Chapter 374: Please Speak Politely
Zhu Yao glanced at the dim surroundings. The place that they were currently in was extremely desolate, and sinister winds blew. Various terrifying and strange noises could be heard. Sometimes, they sounded sharp, while sometimes, they sounded low, and one’s skin would crawl just by hearing them. She thought that she had once again returned to the Netherworld.

There was a green barrier surrounding them, and occasionally, there would be hazy shadows bumping into it, emitting out sharp noises.

“Master, this place is… the lower third floor?” The style changed too quickly, didn’t it?

“No.” Yu Yan shook his head, and his expression sank. “Upper first floor.”

“What?” Zhu Yao was stunned for a moment. “Didn’t we just exit the lower second floor?” Why were they in the upper first floor now? There were exactly eight floors between them!

“I am uncertain of the cause either.” He frowned. He took out the jade tablet they received from the Amway Hall back then, and the words “Upper First Floor” were indeed written on it. “When we crossed floors back then, all of us fell into our heart demon tribulations. Your master was the first to awaken. Most likely, people who pass the heart demon tribulations would be randomly sent to other floors.”

So they could actually skip levels! Zhu Yao looked around and saw that there were other Deities as well. Some were lying on the ground unmoving, while there were some who had already woken up and were hesitatingly and uneasily looking at those shadows outside. Though, without a single exception, everyone had a layer of translucent barrier surrounding each one of them. The colours, however, were different. Some were red, some were green, and some were yellow. There were still a row of words above each of their heads – Unknown Deity (Level 10).

Level 10! The hell! All of them are high-leveled players.

“Master, they…” Just as Zhu Yao was about to speak up, she raised her head and was stunned. A row of words were floating above her master’s head as well. Yu Yan (Level 10).

Why was she able to see his now!? Was being too levelled the reason why she couldn’t see it back then?

She hurriedly turned to look at Yue Ying. A string of words was also written above his head. Yue Ying (Level ??)

“…” What’s with those two question marks?

“Dongfang girly, you’re awake!” A surprised voice sounded. Nangong Cheng ran over with heavy steps. Next to him was Zhonggu Lu who had already completely recovered his muscular features.

“Hi, Little Huang, Little Teal.” Zhu Yao waved her hand and greeted.

“Little…” The corner of Nangong Cheng’s lips twitched. As though he had accepted his fate, he sighed. “Nevermind, Little Huang it is then! Dongfang girly, you two have taken too long to fight off your heart demon tribulations. It’s been an entire month. You two worried us to death.”

“Hoho, sorry for the trouble.” Zhu Yao smiled. She turned to look at Yue Ying who was obediently sitting at the side, and did not explain much about it either. “Oh right, where did the two of you go?”

Nangong Cheng’s expression turned stern. He took few steps forward and hinted them to sit, before he spoke in a serious tone. “I went to listen in some information. This place is indeed the upper first floor, but it’s different from the upper floors from legends.”

“What’s different?” Zhu Yao asked.

Nangong Cheng and his good homosexual friend Zhonggu Lu exchanged glances, their expressions turned heavy. After a moment, he said. “Everyone believed that the Lightning Divine Tower is split between the lower ten floors and upper ten floors. However, from the situation that I managed to gather, it’s different in actuality. The upper floors do not have ten floors.”

“There aren’t ten floors? What do you mean?”

“People that enter the upper ten floors are not able to return to the lower floors, and they will lose the opportunity to exit the tower as well. This is something that you all are aware of, right?”

Zhu Yao nodded.

“Actually, no one knows about the situation in the upper ten floors. The people in the lower ten floors basically aren’t able to find out. Everyone thought that the upper floors would be similar to the lower floors and be split to ten floors. However, in actual fact, there’s only a single floor in the upper layer.”

Zhu Yao and her master were both stunned. After a moment, Yu Yan said. “You’re saying that the God Realm is above this floor?”

“That’s right!” Nangong Cheng nodded. He pointed far towards the horizon in front of him. “Do you see that light?”

