The Sky Tower.
The tenth floor: the Light Continent, where the winged race had lived for generation after generation.
Princess Qianqian had led her team through every pass and past every general in their way, charging all the way here without a pause. She had expected a countless host of Heavenly Realm soldiers drawn up in ranks and waiting for her, and the opponents she had been told to expect — the overlords of the East, North and West Heavenly Realms — to have laid out some terrifying battle array, ready to call her side out. It was nothing like that at all. At the place that had first sent the desperate call for help, the Heavenly Realm legions had pulled back for no reason anyone could see, leaving behind only a battlefield in total disarray — and a handful of enemies Princess Qianqian and the others had never expected.
“Who are you?” Princess Qianqian’s brows drew together slightly. According to their intelligence, these people should not have been here at all.
Six people now stood in Princess Qianqian’s way.
They wore battle suits of a uniform design.
The strangest thing about them was the Heavenly Realm rune for “Devour and Destroy” stamped on the chest and back of every suit as the mark of their race. What kind of alien Heavenly Realm race had come to the Light Continent? What had they come for? Fame? Or profit?
Elite warriors with “Devour and Destroy” runes on the chest and back of their battle suits — no one had ever heard of such a thing. What kind of race were they? Mercenaries? A hidden clan of the Sky Realm? Whatever the answer, Princess Qianqian and the others could draw one clear conclusion: these guys were definitely up to no good.
“Honestly, we have nothing to say to you. But to make you a little more afraid before you die, a little more terrified, I’ve decided to tell you the truth anyway.” The leader was a golden giant, bristling with murderous intent, his presence enough to make anyone flinch. Five meters tall, he loomed over them like a mountain, immovable and crushing. Yet his build was long-limbed and beautifully proportioned. Nothing in the way he moved had an ordinary giant’s clumsiness; he moved like the most perfectly formed human man scaled up — only more graceful still.
Like many Heavenly Realm powers, the golden giant habitually kept a weapon standing upright before him.
It looked like a long halberd, except that its head carried a long, blood-red scythe blade.
One look told you it was a demonic weapon that reaped a life whenever it struck.
Anyone hit by a demonic weapon that strange and that savage, even if they somehow lived, would surely bleed and bleed in agony, howling without end over a wound so huge it could never heal…
The golden giant swept his eyes over Princess Qianqian and the others. Apart from the Tiger-Prison Divine Sword in Princess Qianqian’s hand, nobody and no weapon there was worth his notice. The five behind him, though, each showed an interest of their own in the women behind Princess Qianqian — Sick Beauty, Yue Yu, the Drunken Cat Imperial Lady, the Southern Wilderness Demon King and the rest. Their lips moved slightly; they seemed to be talking in secret, quietly picking out their opponents for what came next.
“We are the Heaven-Devouring clan. Our race came into being the moment the Sky Tower’s warriors appeared in the Heavenly Realm. We exist for one purpose — to exterminate the Sky Tower. You could say we are your nightmare, and your natural enemy!”
“As for this god — my name is Tu Wan. Ever since that Conquest Queen era of yours, I have been a Heaven-Devouring warrior whose lifelong goal and duty is killing Sky Tower warriors.” As he spoke, the golden giant let his gaze rest for a moment on the Tiger-Prison Divine Sword in Princess Qianqian’s hand. “Back then, because of special circumstances, I missed my chance to behead the Prison Emperor Zhanfeng. This time, I won’t miss my chance to behead Yue Titan… Of course, before I behead Yue Titan, I don’t mind beheading every one of you women — his wives and concubines — first. Don’t give me any of that justice-and-evil talk. Between the Heaven-Devouring clan and the warriors of the Sky Tower, death is the only place either side ends up. So don’t even think about moving us with touching speeches and tears. They’re useless. Instead of wasting your strength on them, I’d advise you to think about how to die a little faster and suffer a little less on the way out.”
“I’d say that’s clear enough. So all of you — die!” The moment the golden giant named Tu Wan finished speaking, he struck, without giving Princess Qianqian and the others any chance to open their mouths.
The blood-red scythe-halberd came slashing down like lightning.
Princess Qianqian raised the Tiger-Prison Divine Sword high to parry — and found, to her shock, that Tu Wan’s blood-red scythe-halberd was stretching on and on like a living thing. The parry she had planned did nothing at all.
Bad!
One raised hand, and her head was about to come off!
Caught completely off guard, Princess Qianqian could not change her move fast enough to keep up with her opponent’s lethal heavy slash, even with every ounce of strength she had.
Worse, the eerie blood-red scythe-halberd kept on extending, faster even than the slash itself, and its long curved blade had already crept around behind her head.
“Crystal Dream!”
Sick Beauty pressed her palms together and closed her lovely eyes.
Above her head rose a rainbow of endless, dazzling color.
Then not only Princess Qianqian but every one of their companions on the field was enclosed in a transparent, unbreakable rampart of crystal. Sick Beauty’s kindness and compassion, her tolerance toward all life, had always held her attack power back. Even after comprehending Sovereign Intent, she was still a “Sick Beauty” who would not willingly wound an enemy, much less take or end anyone’s life. Battle and war were simply not places she was made for. The research-loving Madam Dean was Yue Yang’s gentlest little wife. Unlike Princess Qianqian and the others, she had little interest in following Yue Yang onto the battlefield; she would rather be his little woman quietly in the background, throwing herself heart and soul into helping him comprehend and grow in other ways.
A Sick Beauty with a nature like that was never going to be a battlefield fighter famous for her attacks.
But precisely because that was her nature, her comprehension of defense was something none of the other women could come close to.
