The Shafeng act was fully alive now, and the effect was extraordinary.

But playing the fool indefinitely without ever throwing a punch was bound to draw suspicion.

Yue Yang could not afford to be suspected now — the rest of the plan was still a long way off. So he had to keep performing. As a piece of cannon fodder, he was obliged to work this bit part conscientiously to the very end.

“I’ll butcher you!” Yue Yang gathered dozens of tornado-storms and fused them into one, and the raging wind, driven by divine power, ground the endless void to pieces.

Fragments of space.

Blasted outward.

Heaven and earth seemed on the verge of caving inward, and a strange black hole was drawing itself out from somewhere within them, dragging at everything.

Shuanghan and Zhaoxi saw it and were astounded. It had never occurred to them that the idiot Shafeng commanded power on this scale, or technique this fine. It was completely unexpected. Evidently, after obtaining his grimoire, Shafeng had not squandered his personal talent after all. Ten thousand years, and he had clearly not set his cultivation down. They had underrated him badly.

It took a decisive battle like this one to bring it out.

Shafeng, it turned out, was this strong.

Hei Zhou cheered privately as well.

The stronger Shafeng the cannon fodder was, the more smoothly the plan to kill God-Slayer would run.

Still, the sight gave him a faint flicker of surprise. Shafeng’s intelligence might be hopeless, but he had evidently been diligent about his cultivation, and was not as worthless as he appeared. As a commanding talent he was nowhere near qualified — but as a chess piece, as cannon fodder on a battlefield, Shafeng was without question the ideal selection.

Far away, Ji Wuri frowned faintly. He had noticed that this Shafeng had unleashed such a technique without summoning his grimoire, and something about that refused to resolve in his mind.

Was Shafeng’s talent really this good?

It didn’t match what was said of him at all.

The old Shafeng had ranked dead last among the eight Divine Sovereigns in both strength and talent. Judging by this, he was at the very least no weaker than Chiqiu, possibly better than Qingyun, and close on Shuanghan’s heels. Did this dumbass actually understand how to conceal his ability? Was he genuinely stupid, or feigning madness?

Never mind.

Once this Divine War was over, whether he was genuinely stupid or feigning madness, there was only one ending waiting for him.

And not only for him. For everyone. Anyone who obstructed the final plan, anyone who obstructed him, would die.

Ji Wuri felt that nothing could escape his design at all, and so he simply gave up on watching the battlefield and vanished. As the most gifted prodigy the Central Divine Hall — indeed the whole Heavenly Realm — had produced in ten thousand years, his work was not calculating against some individual Divine Sovereign or babysitting an idiot piece of cannon fodder. What he had to do was more important, and set much further in advance.

Everyone, without exception, was inside his plan.

This Mountain Beyond the Mountain.

Not one fish would slip the net.

And even if some large fish inside that net thrashed, it could not escape the plan’s unfolding — because this was a perfect plan of his own making, and no life of lesser intelligence than his own could perceive it, let alone break it.

“Break, damn you, break! You stinking turtle shell, this is infuriating!” Three times in succession Yue Yang condensed a storm black hole; three times in succession he slammed it down onto God-Slayer’s domain. To his frustration, the storm black hole — for all that it carried the power to ruin heaven and annihilate earth — could not blast through a domain guarded by God-Slayer’s divine power and will together. Even at the end, when it shuddered on the edge of shattering, it held. Watching from outside, Shuanghan and Zhaoxi were struck dumb.

“Worthy of the first man of Mountain Beyond the Mountain indeed!” Hei Zhou still had the leisure to be impressed.

“Cut it open!”

The Southwest Divine Sovereign “Shafeng,” holding nothing back at all, seemed to have gone berserk.

He fused wind and fire, condensing with divine power an enormous, furiously spinning Wind-Fire Wheel, and drove it forward with his own body straight at the Eastern Divine Sovereign God-Slayer.

At the wheel’s core was the quasi-divine artifact Xuanya, spinning at tremendous speed in his hand.

This strike joined wind to fire.

Driven by divine power.

And backed by the murderous edge of a quasi-divine artifact.

This time the domain split wide, the way a steel blade heated to glowing cleaves down through a thin skin of ice. God-Slayer had never excelled at defence, only at attack, and the domain he held up by will alone was finally broken open by a “Shafeng” fighting for his life.

It had cost “Shafeng” the better part of his divine power, but the last barrier was down. What came next was the true moment of the encirclement.

