One look at the mysterious man told Yue Yang that the old guy was too much of a monster to go toe to toe with, so he decided to slip away.

If I can’t fight you, can’t I at least hide from you?

But before he could get back to the Grimoire World, a shaft of divine light came down out of the sky and closed over him, holding him inside it. Duoduo and Xiao Wenli were badly shaken and both looked up at once. Neither of them had noticed that the mysterious man had done something to the vault of the sky.

Under cover of the pressure that had come down with his god form, he had quietly set a strange divine mirror at the very top of the heavens.

Nobody could see what that mirror actually looked like.

Because it was turned around.

Back side down.

And even with its back turned down, the radiance streaming off it was immense.

At first it stayed hidden and showed nothing. Then the mysterious man drove it with his Sovereign Intent, and it was like clouds parting to let the sun through — a pillar of light shot down and struck the earth. It wasn’t even the front of the mirror. Yue Yang was lit only by the back, and it still hit him like a lightning strike. His mind was seized away by the mirror’s weapon spirit in an instant, and his body went limp and dropped to the ground. In all the fights since Yue Yang began cultivating, he had never once had his mind taken and his body go down soft and helpless, meat on somebody else’s board. And keep in mind what that meant: the strongest thing about the transmigrator was that Sovereign Intent of his, as unmoving as a mountain.

“…” Duoduo and Xiao Wenli were stunned. They had seen it with their own eyes and still couldn’t believe it. Yue Yang’s mind, taken by a divine artifact?

“Hoo… hoo, hoo.” Yue Yang had dropped straight into the land of dreams.

Peacefully under, snoring away.

The mysterious man in his god form wore the expression of someone looking at an ant he could play with between his fingers whenever he liked.

What he was thinking about now wasn’t how to kill the loathsome brat. It was how to torture the brat in a way that would actually give him pleasure — that would wipe out the humiliation of having been forced to show his true god-form body today.

He thought about it for a good while, and finally made up his mind. He would torture the boy over and over inside the dream for ten thousand years, and make him wail in his ear for the full ten thousand years. That, by his estimate, would leave him just barely satisfied. Out in the world outside it would take no more than a few minutes, of course. If he weren’t making the dream’s pain real in the physical body, one second would have been enough.

A thousand years in one dream. Ten thousand years in one dream.

“Pain!”

The mysterious man sent the command up to the divine mirror turning ceaselessly overhead.

The pillar of light didn’t dim and the mirror didn’t move, but the direction of its spin reversed.

Yue Yang, held in Xiao Wenli’s arms, still didn’t wake, but his whole body convulsed with pain, as though countless needles were driving into him — into his organs, even.

“Drunk!”

Yue Yang’s body, rigid and convulsing a moment before, relaxed at once and went slack as mud.

A strange flush came up in his face, the red of a hard hangover, and in his heavy breathing Xiao Wenli and Duoduo could actually smell liquor on him.

“Hate!”

The command went out, and Yue Yang’s fists closed.

The transmigrator’s face showed real anger, the kind almost nobody ever saw on him, and his body shook without stopping from the fury inside the dream. When that explosive anger had built to its limit, the mysterious man sent up another command — “Grief” — and Yue Yang’s anger went out like a tide going back. What came up in its place was a loneliness and a sorrow that nobody ever saw. People lived alongside Yue Yang every day, and apart from Sick Beauty and Yue Yu, hardly any of them knew that the heedless, grinning transmigrator had this side to him at all.

Even Ye Kong and Sea Fatty, who trained with him and fought beside him, had never seen this side of Yue Yang.

Only in his deepest and quietest sleep did it ever surface, and then only in glimpses.

The rest of the time he kept it buried deep.

He kept himself hidden behind his disguise talent at all times, and never showed anyone a moment’s weakness, not the smallest trace of it… because he had to be absolutely strong in order to protect them all.

Duoduo was angry. The thing she hated most in the world was somebody digging into an opponent’s heart without limit and without scruple. Everyone was entitled to a small private country of their own, and to tear it open by force and expose it out of malice went so far past decency that it was worse than flaying a man with a thousand cuts. And the worst of it, the part she could not stand, was that it was being done to Yue Yang in front of her — the master she respected most, loved most, and most wanted to protect for the rest of her life. What the mysterious man was doing made her angrier than destroying her own dearest treasure would have.

