The Corridor of Time.

“My deepest apologies. I had meant to walk the Corridor of Time with all of you, my honored guests, and show you around the Ruins of the Gods, but things have changed. Wuxia must return to the Sky Tower and fight side by side with her family, so I am afraid I cannot look after you for now.” Xue Wuxia gave a perfectly graceful bow. Before the shadows could react, she had already stepped out of the Corridor of Time, where each step was a hundred years, and drifted away, turning into a comet and vanishing into the endless void.

Xue Wuxia had not only heard Fourth Mother’s call to the heart; she had also held a secret exchange with Her Majesty through her divine mind.

Now it was time for her to return to the Sky Stairway and lend Yue Yang a hand in earnest. And of course, it would also be the beginning of the counterattack they had planned!

Xue Wuxia’s departure set off a stir among the shadows, already uneasy and suspicious, but before they could react she was long gone. Even so, out of respect for strength, the shadows, led by their chief Vast Sea, returned her bow in the direction she had gone.

Even without having seen her true strength — going by appearances alone — she was a power on an equal footing with them, divine-tier powers who each ruled a territory of the Sky Realm. She deserved a bow in return.

This Sky Tower power who called herself “Wuxia” had, at first glance, a divine-radiance height of only thirty meters. In fact, she was an overwhelming divine tier who could kill, in a single move, a divine-realm assassin who had stayed hidden from every one of the shadows.

She had simply used some secret method to hide her strength deep inside, giving outsiders the false impression that her divine radiance stood at only thirty meters…

Talking it over in secret, the shadows had reached a conclusion: without several times the strength of a divine-realm assassin, killing one in a single move was simply impossible. And from that followed another conclusion: little “Wuxia’s” true strength probably exceeded even their strongest member, their chief Vast Sea. Otherwise she would never have dared to come alone, with friend and foe still unclear and herself outnumbered, to make a pact of neutrality with them.

Perhaps little “Wuxia” had only just ascended to the divine tier and could not yet show the full hundred percent of her divine power and might.

But that did not mean the shadows would show her the slightest disrespect.

Whether in the Heavenly Realm or the Sky Realm, strength was always what commanded respect. That was an eternal, unchanging, absolute truth!

“So what now? Keep watching? Or move on?” asked the emerald shadow, Wilds.

“Move on? No, no, no. First let’s see what kind of divine tiers the Sky Tower has produced in these hundred years! There are way too many. In just a hundred years, the Sky Tower has produced divine tiers the Heavenly Realm and the Sky Realm can barely produce in ten thousand… If we don’t get to the bottom of this, we might as well not have come at all!” The black shadow, Storm Cloud, had been shaken by those two little girls with their astonishing potential. Just now, thanks to “Wuxia’s” introductions, he had at last learned that the two newly born divine-tier golden stars were her little cousin Yi Nan and Yue Titan’s younger sister Yue Bing.

The pillars of divine radiance that marked those two girls’ tier, Yi Nan and Yue Bing, were not very tall — but they were growing so fast! One second of theirs equaled ten years, even a hundred years, of anyone else’s advancement. Nobody in the whole world had ever heard of anyone growing stronger at a speed you could see with your naked eye.

What was more, the golden phantom pillars that marked both girls’ potential stood a full three hundred meters tall.

How was Storm Cloud, whose potential was a mere three meters, supposed to take that! Even Wilds, who had the best potential among the shadows, only had forty meters… If you were talking about the biggest blow of a lifetime, nothing could top this!

“It’s not like we’re going to war with the Sky Tower. We’re neutral anyway, and we’ve already made it into the Corridor of Time inside the Ruins of the Gods, so there’s no rush at all. Let’s stay here and get a good look.” The fiery red shadow, Volcano, agreed.

Of course, Storm Cloud was not the only one who had been shaken. So had he.

He was divine tier, but his future potential was only five meters, and he felt deeply dejected, like the guy in the old joke whose fighting power is a measly five.

If not for everyone watching, he would have been tempted to throw his arms around Storm Cloud and weep with him… Among the shadows, he and Storm Cloud were not considered weak. They were not the best, but far from the worst: Silver Veil, Meadow, Wilds and Gleam all fell short of them, and only Thunder and their chief Vast Sea were above them. Who would have guessed that one look around this place would show them their future potential wasn’t even worth mentioning!

“Then let’s take a look at the other divine tiers!” The sapphire-blue shadow, Vast Sea, made the final decision.

When the shadows’ divine minds reached out toward two more brilliantly glittering golden stars, a strange divine light washed over them and swept through the whole space.

