Sage Monarch (Sage Emperor)

“Light-Year Lightning Bolt!”

Seeing her attack fail, Brahma Echo-Silk resorted to a different move. This was no magical treasure attack, but a true trump card that summoned an enormous lightning bolt, a river of pure light that stabbed toward Yang Qi in a most piercing attack.

When it hit him, he trembled physically. Nodding, he said, “That’s a bit stronger. Unfortunately, it’s still not enough to do anything to me. What else do you have up your sleeve?”

“Flip Heaven, Invert Earth!” Brahma Echo-Silk suddenly began spinning like a top, causing everything in the area to flip and invert. Yet Yang Qi was still unaffected.

“Preheaven Eight Trigrams!” She threw her hands out to control an eight trigrams symbol that descended from above. Clearly, it was quite a drain on her quintessence energy. But Yang Qi hardly even looked at the symbol falling onto him. He exhaled, causing a sharp sword to appear that slashed through the eight trigrams symbol.

“Greater Millstone of Heaven and Earth!” The eight trigrams transformed, becoming an enormous millstone that sought to crush Yang Qi into dust.

In response, he simply sent his true energy to meet it and the millstone shattered.

“Clouds in the Azure Heaven; Water in the Bottle!” [1]

Flying upward, Brahma Echo-Silk reached out and a jade bottle appeared in her hand. She tipped it over and Azure Heaven Empyrean Energy poured out, filled with white clouds and divine water, like an enormous sea that rushed toward Yang Qi.

“Be suppressed!” Yang Qi said. Spatial fluctuations rolled out in all directions, suppressing everything they touched. The clouds and water vanished, and after a breath of time passed, Brahma Echo-Silk’s bottle collapsed into fragments.

“Alright, you've gone through plenty of moves already. That Clouds in the Azure Heaven; Water in the Bottle is a boundless energy art from the ancient Azure Heaven God. Who would have thought that you actually cultivate more than one godly-class energy art? The heterogeneous true energy really doesn’t cause a problem for you? Seems the constitution of an Enlightened One is quite useful, although it still doesn’t measure up to me. Come, let’s sit and talk. If you refuse to be reasonable, then don’t blame me for doing to you what I did to Brahma Erudite. I’ll kill you and take your Enlightened constitution, if I have to.”

“What? You killed Brahma Erudite?” Brahma Echo-Silk’s eyes flickered. “But he was a Heaven Moving One. If he wanted to flee, he could escape with speed unmatchable in heaven and earth.”

“Compared to me, he wasn't fast at all,” Yang Qi said coolly. “And it will be the same for you if you try to run. So for now, sit there quietly and don’t try anything funny.”

Brahma Echo-Silk had just been preparing to use a powerful magical treasure to try to make her escape, but considering what Yang Qi had said, she quickly abandoned the idea.

‘If I had known things would end up like this, I would never have come here. This guy is so strong! I don’t even think my uncle would be a threat to him. He definitely surpasses Incarnated Gods. No wonder he knows so many secrets about the Brahman Immortal World. Could it be that he really wants to help me?’

At this point, she finally changed her mind.

Dropping down to sit in front of Yang Qi, she said, “Fine, Yang Qi. I can tell that you’re strong enough to overpower me. But that doesn’t make you strong enough to tackle the Brahman Immortal World, or the future world. Do you know how strong the future world is? Creating virtual godhood is nothing to them. Did you know that their most powerful photonic computers can likely create true godhood?”

“True godhood? In that case you’re talking about actual gods, and they’re invincible. Even Lesser Gods could crush all of the immortal worlds out of existence. I really doubt that the leader of the future world can create true godhood. He needs something else before he could do that, and I'd say it’s highly likely that’s why he’s orchestrating this invasion.”

“He needs something?” Brahma Echo-Silk’s eyes flickered with surprise. “You know what he's after, don't you? If the future world gets it, then we’ll all fall under its rule. We’ll be slaves for all eternity.”

“Yes, I know what he’s after. The God Legion Seal.” As Brahma Echo-Silk’s eyes widened with visible shock, he continued, “The God Legion Seal exists in three parts. One is in the primeval era, one is here in the present, and one is in the hands of the leader of the future world. If the leader of the future world can get a second part, then for all intents and purposes he would have succeeded in getting all three.”

“How do you know all this?” she asked, clearly confused about how he could be privy to such information.

“Because I assimilated a Future One,” he replied. Obviously, he wasn’t going to casually reveal that he had a God Legion Seal. Smiling, he continued, “That Future One’s memories told me quite a bit of information. In fact, I've even seen what the future world looks like. Now, I have a question for you. Who is Proud Heaven?”

