The Night Empress released her will.
The river of stars, already dazzling, began turning faster at once.
Within it, dozens of golden stars — close to a hundred — slowly gathered and took the shape of one of the twelve houses of the zodiac, the Night Empress’s specialty: Aries.
With the birth of Aries, the whole star field began to form an entirely new power of law. Right after it, another house of the zodiac gathered and appeared beside it, reinforcing that power of law as it ran… Gemini, Cancer, Leo and others slowly rose within the river of stars. Each time the river of stars gave birth to a star, the Night Empress’s divine power grew a little stronger; each time it gave birth to a constellation, the power of law within the star field grew a little stronger too.
However depraved and twisted that “door god” commandant might be, there was no denying one thing: the man truly was a formidable enemy. He was a divine-tier power, and no one could question it.
To bring down someone that strong, the Night Empress would have to give it everything she had.
“Stars? Interesting little toys. But to you, a little rookie who only just ascended to the divine tier, this lord has this to say: you have a long way to go!” From the shabby little tent, an immense divine power suddenly exploded like an erupting volcano, blotting out the sky and covering the earth until it nearly smothered the whole tenth floor of the Sky Stairway.
Next to that vast divine power, the Night Empress’s Starry Sky Domain looked pitifully small.
When the divine power had burst out to its limit, at the center — above the shabby little tent — a golden giant appeared, a thousand times more dazzling and fierce than the sun.
The golden giant was plainly the commandant’s divine avatar. It stood a full three hundred meters tall, and standing before the star field that surrounded the Night Empress, it had the terrifying air of something that could swallow heaven and earth.
The Night Empress threw a red giant at it as a probe.
His true body did not even deign to leave the shabby little tent. The Central Divine Hall’s First Commandant of the Watch, the door-god commandant, steered the golden giant — the avatar of his unique Divinity, whose pressure dominated the whole field — directly with his divine mind. Raising one hand to the sky, it caught and pinned the red giant, with all the endless explosive force stored inside it. With a wild, overbearing arrogance, like glaciers shattering and mountains toppling, the golden giant that stood for the commandant hugged the red giant to its chest and squeezed it with both hands until it burst before it had time to explode on its own… The blast shattered space, and heaven and earth lost their color.
And yet the golden giant stood unmoving, like a pillar holding up the sky, in the middle of the devastating spatial storm — without a scratch.
“…” The Night Empress went tense. She knew exactly how powerful her red giant was, and seeing the commandant squeeze it until it burst without a scratch to show for it, she now had a far higher estimate of him.
His mind might be half-mad, but his strength was truly terrifying.
Could the Divinity this man comprehended be a Divinity of madness? Or a Divinity of depravity?
“You call that a jewel? It’s a grain of rice — and you dare show it off?” The commandant laughed wildly. Not only was his divine avatar, the golden giant, unharmed — even the flimsy little tent below and the crowd of golden-armored guards were safe and sound. And what did that mean? It meant the Central Divine Hall’s First Commandant of the Watch, the door-god commandant, had divine power enough and to spare to split several ways, covering attack and defense at the same time.
The golden giant, the commandant’s avatar, brushed its huge palm across the field and swept the golden-armored guards and golden-robed elders — still standing motionless — aside, every one of them.
Then it casually dug a slab of rock bigger than a mountain out of the ground, heaved it up over its head with both hands, strode forward, and brought the six-hundred-meter slab smashing down on the star field where the Night Empress was.
The extreme friction of that terrifying divine power turned the slab into a blazing volcano on the spot. With a force that could shatter anything, it crashed down onto the starry domain where the Night Empress’s true body was.
“…” The Night Empress said nothing. She neither fell back nor dodged. Facing a blow like a mountain falling on her head, she only drew a circle with one jade hand.
The blazing volcano plunged into the star field and suddenly melted away with a hiss, like a snowball dropped into soup. Apart from a faint tremor in the starry sky, too slight to notice, the massive volcanic blow made not even the ripple of a stone dropped in water. It simply dissolved into nothing. That tremor in the starry sky lasted perhaps a thousandth of a second — but the golden giant, the commandant’s avatar, caught it.