No. It had already gone past anger. This was hatred.

“Get away from him!”

Duoduo threw her head back and screamed it, and the hatred in her voice came down like a hammer and shattered the whole of space in an instant.

The beautiful, graceful Flower Goddess was gone. What stood there now, hair on end and her presence swallowing the sky, was a Goddess of Vengeance ruled by anger and hate.

Her eruption gave the mysterious man a real start, but he was full of confidence and the shock was off his face in a blink. He even got the urge to toy with her, and deliberately provoked her by sending another order up to the mirror. “Regret.”

“Repent, little lamb. Your fate is endless tears and regret!” The mysterious man was thoroughly pleased with himself, and when he finished he burst out laughing.

“AAAAAAAAAH——”

At the height of his laughter, at his most delighted and most self-satisfied, an angry fist ignored everything in its way and landed on his nose.

The mysterious man’s god-form body snapped backward, and his foot went back a full step whether he wanted it to or not.

There was one thing in his eyes.

Confusion, and nothing else.

Even with a fist already in his face, he could not believe this was actually happening.

He had unsealed himself into the third, final, most perfect god form, and somebody could still ignore all of it and hit him? A second later the mysterious man was extraordinarily angry. The one throwing punches in front of him was Duoduo, hair on end with rage, killing intent going straight up off her. He swung at once, meaning to hit back many times harder — and more than that. He meant to pound into pulp this plant-type war beast who had dared offend him again and again, and then reshape the pulp into a statue and seal it with divine power so she could never come out again, not for all eternity.

“BOOM!”

The mysterious man raised his hand to strike back.

And Duoduo, furious, drove another punch hard into his face.

He forced himself upright by brute strength, divine power erupting out of him in a wave nothing could stop, both fists coming back at her. Duoduo didn’t give an inch. She sent a high front kick up through the gap between his fists, faster than either fist, into the underside of his chin. When it landed and lifted him clean off the ground, she flashed in behind him, brought her elbow up and slammed it down on the back of his head.

Falling toward the ground, the mysterious man grabbed desperately behind him and caught Duoduo by the calf.

Coming down like a meteor, he flung her away from him in a rage.

Boom. Boom.

Two enormous impacts, almost at the same moment.

The shock wave swept out across the land — but before it did, both of them had blasted the rubble off themselves, righted their bodies and gone straight back at each other.

Their heavy punches landed on each other’s faces at almost the same time, and both of them were knocked backward in the same instant, blood spraying… After a thousandth of a second of dizziness they turned in midair and came back for a fresh round.

Yue Yang, sunk in the dream and being tortured in it, suddenly woke. He yawned, his face still heavy with sleep, and sat up with his eyes half open. The Divine Mirror Nightmare — impossible to escape from once inside, where a second outside meant a day of torture within, or longer — had inexplicably stopped working. The mirror overhead still had him wrapped in divine light. Yue Yang simply didn’t feel it anymore.

“Don’t worry. I’m fine.” Yue Yang saw Xiao Wenli’s small face streaked with tears, cupped it with an ache in his chest and kissed her lightly. “I just dreamed about Bing’er getting bullied on the first floor of the Sky Tower. Made me furious… but it’s over now. I’ve walked out of the Virgo Palace of the Zodiac and out of the Gate of Life and Death — a mere dream doesn’t work on me… The reason the mirror caught me at all is probably the Heart Mirror talent the spirit mirror’s owner granted me in the Virgo Palace. I hardly ever use it. I didn’t expect it to resonate that hard with the mirror’s weapon spirit just now, and I let my guard down for a second and my mind got pulled in.”

“Mm! Mm!” Xiao Wenli had been badly worried, but seeing he was all right she went from tears to laughing in a moment.

“What’s going on with Duoduo?” Having calmed the little serpent-demon down, Yue Yang looked out at the battlefield and found Duoduo trading punches with the mysterious man as though her life meant nothing to her. He stared. What play was this girl putting on? She wasn’t a melee fighter, for crying out loud.

And even if somebody had to go hand to hand, it shouldn’t be her turn.

A-Man, Hong and Yika were all there.

Every one of them had far better close-quarters technique than she did. A trade like this one — no defense at all, every punch going into flesh — might not hurt her, but it hurt him to watch.

