The Grimoire World.

“This is absolutely a fake.” Princess Qianqian settled it in one line. “Never mind thinking with your head — you could work out it’s a fake with your toes. If you’d never seen a Divine Codex, fine. But there’s one in the Sky Tower, and back in the day the Black Prison King stood there day after day hammering at it with a great mallet, wearing himself out, and he still couldn’t get inside that Divine Codex with its super-shield. That’s a Divine Codex. Look at this thing in your hand. What is it supposed to be… I’m telling you, you blockhead, if you’d never seen a Divine Codex, why didn’t you ask little sister Bingyin? She’d know better than anyone. Instead you went and decided for yourself and brought it home. How could this possibly be a Divine Codex? I’ve seen blockheads, but never one like you.”

“A Divine Codex has its own divinity. Apart from its master, nothing outside can touch it. At the very least there should be a layer of golden shielding on it. Where do you get one you can hold in your hands and leaf through whenever you like?” Luohua did not think it very likely either.

“I remember there being four characters on the Divine Codex — Sacred Grimoire.” The Southern Wilderness Demon King also found this silver grimoire with nothing whatsoever about it highly suspicious.

“Put like that, there really are quite a few doubtful points.” Yue Yang, for his part, scratched the back of his head stupidly.

“Mainly because all his clever thinking was going into three great beauties, so a small mistake slipping through is perfectly reasonable.” Fengxian the Beauty, that Divine Punishment girl, dropped it in without much interest — and put the transmigrator straight onto the fire. At that, everyone had the feeling of light dawning, and every doubtful point and every confusion resolved itself at a stroke.

“I’m wronged, honored magistrates.” Yue Yang felt he had been done a worse injustice than Dou’e in the opera, and hurried to defend himself. “I admit that after a miserable slog of a clearance I was a little pleased with myself. That’s hardly avoidable. After trialing that long I finally got through, so tell me — could I not be happy? Could I be happy without being excited? Could I be excited without getting carried away? I swear my mind honestly wasn’t on any beauties. It was mainly on this Divine Codex I’ve dreamed of for so long. Never mind that it doesn’t look like one — it might really be a Divine Codex. And whether it is or not, it’s a gain either way, isn’t it? We went through a thousand hardships to get it. We ought to value it more.”

“Every page in it does represent one gate of the Trial Grounds.” The Sick Beauty supported her husband, to a degree.

“Xiao San, it is a little suspicious, but your elder sister chooses to believe you.” Yue Yu was the best of them, as usual.

“That doesn’t work either. This so-called Divine Codex only has the first seven gates. There’s no eighth gate, Earth Valley, and no ninth gate, Heaven Valley, and certainly no tenth gate that the legends say nobody has ever passed…” Princess Qianqian had found a fresh doubtful point immediately.

“Care to explain? What’s going on there?” The Drunken Cat Imperial Lady smiled and poured oil on the fire.

“Ah — I can’t explain it either.” Yue Yang, for his part, could not make out what was going on either. In point of fact this was the second time he had looked through it. When it first came into his hands he had turned a few pages in a hurry and had not looked at it carefully yet.

“Then can you explain this? Taking this so-called Divine Codex is one thing, but why did three great beauties come home with you as well?” Princess Qianqian had finally come out with what was really on her mind. Her greatest suspicion about the Divine Codex came from three little lolis a certain transmigrator had lured home to look at goldfish — though of course, once they left the endless world they were no longer sweet little lolis. They were three beauties. Three great beauties.

One had a sweet little apple of a face and a sugary smile, and the most vicious, deranged madman in the world could not have raised one thread of dislike or hatred against her.

Another was full of spirit, with bright, intelligent eyes that seemed able to see through every confusion in the world.

The most beautiful and the most affecting, of course, was the one standing in the middle, an elegant beauty so steeped in learning that she made a person ashamed of himself. This one in the middle was beautiful not merely in the shallow way of appearance. What mattered more was that she had a light of wisdom and a fineness that came from the inside out, as though the best and purest spiritual energy of heaven and earth had gathered in her.

She was not smiling, but everyone could feel her warmth.

That intellectual force — which nobody had ever possessed and nobody could ever resist — simply came off her naturally.

It was not maturity, and it was not accumulated experience, and it could not even be called a matter of appearance or of depth or of any other kind of presentation. It was simply a natural existence, inborn, unrepeatable, and one of a kind.

