The Sky Tower’s fourth floor. The Hanging Garden.

Since the beautiful Luohua had gone up to the Heavenly Realm, she had seldom lived in the Hanging Garden. To be precise, ever since she met Yue Yang, she had seldom lived in it at all, and after she was pushed down and made his little wife, that went without saying — she had lived in his Grimoire World the whole time since.

But this was still the place where she had lived for years, a beautiful garden she had spent a boundless amount of heart’s blood laying out. Even though she had already moved the most precious and most beautiful of her flowers — the Enchantress Charm-Scent Flower, the Starlight Azure Grass and others — into the Grimoire World, there were still countless rare flowers and strange plants left here… And at the same time it was the place that marked her first time with that bad little man, the small world the two of them had shared that came closest to a wedding, where they had pledged themselves to each other for life. There was no place the beautiful Luohua valued more.

The beautiful Luohua had originally been heading, together with Qianqian and the others, straight up to the Sky Tower’s tenth floor to the Light Continent, to intercept the Heavenly Realm legions there.

But halfway there, a little creature she had secretly sent to shadow Yue Yang caught up with her.

It reported something that sent her into a towering rage.

The men under that Sky Tower traitor, Grand Hall Master Dongfang, had shamelessly destroyed — for no reason but to strike at Yue Yang’s will — the beautiful little world that belonged to her and him alone. The warm little home that had witnessed their first time together. The Hanging Garden.

Grand Hall Master Dongfang’s men had not, of course, destroyed only the Hanging Garden. Fourth Mother’s house in White Stone City, the Yue family castle where Yue Yang had once led Fourth Mother and Shuang’er in to reclaim their dignity by force, even the Ivy Academy in the capital Shangjing, where he had studied — none of them escaped. Nearly every place Yue Yang had ever set foot in, anywhere with the slightest thread of connection to him, lay inside the reach of Grand Hall Master Dongfang’s men. The Hanging Garden, the Thunder Fortress, the Emerald Forest, Blazing Fire Island, the Falling Star Islands — none was spared.

The force that had been heading straight for the tenth floor had to split up because of the news.

As for the beautiful Luohua, she turned back to the fourth floor in a fury, naturally.

The collapse and ruin of the Hanging Garden could no longer be undone or stopped. But in her great anger she had decided to kill that executioner under her own Nine-Turn Spiral Aurora. Nothing less would ease the hatred in her heart.

“Ah…” Without even seeing the Hanging Garden she had been angry enough. Now she had seen it: the Hanging Garden had been reduced to complete ruin. The floating island was destroyed, the flying waterfall was gone, every rare flower and strange plant once grown there had been reduced to nothing, and even the little courtyard where she and he had once enjoyed their sweet world for two, that warm little home, had gone up in flames. The beautiful Luohua felt a fury she had never known before boiling up from the bottom of her heart, until she could no longer think, and could no longer keep enough reason about her.

Now all she could think of was vengeance.

Unless that smug, strutting destroyer of her home dropped dead in front of her this instant, not half of her anger would ever go away.

“Aurora!” As the beautiful Luohua gathered the Death Aurora in her hands, scene after scene from the past flashed through her mind, and every one of them was about him. The first time she had ever seen him was in front of the Zodiac Palaces, when he said he meant to use a spitting thorn flower to challenge the Aries Palace, and she had paid his challenge fee for him. He had been so cocky and so mischievous back then that one look at him and she had never been able to forget him.

The second time she saw him was before the war against the demon invasion.

He had been standing up for that little brat Yue Bing, who was being bullied by her classmates, and had beaten up a few students of Shangjing Academy — and it had drawn out the hand behind it all. The traitor in league with the Demon Abyss had summoned the Blood Gate, and countless creatures of the Demon Abyss had come pouring out.

She had issued the call to battle and led him and Xue Tanglang and the others in a counter-charge against the Demon Abyss.

And he, keeping his real strength hidden, had killed several demon generals all by himself.

