Yueyang returned to Dragon Rise Continent and made his way to the location Grandma Sha had described — and his face fell the moment he arrived.

The world had moved on without him.

Tens of thousands of years had passed. The place where the ancient runes had once been hidden bore no resemblance whatsoever to Grandma Sha’s memories. What had once been a fragrant valley alive with birdsong was now buried under the weight of history entirely — and rising from where it had stood was a mountain two thousand meters tall. After a thorough survey, Yueyang arrived at his conclusion: the ancient runes were buried under at least a thousand meters of solid earth.

Without digging a tunnel down to them, no amount of perception, however powerful, would be of any use through that much rock and soil.

He headed back to the Great Xia Empire and found Jun Wuyou.

“Consider it done — Dragon Rise Continent has a shortage of many things, but manpower isn’t one of them,” Jun Wuyou said with a broad, easy smile, waving off any concern. “Even if you don’t want to make a big production of it, I know a few old fellows who never made much of a name for themselves in cultivation but have very particular skills. One of them has a war beast — a Boring Mountain Earthworm. Digging a tunnel several thousand meters deep at the location you specify would be no trouble at all, just a matter of time. Going by the pace he dug the underground passages beneath the imperial palace back in the day, a month should be more than enough.”

“Perfect — if it only takes a month, I’ll have time to integrate the runes before heading back to tackle the Trial stages,” Yueyang said, unsurprised. He had known Jun Wuyou would have something.

“How has Qianqian been lately?” Jun Wuyou asked, in the tone of a man raising a completely unrelated topic.

“Enormous progress recently — she’s pushed past her previous limits and is working on fully integrating the Prison Emperor Divine Sword. She’s been so focused on cultivation that I’ve been getting shut out too,” Yueyang said, quickly aligning himself with his father-in-law’s position before the old man started feeling like his daughter was growing away from him.

“Good!” Jun Wuyou’s expression visibly relaxed.

He was well aware that the Prison Emperor Divine Sword had originally acknowledged Yueyang — it was only the Prison Emperor bloodline that had transferred it to his daughter’s keeping. If she could fully dissolve the Prison Emperor’s residual protective consciousness, take complete command of the divine weapon, and make it truly and entirely her own — that would be a cultivation achievement beyond measure. That his little girl had already reached this level of strength and realm in such a short time was something Jun Wuyou couldn’t help but take quiet pride in. Among the Sky-Reaching Tower’s younger generation, Yueyang was too much of a freak to factor into any normal comparison — but setting him aside, who among all the rest could stand alongside his precious daughter? Perhaps only the Xue family’s Wuxia.

As Yueyang was leaving the Great Xia imperial palace, a figure slipped out from around a corner.

Yueyang grinned.

The Eastern Heavenly King — taking refuge in the Great Xia palace, as expected.

The Eastern Heavenly King looked left and right, confirmed the coast was clear, and grabbed Yueyang by the collar. “You little wretch — you actually sold out your father-in-law. Are you tired of living?”

Yueyang spread his hands helplessly. “His Majesty is who they are — you know this better than anyone. If I hadn’t said it was you, I might not have walked out of there in one piece. Besides, His Majesty wasn’t genuinely furious. Go back in a few days, offer an apology, and it’ll all be forgiven.”

The Eastern Heavenly King’s large head shook like a rattle drum. “Go back? Not a chance. I’m not setting foot in there for at least six months.”

He gave Yueyang’s shoulder a pat. “I know you couldn’t hold out under that kind of pressure — can’t blame you for that. No one could withstand that sort of thunderous fury. Anyway — you’ve been running around everywhere lately. Why aren’t you bringing little Luohua along? Cultivation is important, but two people always apart like that is bad for a relationship. Unless you’ve got something so critical it demands your full attention, bring her with you! She can handle herself — she won’t slow you down, and she’ll be genuinely useful. Besides, the two of you need to make an effort — ideally give me a chubby little grandchild by next year and make that Jun Wuyou choke on his own envy!”

The grandchild comment, Yueyang knew, was really just one more front in the ongoing war with Jun Wuyou.

He also had no trouble seeing through the real motivation. The Eastern Heavenly King had spotted Jun Wuyou meeting with Yueyang and gotten worried that Yueyang would end up spending more time with Princess Qianqian and neglecting his own precious daughter — so he’d come out specifically to make sure Yueyang remembered his priorities.

Yueyang agreed to everything on the spot, and this time he actually followed through — heading back to the World Tree beneath the Sky Stairway and bringing City Lord Luohua along.

