Who exactly was this mysterious man who had turned up out of nowhere?

Grand Hall Master Dongfang?

It didn’t fit. If the mysterious man really were Grand Hall Master Dongfang of the Central Divine Hall, whose strength was second only to the Divine Hall Sovereign Tianyu, then even an idiot Ji Wuri would never have claimed to be Zhonghua, Lord of the Light Hall. You can lie to anyone you like, but you cannot lie to Grand Hall Master Dongfang about that. Ji Wuri would only have tried it on someone who didn’t know the Central Divine Hall well.

On top of which, the mysterious man had called himself Jiuxiao’s master, which ruled Dongfang out entirely.

So if he wasn’t Dongfang, who was he? Where does an old monster like this even come from?

Yue Yang’s head hurt.

He turned it over and over and still couldn’t get to the bottom of it.

The part he found hardest to believe was that back when he’d been too weak to matter at all, Jiuxiao had already had eyes on him. He had guarded against the Heavenly Realm from every direction he could think of, and in the end he had still missed Jiuxiao’s faction watching him from the dark.

And now, just as he was breaking through one realm after another with divine tier in sight, leading a revitalized Sky Tower into its best days, Jiuxiao had finally decided he could not wait any longer. Jiuxiao had not only used powerful Heavenly Realm forces like the Heavenly Empress, the Solar King and Ji Wuri to put a knife in Yue Yang’s back — at the end of it he had gone and fetched his own master. With a final boss of that size on the board, the future of Yue Yang and of the Sky Tower did not bear thinking about. Yue Yang was beginning to understand how a Prison Emperor as strong as that one had ended up dying in battle. The Sky Tower pulls too much hatred. Too many serious people watch it and wait for their opening, one after another, batch after batch. There is no guarding against all of it and no end to the fighting.

Whatever this mysterious man’s background was, Yue Yang was sure of one thing.

He had come for their lives.

Nothing they did was going to end this well — not even surrendering.

The mysterious man had chosen his moment for exactly this: to arrive while Yue Yang and Ji Wuri were locked in a fight to the death, so he could dispose of the Prison Emperor’s heir and the Divine Hall Sovereign’s disciple in one go. Then spread word of it, engineer a full Central Divine Hall assault on the Sky Tower, set the Divine Hall Sovereign and the Conquest Queen at each other’s throats, and stand back while the fisherman collects.

If he and Ji Wuri both died here.

The future of the Heavenly Realm would belong to Jiuxiao, who had waited a very long time in the dark for it.

If Yue Yang couldn’t read a scheme that plain, then he had no business talking about storming the Central Divine Hall and repeating Empress Vivienne’s conquest. He might as well go home to the Sky Tower and sell sweet potatoes in the countryside.

Across from him, Ji Wuri’s face had gone cold too. Ji Wuri was not stupid, and something this obvious only takes one thought.

Ji Wuri glanced at Yue Yang.

There seemed to be an offer in it.

If the two of them set the feud aside and stood together, there might be one very faint thread of a way out. If they kept attacking each other and kept throwing rocks down the well at a moment like this, then whichever one of them won, the ending was the same: dead, with no patch of ground to be buried in.

“My disciple Jiuxiao has long admired the deep friendship between you two. He’d like to make your acquaintance, join with you, and advance together — but he was afraid a pair of talents like yourselves might look down on his gifts and refuse him, so he went to the trouble of begging this old man to come out of retirement, find the two of you, and put the idea to you himself.” The mysterious man’s tone was very warm, like a retired official back in the village making small talk with the farmers — friendly, easy to approach, and carrying enough weight behind it that refusing felt impossible. He looked at Yue Yang, then at Ji Wuri, and smiled. “I’m very fond of the pair of you myself. If you’d be willing to come back with me and stay a while, this old man would be glad of the company, and I’d see to it you were looked after properly. Well, little friends? What do you think? Don’t worry — I’m an easygoing sort. If you don’t want to, just say so. I’d never force anybody.”

