Leaving the Divine Codex space, Yue Yang used the Three Realms Compass to return to the fifth level of the Sky Stairway.

He had barely set foot on the blood altar when golden light erupted from his body in columns that drove straight up into the sky. Princess Qianqian, the Drunken Cat Imperial Lady, and Yue Yu — still resting in the Grimoire World — all emerged automatically, one after another, suspended in the air as the beautiful energy of advancement moved through them.

It turned out the battle’s growth rewards hadn’t been suppressed or lost. Inside the Divine Codex space, the Laws governing that place had simply held everything in suspension. The moment they stepped outside, every blocked advancement came through at once.

Everyone who had fought received their due — everyone except Xiao Nu, who hadn’t participated in the battle.

What moved Princess Qianqian most deeply, past all the accumulated exhaustion and relief: she had broken through. The threshold she had been pressing against for so long finally gave way. From the Innate realm, she crossed into the Perfect Innate Sovereign tier — sovereign intent, now genuinely hers. Indestructible will, now real.

The Prison Emperor divine sword deepened its integration with her in the same moment. Not complete yet — but close. Princess Qianqian could see the end of that road. The point where the divine artifact would fully become her own characteristic weapon was within reach.

“Tiger girl — I’ll help you finish it,” Yue Yang said, offering his assistance along with his congratulations.

“I’ll consider whether to give you that opportunity,” Princess Qianqian said, with her characteristic front of imperious indifference. Privately, she knew perfectly well that without Yue Yang’s cooperation it would be impossible — the sword had originally bonded to him, and only his complete relinquishment and full transfer of ownership would let it become hers in truth. But in front of everyone, the Princess maintained her standards.

Fourth Mother was waiting at the edge of the blood altar with Luohua, Inan, Yue Bing, and little Yue Shuang. When she saw the whole group return intact — and saw every single one of them rise in cultivation simultaneously — she let out a long, quiet breath.

“Xiao San-gege!” Yue Shuang hit him first, launching herself before Yue Bing had finished crossing the distance, which was itself impressive.

“You went and defeated the Solar King without even bringing us along,” Fengxian said, trying to sound merely aggrieved and not quite succeeding at hiding the other things in her voice. She knew why he’d done it. She just couldn’t stop herself from glancing at Princess Qianqian’s obvious joy and feeling something.

“Oh, come off it,” the Southern Wilderness Demon King said, glancing sideways at her.

The unspoken content: You’re already his. Everyone knows who wins the close-combat rankings. You’re the last person who should be talking.

Look at how Water Wuhen handled herself. That was grace.

Fengxian covered her mouth and gave the Southern Wilderness Demon King a meaningful look. Tonight?

The Southern Wilderness Demon King’s flawless face went pink immediately. She had intentions — but the first time should be alone, she’d decided. Properly. Her father had already negotiated with Fourth Mother, Elder Yuehai, and the others; Shui Dongliu, Jun Wuyou, the Black Vine Grandmother, and Elder Nangong would witness and officiate. She intended to arrive as a bride, dressed for it, everything done right. Not the way Bi Lv and Lieyan had done things — hidden, unofficial.

Fengxian shrugged. Formality meant nothing to her — she’d been witnessed in her own way the night he’d taken her from the Succubus Palace, and that was more than enough. Besides, the Heaven Devil Hall’s alliance with the Yue family had long since been entered into the family records and the Great Summer national annals. Who on the Longteng Continent didn’t know whose wife she was?

“I can’t explain you to yourself,” the Southern Wilderness Demon King sighed.

Meanwhile, the Dew of Vitality and Wisdom Leaves Yue Yang had collected were being redistributed at speed. Divine Calamity and Bao’er led this effort enthusiastically, with Liuye quietly ceding her share, and Xiayi making pointed comments about not wanting childish things while obviously wanting them very much.

Fengxian watched this and turned back toward the Sky Stairway passage with an exaggerated elder-sister sigh. “Youth. Carefree youth.”

The Southern Wilderness Demon King’s expression communicated: You are not meaningfully more mature than any of them. If you’d been the one waiting alone when he arrived, you’d have been undressed before the echo faded.

The Celestial Dragon Crystal Stones nobody touched — but advanced war beast bracelets were immediately pre-ordered by approximately everyone. The ancient divine blood attracted awed looks and no presumptuous hands. Everyone wanted the full story: the Solar King battle, the Divine Codex exploration. Yue Yang and the Drunken Cat Imperial Lady narrated; Princess Qianqian and Yue Yu filled gaps. Yue Bing and Bao’er and the younger ones produced escalating sounds of disbelief; Luohua and the Southern Wilderness Demon King listened with increasingly wide eyes.

