Sovereign was so insufferable that he simply left early and got on with the next step of the plan.

“Chiqiu’s run off! Why didn’t any of you stop him?” Yue Yang started roaring at Shuanghan and Zhaoxi.

“Ahem. He’s a fake. He’s one of ours!” Zhaoxi couldn’t help clearing his throat. If he didn’t explain it, his throat was going to keep itching at him unbearably.

“I know he’s a fake Chiqiu, but couldn’t he have turned back into his real form before he left? Isn’t there something the least bit suspicious about that? I don’t trust the man. For all we know he’s God-Slayer’s, doubling back to spy on us. He says he wounded God-Slayer — well, look God-Slayer over head to foot. Where’s the wound? The skin isn’t broken and not one drop of blood has come out! It’s extremely suspicious!” Yue Yang had brought the role of Shafeng thoroughly to life.

“God-Slayer is indeed wounded. It’s an internal wound.” Hei Zhou found his own throat unbearably uncomfortable and could not stop himself from explaining, feeling at the same time how hard it was to cooperate with somebody of subnormal intelligence. Just as well the man would be dead shortly; being known as the friend of anyone this stupid would be one of the great humiliations of his life.

“He really is wounded? Right, then I’m going in!” On hearing it, the Shafeng that Yue Yang was playing lit up in both eyes and swung Xuanya about wildly. “First merit belongs to me, Shafeng, and nobody is allowed to take it! The sword Lihen, and the Kunpeng hovering mothership — they’re all mine, hahaha! God-Slayer’s head is mine, and once I’ve killed you I’ll be the first man of Mountain Beyond the Mountain!”

Shuanghan and Zhaoxi covered their faces, eyes brimming.

Even if that was what you were thinking, could you not say it out loud in front of Hei Zhou? Spare a thought for the Western Divine Sovereign who is standing right there preparing to take over the position of first man of Mountain Beyond the Mountain.

Though of course they understood. Insufficient intelligence, plus facing God-Slayer, plus enormous pressure and excitement — it was only natural that Shafeng couldn’t keep a thought behind his teeth.

And in truth — standing before God-Slayer, hadn’t each of them slipped a little themselves?

Hei Zhou heard every word of Yue Yang’s shouting, and not a trace of irritation showed on his face.

At the corner of his mouth.

There was even a hint of a smile.

He was cannon fodder sent out to die anyway. What use would cleverness be to him? Better that he was slow — that way there’d be nothing to grieve over when he died.

(End of Chapter 1181)