The Tianra Imperial Palace.

What Yueyang hadn’t expected was the summons.

His Majesty had called for him today, out of nowhere. Ordinarily, even a formal request for an audience got deflected with some excuse about a minor ailment. So what was different now?

He made his way to the inner hall with a mix of puzzlement and genuine anticipation — an audience with His Majesty was not something that came around often. The duty attendant guided him to the steps outside the inner chamber and withdrew without a sound, exactly as before, leaving him on the far side of a closed door. Anyone else treating him like this would have found the door kicked off its hinges before they finished the thought — but that particular approach did not work here. Here, he was required to behave himself.

He kept a pleasant smile in place.

The full performance of a well-mannered young man who had read all the etiquette manuals.

“I hear you and Jun Wuyou and Shui Dongliu have put together a Dragon Rider Legion,” came the voice from behind the door. “Stirring up the spirit of martial cultivation across the entire Longteng continent?”

“I’m not quite as magnificent as all that—” Yueyang said modestly, while thinking rather the opposite. He’d put real effort into designing this scheme, and if it had produced no effect at all, that would have been the surprise. He produced a written proposal, climbed the steps, and for a moment seemed about to push the door open and walk in — then thought better of it, and used a subtle projection of will to send the document drifting through the door instead. When he spoke again, his tone was earnest: “Several of the senior figures — and Elder Nangong as well — have all said the same thing: if the Longteng continent wants to rise, it needs to maintain its competitive edge. Finding elite talent, building the Dragon Rider Legion, using honor and opportunity to ignite a culture of martial cultivation across the population — that’s only the first step.”

A long pause. The sound of pages turning.

“The proposal is well done,” His Majesty said at last. “Whether the implementation will match it remains to be seen. The Dragon Blood Guard concept at the end — that part I find genuinely compelling. Not everyone can be an elite. But people with unusual talents, people with iron will, and above all loyal people — it makes sense to find ways to let each of them contribute where they’re strongest. Many senior figures have thought about something like this over the years, and none of them ever managed to bring it to completion — not even the Prison Emperor. If you’re committed to doing it, you have my support. Just make sure you see it through to the end, and do it properly.”

“With Your Majesty’s instruction, I’ll give it everything I have.” Yueyang bowed with a cheerful grin.

“The Dragon Rider and Dragon Blood Guard plans — I’ll leave those to you.” A slight pause. “With your capabilities, and the right support from the others, I think it’s achievable, even if it takes time. Your reputation is strong enough to move the Longteng continent, even if moving the whole Sky Stairway is still a stretch.”

“Please don’t just wash your hands of it entirely, Your Majesty!” Yueyang said, alarmed. He wanted full Imperial backing, not a polite send-off.

“The East Heavenly King and West Heavenly King will coordinate with you on my behalf. If that proves insufficient, I’ll appoint a special envoy to handle the matter directly.”

“What are you doing with yourself all day, anyway?” Yueyang blurted, unable to stop himself. “Sitting in the inner palace doing nothing — doesn’t it get dull?”

“That is none of your business,” His Majesty said, with a flash of irritation.

“I only meant — as a small favor—” Yueyang clasped his hands together hastily, projecting sincerity.

“I have been extremely busy lately. I have no time at all.”

This statement, delivered to anyone on the Longteng continent, would have been met with universal disbelief. Everyone knew that the Tianra Emperor Hua Xuri was the most unhurried ruler in the known world — he rarely held court, almost never involved himself in governance, and left the entire administration of the kingdom to his ministers.

There was a famous joke about him on the Longteng continent: that once, during a grand ceremony in the Tianra Plaza, His Majesty had risen late with a minor ailment and rushed out of the palace without his formal robes, accompanied only by his attendants, hoping to slip into the plaza in time. The official maintaining order at the entrance stopped him and asked for a VIP invitation. When his attendant produced the Sunrise Jade — the token identifying the Emperor himself — the official assumed it was an attempted bribe and refused with great severity: for the safety of His Majesty, this official cannot permit unidentified individuals to enter the grounds; leave at once, or the palace guard will be summoned.