A ball of energy a thousand times brighter than the sun formed between the golden giant’s hands. Right on the heels of the burning volcano, it slammed into the star field.
“Die! You can’t even catch a rock, and you still want to go challenge that old ghost, the Immovable One? Don’t make people laugh their teeth out!” The commandant was sure that once the giant rock had smashed open the enemy’s defenses, the killing blow of divine power that followed would be enough to shatter her divine body and annihilate her soul — or at the very least leave her gravely wounded.
Boom-boom-boom-boom-boom…
In the center of the battlefield, a blood-red mushroom cloud shot up.
Right after it came the shock wave of space shattered by divine power, sweeping across the entire field, arriving ahead of the sound.
In an instant, the whole battlefield was shattered.
Everything except what lay behind the golden giant — everything in front of its toes, heaven and earth and all things in them — was blasted to pieces. In the end, even the rising mushroom cloud was swallowed whole by the rifts in time and space, without a single drop of it leaking out.
In front of him, apart from shattered space, there was nothing but emptiness.
The Night Empress, and the star field that had been protecting her, seemed never to have existed at all.
Inside the shabby little tent, the door-god commandant gave a contemptuous snort. “This lord said so long ago: the Sky Tower’s warriors are all champion braggarts. Divine-tier powers, Conquest Queens — garbage, all of them! They have never met a real power. They knock down a few small fry and get all puffed up and blow hot air, and they don’t even know how to blush! If she had met this lord back then, the Conquest Queen’s skull would long since have become this lord’s wine vessel. Sweeping the Heavenly Realm without a rival — what a laugh!”
“Woof woof!”
From somewhere came two barks. The animal seemed to take issue with what the door-god commandant had said.
Provoked, the Long Gate Colossus flew into a boundless rage on the spot. Where had some worthless mutt come from, that it dared to provoke his supremely noble divine tier?
Out of the void, a worthless mutt with a face that was just begging to be punched came wobbling along three steps at a time, its long tongue hanging out, drooling shamelessly. If its master had been there, it would have been a wonder if he hadn’t booted it past the ninth heaven. Unfortunately, whoever’s watchdog this was, it had wandered onto the battlefield of a Divine War, and was even ignoring the fury of His Excellency the Long Gate Colossus, the Central Divine Hall’s First Commandant of the Watch. Was the mutt just too brain-dead, or did it have no upbringing at all?
A Bronze-rank level-three mongrel — normally, the door-god commandant would never have spared a creature like that, a mere ant, so much as a glance from the corner of his eye.
But right now, he summoned the best patience of his whole life and studied the mutt carefully for a full second.
It might have a face that begged to be punched — the kind that made anyone who looked at it want to slap it again and again — but it could still pass freely through the void… What drove the commandant up the wall was that, perhaps sensing it was being watched, the mutt actually grew smug without a shred of shame. It swung its head, strutted about with its nose in the air, showed not the slightest awareness of what a watchdog should be, and then, with a “watch this” swagger, let rip an extremely loud, extremely smelly fart in the direction of the commandant’s little tent! When it was done, an expression spread across the mutt’s face that said, You should be satisfied now, right?
The commandant swore that his next meal would be dog-meat stew.
He had to have it!
If he let this mutt live one second longer, it would be the disgrace of his entire life.
He had seen cocky dogs before, but never in his life had he seen a dog this cocky — and a worthless mutt with no idea of its own place, at that!
“How did you get here?” The Night Empress’s voice came out of a rift in time and space. A moment later, a single point of starlight flew out and spread in an instant into a river of stars with millions of glittering lights.
“Meow!” The mutt took one look, raised a front paw and quickly snapped off a salute that said, Private reporting for duty!