Once she put on her crystal armor, raised her crystal shield, and wrapped herself in the power of her Crystal Domain and her own unique Sovereign Intent, not even a god on the battlefield would dare to claim lightly that he could break her defense.
Sick Beauty had, in fact, been fighting all along, steadily and tirelessly. It was just that her way of fighting was not attack, but defense.
Her secret wish — I will use my own strength, in my own way, to protect the man I love and all my little sisters — was known only to Yue Yang, her husband, and only he understood her effort and resolve in this. She rarely joined a fight, so her true strength had never been shown accurately, but that did not mean she had not progressed. Every time Yue Yang grew stronger, she leapt forward too as a matter of course, since she dual-cultivated with her beloved.
Today, as the Sky Tower’s greatest crisis descended, Sick Beauty — determined to protect her beloved and her little sisters — finally burst out with the brightest radiance of her life…
Clang!
Bloodflow was a scythe-halberd that could split a ten-thousand-meter peak in two or cut it through at the waist with ease, a divine artifact that ranked second in all of the Sky Realm’s Heaven-Devouring clan. Its master, Tu Wan, had brought it down in a heavy sneak-attack slash — and it had been stopped by a crystal wall that was more than pretty to look at but thin as paper! How — how could this possibly happen?
Not only Tu Wan, its owner, but even the Heaven-Devouring warriors behind him, who had been watching and snickering, felt their jaws hit the floor.
A crystal wall condensed from will could stop a divine artifact’s heavy slash?
A crystal wall almost as thin as paper, at that?
Could that thing even be called a crystal wall?
But the fact was right in front of them. However maddeningly impossible it was, it was an ironclad fact!
“…” Princess Qianqian and the others found it hard to believe too. One by one they turned to look at Sick Beauty, as if they had to get to know her all over again. Sick Beauty’s expression was grave now, nothing like her usual gentleness. Slowly she opened her crystal-clear eyes and fixed them on Tu Wan, the Heaven-Devouring warrior raging over his failed sneak attack. “You’re nothing but a pseudo-god. Don’t even think about hurting my sisters! I don’t much like fighting anyone, but I promised him I would look after everyone properly. No one gets to run wild in front of me!”
Several pairs of crystal wings unfurled behind Sick Beauty, exquisite beyond compare, beyond any words to capture even a fraction of them.
A crystal barrier spread out from her Sovereign Intent as its center point, growing and growing until it had not only enclosed and protected Princess Qianqian and all the others, but forced Tu Wan, standing across from Princess Qianqian, bodily away.
The golden giant named Tu Wan let out a furious roar.
He thrust out his right hand and braced it against the crystal barrier, trying to shatter it.
But his divine-tier strength did him no good at all. In the end he raised his divine artifact Bloodflow and struck a hundred times in a row, and still could not shake the crystal barrier in the slightest!
“Damn it, this is impossible! You’re obviously not divine tier — how can you make a barrier that even I can’t break, at divine tier and holding a divine artifact?” Tu Wan could not make sense of it at all. How could there be a talent like this in the world? How could anyone comprehend and create a crystal barrier that was nothing but defense, with no attack in it whatsoever? Had the woman in front of him never once in her life thought about attacking anyone? Not even an enemy?
“My Sovereign Intent is eternal and unmoving. You understand only destruction — you don’t even understand creation. How could you break my eternity…” Sick Beauty had no wish to explain. She knew Tu Wan’s strength was far above her own, but that meant nothing.
Only a “true god” who had comprehended real eternity could possibly undo the Crystal Dream she had created with her Sovereign Intent.
Strength isn’t always everything.
That was the true meaning she had grasped from the wisdom of the man she loved.
Weakness defeating strength, softness overcoming hardness, slowness striking down speed, the circle breaking the point — the great wisdom Yue Yang had formed by combining all his inherited knowledge with his own comprehension, he had shared with her in dual cultivation, and they had progressed together… How could a secret of heaven like that be glimpsed by a pseudo-god like Tu Wan, divine tier in raw strength perhaps, but still treating his own personal power as the first rule of everything he did!
“Doesn’t matter. Never mind ‘impossible’ — even if you hide in this turtle shell for the rest of your lives, we don’t care.” The golden giant Tu Wan suddenly calmed down. He shrugged, putting on a show of nonchalance, twirled the scythe-halberd Bloodflow in a flourish and slung it across his back, as if he were calling off the fight to take a break. “Killing every living thing in the whole Sky Tower — that’s the Heaven-Devouring clan’s goal. Leaving you behind to torment at our leisure isn’t bad either! And if you’re naive enough to think a crystal barrier like this makes you safe, that’s the joke of the century… I, Tu Wan, am only the vanguard of the Heaven-Devouring clan’s extermination of the Sky Tower. The one really in charge is Tu Shi — the one they call the God-Butcher. Next to this big brother of mine, I’m practically a saint about to get a medal for good conduct… Hahaha, look forward to it. Once we’ve cut down every last one of those scum races in the Sky Tower, we’ll come back to admire the misery that’s coming your way — the kind where you can’t live and can’t die!”
“The God-Butcher? Tu Shi?” Princess Qianqian curled her lip and gave a faintly contemptuous snort. “Never heard of him!”
Suddenly she stepped out of the crystal barrier.
Under the disbelieving stares of Tu Wan and the rest, she slowly raised the Tiger-Prison Divine Sword high. “Before this God-Butcher whatever-he-is gets here, let me send him a present! I’m sure that when he sees your heads piled up in front of him, eyes still wide open in death, he’ll feel exactly how sincere I am! Everyone — before you die, this princess will give you one piece of advice for free: the Sky Tower is not a place any old cat or dog can just stroll into!”
(End of Chapter 1282)