After that, the two of them went together to the Bloody Queen’s castle in the air on the Sky Tower’s third floor to take the Enchantress Charm-Scent Flower, and in the bloody fight against Marion and the other demons she had fainted and fallen, and it was he who carried her back on his back… From that day on he had won not only the Bloody Queen, Hong, but her own heart as well… Back then she had even joked, on purpose, that she would make him captain of the personal guard of this City Lord Luohua… And just like that, day by day spent together, a little closer bit by bit — climbing to the Cloud-Peak Heavenly Pool, merging the ancient rune arrays with him there, and then, in a battle against the Earth Devils of the Heaven Devil Hall, plucking the priceless Starlight Azure Grass…

The deepest memory of all was of this Hanging Garden.

Shy as she was, she had brought him here.

And made this beautiful garden their wedding home.

Their first time.

She would never forget her first time with him, that happiness sweet with a faint edge of pain in it. It was here.

This was the warm little home, the world for two, that she shared with him alone. However long she lived in the Grimoire World, however many times she took her joy with him, this place would always be the one most worth remembering. And yet a place like this, a place that was no battlefield and had no fighting strength at all, had been attacked and destroyed by the enemy, shamelessly and contemptibly.

How could she, City Lord Luohua, not be furious?

“Bad little man, somebody has destroyed our home — did you know? Maybe you know already, and you cannot be any sadder, because the blow to your heart is ten times, a hundred times worse than it is to mine! I know you’re angry, because I’m angry too. You’re caught up right now and can’t break free to crush the enemy’s arrogance. I don’t blame you. Now it’s time for your little wife to stand up and share your pain and carry some of the weight for you!” The beautiful Luohua began it as a murmur to herself, but by the time she reached the end the grief on her face had been wholly replaced by a look of firm resolve. Both her hands were gathering the aurora, and in her eyes Sovereign Intent was gathering too, as firm as a mountain and never to be shaken. “I, the one the Sky Tower calls City Lord Luohua, will in the name of love slaughter every demon who tries to stand in the way of our happiness on the road of life! Wherever they come from, whatever power they hold, there will be only one result for them — annihilation!”

“Aha, and what do I see here? A poor wretch whose home has been destroyed, with nowhere left to live!” The Dijie Divine General, who had destroyed the Hanging Garden but not left — who had stayed on deliberately and waited here to take any reinforcements in a single net — came drifting out of the empty space where he had been hiding, and laughed out loud.

“Hey, be careful. This girl doesn’t look like someone to mess with. She’s very angry!” The Jumen Divine General, who had destroyed White Stone City, could not help warning his companion.

“She’s very angry? Ha ha ha, angry is exactly what I want! If she weren’t angry, I wouldn’t be enjoying myself nearly this much!” The Dijie Divine General did not care in the least.

“He’s right. With five of us Divine Generals here, however much skill she has, she’s fated to lose, and there’s nothing to worry about. Dijie, I really do envy your luck. I smashed the Yue family castle to pieces and not one person came back to rescue it. And you — you knock down one garden, any old garden, and a City Lord Luohua comes hurrying straight back to hand herself over as a hostage! This is that Yue Titan’s woman. If we catch her — never mind raping her and then killing her, just a little torture would be enough to drive that Yue Titan mad… The Grand Hall Master’s calculation really is too precise. Anywhere else we might not have taken any captives, but here — the Grand Hall Master named this place for everyone to gather at, and put the eldest, Ziwei, in charge in person, and sure enough, he calculated it and hit it!” The Wuqu Divine General, who had smashed the Yue family castle to pieces in the earlier scene, clapped his hands in great praise of his master Dongfang’s wisdom, and envied his companion the Dijie Divine General’s good luck with a note of jealousy in his voice.