“Proud Heaven? He's very important in the future world, probably one of the chief elders in the empire. And he's close to the level of the legion of gods. If he hasn’t broken through to the Deathless Throne already, he soon will. The fact that his divine likeness can give out virtual godhood further goes to show that he’s anything but ordinary.”

“I see,” Yang Qi said. “So, how did you trick the divine likeness?”

“Well, that….” Brahma Echo-Silk initially wasn’t sure how to respond. But then her eyes glittered and she said, “Hold on, I remember you now, Yang Qi. You’re Proud Heaven’s son! I remember looking over your information once. Proud Heaven sent a clone to the mortal world looking for someone with a special constitution. A Fateless One. That’s one of the top two or three of the three thousand constitutions, of roughly equal standing with the Fortuned One and the Eternal Ones. Your mother’s name is Greensura, isn’t it? She's not very important in the big scheme of things, but I imagine she’s very important to you. Someone matching her description was seen in one of the parliament of elders’ secret meetings some time ago.”

“What?” Yang Qi blurted in astonishment. “Don’t tell me mother is in the Brahman Immortal World!”

“No, how could that be possible?” Brahma Echo-Silk replied carefully. “It was back when the parliament of elders was communicating with the future world. Normally speaking, it takes a huge amount of power and resources to send someone to the future world, but somehow they sent her into the space-time passageway, never to be seen again. I can't attest to the details, because I wasn’t there to see it happen. But after I reached the Godmyth level, I got access to certain privileged information.”

“I see….” Yang Qi thought, his heart pounding, ‘Proud Heaven will use any means possible to get at me, fair or foul. He actually did send my mother to the future world, knowing that once I found out, I would follow, essentially handing myself over to him. Of course, I speculated from the very beginning that this was the case, and I knew that I would eventually end up going to the future world. My Master is probably there as well, and Aunt Susu. If they were still in the present, my Wheel of Fate would have told me—even if they were dead.’

“What do you think, Yang Qi?” Brahma Echo-Silk said. “I know a thing or two about you, just as you know something about me. But why exactly do you want to work together? Do you really just want to get your hands on some pure virtual godhood? If that’s what you want, I can tell you right now that it’s impossible. Not even I could do the same thing again right now. It took me years to first become a child of Brahma, then more years to perform all of the services and get all the rewards that I needed before I made my move. If you’re thinking about trying to get virtual godhood for your subordinates, you might as well forget about it. There’s no way Proud Heaven’s divine likeness would allow that much manufactured virtual godhood to be sent here from the future world.”

He was actually fairly certain she was right. If Proud Heaven’s divine likeness continued to dole out virtual godhood, the people in the future world would notice. ‘I guess the main priority right now is to ruin the future world’s invasion plans. Afterward, I’ll have to figure out a way to mask my God Legion Seal and go to the future world. After all, it wouldn’t do to have the leader of the future world detect me as soon as I arrived, and there’s no way I’m a match for him now.’

“I'm not dead set on getting more virtual godhood,” Yang Qi said. “Truth be told, my main goal right now is to wreck the future world’s invasion plan. Then I might try to use the space-time passageway to take a trip of my own to the future world. What do you think?”

“You want to go to the future world? I’ve considered the same thing myself. If we did so, we would gain the constitution of Past Ones, which would tremendously improve our cultivation bases. It seems our goals really do coincide. Unfortunately, we don’t have very much time. The Brahman Immortal World plans to upgrade to a higher level in only a few months. When that happens, it will become, at a minimum, a tenth ranked immortal world. It’s possible that it could even reach the fifteenth rank. And of course, that process will cause all the core leaders in the Brahman Immortal World to advance by leaps and bounds. That includes me. Considering how much power and energy that will take, the future world will be at its weakest in that moment and it will be the perfect time to stop the invasion and go to the future world.”

“How exactly do you plan to do all that?” Yang Qi said, not willing to simply trust her immediately. “Tell me. Who are you really? You're not Brahma Echo-Silk, that’s for sure. I'm going to guess that you possessed Brahma Echo-Silk, making you a clone or a doppelgänger.”

“You’re right. I'm actually from the thirteenth ranked Glorious Treasure Heaven. And yes, I'm a Fraudulent One. You can call me Goddess Treasure. It’s all thanks to my Fraudulent powers that I was able to possess Brahma Echo-Silk without anyone being the wiser. My true self is currently in secluded cultivation. If I came here with my true body, then as an Incarnated God I don't think you would have an easy time dealing with me.”

1. “Clouds in the azure heaven; water in the bottle” is originally a line of poetry from the Tang Dynasty philosopher and writer Li Ao.