Fourth Mother listened quietly throughout, keeping her smile.

When Yue Yang reached the part about the infuriating guardian blocking the inner hall — and described the guardian’s particular career-ending backstory — Fourth Mother had a difficult moment maintaining her composure.

Yue Yu noticed. She asked quietly: “Do all Divine Codexes have guards? Or only this one?”

“I don’t know,” Fourth Mother said.

Yue Yu suspected she knew more than that. But Fourth Mother had her reasons, and they wouldn’t work against Xiao San. So Yue Yu let it rest.

After the reunion, the Southern Wilderness Demon King and the others returned to the World Tree to train. Fourth Mother brought Yue Yang, Yue Bing, and little Yue Shuang home.

Princess Qianqian begged off — she wanted to consolidate her new realm immediately. The Drunken Cat Imperial Lady similarly cited pressing cultivation. Eventually, with encouragement from Luohua and Inan, Yue Yu agreed to rest as well — exhausted from the battle, and aware that Yue Yang would need her for the war beast bracelet research. If she and Princess Qianqian both went to the Sky Stairway to train, he’d produce chaos unsupervised.

Luohua, Inan, and Yue Yu headed to the Tianra Palace’s mirage palace to wait for Yue Yang.

Fourth Mother brought Yue Yang and the girls to the Yue family castle first — Elder Yuehai, the Old Fox, and Jun Wuyou had been waiting anxiously for news.

“The Solar King is dead?” Jun Wuyou and the Old Fox went from stunned to jubilant in one breath, the kind of joy that produces involuntary movement.

“Good.” Elder Yuehai threw his head back and howled at the sky.

Yue Yang’s growth had long since exceeded their expectations. But this — a being approaching the divine tier, the kind of peak existence human strength was not supposed to reach, simply gone — exceeded even their most optimistic private hopes. How could they not be overwhelmed?

Jun Wuyou and the Old Fox immediately went to confer with Elder Nangong about suppressing the news. Celestial realm informants existed. If word reached the Elder Council before Sky Tower had time to consolidate, the advantage would evaporate. The victory announcement, if any, could be framed around the Eight Generals — formidable enough for local morale, without revealing the full picture.

“Where’s Sea Fatty?” Yue Yang noticed the absence.

“He and Ye Kong were too enthusiastic in pursuit and got critically wounded. The Demon Abyss and Eastern Demon Clan fighters are about the same. The Heaven Devil Hall fared somewhat better.” The Old Fox recounted: the Poet and the Lazy One had surrendered conditionally — Luohua and Inan approved the terms. The Dwarf was captured. The Tribesman and Hanged Man died in combat. The White-Bearded Elder ran for a full day before Fengxian and Divine Calamity ran him down together. The Fat Man — caught by Beifeng Jia and Fengzhu — refused surrender absolutely and had to be taken down by a combined assault of the Heaven Devil Hall, Demon Abyss, Eastern Demon Clan, and Snow-Hungry Wolf’s people, fighting through a full day and night before he fell. Even surrounded, he had been extraordinarily strong.

“Ye Kong and the others went to the Spirit Forest to recover. The spirit spring water there helps,” Jun Wuyou said. “Don’t worry.”

“One sentence covers it: still too weak across the board.” Yue Yang had no better answer. Growth took time.

“Don’t say that,” the Old Fox said, clapping his shoulder. “Their performance already exceeded everything we hoped. If you’re calling that weak, where does that leave us old men? Rest. The fighting we can’t help with — everything else, leave to us.”

After parting from the elders, Yue Yang returned to the Tianra Palace. He stopped to see the Empress first — she apparently already knew, was in good spirits, offered mild praise in her characteristic manner, and then declined to actually receive him, sending him away with the door closed. He accepted this with the equanimity of long practice.

Fourth Mother cooked. A full table. Little Yue Shuang stole from various dishes throughout preparation, forgot each time to wipe the evidence from her face, then sat in her place with an expression of total innocence that persuaded no one.

Luohua and Inan each contributed one dish. Yue Bing, true to the training schedule Yue Yang had set, had put in her full hour of combat practice before he arrived and was finishing as they sat down.

“Would the Ruins of the Gods also have that kind of infuriating guard?” Yue Yang asked midway through the meal, struck by a thought, addressing Fourth Mother directly despite her earlier non-answer.