Princess Qianqian could not get angry at the three of them. She was not about to let Yue Yang off, though.

Yue Yang scratched the back of his head again and explained very carefully. “Actually, at the time they were three sweet little lolis. I saw they had nowhere to go and looked rather pitiful, and I couldn’t help myself, so I took them in…”

Little lolis that adorable, and a transmigrator with his tastes was naturally going to collect them.

Cat ears and so forth had been ready for a long time.

All that was missing was somebody to train…

Besides — never mind sweet little lolis, if a bunch of soft-hearted girls saw a cute kitten or a puppy, wouldn’t they want to collect every one of them too? In a word, with little lolis as fine as those, not taking them into the household would simply be an offense against heaven’s own reason. Yue Yang, for his part, acted so as not to have to despise himself — although doing it meant he could not avoid a thorough dressing-down from Princess Qianqian and the rest.

“How am I supposed to see anything about them that looks like little lolis?” Princess Qianqian looked at the three women, at what curved out and what curved in, at certain areas more exaggerated than her own, and could not help feeling a bit sour about it.

“The moment they left the endless world they grew up all at once. I’m not too clear on the specific reason either.” Yue Yang, for his part, could not work out why that was either.

“Do you imagine an explanation like that is going to convince anybody?” Princess Qianqian was very angry.

“What he says is fact.” The intellectual beauty in the middle confirmed it.

“This is the body we present in human form. It really is a little different from what we are in the endless world.” The little round face had always taken Yue Yang’s side.

“Even so, wasn’t handing him the Divine Codex the end of it? Why come here with him? Your task is finished. Shouldn’t you be going back to your Heaven Above or whatever other world you came from?” Princess Qianqian did not understand at all. Little lolis inside the endless world they might be, but outside it they were adults after all — and wasn’t coming here dangerous? In this Grimoire World, apart from Yue Yang, everyone was a woman.

“A certain uncle said he’d bring us back to look at goldfish or something…” The spirited girl had never gotten along with Yue Yang, and gave away his worst secret the moment she opened her mouth.

“Pff.” The Drunken Cat Imperial Lady was drinking water and sprayed it everywhere, and could not stop coughing.

The Sick Beauty and the rest had nothing whatsoever to say.

Princess Qianqian charged straight at Yue Yang. There was no time to draw the Tiger-Prison Divine Sword. She raised a fist to give this big lecherous wolf who lured little lolis home to look at goldfish a thorough beating. Yue Yang, for his part, was naturally not going to sit and wait for death. He bolted for the door. A tiger girl in a rage is a very frightening thing and best avoided, and a great man knows when to bend and when to stand — better to slip out and let the wind blow over first.

Standing in front of everyone, between her two companions, the intellectual beauty smiled slightly. “Let me introduce us again. My name is Eternity. My younger sister on the left is Creation, and my younger sister on the right is Destruction. The three of us are in fact one existence — although in human bodily form we are separate individuals as well… none of that matters. The real reason we came here is that we want to help the man you all have in your hearts become the Divine Codex’s master. Perhaps you have a question: why is it that he passed every test successfully and even obtained the Divine Codex, and still cannot gain the Divine Codex’s acknowledgment? Perhaps some of you have already guessed it, and some of you have suspected it without daring to be sure… you are right. The reason this Divine Codex does not take him as its master is that he already possesses one.”

The Sick Beauty and the others exchanged a look.

This news.

It was something they had indeed suspected, and had even discussed privately, but they had not dared be a hundred percent certain.

After all, before Yue Yang, through thousands upon thousands of years right up to the present, neither in the Heavenly Realm nor in the Sky Tower had there been a second person in the whole world who had ever been in this situation: one person holding two grimoires… everyone knew Yue Yang’s summoning grimoire had already ascended to a Sacred Codex, and at certain very particular moments they had seen, or sensed, the existence of another grimoire, and some of them had learned from Xiao Wenli or Duoduo just how special that grimoire was.

Nobody had ever held two grimoires.

Nobody except Yue Yang.

And now he had obtained a third — and this one was a Divine Codex.

They had considered a good many possibilities on that point, and now it could not be avoided any longer and had to be faced. They simply did not know whether it was a disaster or a blessing. For a moment every heart in the room was hanging, and they looked with some tension at these three white-robed girls, who were the Divine Codex’s guardians.

