The Captain opened his mouth to speak, but no words would come out.
The clay fox above was already swaying forward seductively, hēr curves more than prominent as shē approached Xu Qing. Hēr beautiful eyes shimmered with tender affection as shē softly said, “You’ve lost weight, you naughty little boy. Did you miss me while we were apart?”
Xu Qing hesitated briefly, then rose and bowed. “Well met, High God Starfire.”
When the clay fox heard his words, the look in hēr eyes turned into one of hidden bitterness. “I guess you didn’t miss me, naughty boy.”
Hēr arrival had caused the Heir Apparent and his siblings to go fully on guard.
The Captain seemed deeply forlorn, and instinctively looked up at the gray color in the canopy of heaven. He couldn’t help but muse that life really wasn’t worth it. After all, there were two High Gods here, but they could hardly be more different from each other. One of them was indifferent toward him, and actually wanted him dead. The other was obviously completely obsessed with his little Junior Brother. If that had been all there were to it, he might have been able to accept it. But what was worse, one of them wasn’t very good-looking, while the other was extremely attractive.
Though his heart was in chaos, when he heard the words being spoken, he came to the conclusion that, as the Eldest Brother, he should step in to help Xu Qing respond. Walking forward he cleared his throat.
“Big Sis Starfire, my little Junior Brother is relatively shy. I can answer the question for him. Of course he missed you! He missed you very, very much!”
The clay fox frowned and looked at the Captain disdainfully. “Don’t say one word to me, Kidney Boy. I’m worried my naughty little friend might misunderstand. In fact, please get the hell back. Put some distance between the two of us.”
The Captain inhaled sharply. Neither in past lives nor in the present life had anyone called him Kidney Boy. And if someone called him that who he could beat in a fight, he would instantly get very angry. But considering the level disparity, all he could do was bow his head and back up until he was behind Xu Qing, all while musing that considering the difference in cultivation level between himself and Grandpa Eighth, it was definitely Grandpa Eighth who should have spoken up just now.Meanwhile, the clay fox looked at Xu Qing and licked hēr lips. Shē was about to say something further when rumbling filled the dome of heaven, and the voice of High God Moonfire echoed out.
“Stop wasting time, you slutty fox. Get over here!”
The clay fox smiled faintly at Xu Qing. “I have a quick fight to attend to, naughty boy. We’ll continue our date a bit later.”
Shē turned and shot up into the abstract painting. When shē entered it, another color appeared. Pink. Now a total of four different colors were clashing in the sky. The vortex in the painting was spinning faster and faster. It looked like the red color inside was under a lot of pressure.
But Crimson Mother was strong. Even with Li Zihua, High God Moonfire, and High God Starfire all attacking hēr, shē still wasn’t completely shaken.
The Heir Apparent and his siblings were watching with serious expressions.
As for the Captain, he was starting to get nervous. Finally, he gritted his teeth and said, “When the critical moment arrives, I still have to rely on myself! My ex-wife is just too weak! Little Junior Brother, help me out here. I need you to take this and smack me in the head with it. Hard!”
The Captain took out a scepter and tossed it to Xu Qing.
Xu Qing caught it. Looking down at it, he saw that it was completely blue, but also somewhat blurry. And the longer you looked at it, the more you felt drawn into it. This was the very same scepter the Captain’s past-life body, the one formed from his heart, had wielded at Mount Heavenly Ox.
“This is the Dream Scepter of the Grand Dancer!” Xu Qing looked at the Captain.
“That’s right,” the Captain said, his eyes gleaming with a crazy look. “I’m going to use that thingy to send the dream shadow of my past life into Crimson Mother. Maybe by awakening hēr human nature, I can disrupt the stalemate!”
A blue worm suddenly flew out from the Captain and landed on the ground in front of him. Then the Captain’s sleeves snapped as he started performing a very strange dance. It looked as if some sort of sacrificial offering was being made right here in the Moon Palace. As the dance proceeded, the Captain started chanting a song. It was impossible to make out the details of the lyrics, but it conveyed a very complicated sensation.
The Heir Apparent and his siblings noticed what was happening, and in particular, Eighth Sib’s eyes gleamed with a curious light.
“How interesting....”
As the Captain sang and danced, billowing mist built up around him, flashing with seven colors. Within the hazy mist, it was just possible to make out some indistinct images. Those images were dreams. They were dreams of beauty, sorrow, pain, and confusion, and all of them contained human nature. To cultivators, those dreams seemingly contained countless lives, and when they poured into the mind, they were like reincarnation. Anyone who experienced them would feel like they were living over and over again. If the effects became serious, that cultivator might become lost forever.
But to gods, dreams meant something different than they did for cultivators. For preheaven gods, it might not be as serious of a situation. But postheaven gods had to balance human nature, animal nature, and godly nature. And if that balance was disrupted, it could cause everything to come crashing down. In other words, to postheaven gods, dreams of human nature were like a deadly poison. Normally speaking, such poison, though harmful, could be wiped out by godfire relatively quickly. By suppressing them with godliness, the balance could be restored.