Vast Sea and the rest all stared, dumbstruck, at the scene before them.

There were two “Divine Codexes.” To be exact, there was one Divine Codex in solid form and one that was only a phantom — and apart from those, nothing else at all.

How could the image of a divine-tier power be two Divine Codexes? And who did these two Divine Codexes belong to? Why was one solid and one a phantom? Weren’t there supposed to be two divine-tier powers standing here?

It was baffling, and they racked their brains without getting anywhere… Was everything about the Sky Tower this bizarre?

Since they got here, they had not seen one normal thing. It would have been one thing if that freak genius Yue Titan alone were so unbelievable — but his wives and his sister were maddening geniuses too. In fact, it seemed there were no normal people here at all. The more they looked, the more they found that the Sky Tower’s people were each more mysterious than the last, each stranger than the last!

To set up two Divine Codexes here as an image, standing for two divine-tier powers — no one had ever heard of anything showing itself like that. In the Sky Realm, at least, it could not be done.

“These two divine tiers must be real. It’s just that, for whatever reason, they’ve chosen to stay unseen and show themselves only in this form,” the purple shadow, Thunder, tried to reason it out.

“Can these two divine tiers change the laws of the Corridor of Time, then? Otherwise why would they show up like this? It makes no sense!” Volcano strongly disagreed.

“They show up like this, so why can’t they? That’s the fact!” Thunder snorted.

“It’s also possible that these two divine tiers’ power is so far beyond the reach of our wills that we simply can’t see their true forms,” their chief Vast Sea said, and the shadows were struck speechless. If a whole crowd of divine tiers like them couldn’t see, then who could?

How powerful did you have to be to blind even a divine tier’s eyes?

At the thought, every one of them shuddered.

Fine! Some things were too far beyond understanding to think about too hard, or you’d scare yourself crazy!

Skipping over these two divine-tier powers — who showed themselves only as two Divine Codexes, and who knew what they really were — the shadows picked a new target.

This golden star was very strange. It flickered in and out of sight, as though it were not quite a divine tier. But if it was not, there was no reason for it to appear here. Their curiosity about to explode, the shadows all picked it at once as their next subject.

When they turned their divine minds on this golden star, divine power surged at them in the same way. But unlike the divine tiers behind the four golden stars before, the power showing itself now was utterly terrifying and destructive. It was only a form of existence, not a real attack, yet the shadows still felt as if their hearts and souls were about to be destroyed. On top of that, a divine curse that numbed them to the marrow filled the whole space. In the middle of that teeth-chattering cursed space stood the enormous head of a goddess. She had lost her body; the head alone was more than four hundred meters tall.

At the sight, the shadows were so frightened they very nearly fell to their knees to worship this goddess, whose cursed, boundless space seemed bent on destroying heaven and earth.

This great god might be missing her body, but she was certainly not someone they could afford to provoke.

Afraid of offending the great god’s majesty, the shadows hurriedly bowed and backed away, not daring to so much as breathe, and withdrew from that terrifying cursed space, escaping its destructive divine erosion.

It had lasted only a few seconds, yet the shadows felt as if they had just escaped death by a hair and been born again.

None of them knew which great god this was, but every one of them knew one thing: this was surely one of the great gods of ancient times, nothing today’s divine tiers could compare with. For some reason, this ancient great god had chosen to become one with some warrior of the Sky Tower, producing one of the divine tiers the Sky Tower had given birth to in a hundred years. None of that mattered, though. What mattered was that this really was a great god of matchless power!

“No offense meant! We juniors failed to recognize a great god when we saw one. Forgive us for intruding.” Wilds and Meadow, still shaken, bowed toward that golden star, terrified that their attitude might not have been respectful enough.

“If this great god is backing Yue Titan too, then that Dongfang fellow will be crying with no tears left!” The jet-black shadow, Storm Cloud, suddenly turned gleeful.

“Dongfang’s no good anyway, so wouldn’t that be just right?” Volcano thought it was great.

“Are we still going to keep looking?” The golden shadow, Gleam, felt that if they kept going and there turned out to be a higher, stronger great god after this, they might really give offense. Out of self-preservation, he suggested carefully: “How about we wait until that ‘Wuxia’ comes back and look only when she invites us? That way we show the Sky Tower’s divine tiers the greatest respect.”

“We look. When little ‘Wuxia’ invited us into the Corridor of Time earlier, she naturally gave her tacit permission for us to look. Ah — keeping a proper respect is still necessary, I mean. When we meet a great god, we should feel humble, not arrogant.” The purple shadow, Thunder, looked at their chief, Vast Sea.

