Hei Zhou felt Ji Wuri’s hand press flat against the middle of his back.

One second only.

And a tenth of the divine power in his body was drawn away.

Terror scattered his soul. Throwing every scrap of strength into it, he turned himself into a ball of black light and tore free of the golden shadow Yuanji’s grip by main force. In mid-air he twisted clear of Tianchou’s Yinxue, a blade capable of ripping heaven and earth apart, and then barely evaded Yuanji’s Divine-Taboo Finger. Panicked and with nowhere left to run, Hei Zhou was driven to take shelter at the side of God-Slayer — who a moment earlier had been his mortal enemy. He understood that at certain times, standing beside your nemesis is safer than standing beside your own people. Such as now.

“God-Slayer! I renounce my claim to the position of first man of Mountain Beyond the Mountain. Yuanji has been reborn — we must join hands against the enemy!” Hei Zhou switched his position instantly, discarding every desire and objective he had held until that moment, and put breaking the enemy and saving his own life first.

“I have no need to join hands with you.” God-Slayer snorted. He was confident nobody alive would trust Hei Zhou. Who was to say this was not another West Camp stratagem?

And even supposing it wasn’t.

Was dog eating dog not exactly the sort of spectacle a man enjoys watching?

Though it was true that Yuanji, that strongest of enemies from the old days, returning to Mountain Beyond the Mountain was a crisis nobody could afford to treat lightly.

God-Slayer drew a long, deep breath, and his hand tightened by a fraction on the divine sword Lihen. With a powerful enemy resurfacing, this battle would have to be fought with everything he had. But he would absolutely not join hands with Hei Zhou. To ally against an enemy with a ruthless warlord who would sell out his own allies at any moment and had no honour or good faith to speak of was to bargain with a tiger for its hide.

“You— you are an absolute fool!” A surge of hatred rose in Hei Zhou, part of it fury at God-Slayer’s refusal, part of it shame at having been sold out and turned upon by his own nephew.

“Hahaha! My dear uncle, God-Slayer refuses to join hands with you and you cannot lay the blame at the Eastern Divine Sovereign’s door. You should look for the cause a little closer to home. If you were not so notoriously faithless and merciless, so given to selling out your allies, how would your cup of iniquity have filled to the brim, with heaven and earth spitting on you? Never mind outsiders — even I, your own nephew, dare not believe half a word out of you. With a man like you, anyone who trusts you so much as a tenth will die without a scrap of ground to be buried in. Do you remember Shafeng, who died wronged only moments ago? It was no time at all; the scene is still vivid before my eyes, the sound of it still lingering in my ears. Hahahaha! And do you remember what he said as he died? Shafeng said: He is without benevolence. That does not free me from loyalty. Ha! What a heartbreaking cry that was. My dear uncle, in the face of your betrayal, Shafeng was past the point where a man can even weep. Set against that, what you are suffering now amounts to nothing at all — at most, evil getting its due return and the whole world turning its back on you for it!” Ji Wuri’s face wore the sanctity of a man destroying his own kin for the greater right. Before him hovered that Sacred Codex of surpassing splendour, and through its ten million rays of light he looked at Hei Zhou the way a gourmet looks at the dishes laid out on a table.

“You imagine one single Yuanji is enough to have me?” Hei Zhou laughed coldly. He had steadied himself by now.

If he could not win the fight, he could still flee back into his Grimoire World.

At worst he would hide in there for a thousand years or more and not come out. Let them see who could outlast whom.

However strong Yuanji might be, he could not possibly slip into another man’s Grimoire World and drag him out of it. Summon the grimoire, return to the Grimoire World, and the crisis would melt away like snow, resolved at a stroke.

Hei Zhou raised his hand and summoned his grimoire.

Being betrayed was bitter, and losing the position of first man of Mountain Beyond the Mountain was hateful — but while the green hills remain there is no fear of running short of firewood. Preserving himself and keeping his life was the important thing now. As for whatever Ji Wuri stood to gain from this Divine War — taking over the whole of Mountain Beyond the Mountain and Earth Valley? Seizing the position of first man? Hei Zhou could no longer afford to care about any of it. Everything came second to keeping himself intact.