Luohua was thrilled, though she put on a show of reluctance. “Treasure hunting? But I still need to train — if I fall behind now, I’ll never catch up. Why don’t you take Yi Nan or Bing’er instead?”

Yueyang pulled the sweetly-scented beauty into his arms and pressed a kiss toward those rosy lips of hers. “Our city lord has been performing exceptionally well recently. Doesn’t that deserve a reward?”

Luohua caught sight of Yue Yu standing not far away and quickly dodged the kiss, cheeks flushing crimson as she pushed him back with one hand.

No matter how boldly she might attend to this scoundrel in the privacy of the night, in daylight, with people watching, she still couldn’t quite abandon her dignity.

It wasn’t until they had waved goodbye to Yue Yu, Sick Beauty, and the others and left the World Tree entirely that she let her guard down and her true self come back out. She leapt onto Yueyang’s back, looping her slender arms warmly around his neck, rewarded him with a sweet kiss, then breathed softly in his ear: “Wait — you’re being suspiciously nice to me all of a sudden. What have you done? Out with it. Honest confessions receive lenient treatment.”

Yueyang adjusted his grip, his hands supporting her from below to settle her more comfortably against his back.

All while helping himself thoroughly, he laughed and replied: “Oh, my beautiful and impossibly suspicious City Lord — if you keep this up, your Head Guard is going to have to submit his resignation.”

“Resignation? Absolutely not. Death is the only acceptable apology,” Luohua declared, thoroughly amused. In their own little world, away from everyone else, she let herself go completely — laughing freely and without restraint, her shoulders shaking with the kind of pure, unguarded joy she only ever showed here.

“Worked to death? Your Head Guard would be honored to give his all,” Yueyang replied, his hands continuing their very unofficial duties.

“You terrible man, always taking advantage of me…” Luohua made no move to stop him. She let her eyes fall half-closed in a look of dreamy contentment, and when he turned his head toward her, she offered her sweet lips to meet his — a kiss shared beneath a sky blazing with the colors of the setting sun. Their shadows stretched long and inseparable behind them, and the kiss went on, and on.

Buried Sword Valley was not a valley.

It had once been a city — built at the foot of the Iron Ridge Mountain Range on Dragon Rise Continent, famous in its day for its extraordinary tradition of crafting divine weapons, and so it had earned the name Buried Sword Valley, or sometimes Buried Sword Manor. Its founding ruler, the Buried Sword Immortal, had written a chapter of history radiant enough to rival any era — in the ancient age, Buried Sword Valley had dwarfed even the Imperial Capital in scale.

Now, of course, it was nothing but an abandoned ruin, lost to history.

Working from incomplete historical records and what Grandma Sha had told him, Yueyang had assembled a rough picture of the truth.

After more than a hundred and eighty generations, the power structure of Buried Sword Valley had fractured into civil war — kinsmen turning on kinsmen, generations of fighting. In the end, the Fairy Qiluo’s husband fell in battle, and Buried Sword Valley drove out the faction led by the True Lord of Raging Fire at terrible cost. But the True Lord of Raging Fire, once his strength had recovered, broke his oath without a second thought — the promise he had sworn upon defeat, never to move against Buried Sword Valley again, abandoned the moment it was inconvenient. Using the pretext that a woman had no right to hold authority over Buried Sword Valley, and claiming himself the pureblooded heir of the Buried Sword Immortal’s lineage, he led an army of powerful warriors in an assault on the Valley.

The final confrontation between the Fairy Qiluo and the True Lord of Raging Fire triggered a Heavenly Tribulation of catastrophic proportions. The entire Buried Sword Manor was destroyed, and both combatants fell — never to be heard from again.

The Iron Ridge Mountain Range became a place of annihilation, and for a long time no one dared approach it. Millennia upon millennia passed. Forests grew back. Magical beasts returned and made their home in what had once been Buried Sword Valley — which itself had long since ceased to exist in any recognizable form.

“The magical beasts here are strange,” Luohua observed after she and Yueyang had spent half a day searching the Iron Ridge Mountain Range. Her eye for detail hadn’t missed a thing. “They’re not particularly powerful, but they’re peculiar — as if something is influencing them. The plants are the same. I counted dozens of varieties of flowers on the way here, and not a single one looked normal.”