After looking closely in the horizon, there was indeed a glowing vertical line that shot straight upwards towards the sky. It was as if it was splitting the sky into two halves. Because it was so faraway, all they could see from here was a thin line.

“That’s the passageway to the God Realm.” He continued. “From here, it’s about several hundred kilometers away. As long as we reach that place, we can head straight towards the God Realm.”

“Several hundred kilometers.” Zhu Yao’s heart shook. They were going straight for the peak of the tower over here. “That’s not far either.” If they were to fly on their swords, they wouldn’t even need an hour.

“It’s not far!” Nangong Cheng’s eyes opened wide, his face looked strange. As though he had thought of something, he turned to look at Yu Yan and said. “Didn’t you tell her?”

Yu Yan shook his head. “Not yet.”

“What do you mean?” What kind of secret are you guys keeping?

“Dongfang girly, haven’t you tried sensing the divine energy in your body?”

“Sensing div… the hell!” Zhu Yao tried sensing, and then she began to feel uncomfortable all over. Her cultivation and divine energy were still present, but… she couldn’t use them!

Nangong Cheng had a bitter look. “From here to where that Light of Guidance is, we aren’t able to use any mystic arts in the area. That’s why… we have no choice but to walk there.”

“…” Are we going back to the stone age now? This entire floor is a mystic arts restricted zone!

No wait!

“If we can’t use mystic arts, then what about these barriers?” She pointed at the green translucent barriers that were surrounding her and the rest of the people.

“Nascent Divided Pearls.” Yu Yan took over. “When we came up, the Nascent Divided Pearls that we gathered before automatically opened up barriers. Every Nascent Divided Pearl can sustain the barrier for about half a day. If the barrier is destroyed…”

Before he could even finish, a scream suddenly sounded from the side. A Level 10 Deity not far away was currently rolling on the ground, covered in fresh blood. Surrounding him were a bunch of shadows, which constantly crashed into him. With every shadow slicing through, a piece of his meat would be torn off. Though he was resisting against them with all his might, he could not block the horde of shadows that could already cover the sky itself.

The blood on-site made it look like a very terrifying zombie film. A living Deity was dismembered right in front of them just like that. Zhu Yao could not help but take a step forward, but was stopped by Yu Yan. “It’s too late!”

Yu Yan then pulled her over, covered her ears with his two hands, and sank her in his embrace. As expected, the noises from over there disappeared a short while later.

Zhu Yao felt that her heart was suffocating.

“Haah… This is already the third one.” Nangong Cheng sighed. “The moment the barrier disappears, we will be attacked by the surrounding shadows. We don’t even know what those shadows are. We can only hope that the barrier can block them.”

“How many more Nascent Divided Pearls do we have?” Yu Yan asked.

When they were in the lower third floor back then, in order to prevent the scenario where they had to gather even more quest items, they intentionally gathered a little more.

“About a dozen.” Nangong Cheng said. “When everyone fell into their own heart demons, we had used up more than half of them. The remaining ones can only sustain us for five more days or so. However, from this place to that Light of Guidance, ten days of travel is required.”

“In other words, we will be attacked by those shadows if we simply sit here. However, the moment we get out, if we don’t reach our destination within five days, we will be in danger?”

“Mn!” Nangong Cheng nodded with an anxious look. “I don’t know we should approach this either, and thus wanted to discuss with you people about it.”

Zhu Yao sank into silence for a moment. They were truly caught in a dilemma now. She turned to look at the person at the side who hadn’t spoke all this while. “Yue Ying, what do you think?”

Yue Ying was startled, as though he never thought that Zhu Yao would ask for his opinion and was dumbfounded. Looking at the surrounding eyes that were sweeping towards him, he lowered his head a little anxiously. After a moment, he said. “Head… Heading out, will provide us the opportunity to live. Also, I have a feeling that… there must be a reason behind the appearances of these shadows. If we can figure it out, we might be fine after that.”

“I have the same thoughts as well!” Nangong Cheng happily slapped his thighs and said. “Rather than waiting here for our deaths, why don’t we take a gamble and head out? What do you guys think?”