“I thought I was in for a nasty fight, but since you’re here — never mind, he’s all yours. There are more enemies than anyone could ever finish off anyway!” In the Night Empress’s Starry Sky Domain, one constellation after another vanished and one star after another went out, until all that was left was the mysterious river of stars wrapped in its nebula. Ignoring the commandant’s fury, the lovely figure within the river of stars stepped onto the void and drifted away.
“Awooo!” The mutt was overjoyed. Its sleazy face lit up with an expression that said, I’ve been wanting a good meal for ages — about as punch-worthy as a face could get, and vivid in the extreme.
The moment it had respectfully seen the Night Empress off, the ever-so-deferential mutt did a full three-hundred-sixty-degree about-face, faster than flipping a page.
The commandant’s irritation had hit its absolute limit. You think this is a game of house? Come when you like, leave when you like? And leave a dog behind to fight me — what’s that supposed to mean? Even looking down on someone has its limits!
Die!
It must die!
And under no circumstances will this mutt live to see the next second!
The golden hand of the commandant’s avatar pointed a finger, and dozens of pillars of divine light — nearly a hundred — shot down, thicker than rain.
If he hadn’t wanted to eat dog-meat stew and held back a little, he would have happily destroyed the whole landmass in front of him, never mind that damned mutt that made you want to punch something just by looking at it!
“Ahhh-choo…” Faced with the pillars of divine light pouring down like rain, the mutt merely opened its mouth wide and gave a sleepy yawn, completely unbothered, with the leisurely air of a creature that eats until it’s full, then sleeps, then sleeps until it’s rested, then eats. Good thing this wasn’t a beach, or the mutt would probably have pulled out a lounge chair, put on a pair of sunglasses and settled in for a healthy bit of sunbathing…
“This lord can kill divine tiers — never mind a worthless mutt like you!” The commandant was so angry that smoke nearly poured from every opening in his head.
He had meant to hold back a little so he could eat dog meat. He had never expected to be blatantly looked down on by the mutt in front of him!
Damn it, is there any justice left in the world? Looked down on by a dog — how could I go on living?
The golden giant’s fist came down a hundred times faster than lightning, with a force that could destroy heaven and earth, and its target was the mutt that was lazily yawning.
Boom!
The force of that punch shattered even the void.
The rifts in time and space that had already been there broke up even further, until they were nearly powder.
The mutt took the punch full on. Whether it had been annihilated or knocked into some other dimension, no one could tell. The commandant figured that even if the mutt had not died, it would never recover its dog shape in this life. It was certain to be crippled, and it would never make it back to the Sky Stairway’s world… After throwing the punch, the commandant actually felt a little regret. He thought he should have grabbed the mutt first instead of killing it in one blow. He should have caught it and worked it over properly, let out every last bit of his frustration and his rage, then swallowed it in one gulp, so that the mutt would exist forever on the Sky Stairway in the form of dung.
Only that would have come anywhere close to satisfying his hatred! Only that would have come anywhere close to wiping out the shame of being — a divine-tier power! — provoked, offended, insulted and profaned by a lowly worthless mutt!
“Ha-choo!” From somewhere, a voice that sounded very much like a mutt’s suddenly let out a huge sneeze. And then, with everyone looking on, a mutt that looked completely unharmed came trotting out of the void, wagging its tail and bobbing its head, and ran all the way to the golden giant’s feet. With no shame at all, it hiked up a hind leg, took aim and let fly a thin stream of yellow…
As if afraid someone might miss it, the mutt waggled it in a figure eight the whole time it was going.
When at last it was finished, a sleazy expression spread across its face without the slightest restraint: If you’re not satisfied, I can give you some more.
Compared with a certain punch-begging fatty in the Sky Tower, this mutt was a hundred times more punch-begging. It had to be said: it had reached a level of asking-for-it that outraged heaven and earth, man and god alike… Of course, compared with its master, the mutt still fell a little short. It still had room to improve!
The commandant, his lungs ready to burst with rage, suddenly had a thought well up in his heart:
There’s a kind of dog called “Asking for It”!
And this mutt in front of me is exactly that kind of dog — born asking for it!
(End of Chapter 1272)