But Crimson Mother was fighting Li Zihua and two High Gods. Therefore, a loss in balance could be very dangerous.
Xu Qing had picked up on that, as had the Heir Apparent and his siblings. All of their eyes began to shine.
After some thought, the Heir Apparent exhaled, sending his perception-altering powers into the Captain’s mist. The mist seethed as it absorbed that power and became stronger as a result.
Princess Brightblossom muttered something under her breath and sent out a river of time, giving a sensation of space-time to the dream mist.
Eighth Sib added in his powers of the seven emotions and six sensory pleasures, which made the dream’s human nature even more realistic. In fact, his assistance was much more useful than that from the Heir Apparent and Princess Brightblossom. After all, Eighth Sib’s authority was related to emotions, which were a fundamental embodiment of human nature. The mist instantly became much more colorful and dazzling.
As everyone assisted, the Captain’s dancing sped up, and the mist grew thicker with the power of a dream. From that it could be seen how well the Captain had prepared in his past life here. Eventually, all the dream elements coalesced, and the Captain went stock still. Then his voice echoed out from within all of the dreams, right into Xu Qing’s ears.
“Little Junior Brother!”
Xu Qing didn’t hesitate to heft the scepter and then lunge into the dream mist. Because of the blue light emanated by the scepter, he wasn’t dragged into the actual dreams. Piercing through one dream after another, he eventually reached the Captain. There, he raised the scepter and then brought it crashing down.
Because the Captain had asked him to use force, he didn’t hold back at all. When the scepter hit the Captain with a thump, his head exploded. However, there was no blood or flesh. Instead, bubbles erupted from his head, which swept through the mist and into the sky. In the blink of an eye, they reached the vortex above, where they split up into a host of smaller bubbles.
Each smaller bubble caused the vortex in the painting to spin faster, and provoked agonized shrieks from inside. Thanks to the bubbles, the vortex was soon a mass of chaos.
The eye inside bled. The blood-colored heart began to race. The irregularly shaped eyelashes transformed into shadowy shapes that began to devour each other.
The Captain’s actions had significantly changed this battle of gods. Then, the shadow form of the Captain sped back to the wriggling blue worm, merged into it, then appeared back by Xu Qing.
“These dreams of human nature are going to make that shrew Crimson Mother suffer!” the Captain said proudly.
It was at that exact same moment that Emperor Ancient Spirit chose to come out of concealment. This time, he wasn’t just a single eye. He was a host of blood-soaked eyes, all of them pulsing with greed as they shot toward the blurry vortex above. As he entered it, the vortex acquired another color.
With hīm in the vortex, the image blurred even further, but at the same time, coalesced into a more cohesive scene. The fleshy feather form of Crimson Mother was visible. The antlered Moonfire was there. Starfire was also present. Starfire, though somewhat different in appearance than before, hadn’t changed as dramatically as Crimson Mother and Moonfire, and was still incredibly charming. Most noteworthy was Li Zihua. From beginning to end, he had maintained the same form. Just now, he had lifted his right hand and pointed out toward nothing.
The Moon Palace trembled as an enormous, shadowy figure smashed through the barriers of space-time to arrive in the canopy of heaven. It was an enormous flame beast, with the body of a horse, the head of a crocodile and the tail of a dragon. A sea of flames spread out beneath its feet, and its eyes shone with incredible majesty. The ancient aura that spread out from it was full of the lineaments of natural and magical laws.
Next, a second similar beast appeared. This one was a headless giant with two pitch-black eyes on its chest. Radiating a sense of fury, it carried an entire sea on its back as it stomped forward. It also emanated a profoundly ancient aura.
After that came a third, fourth, and fifth beast.... And more continued, all of them pulsing with ancient auras as they showed up one after another in the sky. They included solemn humanoid figures, seemingly illusory netherworld souls, and golden magical symbols. There were all manner of ferocious nonhumans that seemed no weaker than gods.... They just kept popping into being until there were a total of ninety-nine of them.
“Ancient heavenly daos!” the Captain growled. The dome of heaven seethed with the arrival of the ninety-nine ancient heavenly daos. And then, another one appeared.
It was a huge baby, crawling on hands and knees.... The baby whimpered, though it sounded like thunderclaps. Tears leaked out of the corners of its eyes, which dripped down its face and nose like rain, then fell to create puddles beneath it. It was crawling from some distance away.
When the Captain saw the huge baby, his eyes shone brightly, and he turned to look at Xu Qing. Xu Qing also noticed the huge baby, and all of a sudden, his eyes gleamed with a strange light.
“Son?” the two of them said at the same time.
Deathblade's Thoughts
Many thanks to muchysio and Azakinu for the reviews!