The spirited white-robed girl who stood for Destruction was very serious. “We did not anticipate this situation either. If it had been anyone else, he would absolutely not have succeeded, still less gained acknowledgment. The problem is that all of it ran past anything we expected, and became fact anyway. We had no choice but to obey the law and give him the Divine Codex.”

Yue Yu wrung her hands uneasily. “Then — will he be in any danger?”

“We do not know either. That is why we want to stay and watch.” The white-robed woman who stood for Eternity nodded slightly to Yue Yu and offered what comfort she could. “We all know that energy and wisdom are both limited and limitless existences. In theory, any person’s will and divinity can create only one world, embody divine nature within one world, and rule within one world. Past that, such an existence cannot be carried through. Perhaps he is a special existence. Perhaps, on top of completing the creation he has now, he can expand himself again, go a further story up and create another entirely new world, and achieve another kind of divine existence over again — all of it him, and yet expressing two or even three completely different achievements that are compatible with one another… that will need your help. He is unstable at the moment, and in an immature period of growth, and in that process you hold every possibility and every foundation for pushing him or guiding him. Perhaps you have not noticed it. But step a little outside it and you will find that you are in fact one existence too.”

“In that case, you are welcome to stay.” The Sick Beauty made the decision in her standing as mistress of the house. “He is exactly as you say. We cannot change it, and we would not want to change his growth. All we can do is keep him company or help him as best we can — and in that process we welcome you a hundred percent. We hope you can go on guarding this new master of yours the way you guarded the Divine Codex.”

“Guarding — there is a higher guardian behind him.” Eternity smiled slightly. “Perhaps we are the same as you. Simply inside the game and unaware of it.”

“Living here would be lively. I’d like that.” The soft, pink little round face made her feelings plain.

“I need somewhere quiet. That fellow really is far too noisy.” The spirited Destruction agreed to stay as well, but her mouth was not about to let Yue Yang off easily.

As Yue Yu volunteered to take them away and get them settled, Luohua suddenly asked a question.

She hesitated a little at first.

But in the end she parted those jade lips and asked it. “The Trial Grounds don’t have an eighth gate, Earth Valley, or a ninth gate, Heaven Valley, at all — do they?”

The white-robed girl who stood for Eternity smiled. “Your suspicion is not without reason. Human Valley’s Tower Beyond the Tower is in fact a seal turned inside out. The real Tower Beyond the Tower is the existence formed by Heaven Beyond the Heaven, Mountain Beyond the Mountain and Tower Beyond the Tower together. That is an extension of the seventh gate, Human Valley — another kind of test. Those who go to Earth Valley and Heaven Valley are in fact the eliminated. Earth Valley and Heaven Valley no longer belong to the Trial Grounds and are not bound by the Trial Grounds’ laws. A good many people can see it, and a good many are still muddled and kept in the dark. However it goes, the challengers who go to Earth Valley and Heaven Valley are all failures. They have been eliminated by the Trial Grounds. Only a challenger who has genuinely entered the endless world will know what the real trial is… the eighth gate’s trial is nothing: to create everything or destroy everything out of nothing, and to turn that nothing, which did not exist to begin with, into eternity. That is the trial. As for the ninth gate, its trial is something: to take, out of what is, an eternal something, and create it or destroy it according to your own will — to turn an eternal something that does not belong to you into an eternity that does. That is the ninth gate’s trial.”

“At the ninth gate, before Yue Yang, nobody had ever managed to turn an eternal something into an eternity of their own.” The little round face smiled with unmatched sweetness. “Even the Conquest Queen, whom you all admire most, could not make the conversion. Otherwise she would never have been sealed all those years. It is a very difficult creation.”

“As for the tenth gate — to us it looks like an eternal acceptance, but in fact it is unknown as well.”

The spirited Destruction had a thread of memory in her bright eyes. “Perhaps, even before we were appointed, the sovereign who created everything already knew the ending. Knew everything about today. Knew there would be an existence like this one. Which is why that supreme sovereign set the tenth gate — to be broken through and explored by one man alone. Perhaps we are guessing wrongly. But we all know that on the day he becomes able to accept the Trial Grounds and this sealed Divine Codex in full, this Divine Codex will finally show what it can really do…”

The white-robed girl at the front, the one who stood for Eternity, nodded lightly and confirmed it. “For the Trial Grounds, the first seven gates are enough. The eighth gate and the ninth gate both have to be created by the Divine Codex’s chosen one with his own hands. And the tenth gate — that is his true inheritance, and it will be a true eternity.”

(End of Chapter 1240)