“It must be residual Heavenly Tribulation energy,” Yueyang agreed. He’d noticed it too. “And Buried Sword Valley itself may have had some kind of secret energy of its own.” The magical beasts here were weaker than he might have expected, but utterly unlike their counterparts anywhere else — with a vitality and resilience that far exceeded creatures of the same rank found in other regions.

“Is there any way to harness that energy?” Luohua was already turning the question over in her mind.

“If there is… it would probably provide a significant boost for warriors and war beasts below the Innate realm. Above Innate is harder to say,” Yueyang replied. He had the frustrating sensation of a realization hovering just out of reach — something he was almost grasping but couldn’t quite close his hand around.

“Maybe we could start by feeding the plants here to herbivorous war beasts,” Luohua suggested.

“The numbers wouldn’t add up,” Yueyang said, dismissing the idea.

“What if we brought people here to excavate? I keep feeling like this place is similar to Hailan’s Meteor Sea — just with a different kind and scale of influence.”

Luohua’s offhand remark was all it took. The answer Yueyang had been chasing suddenly snapped into focus with perfect clarity. Of course — this place and the Meteor Sea were deeply similar. The key difference was that the negative influence here wasn’t nearly as overwhelming. Which meant that whatever energy from Buried Sword Valley had once kept the Heavenly Tribulation forces from destroying everything completely was still active — still at work. The Tribulation had only destroyed the surface. What lay below might be entirely another story.

“Worthy of the title of City Lord — as sharp as ever,” Yueyang said, giving her the compliment she deserved.

Luohua tilted her chin up with a satisfied little huff.

There was something about her when she was pleased with herself that Yueyang found completely irresistible. He pulled her close without thinking, tilted her back in his arms, and kissed her — long, breathless, lingering.

The secrets of Buried Sword Valley, Yueyang decided, were not something he was going to share with anyone else just yet.

There was every chance that digging out the underground remnants of Buried Sword Manor might yield treasures no one had imagined. He left the Five Elements Gold-Seeking Mouse behind with instructions to focus on gathering intelligence, then set off with Luohua for the Southern Heavenly Realm — and the city of Eternal Night, which he hadn’t visited in quite some time.

The Western Heavenly Realm was on the verge of eruption. If the Southern Heavenly Realm stayed quiet while all of that was happening, the Central Divine Temple would only need to fight on one front — and that was far too easy on them.

Yueyang had decided he was going to stir things up in the Southern Heavenly Realm, one way or another. A true multi-front war might be beyond his means to engineer right now — but forcing the Central Divine Temple to split their attention between two theaters, to fight on two fronts at once, to stretch themselves until they couldn’t breathe: that much, he could absolutely arrange. Anything less would be a waste of the name “transmigrator.”

Eternal Night City had the Surrender Trio holding down the fort, along with Sky-rank powerhouses like Flying Locust and Flower Panther. With the Jade Domain Lord too intimidated by the forces backing Yueyang to dare cause trouble, the city had remained completely secure.

Things had been quiet for some time.

No exemptions, no wars, no disruptions.

Commerce had flourished to an extraordinary degree.

Baogu and Niugen had risen to a status that would have been unthinkable before — everywhere they went, people called them “My Lord” without hesitation.

Baogu especially, once a wandering street merchant, had earned the deep respect of the entire city. Even merchants passing through from elsewhere, upon hearing the story, were filled with admiration. That said, both Baogu and Niugen knew exactly who they were. The moment they spotted Yueyang approaching, they flew out to meet him, greeting him with full and proper courtesy, their attitude perfectly calibrated — they hadn’t let the titles go to their heads. They knew that being counted among the Third Young Master’s people was itself a privilege beyond what most could dream of. After all, the Surrender Trio and Flying Locust and Flower Panther — Sky-rank powerhouses all — hadn’t even qualified to serve as proper subordinates yet.

“You’ve handled things well here — no need to brief me. Wait until Young Master Hai has time to come up, then give him the full report,” Yueyang told them, while assigning them one immediate task: make contact with Bi Lv as quickly as possible.

At Yueyang’s current level of strength, taking down the Jade Domain Lord was no longer any kind of challenge.

The issue was what lay behind him — the Wilderness King, the Lion Heart King. If he could gather enough intelligence first, he might be able to sweep them all in a single net. Set that in motion, and the Southern Heavenly Realm would have no choice but to erupt into chaos — and with Yueyang continuing to fan the flames and widen the conflict, the Central Divine Temple would find it impossible to look away, no matter how much they wanted to keep their focus elsewhere.

Yueyang’s ambitions were not going to be contained by one insignificant little Jade Domain.