Fourth Mother looked at his expectant face and sighed quietly. “I haven’t entered the Ruins of the Gods myself. But some things can be reasoned through from general principles. Why would an ancient deity place a guardian at the entrance to a Divine Codex? If the Codex were completely safe, there’d be no need. And if the deity simply didn’t want it contracted, they could seal it directly — why bother with a guardian? Perhaps consider this: a Divine Codex with a guardian at its entrance may actually be the easiest kind to contract. The guardian exists to find the right person. Not every Divine Codex is the same — some must have stricter conditions. Why does that particular Codex have a guardian? Perhaps because the divine being who sacrificed herself to open the passage for those who came after also deliberately placed the guardian — to guide the search for the right inheritor. The Ruins of the Gods, I imagine, holds the remains of many divine beings with many different natures. The approaches would differ for each.”

She kept it carefully vague, directing everything toward general inference rather than anything too specific about her own knowledge.

But every person at that table — Yue Yang, Yue Yu, Luohua, Inan, Yue Bing — understood at once what she was pointing toward.

A Divine Codex with a guardian was one actively searching for its master.

Yue Yang’s heart leapt. His face stayed still. Fourth Mother had guided him this far at some cost to her careful neutrality — pressing further would be presumptuous. And besides: without the lived experience of what he’d just been through, even this much would have been incomprehensible. You had to have stood where he’d stood. Ancient divine beings’ logic operated on a different scale. You had to approach that scale — or at least glimpse it — before the patterns resolved.

After the meal, the mood was easy and warm. Everyone settled together, talking and laughing, enjoying the particular stillness that follows extraordinary effort.

When the sky darkened, Yue Yu found a graceful reason to excuse herself and slipped away to her room.

Yue Bing didn’t notice the significance. Yue Yang was home — rare and precious — and she had months of cultivation progress to report. She kept him happily occupied with detailed accounts while Fourth Mother carried a repeatedly yawning Yue Shuang off to bed. Luohua and Inan waited with patient amusement, watching the world’s most indulgent brother run through combat practice with his little sister late into the night.

Eventually Yue Bing noticed the hour. “Is it too late? Am I keeping Gege from resting?”

“Of course not. Your training comes first.” He ruffled her forehead hair into gentle disorder.

“Goodnight, sister-in-law Inan. Sister-in-law Luohua.” Yue Bing made her farewells and turned to go — then spun back immediately with the expression of someone who’d just remembered something urgent. “Oh! Before the battle, Mama said — once the fighting is over and things are safer — she hopes you’ll both have little babies soon!”

She beamed, bowed, and trotted off.

Luohua and Inan turned various shades of red.

In Yue Bing’s understanding, babies arrived when a husband and wife slept in the same room — general awareness with no particular curiosity about specifics. Her reminder to Luohua and Inan was entirely sincere: don’t end up like Qianqian and Wuxia, spending days with him but retiring separately at night. Sleep together. That was the full extent of her thinking.

Yue Yang found himself briefly at a loss for words.

My little sister cannot possibly be this adorable.

The purity wasn’t entirely natural — Yue Yang had been regularly cleansing Yue Bing’s body with Innate True Qi throughout her cultivation, and that process had gradually cleared away certain accumulated mental complexity along with its physical work. Her body stayed in the freshness of early youth. Her mind, in certain respects, followed. Purification of the body, sustained over time, also purified away the noise of the world. That was why this particular younger sister grew progressively more guileless rather than less.

Purification was not a bad thing. Not at all.

After she’d gone, Yue Yang looked at the two women remaining with him.

Inan’s composure had come somewhat undone — the blush Yue Bing had caused was still present, her silver eyes holding a quality of patient waiting. Luohua had already moved; her arms settled around him from behind, her face warm against his shoulder, her quiet laugh low and unhurried — the laugh he associated with her when she had decided something and felt no need to announce it.

He turned in her arms, and she tilted her face up to him with that undefended expression she almost never showed in company. Behind him, he reached back and found Inan’s hand, drawing her forward, and felt the slight catch of her breath at the contact — not hesitation, just the small adjustment between anticipating something and having it actually arrive.

What followed needed no narration. The night was theirs — warm and quiet, the household settled into sleep around them, everything outside this moment held at a comfortable distance. As for the side effects Yue Bing had so earnestly wished upon them: those were a question for considerably later. Enough of the enjoyable process, as any reasonable person would agree, tends to produce the desired results in its own time.

(End of Chapter)