Shuanghan’s expression flooded with delight.

Zhaoxi’s brows lifted with pleasure too.

Together the two of them gathered and raised their own divine power, coupling it to the grimoires in their hands and their life-guardian war beasts.

Northwest Divine Sovereign Shuanghan took the left, holding the quasi-divine artifact Suohun. North Divine Sovereign Zhaoxi took the right, cradling the Zhenmiao Divine Mirror. And in the centre was the Western Divine Sovereign Hei Zhou, who had waited a long time for this and was, by now, verging on impatient.

They had never for a moment expected “Shafeng” to kill or even cripple God-Slayer. That was flatly impossible. All they wanted was for Shafeng to burn through as much of God-Slayer’s divine power as he could, and at minimum to break the protective domain and clear away that final barrier. Everyone knew God-Slayer had never been good at defending. If Ji Wuri, wearing Chiqiu’s shape, had not struck from concealment and injured his internal organs, Shafeng would have had no opening to act on whatsoever. Indeed, only moments ago the three of them had been worried that an angry God-Slayer might cut Shafeng down in a single stroke.

With the divine sword Lihen in hand, God-Slayer was absolutely capable of a one-stroke kill.

Happily, he had not done it.

God-Slayer had chosen to heal himself.

He was spending divine power raising a domain to fend off his enemies, and dividing his attention to mend himself at the same time.

Hei Zhou, who had laid the trap, of course knew that a wound inflicted by Ji Wuri could not close on its own any time soon. After being struck by Ji Wuri using that treasure, nothing short of the legendary Sacred Sovereign could dissolve such an injury. God-Slayer was attempting to split his mind two ways, spending divine power on defence and divine power on self-repair together — walking precisely into the trap. If this had not been a trap, Hei Zhou would have charged in and attacked first himself long ago, rather than let Shafeng stand there hogging all the glory.

“Hmph.” God-Slayer seemed to have realised as well that he was not going to heal himself in the near term.

He was extremely irritated by this “Shafeng” who kept coming at him alone.

The divine sword stayed on his back.

God-Slayer, who looked down on the whole of Mountain Beyond the Mountain, would not deign to use Lihen against one paltry Southwest Divine Sovereign.

Facing the incoming slash of Xuanya, and behind it the “Shafeng” ramming himself forward like a madman with his life on the line, God-Slayer crooked the index finger of his left hand and flicked it, lightly.

Sword-qi shot out.

A line of sword-qi so sharp it beggared description, compounded of divine power and will, loosed by a careless flick of God-Slayer’s finger, went streaking at the madman “Shafeng.” It pierced and split the Wind-Fire Wheel — unstoppable an instant before — with no effort at all, grazed past the whirling Xuanya like lightning, and drove straight for the point between “Shafeng’s” brows. A single strike from God-Slayer, aimed at the vital point: the force of an instant kill, without peer in this world.

“Look out!” North Divine Sovereign Zhaoxi called, but it was already too late.

“Hmph.” As the strongest present, Hei Zhou naturally had time enough to react. But he had no wish to burn much divine power on a piece of cannon fodder like Shafeng — and more importantly, no wish to hand God-Slayer an opening he could seize on, press hard, and use to turn the situation around.

If sacrificing one Shafeng bought him the initiative in the larger game —

Then Hei Zhou would not spare him a second thought!

Shafeng had been fated from the start to be a sacrificed piece of cannon fodder. Dying early or dying late made no difference at all.

Ice chains crossed and recrossed like a net, whirling everywhere, and in an instant they had wrapped Shafeng up as swiftly as a snare closing on some wild beast — and dragged him clear. Blood erupted skyward. God-Slayer’s stroke had failed to kill him outright, thanks to Shuanghan pulling him out at the final moment, but that line of sword-qi still opened a deep bloody trench across his shoulder and on down his chest and belly, deep enough to show bone. Blood came surging out like water from a spring, spattering across the chains that bound him, and turning into frost-rimed flowers of blood.

“Shafeng” stood there rasping for breath, still shaken.

Nobody could quite believe it.

In the end, the man who had saved Shafeng was Shuanghan — nominally an ally, but a lifelong rival who had never gotten on with him and was forever at his throat.

“Bastard, I had it handled. Spare me your false charity!” The Shafeng that Yue Yang was playing was performing at a level Yue Yang himself hadn’t known he could reach off the cuff.