Ji Wuri watched Hei Zhou’s turtle-in-its-shell retreat into the Grimoire World entirely at his leisure, and made no move to stop it.

One second later.

Hei Zhou’s face changed utterly.

It went the colour of dead ash, stained through with terror.

And not only his. The gravely wounded Shuanghan, and North Divine Sovereign Zhaoxi watching quietly from the side, both showed the same look of horror.

“Sovereigns — you find you can’t summon your grimoires?” Ji Wuri smiled faintly and opened his palm to display the main body of an ancient relic. Like a guide introducing the beauty spots to a party of tourists, he launched into an unstoppable flow of explanation. “If you were in the mood for it, I would very much like to give you a lesson on the difference between true gods and pseudo-gods. But none of you seems to be in a very good mood, so let us skip that lesson. Matters of that depth would be beyond your understanding in any case. All you need to know is that within my domain, anyone without Sovereign Intent will stand helpless and await death before the Codex-Forbidding Law. You have all assumed the ancient relic’s function was merely to weaken an enemy’s strength. What is comical is that you have held that belief for ten thousand years. Not one of you ever questioned it, and not one of you ever went looking for what it actually is.”

“The ancient relic’s true function is god-forbidding. It is the measure by which pseudo-gods are told apart from true gods, and the same measure by which martial cultivators are sifted and chosen throughout the Trial Grounds. Fools as you are, no more than pseudo-gods — how would you ever have grasped the truth of it?”

“I was wrong. I should not have set my hopes on you so high!” Ji Wuri shrugged elegantly at the last, and added, contemptuously, “I really did think that in all these ten thousand years one of you might break through his limit, rise up out of the pseudo-god state and comprehend Sovereign Intent — that one of you might justify the pains Taiyan and Bingli took, spending what remained of their divine sense and their lives to help you contract your grimoires. And who would have guessed there is not a single talent among you. All of you garbage.”

The whole field went dead silent.

Shuanghan sank to his knees on the ground, all strength gone.

Ji Wuri’s contemptuous words had struck home and shattered his heart to powder.

Ten thousand years ago, Taiyan and Bingli had paid an enormous price to help them all contract grimoires — and in the end not one of them had amounted to anything. Ten thousand years later, every one of them was still a pseudo-god. What a waste they had made of Taiyan and Bingli’s bitter care.

North Divine Sovereign Zhaoxi’s face carried grief now too, his thoughts sunk deep in the memory of those years, unwilling for a long time to surface and face a reality as cruel as this.

“Hmph!”

God-Slayer’s face showed nothing at all.

He put out a hand in front of him, and countless divine lights gathered into a mass in his palm.

The radiance seemed to be under some kind of suppression; it wavered and guttered. But in the end nothing could hold down God-Slayer’s sky-piercing will, and a pillar of light burst upward with a roar and levelled itself furiously at the firmament.

A golden grimoire hung in the air before God-Slayer. One page turned lightly over, and ten million lines of sword-qi cut every restriction to pieces and fused with their master God-Slayer in flawless unity. Yue Yang, still playing dead, felt his heart jolt. Sovereign Intent. God-Slayer had comprehended Sovereign Intent as well! It could not be spoken of in the same breath as Yue Yang’s own, but set against Sea Fatty, Ye Kong and Xue Tanglang it was stronger rather than weaker — it would pass the Gate of Life and Death without the slightest difficulty. Were it not for the limits imposed on a grimoire contracted with Taiyan and Bingli’s divine assistance, God-Slayer’s realm might well have climbed higher still.

Ji Wuri was astonished. God-Slayer’s summoning genuinely had fallen outside his calculations.

As for Hei Zhou, Zhaoxi and Shuanghan, their eyes all but dropped out of their heads.

Surely not?

This sword-mad God-Slayer had comprehended the legendary Sovereign Intent? Did that mean he had already set foot in true divine tier?

Small wonder God-Slayer had shown no fear whatsoever of Hei Zhou’s challenge, or of any scheme or intrigue the West Camp cared to run. Had Ji Wuri’s intervention not changed everything, God-Slayer’s position as first man of Mountain Beyond the Mountain could never have been shaken at all. Never mind Hei Zhou’s five against one — with Chiqiu and Qingyun added, seven against one could not have won either.