“To be looked kindly on by senior, and to be shown the true meaning of cultivation, would be the good fortune of Ji Ge’s life. How could there be any question of being unwilling? And to drink with Brother Jiuxiao, to gather in fellowship and push one another forward, is something Ji Ge has wanted for a long time.” Ji Wuri’s manner stayed perfectly respectful and nothing showed on him anywhere — except that at the very end he hesitated a little, as though there were something difficult he had to say. “It’s only that my master gave me an order. Ji Ge is slow, and I haven’t managed to carry it out yet, so I don’t dare divide my attention for the moment. The instant my master’s task is finished, I’ll come to your door and listen to your teaching.”

“Ah, I see.” The mysterious man waved a hand lightly. “Well, if you’re under orders, then never mind. Little friend Yue Titan — what about you?”

“I don’t have a task or anything. I’m just not in a good mood, so I don’t feel like going out.” Yue Yang turned him down flat.

“And why would my young friend not be in a good mood?” The mysterious man sounded puzzled.

“I’m broke.” Yue Yang spread his hands. “Even if I wanted to travel, I’ve got no money for the road. When you’re a poor family’s kid running around every day just to put two meals together, where’s a good mood supposed to come from?”

Poor kids have it hard. That was Yue Yang’s position.

Life is a grind, and on top of that you keep running into those blind fools on street corners with microphones asking whether you’re satisfied, with a look on their faces that tells you exactly which kind of satisfied they mean. Where is a good mood supposed to come from?

Ji Wuri, being tall, rich and handsome, immediately offered to cover part of Yue Yang’s travel costs. The mysterious man expressed his deep sympathy and concern, and encouraged Yue Yang to study hard and improve daily, to work hard, to aim at buying a house by forty, and then to marry the twenty-year-old daughter of the girl he’d first fallen in love with. Yue Yang nodded, deeply moved. Put like that, life sounded wonderful.

And just as the atmosphere reached its most harmonious and most agreeable, somebody started coughing at entirely the wrong moment.

It did serious damage to a very productive three-way summit.

That somebody was God-Slayer, still hanging in midair, still caught in the net of love and unable to get out of it.

God-Slayer honestly could not take any more.

If one of them were this shameless, he could have gritted his teeth and borne it. But all three of them were this shameless, and each one was worse than the last. He couldn’t hold it in. His throat had started itching, and if he didn’t cough a few times he was going to choke to death on it.

“Ji Ge is under orders, so I’ll take my leave of senior here. I’ll come to your door another day and ask for your teaching sincerely.” Ji Wuri made a deep formal bow and began backing away slowly. The mysterious man made no move to stop him, but Ji Wuri did not dare turn his back for a second. He didn’t put away the Sacred Codex, and he didn’t recall a single one of the war beasts he’d summoned earlier. He knew perfectly well how little those beasts could do against a man like this — but however much they added, even a hair’s worth, he was pinning his hopes on it. If he could get out of this with his life, Ji Wuri would pay any price at all.

“Little friend Yue Titan. And you? Are you leaving too?” The mysterious man looked at Yue Yang.

“Ji No-Cock over there is leaving because the sow at his place went into labor early and he has to get back and deliver the piglets. I haven’t got a school assignment like that, so what would I go back for?” Yue Yang shrugged, then pointed at God-Slayer. “I came out to God-Slayer’s place to visit family. It isn’t every day a man gets a relative in the city — if I didn’t stay a few days and eat and drink and enjoy myself, how could I face myself afterward?”

“So he’s a relative of yours. Hm. There is a bit of a resemblance.” The mysterious man did not so much as glance at God-Slayer, and delivered his verdict offhandedly. “Not a bad relative to have.”

God-Slayer was fighting back tears.