“Then let’s go on!” Their chief Vast Sea looked around at his companions, saw that everyone’s curiosity was strong enough to kill a cat, and nodded, deciding to keep searching for the truth.

The sixth golden star was a divine-tier power whose face was hidden inside starlight.

She seemed to be a woman as well.

What she showed outwardly was mostly stars, star palaces and nebulae, and whatever else she might reveal was hidden away secretly inside a river of stars. She was a deeply mysterious divine tier. Mysterious as she was — they could not even see the golden pillar that marked her divine-tier realm — the shadows still showed her full respect, because her potential pillar, that golden phantom, had not been hidden, and it stood far taller even than those of the two little girls named “Yi Nan” and “Yue Bing.” Looking at it made the shadows dizzy…

Their potential put together probably did not come to half of what this divine tier hidden in starlight had!

Volcano and Storm Cloud were rendered completely speechless.

The Sky Tower’s local specialty? Freak geniuses! They were sure of it now!

Next, the seventh golden star. The shadows found that it was the little girl who called herself “Wuxia.” That she was here was no surprise. The surprise was that the pillar of divine radiance marking her place in the divine tier stood three hundred and ninety meters tall, and her potential was higher still. With the phantom included, her pillar of divine radiance was probably eight or nine hundred meters tall. Never mind the most timid of them, Gleam — even the boldest, Volcano, Storm Cloud and Thunder, felt scared enough to wet themselves. Little “Wuxia” had hidden her true strength by a full ten times, no kidding! If any of them had let greed get the better of them back then and turned on her, they would all have been wiped out by now!

Once they had withdrawn, everyone spent half a minute massaging their hearts before their heartbeats felt a little closer to normal. The breathless feeling of fright eased, barely, just a little.

However strong an unfamiliar divine tier was, it never pressed on them quite like this. Remember, a moment ago this little “Wuxia” had spoken to them as politely and courteously as a junior… Who would have known she had the strength of a great god out of legend!

If they had known, they would all have bowed to her again and again.

When the shadows looked at the eighth golden star, they found that the hearts that had nearly stopped from fright a moment ago stopped dead all over again… The Sky Tower seemed to have a saying: there’s no such thing as the greatest genius — only an even greater one!

Now they felt they were beginning to understand what that saying meant.

Because before them appeared a sea of light, with a bright moon hanging above it, its splendor shining for ten thousand feet.

In that wondrous radiance stood two divine tiers. One of them was, astonishingly, a life-guardian war beast whose pillar of divine radiance stood three hundred meters tall. The other was the true divine tier who held this golden star’s Divinity.

Not one of the shadows could see that goddess’s pillar of divine radiance, and none of them could make out her form. In less than a second, every one of them was driven out of the sea of light by her supreme Sovereign Intent. No one could possibly raise their head before her, let alone study her majestic divine body. All they could faintly sense was that this goddess possessed the fiercest, wisest Divine Sight in the world, able to see through all things in an instant and look down on all living beings.

That supreme Sovereign Intent had erupted the very instant the shadows came barging in to look, and driven all of them out of the sea of light.

Her life-guardian war beast was itself divine tier, with a pillar of divine radiance three hundred meters tall — something the shadows could not even have imagined… Every one of them, their chief Vast Sea included, hurriedly bowed low, repeating, “Forgive us, great god! Forgive us, great god!”

“The great gods here are each stronger than the last. Do we really have to keep looking?” The weakest of them, the golden shadow Gleam, was nearly in tears from fright.

“We look! Better scared to death than to die not knowing!” Volcano had thrown caution to the wind.

“I’ll look too!” Storm Cloud shuddered, but said he was with him.

“If the Sky Tower is secretly hiding this many powerful divine tiers, should we perhaps change our position?” The emerald shadow, Wilds, suddenly raised a question worth thinking hard about. They had stayed neutral before because the Sky Tower had no strength to stand up to the Central Divine Hall. But now it looked as if that might not be so — and changing their neutrality might really be worth considering.

“Here’s what we’ll do. If the ninth divine tier is another powerful great god, then we’ll consider the idea.” Their chief Vast Sea also felt it was time to do something. The Sky Realm was safe, it was true, but some investments, if you made them, might not pay off — and if you did not make them, you would surely regret it for the rest of your life.

With a curiosity on the verge of exploding, and a tangle of feelings about an uncertain future — part longing, part dread — the shadows turned their collective divine mind on the ninth golden star.

One look, and every one of them was stunned, frozen like wooden chickens…

(End of Chapter 1294)