“It isn’t only us here. The Succubus Palace on the seventh floor and Blazing Fire Island might both catch someone. Divine Punishment is very likely to go to the rescue of the Succubus Palace, and that Sea Empress or whatever she is will go to rescue Blazing Fire Island. It’s a pity the half-elf slave girl and that mercenary girl surnamed Xia are too weak to split off to the Thunder Fortress, or that boy Tianfu would have picked up a real bargain!” The Wenqu Divine General, who had destroyed the Ivy Academy in the capital Shangjing, stood with his arms folded, perfectly at his ease, looking like a man settling in to watch a good show.

“The Succubus Palace is a thorny one. That Divine Punishment is a famous power in the Sky Tower.” The Jumen Divine General drew his thick brows together.

“Ha ha ha! A famous power in the Sky Tower? In a backwater like this, how strong can even the most famous power be? Innate? Sky-rank?” The Dijie Divine General roared with laughter. “Give the Sky Tower another hundred years and it still couldn’t produce a single Divine General!”

“According to the intelligence that’s true. But with that particular existence, Yue Titan, around, the Sky Tower’s warriors have been advancing by leaps and bounds these last few years, a thousand li a day — you can see it in his teammates, Hai Dafu and Ye Kong and the others. Hai Dafu didn’t even rank as Earth-rank before, and in just a few years he’s crossed Earth-rank and climbed to Sky-rank, which is almost unthinkable even by the Heavenly Realm’s standards. I think it’s best not to judge anything connected with that Yue Titan by ordinary reasoning, or you’ll easily come off worst.” The Jumen Divine General was the more cautious one, and thought things through more deeply.

“Say Hai Dafu has climbed to Sky-rank. So what? Any one of us could still kill him with a single finger! And even if there were more Sky Tower powers like Hai Dafu, so what? A swarm of ants. If the Grand Hall Master hadn’t told us to hold our strength back, I could sweep this whole fourth floor by myself — or, for that matter, I could sweep every region of the whole Sky Tower by myself!” The Dijie Divine General felt that here in the Sky Tower he was an existence without equal, and that nothing could possibly threaten him.

“That idiot fatty Hai Dafu really isn’t worth worrying about, but the Sky Tower does have its powers. That Yue Titan, for one,” the Wuqu Divine General said with a laugh.

“There’s only one Yue Titan in the Sky Tower.” The Dijie Divine General shrugged. That one was their master’s opponent.

“Apart from that Yue Titan, there’s the one in the Tianra Imperial Palace — no, and there’s one more. They say she’s the human Supreme, also extremely strong, strong enough to join hands with Yue Titan and kill the Nine Luminaries Clan’s Heavenly Empress. Even the Grand Hall Master pays her particular attention. But for some reason this human Supreme hasn’t shown herself at all lately. She’s vanished without a trace. Maybe she’s traveling in the Heavenly Realm and can’t make it back in time to guard the Sky Tower, her home… If she does get back in time, she’ll be an unstable factor.” The Wenqu Divine General brought up the Supreme. In gathering intelligence they could be said to have done everything in their power. The pity was that they would never know that after defeating the Nine Luminaries Empress, the Supreme and the Night Empress had gone charging up the Sky Stairway to the millionth step and the five-hundred-thousandth step respectively. Their strength had not been standing still, and was nothing like it had been in the days of that costly victory over the Heavenly Empress.

Most important of all, in that battle the Supreme’s blood had mingled with Yue Yang’s, and their souls had come to be connected.

In the thick of that fierce fight, neither of them had felt anything.

But in the days of cultivation that followed, the two of them influenced each other’s advances and insights without a sound. When Yue Yang went into the Trial Ground to take on its challenges, every advance he made affected not only Princess Qianqian and the beautiful Luohua and the rest beside him, but, without his knowing it, the Supreme too as she was charging for the millionth step… In the same way, every advance the Supreme made while charging for the millionth step on the Sky Stairway, every insight, fed back into Yue Yang… It was precisely because of that resonance and that mutual gain between them that Yue Yang had finished every trial of the Trial Ground at such tremendous speed — and that the Supreme, just as incredibly, had reached the millionth-step goal that she had originally believed would take her at least ten years.