The joke was an exaggeration, of course. No official responsible for security could fail to recognize the Sunrise Jade. And Tianra would never assign a man blind to Imperial insignia to maintain order at a state ceremony. But as a reflection of reality, it wasn’t entirely off the mark. At least a fifth of Tianra’s officials and a tenth of its city governors had never laid eyes on Emperor Hua Xuri. It was said that over a hundred Tianra officials had, at one point or another, mistaken the Tianra Guardian War God — who handled state affairs publicly and regularly — for the Emperor himself. That was how rarely His Majesty showed his face.

Compared to the Great Xia Emperor Jun Wuyou, Tianra’s Hua Xuri was quiet to a degree that bordered on nonexistent. Jun Wuyou had never put his portrait on a gold coin either, but within the borders of Great Xia, at least eight in ten people — commoners included — could describe what their Emperor looked like, especially after Yueyang’s rise had swept Jun Wuyou’s name across the wider world.

When Yueyang heard His Majesty claim to be extremely busy, he had to work very hard not to smile.

If you’re extremely busy, there isn’t a single idle person left in the world.

His Majesty seemed to read the thought directly off his face. “I am genuinely busy. You don’t know, so don’t speculate.”

Yueyang’s curiosity won out. “What are you busy with, then, Your Majesty?”

A long silence. Then — a barely audible sigh. “I have been researching whether there is any way to create a substitute for the Summoning Grimoire.”

“…Isn’t that a bit ambitious?” Yueyang said, with considerable diplomacy. If Jun Wuyou or one of the old foxes had said this, he’d have assumed they’d temporarily lost their minds. Replace the Summoning Grimoire? That was the kind of thing you said in a dream. If any substitute existed, the Sky-rank warriors of the heavenly realms wouldn’t spend their lives eyeing other people’s grimoires with barely concealed envy. Even with his Heavenly Eye of Wisdom, Yueyang couldn’t detect the faintest trace of how a Grimoire was made — couldn’t find a single seam or signature in the construction. His private estimate was that not even the divine beings of legend could have forged one. Something like the Summoning Grimoire had to be the work of the ancient titans of a forgotten age — beings of power so vast the concept barely translated into any framework he knew.

And now the Tianra Emperor was sitting in his palace researching a replacement.

Yueyang deserved significant credit for not laughing out loud.

The two of them sat in silence for a moment.

Then His Majesty sighed again, softly. “The Grimoire is too mysterious. Across every generation of Sky Stairway cultivators, there have always been those who devoted themselves to studying it — and none of them ever made any meaningful headway. Eventually, the thinking shifted. Even if matching the Grimoire itself was impossible, could something be developed for those warriors who simply cannot form a Grimoire bond? Some kind of substitute?”

Yueyang was genuinely astonished. These Sky Stairway seniors were clearly not short of ambition. And apparently the research was real, and had been going on for quite some time — knowingly futile, and yet continued anyway. Why?

“How long has this research been going on?” he asked, half-probing, half-curious.

“Eight thousand years.”

Yueyang had nothing to say to that.

Eight thousand years spent pursuing something that would almost certainly never succeed. Was that dedication, or was it something else entirely?

“In any case — I don’t have time for your affairs right now. I’ll be in seclusion for the next few months. Go back, and speak with the East Heavenly King when you need something.” His Majesty was clearly wrapping up the audience.

“Wait — let me help you with this.” Something had shifted in Yueyang’s chest. If any progress could be made here, it would almost certainly deepen his understanding of his own realm.

“You don’t have the patience for it.”

“Tell me the framework first. The thinking and the progress so far.” Yueyang wasn’t ready to give up. He’d hear it out, and abandon it if it was truly hopeless.

“Since roughly eight thousand years ago, a consistent line of thought took shape,” His Majesty began, and something in his voice changed — the studied detachment of a moment ago warming into genuine engagement. “The aim was to create an object that could bridge and communicate with the soul, while also serving as a vessel for bonding a war beast. You know yourself that war beast vessels appear in many treasures — Gold-rank and above almost always carry a nascent spirit of their own. Sacred-rank and Divine-rank artifacts have fully formed artifact souls. The question we kept returning to was whether it might be possible to lower the threshold — to create a vessel of Silver-rank, or even Bronze-rank, that could still sustain a Gold-rank or higher war beast bond. Ordinary warriors can’t make use of Gold-rank artifacts. Young children don’t have the spiritual force to command them. But if a lower-grade vessel could be developed that still permitted high-tier bonding—”

He was off now, the research taking over, the words coming faster.

