Tu Wan stomped down hard.

But strangely, he did not feel his foot meet solid ground. Instead his body suddenly felt inexplicably light, and he rose a good half of his height into the air.

Tu Wan looked down in utter astonishment and found himself hanging in midair. The bearded man below, who should have been crushed to death under his foot like a little ant, was still alive and well. What was going on?

In the eyes of Gu Ang the Two-Headed Dragon, the gorgeous queen “Bonemelt” and the others, what they saw was astonishing.

That “Demon Dragon,” whose attitude was a hundred times cockier even than the arrogant, swaggering young man’s, had stopped the five-meter golden giant Tu Wan’s absolutely lethal furious stomp with nothing but one outstretched index finger. And he did it with such effortless, carefree ease — as calm as a master painter at the height of his art, picking up his brush to sketch, with his own singular inspiration and style, a miniature of the world inside his heart.

If they had not seen it with their own eyes, all of them together, they would never have believed it was real.

And so they all stood frozen, gaping, for three full seconds. Heaven and earth fell silent. Nobody had the faintest idea what one was supposed to say in a situation like this.

But the awkward scene was broken almost at once.

Tu Wan, who a moment ago had been high above them all, suddenly went head over heels.

Head down and feet up, his whole body went thunk into the ground just outside the blood altar, with only his two big feet sticking out, soles to the sky. Perhaps the Demon Dragon felt the pose was not quite right, or that some part of it could still be improved; in any case, the one responsible for all this soon changed his mind.

He reached out a hand and casually grabbed Tu Wan’s left ankle. Then he yanked the divine-tier power straight out of the dirt in front of him, like pulling up a turnip from a field. And before Tu Wan could react in any way — say, with some furious yet helpless protest, or some willing, cooperative enjoyment — the bearded Demon Dragon, before everyone’s eyes and in full view of them all, with no democratic manners whatsoever, savagely and shamelessly stuck Tu Wan’s body back into the dirt.

“…”

Tu Wan, arms and legs flailing, seemed to shout something, sounding a bit put out.

But it all happened far too fast. None of them caught what he said. Of course, since it was not the point, everyone simply ignored it.

“So tiring!”

The bearded Demon Dragon seemed quite satisfied with his hard work planting turnips. Keep in mind that he was normally a thoroughly lazy man; for him to take the trouble to actually do something was a rare event indeed.

Even so, he still felt a teeny little bit of regret about Tu Wan’s current pose. He did not consider this “upside-down onion” the best pose of Tu Wan’s life. Unfortunately, conditions were limited for now, time was short, and the setting was not quite right, so he would have to make do for the moment. He shook his head, let go, gave his hands a habitual dusting-off, and waved his sleeve without taking a speck of dust with him.

He did it all with a clear conscience, and he did it like a natural.

Watching from the side, Gu Ang the Two-Headed Dragon, “Bonemelt,” the black bear demon, the wild boar demon and the rest all felt their jaws hit the floor.

As for the arrogant, swaggering young man, a blind fervor blazed in his eyes, like a devout believer who had suddenly discovered his true god descending before him. He was beside himself.

The swaggering young man had done plenty of badass things. You could say he had never kept a low profile for a single day of his life since he was old enough to know better. But toying with a divine-tier power in the palm of his hand, this cocky and this outrageously badass, this effortlessly — that, the swaggering young man had never done, never even thought of. Moves this cool, this flashy — that was what he needed to be learning!

You didn’t know where you stood until you compared yourself. Compared with this, he really was way too weak!

Toward the Demon Dragon — senior master of all things cocky — the swaggering young man turned instant fanboy, and an almost brain-dead fervor of hero worship erupted in his heart.