“Leave this place.”

God-Slayer waved a hand, ordering Shuanghan, Zhaoxi and the rest to withdraw from the battlefield, and summoned a special life-guardian war beast in the shape of a sword. They fused into one, and the might of his divine power leapt a hundredfold on the instant.

Sword-qi condensed into shape, solid as a blade edge, a full kilometre in length.

If it were swung.

Shuanghan did not doubt for a moment that this materialised sword-qi would annihilate the whole Eastern Divine Nation, and quite possibly all of Mountain Beyond the Mountain.

Hei Zhou’s expression was deeply awkward. He had discovered that he was a frog at the bottom of a well, and that with his current strength, challenging God-Slayer for the position of first man of Mountain Beyond the Mountain was simply a joke. God-Slayer had never once exposed his real strength; he had only summoned his grimoire and shown what he actually was when Ji Wuri appeared. Did that not mean God-Slayer had never regarded him as worth noticing in the first place?

“Not bad! Now it finally gets interesting!” The golden shadow Yuanji clapped and laughed. “If I get to absorb you, that will be a magnificent tonic. Come on, then — I can hardly wait to become one with you!”

“Sword. Annihilate.”

Neither pleased nor angry, God-Slayer swung the materialised kilometre of sword-qi down hard at Yuanji.

The golden shadow Yuanji did not stir by so much as a hair.

Ji Wuri idly turned a page.

A knot of radiance rose out of the Sacred Codex.

It resolved into a humanoid war beast with the upper body of a beautiful woman and the lower body of a spider. The moment she appeared she laughed a coquettish laugh, preening, her voice like a small bell. “What a ferocious, vicious man you are. I do like you so much!”

God-Slayer paid the spider-demon’s words no attention whatsoever, and brought the kilometre blade chopping down on her head. A ruthless hand crushing the flower was coined for iron-hearted men of exactly his sort.

The spider-demon parted her cherry lips and breathed out, lightly — as tenderly as a lover breathing against your ear.

Countless transparent threads flew out.

Clinging, endless.

And under the disbelieving gaze of Shuanghan, Zhaoxi and Hei Zhou, they miraculously wound themselves around that kilometre blade of God-Slayer’s — driven by divine power and Sovereign Intent, and capable of destroying heaven and earth. At first the edge still descended, slowly. But for all that it could cleave space itself, it could not sever a single one of those threads, and in the end more and more of them coiled about the blade until it was pinned fast in mid-air.

“Eastern Divine Sovereign God-Slayer. I studied you through and through long ago.” Ji Wuri’s expression was arrogant. “Your sword can ruin heaven and annihilate earth. But what you do not know is that there is one thing in this world your sword cannot cut — and that is love-threads!”

“Love-threads?” This time, even God-Slayer’s brows drew together.

“My Love-Thread Spider-Demon is one of the strongest war beasts in the Heavenly Realm. Once she has fallen in love with a target and bound it in love-threads, there is no prey in the world that can escape her. Love-threads cannot be destroyed by any force whatsoever — not by blade or sword, not by water or fire. In a word: everything in this world, and everything in a lifetime, is subject to the pull of the love-threads!”

Ji Wuri had not finished speaking before God-Slayer discovered that he was caught inside a vast, boundless net of love-threads.

The Love-Thread Spider-Demon covered her mouth and giggled to herself.

Her own strength could not possibly kill God-Slayer. But she had no need to kill this powerful Eastern Divine Sovereign. So long as she loved him and held him fast in her net of love, everything in Mountain Beyond the Mountain would belong to her master forever, and there would be nobody left who could stop it.

“Die!” Shuanghan roared, and sent his ice chains streaking at the Love-Thread Spider-Demon. He had seen it: this spider-demon was no stronger than he was, and the truly terrible thing was the love-threads born out of her falling in love with a target.

Kill her, and God-Slayer would be free of the trap at once.

Ji Wuri idly turned another page of his codex. A streak of light shot out and passed across the ice chains — and the ice chains instantly became a chain of fire, burning back along their own length at tremendous speed toward Shuanghan himself. Shuanghan, whose body had never in his life been burned by fire like this, roared in agony. And he discovered that the more freezing divine power he poured out, the more savagely the flames burned.