The Supreme had not only been touched at every moment by the insight of Yue Yang’s advances. She had also passed the test left by the ancients at the millionth step.

And now the Supreme, heir to ancient divine power, was returning to the Sky Tower.

How strong would she actually be?

That was beyond anyone’s imagining — otherwise, how would Yue Yang have dared invite the Nine-Headed, Sky Dragon and Black Terror clans and the rest of those enemies to fight him at the blood altar?

“Have you all said enough?” The beautiful Luohua had no sense at all that she was the weaker party, and felt no fear or trembling at having four, perhaps even five, Divine Generals in front of her. She had accompanied Yue Yang through advance after advance in the Trial Ground, had often practiced dual cultivation and the husband-and-wife combined techniques with her beloved, had had her marrow washed and her insight deepened more than once as he advanced, had even once received the illumination of some mysterious power in a dream. She was no longer the City Lord Luohua who had needed help to counterattack the Demon Abyss.

She was still City Lord Luohua.

But she was no longer the weak woman she had been.

She laughed as she always had. She loved as fiercely as she always had. But her strength and her realm had long since stepped into the boundless Great Void, gazing straight toward the Divine realm, and it was no longer possible for a few so-called Divine Generals to shake her Sovereign Intent…

Heavenly Realm rune arrays, the core of the ancient runes, and the divine runes Yue Yang’s own will had created came welling up out of her body a little at a time, and merged with perfect completeness with the Moon Battle Armor her beloved had tailored specially to her body and given her with his own hands, forming, gorgeously, a “Moon Goddess Sacred Armor” whose power and quality alike stood comparison with a top-grade divine artifact.

A faint, faint scent of flowers rose off her and spread out all around her as she willed it.

Between her two hands, the Death Aurora had gathered to its limit.

The aurora wound through nine turns. Eight of them were dragon-headed spiral auroras, each spinning ten thousand times a second and coiled around the Death Aurora at the center, and under her will any life that touched it could meet only one end.

Annihilation!

“Finished with your last words? Then go and die!” The beautiful Luohua poured her fury into the aurora in her hands and let it go to annihilate her enemy.

“Careful, Dijie! There’s divine power packed inside that light!” An existence that had been hiding unseen in the folds of space suddenly appeared the instant the aurora shot out. The moment he appeared his radiance blazed, like the brightest star in the sky, and however strong his companions were, they could not dim that singular light of his. The man who put his companions in the shade took shape and at once shouted out, warning the Dijie Divine General, who had been looking down on the beautiful Luohua the whole time.

“A beam that needs that long to gather, moving that slowly — could it even hit a mosquito?” The Dijie Divine General still thought nothing of it. However strong it was, so what? Could it hurt the body of a Divine General like him? And besides, gathered that slowly and fired that slowly, could it even hit a Divine General like him? Don’t make him laugh!

“It really is too slow!” the Wuqu Divine General agreed. He had seldom seen an attack this slow. This move was slower than a snail crawling.

The next second.

To be precise, one ten-thousandth of a second later.

The Nine-Turn Spiral Aurora — improved dozens of times over by Yue Yang and the beautiful Luohua together and finally named the “Death Aurora” — fired at last.

And there was one result.

Death!

In one ten-thousandth of a second, the Dijie Divine General, so pleased with himself a moment ago, was bathed in the Death Aurora, and without so much as a struggle or a scream he was annihilated in the pillar of light, soul and all. His summoning grimoire flew out of him with a bang and landed hard on what was left of the Hanging Garden’s collapsed floating island, now a ruin.

A second later the Death Aurora vanished somewhere into the sky, nobody could say how far away.

It was as though the Dijie Divine General had never existed.

Gone.

Nothing left between heaven and earth but a blank space.

His four remaining companions stood stunned, every one of them as wooden as a carved chicken.

(End of Chapter 1257)