When Tu Wan, the divine-tier power, came crawling dizzily out of the dirt, the Demon Dragon was not done with him yet. He planted one foot firmly on the divine-tier power and stood squarely on his face, sighing, “What a big face!” while laboriously digging around in his ear with a finger. When he had finished with the left one, he still was not satisfied: “Resources are a bit thin. There’s no way I can show my sincerity with this!” His finger moved to the right ear and dug hard for a good long while. In the end, a little regretfully, he held out his pinkie and, sighing, a bit apologetically, smeared it on the tip of Tu Wan’s nose. “Really sorry about this. I’ve been pretty diligent lately, so I don’t have much stocked up…”

“I’ve got some. Let me chip in!” The swaggering young man immediately raised his hand. If there was a shortage of resources, he had plenty right here!

He covered three steps in two and rushed up with the utmost enthusiasm, both hands at work at once — dig on the left, dig on the right — unearthing a very rich haul, which he displayed in front of Tu Wan as if showing off. “If that’s not enough, I’ve got more. Don’t be shy with me, whatever you do!”

Tu Wan was so furious his lungs nearly burst.

What did it mean to choke on your own rage? What did it mean to cough up three liters of blood into the wind, spit out half and swallow the other half? Now, at last, he understood!

But he understood something else even better: if someone in the world could pin him, a divine-tier power, under his foot while he did not even have the strength to struggle, then whatever that person did, he had better not get too angry… Strength was what commanded respect. When you were outclassed, shutting up, conceding, surrendering, eating crow — all these humiliating moves were sometimes the best survival skills there were.

“Ah — no, wait, De-De-Demon Dragon, isn’t that the one, the one who…” Gu Ang the Two-Headed Dragon suddenly recalled a name that had long been buried in dust, and began to tremble all over in terror.

“What are you saying?” At his prompting, “Bonemelt” and the others finally caught on too.

Thud! The black bear demon and the wild boar demon were so scared they simply dropped to their knees.

Of course, they were not the only ones scared witless. So was Tu Wan. If he were not still pathetically pinned under someone’s foot, he would have liked to kneel down like the black bear demon and the wild boar demon and kowtow, begging for mercy.

The name Demon Dragon had not echoed through the Sky Realm in who knew how many years. The man called the Demon Dragon had not appeared in the Sky Realm in who knew how many years.

If he had suddenly appeared before them, and he was not an impostor, what did that mean? Death? Destruction? The collapse of the whole world?

Perhaps it was not quite that bad. But anyone who knew what kind of being this bearded man was did not look too well. No one thought that making an enemy of this bearded man named “Demon Dragon” would be a good thing in their life. On the contrary, they were sure it would be the beginning of the most terrifying tragedy in the world. Even the Central Divine Hall, whose orders were obeyed in every direction of the Heavenly Realm, would not come to a pretty end if it provoked this demon of ill omen.

This terrifying bringer of doom ought to have been sleeping in an eternal seal. What was he doing in the Sky Tower? And from the way he talked, he seemed to have become that Yue Titan’s big brother?

“Interesting. It seems coming to the Sky Tower was the right call after all!” Of all the onlookers, only the Nine-Headed Demon of the Nine-Headed Clan looked exactly as before. A mysterious smile suddenly appeared at the corner of his lips.

The Sky Stairway. The World Tree.

On the millionth step, Yue Yang felt everyone’s support, and his heart surged so hard he could barely contain it.

He let out a roar at the sky: “A thousand meters of Fate Giant power — I swear I’ll master it! Now let me bear it. I, Yue Yang of the Sky Tower — Yue Titan — will never bow to fate. My fate is mine, not heaven’s!”

As if it had heard what was in Yue Yang’s heart, the invisible yet very real wondrous hand suddenly cut away, with flawless precision, a portion of the power of fate a thousand meters high, and set it upon Yue Yang’s shoulders with uncanny skill. Unfortunately, however full of confidence Yue Yang, for his part, might be, what he could bear was a true reflection of his body, and had nothing to do with fighting spirit, will to battle or morale.

The moment a thousand meters of Fate Giant power settled on his shoulders, Yue Yang collapsed.

He could not stay on the millionth step at all. Just like the Luminous Moon Goddess before him, his body went plummeting down like a meteor with a thunderous roar.