Duoduo was in the thick of it, though, and Yue Yang didn’t dare call out to her in case she lost focus and the mysterious man landed something.

Yue Yang, for his part, was working out how to step in and give Duoduo a hand.

Then a shadow flickered across the sky and was gone.

It was there and past in an instant.

And the divine mirror that had been turning ceaselessly overhead had vanished, for no reason anyone could see… Shuanghan, Zhaoxi and God-Slayer all looked like men seeing a ghost in broad daylight. Who was bold enough to steal a divine artifact right in front of the mysterious man? And these things choose their own masters. Never mind whether it could even be stolen; if it could, what use would stealing it be?

Yue Yang exploded, pointed at the sky and started shouting. “So you’re a thief! No wonder I’m always losing things — it’s been you the whole time! I had that mirror on order well before anybody else, so hand it over right now! I’ve fed and housed you all this time for nothing. You don’t pay rent, you don’t help me fight, and now you’re stealing out of my own house? Outrageous!”

He wasn’t done shouting when a dark shape came charging in low across the ground.

It headbutted him flat on his back.

Then a grinning little face popped up over the top of the mirror she was hugging. “Your name isn’t written on it! It doesn’t have an owner, so obviously it goes to whoever’s hands are fastest. And it isn’t even a good thing — look, this mirror only has the evil side. It doesn’t have the good side at all. A divine artifact like that turns on its master very easily. Look at that old ghost, he didn’t dare form a contract with it either. I’m removing a danger for you… And you can’t blame me for the things you lose. I never steal. Mama taught me from the time I was little to be a good girl. Besides, how does taking a few of your things count as stealing? Aren’t your things mine anyway?”

That piece of crooked reasoning bent the transmigrator badly out of shape.

Girl, you’re more savage than a bandit, you know that? The blackest-hearted bandit in the world would take one look at you and call you ma’am.

There was no reasoning with this particular little madam. Whether she had a point or not made no difference, because the discussion always ended with her headbutting you flat. The mirror had been snatched, and Yue Yang could only write it off as bad luck. He had never once seen a treasure fall into her hands and come back out again.

“Girl. You took the mirror, so I’ve got no treasure to protect me, and that old ghost has come to my door and started a brawl. You’re not going to help me finish him?” Yue Yang worked hard on the Qilin girl, trying to talk her into fighting for him. If she’d only get involved, then even if nothing else came of it, one headbutt ought to be worth at least a couple of the old ghost’s front teeth.

“I can’t beat him… If I could beat this old ghost I’d have done it ages ago. He’s one of the ones who attacked me in the Heavenly Realm. He hunted me for a long time back then, and it’s lucky I run fast or I might not have made it.” Qilin Girl Bingyin patted her small chest, still shaken by the memory, to show just how scared she’d been.

“Then all the more reason to go to war with him! You’ve improved incredibly fast, you passed him long ago. Beat him up. You have my moral support!” Yue Yang, for his part, was doing his best to stir her up.

“This old ghost isn’t even the worst of the trouble. I forgot to tell you — in that place full of fog there’s someone even stronger, and he’s squeezing his way in here as hard as he can. I’d guess it won’t be long before he breaks the seal and gets through…” Qilin Girl Bingyin pointed in the direction of the God-Slaying Mystic Realm, and let slip, without meaning to, a piece of bad news that came close to bursting Yue Yang’s heart on the spot.

“There’s a fiercer one?” Yue Yang, for his part, was scared stupid.

“If you don’t go and stop it right now, I figure it’ll be through in half a day. This old ghost opened a hole in that seal!” Qilin Girl Bingyin finished, still holding the mirror, and shot off with a whoosh. She dropped her head and headbutted the mysterious man — who had been gradually gaining the upper hand and pushing Duoduo back — clean off his feet. Then she rubbed her small forehead, looked back and shouted at Yue Yang: “That’s as much as I can help with. This old ghost is really strong. You’d better run for it!”

“Girl, you have no loyalty at all!” Yue Yang, for his part, was nearly in tears.

“Mama says early to bed and early to rise keeps you healthy. Good night!” Qilin Girl Bingyin paid no attention whatsoever to the accusation. She stuck out her small pink tongue, hugged the mirror and bolted back into the Grimoire World, leaving the transmigrator standing there staring at nothing.

(End of Chapter 1202)