“Don’t misunderstand. I wasn’t saving you. I simply want to watch God-Slayer torture you to death slowly.” Shuanghan curled his lip.

“You— God-Slayer! The only one who can finish you is me, Shafeng! Congratulations, you’ve now successfully made me angry!” The eyes of Yue Yang’s “Shafeng” went red as blood with rage, fierce flames burning across his body, and the storm of divine power that broke out of him wrenched heaven and earth into a churn of changing colours.

Hei Zhou silently cursed Shuanghan for meddling. Saving Shafeng had not been part of his plan — he had wanted Shafeng, gravely wounded and on the verge of death, to go mad, wrap himself around God-Slayer and detonate, draining him a further step. Shuanghan’s intervention had wrecked the intended sequence. Fortunately things had come round again to what he wanted anyway: Shafeng wounded, plus the pressure of impending death from God-Slayer, plus the provocation from Shuanghan, and his emotions had lost control entirely and tipped him into a berserk state. That would very probably burn a great deal of God-Slayer’s divine power too, possibly more than expected.

Hei Zhou and the others were not watching the slowly maddening Shafeng. Every one of them had their eyes fixed on God-Slayer.

With this God-Slayer, one second of relaxed attention was one second too many.

It could lose you the whole thing.

At the edge of his vision, Hei Zhou seemed to see a pillar of light from a golden grimoire rising in the heart of Shafeng’s storm. He couldn’t make it out clearly, but the resonance was unmistakably the usual one, and he understood that Shafeng was finally about to bring out his life-guardian war beast. He was privately delighted.

If a piece of cannon fodder like Shafeng was willing to go this far, then God-Slayer would certainly be slain today.

He also glanced sideways at Zhaoxi and Shuanghan. Neither ally showed the slightest anomaly. They were shrewd men; there was no chance of a change of heart on the eve of battle and a switch of camps. The East Camp had God-Slayer and nobody else, while the West Camp had its hidden pieces and a great many further arrangements behind them — victory was in hand. Zhaoxi and Shuanghan would never gamble their own lives and futures on a whim. Even an idiot like Shafeng knew to cling to the strongest leg in the room; for Zhaoxi and Shuanghan, joining the Divine War carried return without risk. Why on earth wouldn’t they?

At that, Hei Zhou’s heart settled entirely.

At the corner of his mouth, a smile quietly formed.

Behind him, Shafeng was roaring like thunder, his voice a peal of lightning, shaking heaven and earth.

The Southwest Divine Sovereign appeared to have unleashed every last reserve of his divine power without holding anything back, and the force of his charge drew even Hei Zhou’s private astonishment. The man might be a bit of a dumbass, but he was a Divine Sovereign after all, and his combat strength was genuinely not to be taken lightly.

The divine power of “Shafeng’s” charge ploughed a vast trench into the earth by main force, tens of metres deep and a full kilometre long, the rock and sand inside it reduced to powder.

The clouds in the sky had long since been blown a thousand li away.

The dust flung up by the storm.

Had blotted out the sun one moment, and the next was drawn clean across the sky in a single long bar. “Shafeng” charged like a maddened bull, and the final target of that berserk impact was God-Slayer, who still stood there with his head raised to the heavens, proud and unmoving.

Hei Zhou had no idea that the Shafeng in front of him had long since been reduced to a counterfeit sustained by a “dragon pearl,” and that the true body inside it was Yue Yang’s.

Watching Yue Yang fight this desperately.

He felt a certain regret.

Where exactly was he going to find another junior this obedient and this useful? Cannon fodder you could push out to die at any moment, anywhere — he doubted he would ever come across the like again. To simply stand here and watch him die really did seem a bit of a waste. But cannon fodder was cannon fodder and a chess piece was a chess piece, and the role it existed to perform was to be sacrificed, to be used. Once its value was gone, there was no further necessity for the piece to exist. Hei Zhou hardened his heart. How can a man who accomplishes great things afford a woman’s compassion? Allies are born to be sold, and juniors are born to be sent to their deaths. For a ruthless warlord to pity the life of a piece in his own hand — the idea was laughable.

Hei Zhou found the thought that had flickered through the back of his mind absurd, and sneered at it in the same breath.

His heart went cold again, hard as iron and stone.

So long as God-Slayer could be killed.

Never mind Shafeng — no price at all would be too great to pay.

(End of Chapter 1182)