The Supreme chased after him from behind and could not catch up. Never mind the millionth step — carrying a thousand meters of the power of fate, Yue Yang could not stay on the five-hundred-thousandth, the hundred-thousandth, or even the ten-thousandth. He fought with everything he had to hold on, struggling and straining, trying at every step he had ever stopped at to stay a little longer, to plant his feet and hold out. But it could only be a wish. On the millionth step he could not last a thousandth of a second. When he fell to the five-hundred-thousandth, he managed one feeble struggle, but he could not last half a second there either before he went rumbling down again.

On the hundred-thousandth step he held for one second — but only one.

On the ten-thousandth he held a full ten seconds, and in the end still could not bear it. His body gave out, and he kept falling.

The thousandth step, the hundredth, the tenth — and finally Yue Yang crashed all the way back to the starting point of the World Tree’s Sky Stairway, landing right next to the Luminous Moon Goddess.

The Supreme was still far above, chasing after him, with no time to get down… Lying spread-eagled on the ground, Yue Yang saw the Fate Giant’s image towering in the sky like a mountain, heavier even than the Five-Finger Mountain that the Buddha pressed down on the Monkey King’s shoulders. Never mind moving — he found even blinking a struggle. Only now did he realize he had somewhat underestimated the power of fate, and somewhat overestimated how much he could bear… The Luminous Moon Goddess, a mighty divine tier, had shouldered a hundred meters of the power of fate and fallen like a meteor. Now he had shouldered a full thousand in one go. Maybe he really had overdone it a little!

But what was shouldered was shouldered. Backing out now was absolutely impossible.

Challenging fate was naturally not going to be easy.

Yue Yang, for his part, decided to grit his teeth and just treat himself as the Monkey King. The Monkey King had carried his mountain for five hundred years; he only had to carry his for three days at most. If he could not even manage that, he might as well never have transmigrated!

“Oh my — isn’t this that Yue family third young master everyone says is so cool and so badass in the Sky Tower? What a dashing pose!” At some point a girl with the Tiger-Prison Divine Sword on her back had arrived. She walked over and looked down from on high at Yue Yang, lying spread-eagled on the ground. Only then did Yue Yang notice that a whole crowd of girls had come to the starting point of the Sky Stairway, every one of them covering her mouth and snickering, as if waiting to watch him make a fool of himself. The transmigrator, whose face was thicker than a city wall, did not feel the slightest embarrassment. They were all either girls he had already pushed down or girls he had not pushed down yet, so striking a spread-eagle pose was just review — or a preview.

No big deal!

Because of the angle, though, Yue Yang, for his part, had a completely unobstructed view of what lay beneath a certain tiger girl’s battle skirt.

At a ninety-degree viewing angle — double the pure forty-five degrees — the perks were as dazzling as the little white flowers inside that battle skirt.

Even though the transmigrator had cultivated himself to the lofty realm of “form is emptiness, emptiness is form,” under a visual assault this strong he still had the illusion that a waterfall of nosebleed was about to gush out and kill him. On the surface he was as grave and serious as a gentleman, but Yue Yang shamelessly got hard. Down below, even under the crushing pressure of the power of fate, he was standing tall like a pillar holding up the sky.

“Still got plenty in reserve, I see. Looks like another thousand meters of the power of fate would be no problem at all!” The lovely Fengxian, who had a very sharp instinct for this sort of thing, spotted the key point at once, and her words left Yue Yang, for his part, sweating buckets.

“Hahaha!” The beauties great and small, crowding around to watch, finally could not hold back their laughter.

The shadow of death since the Heavenly Realm’s invasion, and the invisible, suffocating pressure brought by the many powers of the Central Divine Hall — Dongfang, the Immovable Supreme, the Divine Hall Supreme and the rest — slowly faded and vanished in the laughter and the teasing…

As long as he was by their side, they had confidence. They would fight heaven, fight earth, fight everything in the world — fate included — to the very end!

With him by their side, there was confidence. There was everything!

(End of Chapter 1296)