“The enemy can convert your freezing divine power!” Zhaoxi saw the truth of it in the Zhenmiao Divine Mirror.

“You, who fancy you can see through every truth in the world — can you see that your own heart is muddled?” Somebody behind Zhaoxi belched, and the reek of wine rolled over him in a wave.

Zhaoxi held his breath at once.

But he found.

That he was drunk anyway.

The Zhenmiao divine artifact was frantically sounding a warning in the depths of his mind — do nothing, the moment you act you will err — but Zhaoxi still could not stop himself turning his head to look at the enemy who had fixed on him without his ever noticing. What he saw was a jar of wine, giving off a fragrance no man could resist. Anyone who so much as caught the scent would be helpless before the temptation of it, a temptation like some worm gnawing away at the heart, chewing through every scrap of reason and restraint.

He knew perfectly well that it was a lethal poison, and still Zhaoxi could not resist it, and walked toward the wine jar one halting step at a time.

He did not want to do it. But his actions had gone entirely out of his control.

It was as though some ravenous wine-worm had taken command of his body.

Set against Shuanghan burning in his fire, Zhaoxi felt his own position was the worse of the two. This was beyond question a war beast Ji Wuri had chosen specifically to counter him — and though he knew it was a trap, he had no Sovereign Intent, could not restrain himself, and was walking step by step toward his own destruction.

“The Drunken Muddle-Worm. To counter you, Zhaoxi, I searched the Heavenly Realm for who knows how long before I found a war beast that suited. Had you comprehended Sovereign Intent the way God-Slayer has, this really would have been dangerous. Sadly, you and your Zhenmiao Divine Mirror are fated to die in a muddled stupor. You have it far better than Shuanghan, though — at least you get to die drunk!” Ji Wuri seemed genuinely interested in Zhaoxi. Shuanghan, by contrast, he did not consider worth a glance.

“Don’t forget — there’s still me!” Hei Zhou had made up his mind to fight for his life. God-Slayer, Zhaoxi and Shuanghan were all trapped; if he did not stake everything now, what chance would there be later?

“My dear uncle, how on earth could I ever forget you?”

Ji Wuri smiled faintly at that.

He turned several pages of the codex with an air of great ceremony, as though searching out a suitable war beast.

Then he put out a hand and summoned. A black hole opened in the sky at once. Deep inside the black hole, some dreadful creature seemed to lie in wait; it opened a mouth as vast as the black hole itself, and mouth and hole together devoured heaven and earth with a doubled force. When Hei Zhou’s divine power erupted, that darkness-affiliated power which blackened the sky and dimmed the earth was swallowed in a single gulp. And having swallowed it, the monster rolled its tongue as though it were still not satisfied.

Hei Zhou, his nerve badly shaken, looked into the black hole and found that the creature lurking inside it and devouring heaven and earth was a bizarre giant frog.

Yuanji burst into wild laughter. “The Black-Hole Star-Devouring Nether Frog — an ancient giant frog that can hunt down and eat the meteors in the sky. Hei Zhou, what is that scrap of divine power of yours worth? If your divine power were not the very best nourishment, do you imagine you would still be alive now? Feel the shame! Feel the rage! Your grand eruption is precisely what we want. The angrier you get and the harder you erupt, the better you’ll taste when we eat you!”

Faced with a Ji Wuri as twisted as this, who had designed a specific counter to every one of their abilities in advance, Shuanghan and Hei Zhou had already fallen into despair.

Zhaoxi was sinking into his drunkenness.

His mind was no longer clear.

And even God-Slayer, the strongest in all Mountain Beyond the Mountain, was pinned inside the net of love and could not free himself. Nobody could have imagined that the final victor of this Divine War would turn out to be an outsider who had not so much as reached divine tier — Ji Wuri!

“You may say your last words.” Ji Wuri very mercifully granted them all the chance to say a few final words.

“I— I’ll go first!” Yue Yang, who had been playing dead for a good long while now, evidently felt he could still manage to die a little more mischievously, in the Stephen Chow manner. So he stood up and raised his hand to volunteer. A chance to deliver last words — that was rare screen time, and no self-respecting extra could possibly let it pass!

(End of Chapter 1186)