Volume One, Chapter Ninety: The Madness of Tu Zhe

Chapter Ninety: Tu Zhe's Madness

Tu Zhe drove himself to his utmost speed, chasing in the direction Doggie had been flung.

Not far from where the wormhole had exploded, a dazzling spear-shadow transformed into a heavenly god with his hands clasped behind his back. His pitiless eyes followed Tu Zhe as he pursued Doggie. He did not strike again, merely sneering:

"So anyone dares to traverse my Three Enclosures Star Domain at will? If I do not teach you a lesson, will you truly think the Heavenly Spear is some toy for amusement? Xuan Ge, would you not agree?"

Behind the Heavenly Spear stood another tall and majestic general, together with countless heavenly soldiers and generals.

This general was called Xuan Ge. He and the Heavenly Spear were legendary divine weapons of the Purple Forbidden Enclosure. Both had cultivated themselves into beings of heaven-defying power, awakened their own consciousness, and could shift freely between weapon-form and human form. Within the Three Enclosures, the Four Symbols, and the Twenty-Eight Mansions, whoever dared defy the will of the Heavenly Spear and Xuan Ge—be he Great Emperor or God-King—would face their merciless assault.

In the endless void, amid measureless darkness, Tu Zhe locked onto Doggie with his divine sense and hurled himself forward with all his strength. Though his overall power was already comparable to a God-King, and his divine sense alone was no weaker than that of an ordinary Great Emperor, he had never learned any special art of flight. His speed was indeed greater than that of an average God-King, but not by much.

How great was the force of the wormhole explosion? It had blasted Doggie far into the infinite depths, as swift as a meteor or a bolt of lightning. In the blink of an eye, she was already becoming blurred in the distance.

As he flew, Tu Zhe muttered over and over, Doggie, you must be all right... you must...

He had no time now to think about why Trishna had hesitated for that single instant just as she was about to seize Doggie.

If not for that hesitation, how could Doggie have been blown away by the shards of space-time?

His hatred for Trishna had already reached the heavens. He longed to tear her to pieces that very moment. But where could he find the time for that now?

Within the millions upon millions of kilometers covered by his divine sense, Doggie was still moving farther and farther away from him. Yet she had not entirely slipped beyond his lock.

But if he could not catch hold of her before she left the range of his divine sense, then she would keep hurtling onward along some unknown path until death claimed her.

Tu Zhe hardly dared imagine what would happen then.

He could not lose Doggie, just as Doggie could not lose him. At that moment he bitterly hated himself for not having learned some spatial divine art like the Great Shift of Heaven and Earth before setting out. But he knew as well that he had only been born a few days ago, and there was a boundless sea of things he needed to learn. Yet where had the time been?

Tu Zhe was on the brink of madness. He poured all his power into his legs, wanting to crush the infinite void beneath his step and stride straight to Doggie's side.

But he could not do it. All his tears and howls were flung rapidly behind him; all his fury and grief flooded his heart.

No—

This could not go on. If it did, he would lose Doggie forever.

So what if it was a shockwave? So what if that shockwave was faster than he was?

Fine.

Then I will create a shockwave of my own and see whose is stronger!

At that moment, the crazed Tu Zhe made an even madder decision.

With his divine sense, he drew a supreme emperor-grade Brahma crystal from his Sumeru ring.

It was not that he could not bear to use a king-grade divine crystal. He simply judged that no matter how violent the wormhole's explosion had been, it could not possibly have equaled the force of one hundred and twenty minor worlds.

So he chose an upper emperor-grade Brahma crystal—one containing the power of thirty minor worlds.

He intended to detonate it and use the shockwave from its explosion to hurl himself to Doggie's side in an instant.

He scarcely spared a thought to whether the instantaneous detonation of an emperor-grade crystal with the power of thirty minor worlds would blow him to pieces.

He wrapped the emperor-grade crystal in his divine sense. With the soul-force of a heavenly god, he compressed it in an instant, creating immense pressure and tension within its internal structure.

The moment Tu Zhe ignited it with the fire of his soul, a terrifying explosion erupted behind him. The dark vacuum was lit in a blaze, and the immense shockwave instantly flung him toward Doggie.

He did not even feel that the monstrous force had blasted his body full of holes, turning it into something like a honeycomb. Before losing consciousness, he finally smiled.

Because at last, Doggie was in his arms.

Inside the Sumeru ring, Trishna sat as if her soul had left her body, dazed and empty-eyed, staring at her own toes without saying a word.

As the eldest of the Three Witches, she was the sort who dared to act and dared to bear the consequences, who loved fiercely and hated fiercely, the unquestioned leader among them.

Her absent trance was certainly not because the transmission passage had exploded, but because of that kick from Tu Zhe.

That kick had sent her into the ring. She was safe, yet in that instant her heart had turned to ash.

Why had she hesitated at the very moment she was about to catch Doggie?

Was it deliberate? Instinctive?

Was it revenge for Doggie's endless clamoring? Or had some inexpressible impulse been at work?

How could I have hesitated?

No matter how spoiled and difficult Doggie was, she was still Tu Zhe's little sister.

That kick of his had surely been delivered in hatred. But why had he not kicked me out into the void, but into the ring instead?

He hated me so much. There was such force in that kick that it nearly shattered my hip.

And yet he still had not kicked me into the vacuum.

Then does that mean I killed Doggie?

Am I truly the murderer?

Did I really, in my heart, want Doggie dead?

Ahhh—no—

At this time, Tu Zhe was still flying through the vacuum with Doggie in his arms. The shockwaves from both the transmission passage and the emperor-grade Brahma crystal were still carrying them onward. Yet neither Tu Zhe nor Doggie was breathing any longer.

The power of that emperor-grade Brahma crystal was equivalent to the combined strike of thirty Great Emperors. That Tu Zhe had not been blasted into drifting ash was only because of his cultivation within the Heart of the Lotus, where he had absorbed an immense quantity of Brahma energy. In the span of a mere hundred years, that energy had tempered his body into something like fine steel, fierce and formidable as a demon's flesh.

By now, no one knew how far Tu Zhe and Doggie had flown through the void. Hundreds of millions of kilometers? Tens of thousands of light-years?

Perhaps even farther.

After an unknown length of time, faint starlight finally appeared in the dark vacuum. Tu Zhe and Doggie streaked like meteors toward a dim planet.

The planet was wrapped in a thin veil of Brahma energy. The moment they plunged into it, violent friction arose, and their bodies seemed to burst into flame. Like twin fireballs, they plummeted toward the surface below.

At that very moment, on the planet where Tu Zhe and Doggie were falling, a group of people stood in formation.

Though they were drawn up in ranks, to call them a heavenly army would have been laughable.

Look at them: bodies of every shape, the old and the young mixed together, men and women jumbled without distinction, garments of every possible kind, weapons of uneven length, armor tattered and broken, banners... no, there were no banners at all.

There were a few heavenly horses serving as mounts, but those steeds were no better. One man had one while another did not; they were lean and gaunt, their ribs plainly visible, their coats dull, mottled, and disorderly—as though even the horses had brought shame upon the name of heavenly horse.

And yet, looking at this near-barren planet, at the sparse little clumps of immortal grass scattered across the earth—if such things could even be called immortal grass—and feeling the faint, elusive traces of Brahma energy in the air, anyone who yearned passionately for ascension would likely be bitterly disappointed to learn this was Heaven.

But Heaven it was.

This was one of the more remote among ten planets near the median line between the Kui Mansion and the Bi Mansion.

These ten planets had been set aside specifically for raising horses for the armies of the Three Enclosures Heavenly Court, and so this small star region was called the Heavenly Stables.