Yueyang listened carefully. Somewhere in the depths of the knowledge he’d inherited — the vast sealed archive within him — he had a feeling there were fragments related to this. Incomplete ones. He suspected that his Elder Sister had researched the question herself at some point, and simply hadn’t had time to develop it further.

“The vessel is the first obstacle,” His Majesty continued, and his voice settled into something heavier. “But the hardest part — the part that has never been solved — is the soul communication.”

“Soul communication.” Yueyang frowned.

Even for those at the Innate realm and above, that was a formidable challenge.

For an ordinary person, it was beyond imagining entirely. In deep sleep, perhaps — very rarely, someone with extraordinary innate sensitivity and uncommon purity of heart might brush up against their own soul almost by accident. But ordinary people couldn’t sustain that contact even under guided instruction without sustaining damage. Attempting to expose a fragile ordinary soul to the will of a Gold-rank or higher war beast, mediated only by a vessel — the war beast’s consciousness would simply crush the human soul outright.

Only the Summoning Grimoire — that incomprehensible artifact — could absorb and mediate that kind of force. Nothing else came close.

For a true soul bond with a war beast, the soul and body had to be completely and permanently integrated — a state where beast and master became wholly one. A beast bonded at that level became a life-guardian, an existence that shared every breath with its master and would die when the master died. Ordinary bonds were only physical contracts. A dissatisfied beast could break them. A beast without sufficient intelligence would never learn, never grow, no matter how much time passed — because there was no shared will, no true meeting of minds.

“You should focus on your own work,” His Majesty said gently. “Perhaps this entire line of inquiry is simply wrong.”

But Yueyang had stopped listening. He had sunk into thought — deep, genuine thought — because something was moving in the back of his mind. A flicker of light at the edge of his awareness. He couldn’t name it yet, couldn’t pin it down, but it was there — a sense that if he could only catch hold of it, something about soul communication would become clear in a way it hadn’t been before.

His Majesty observed him with quiet puzzlement. What is this boy thinking?

Surely he’s not genuinely considering helping with this.

Yueyang sat down on the steps without any concern for appearances, thinking hard, chasing the idea as it drifted in and out of reach. After a while he lay back entirely, hands folded behind his head, one leg crossed over the other, eyes unfocused, staring up at the sky — and let his mind go.

He cast the net wide. Fourth Mother’s inherited knowledge. Vivienne’s complete transmittal of realm insights. The accumulated wisdom of every warrior whose dying thoughts had been absorbed by the World Tree. And beneath all of it, the layered, multiverse-spanning knowledge he’d carried with him when he crossed over.

What kind of object could stand in for a Summoning Grimoire?

What would it need to be, at its core, in order to make that possible?

His Majesty, afraid of disturbing his concentration, said nothing. Just waited. And felt, against all expectation, a quiet thread of hope stirring somewhere in his chest.

Could this boy actually solve it? A question that has gone unanswered for eight thousand years — could he be the one? And if he did — how would one even begin to praise him for that? And more importantly — if he truly accomplished it, would ancestral protocol require taking him to that place?

…On second thought, perhaps it was better to send him home before he got any further.

His Majesty cleared his throat lightly. “It’s getting late. You should return. The Dragon Rider Legion needs your attention right now — set this aside for the moment.”

“Wait—” Yueyang shot upright as though something had struck him. “I have an idea. I don’t know yet if it will work—”

“Already?” His Majesty couldn’t contain the exclamation. A beat, and then a careful composure restored itself. “You thought of something? That quickly? What kind of idea?”

“I’m not telling you yet. Let me build a prototype first. I just need it to be possible — gods above, if this actually works—” He was already on his feet, already half out the door, moving like a man chasing something that might vanish if he slowed down.

“That boy,” His Majesty murmured, watching him go. “He is not entirely trustworthy.”

But even as the words left his mouth, he found — to his own surprise — that he believed in Yueyang completely.