Whatever else was true, he was the first man of Mountain Beyond the Mountain. Even if his strength was garbage, even if he didn’t count for anything, the man could at least have looked.

Not even one glance. Was his strength really that far into the gutter? It was a crushing blow. The great humiliation of a lifetime.

If he had been free.

God-Slayer would probably have gone straight off to find a rope. What was the point of going on? He was done.

Over on the other side, Ji Wuri kept backing away, getting farther and farther off. Yue Yang scratched the back of his head, and then suddenly remembered something. “Oh — I nearly forgot. I’ve got a good soup on at home, I have to get back and watch the stove!” He hadn’t finished the sentence before he scooped up the little serpent-demon girl who had been guarding him all this time, and at a speed millions of times faster than lightning, he was ten thousand meters out and still going before Ji Wuri’s astonished eyes had finished tracking him.

“You—” Ji Wuri was angry enough to do himself an injury. He had assumed Yue Yang would go on playing dumb and look for a chance to slip away later. All that pretty talk, and it turned out the brat could run faster than anybody. There was no time to complain about it, though. Ji Wuri spun around, picked up his feet, and ran for his life at the fastest speed of his entire existence.

The mysterious man did nothing to stop them. He might not have noticed Yue Yang and Ji Wuri splitting left and right and bolting at all.

Yue Yang and Ji Wuri were mortal enemies.

But they moved in perfect coordination.

One left, one right.

Running in opposite directions at the same moment, which improved both their odds enormously.

If a man’s luck held up, the mysterious man would go after the other one, and there was a real chance of getting out alive. Ji Wuri was hoping the mysterious man would chase down Yue Yang, the Prison Emperor’s heir. Yue Yang was hoping he’d chase down Ji Wuri, the Divine Hall Sovereign’s disciple. Things being what they were, neither had another option. It was down to luck.

Unhurried, the mysterious man raised his left hand and pointed at the God-Slayer hanging in the net of love.

Yue Yang felt it, and his body stalled for a thousandth of a second — barely enough to see.

Ji Wuri paid no attention at all.

Whether God-Slayer lived or died.

It had nothing to do with him.

Better still if the mysterious man killed God-Slayer first and then went after Yue Yang. Things wouldn’t have gone as planned, exactly, but that would still just about count as hitting the target.

A pillar of light shot out of the mysterious man’s finger. It went past every thought in the world, past every light and every darkness; it ignored distance, ignored defenses, ignored everything, and simply arrived.

God-Slayer closed his eyes. There was no point. He gave up resisting.

Whoosh!

Ji Wuri saw a flash of light in front of him.

And found a pillar of light coming out through his own chest, still traveling, still cutting a long line across the sky, until it disappeared somewhere in the endless distance ahead.

The pain reached him a second later. Only then, in the middle of the pain, did his mind clear enough to grasp that he was hurt — and hurt badly enough that somebody had put a hole clean through him, front to back, in a single move. His body kept flying forward under its own momentum, and when it finally stopped and he looked down, he found a round, fist-sized opening in his chest with his organs in plain view inside it.

“Ah, well. I’m old. My aim isn’t what it used to be.” The mysterious man shook his head and sighed.

Yue Yang nearly wet himself.

He had no idea whether Ji Wuri was wearing the divine armor. But even without it, he was fairly sure Ji Wuri’s own body was no less protected than divine armor would have made him. And that had just been opened front to back by one finger. There was no way to call Ji Wuri garbage for it. The only conclusion left was that this old man was a monster.

Thank god that finger had not been pointed at him.

Otherwise there might be a hole through him too.

So what now? This monster of an old man attacks in a way that ignores distance and ignores defenses, so what exactly is the point of running? You can’t outrun it. But if you don’t run, and you turn around and try to fight him, you die faster.

Up against a super final boss who could one-shot the entire field, Yue Yang felt his head swell to three times its normal size.

Hell with it — there’s no fighting this. There just isn’t.

(End of Chapter 1195)