“I don’t have any objections!” Zhonggu Lu said nonchalantly.

Yu Yan nodded as well.

“Then let us be off! In order to save our Nascent Divided Pearls, it’s best we move together.” Zhu Yao immediately stood up. She turned around and glanced at the person who was still sitting on the ground. “Let’s go, Yue Ying.”

Stunned for a moment, he then hurriedly nodded his head and stood up. In those pair of deep eyes, a slightly different luster shone.

——————————

After speaking their minds, Zhu Yao felt that Yue Ying was slowly becoming different. The eyes he had when looking at others now carried a degree of sincerity. He was no longer someone with bottomless and incomprehensible thoughts, where she couldn’t figure out what he was thinking like before. The reason why he had such deep obsession for her was most likely because of the influence of his memories of his past life as Shao Bai. When she picked him up for the first time back then, he must already possessed a few of his memory fragments, and thus wanted to stick to her no matter what. After that, when he became a Devil, most likely, he had completely remembered it all at that time. However, what struck him the most in his memories, was actually the matter where she forcefully sent him into the World Crossing Door. That was why he was so mindful that she would throw him aside.

And it was exactly because of this, that no matter how much she tried to reason with him, and no matter how much she spoke to him, he basically did not take them to heart at all. He, who turned into a Devil because of his obsession, had always lived in the memories of his past life.

Zhu Yao felt that the current Yue Ying was off to a great start. At the very least, he was willing to present his true self, and was sincerely willing to listen to her words. He was learning to become a good child, and not ignore everything in his surroundings. With how he was able to walk out on his own now, Zhu Yao felt that as long as he interact more with others, everything would be better. After all, be it shutting himself in or his obsession, the root of everything was his lack of interaction with others.

However, interaction seemed to be… a little difficult for Yue Ying.

“I say, Daoist Ximen…” Nangong Cheng said passionately. “You don’t speak very often, so I never expected that your thoughts would be similar to mine! The more I look at you, the more intimate I feel! Oh right, so your real name is actually Yue Ying!”

“…” Yue Ying was expressionless.

“You guys are really too much, to even go to the extent of using fake names.”

“…”

“The three of you are all from Lightning Divine Palace, right? Why do the two of them have ‘Yu’ as their Daoist title, while you’re called Yue Ying?”

“…”

“Dongfang girly calls Daoist Beichen master. Looking at your age, you can’t possibly be Daoist Beichen’s grand disciple, right?”

“…”

“Eh? Daoist Yue, why are you walking so quickly? There’s nothing much going on right now anyway, so why don’t we chat about Dongfang girly?”

“…”

“Oh right! Are you married? Do you have a partner? Mingling with the two of them everyday must be really hard, right? I understand!”

“…”

“But don’t you worry, there might be many Goddesses waiting for us in the God Realm, you know! We can’t give up! You think so too, right?”

“…”

“I wonder what Daoist Yue’s preference is? Let me tell you a secret. Even though my true form is a mammal, I like those with wings.”

“…”

“Let me tell you this! Every winged female beast…”

Yue Ying’s feet stopped abruptly. As though he had truly been annoyed by his questions, he sent him a cold glance and in an instant, killing intent filled the surroundings. “Scram!”

“…” Nangong Cheng was stunned. What happened to him now?

Zhu Yao had no choice but to smooth things over and nudge the person who was driven crazy by the questions. “Yue Ying, talk nicely.”

Yue Ying’s killing intent sizzled, and he immediately changed to another manner of speaking. “Shut up!”

“You can’t be that fierce. Try again.”

“How do you want to die?”

“… A little more politely.”

“Please go and die!”

“… A little more tactful.”

“You lowly beast, don’t speak to me. Given my race’s esteemed status and bloodline, I am not someone you can afford to speak to. If you dare to utter even a single word more, if you have two legs, I will break your two legs, and if you have four, I will break all four of them. Do you understand?”

Zhu Yao: “…”

Yu Yan: “…”

Little Teal: “…”

Nangong Cheng: “…” His heart suddenly began to ache painfully! Dongfang girly, are you certain you’re not here to make things worse?