After finishing their tour of the shuttlecraft factory, Yvette led the two of them through the tal gate that slid open automatically and out onto the road.
After years of repairs, Ish City now presented a curious blend of old and new.
The ruins that remained relatively intact had all been treated with anti-corrosion coatings. Dark green vines climbed along the cracks in the walls, twining together with exposed, broken rebar and concrete, creating a lively, ruined-tropolis sort of aesthetic.
As for places that had been completely destroyed, they’d been cleared and turned into all kinds of functional zones, from industrial production and warehouse storage to magic-plant cultivation—everything was here.
Walking along the road toward the central manor, Tertia and Shuanghua both fell quiet, silently taking in the scenery around them. Alongside curiosity, there was also tension in their brows.
Clearly, both of them had realized that this was the very land where, seven hundred years ago, their teacher had lived and studied alongside their Grandmaster.
That realization made their mood take on a touch of pilgrimage-like solemnity and reverence.
“You’re free to move around on the island,” Yvette reminded them, “but don’t go into the sea.”
The Abyssal North Sea was the domain of one of the Nine Monarchs—the King of the Ocean Depths.
Whether the Witch of Finality had resurrected or not was still unknown, but the King of the Ocean Depths was a very real top-tier powerhouse.
She was sure the King of the Ocean Depths knew that Ish Island was her territory. Since they’d tacitly chosen “you stay in your lane, I’ll stay in mine,” there was no need to stir up trouble.
As for how strong the King of the Ocean Depths actually was, Yvette had no idea. Her only point of comparison was the Shadow King, Veris.
The awkward part was that Veris’s divine realm could block information.
Back then, she’d lacked experience and had fired back with tons of mana and Aberrant Mana, only for it all to hit nothing but air. She hadn’t felt the other side even once, and then, feeling pretty spooked, she’d simply turned tail and run.
So she’d never really had a direct, head-on clash with Veris. The situation was more like a battle royale ga: you’re standing in a pitch-black open field, suddenly getting shot several tis from who-knows-where, panic-firing wildly in all directions, then jumping into a vehicle and speeding away.
It was really such a pity.
Tertia and Shuanghua imdiately agreed. They were full of curiosity about the Land of Finality, but they also knew how dangerous this place was. Even True Gods steered clear of it; naturally, they wouldn’t go strutting around either.
“Grandmaster, what’s the relationship between the Land of Finality and the Ultra-ancient Civilization?” Tertia asked.
“I don’t know,” Yvette said, shaking her head.
She had so conjectures about the two worlds on the level of ti and space—things like Möbius strips—but those hypotheses lacked solid evidence and were more like simple, intuitive guesses.
“So parts feel very similar,” Tertia said, staring at the remains of those ruined high-rises, “but they’re clearly not the sa style.”
Yvette knew exactly what she ant. According to the records, the Ultra-ancient Civilization ruins discovered so far didn’t look as “sci-fi” as the Origin Civilization. They felt more like a fusion of primitive nature and high-level magitech, often carrying a sort of religious divinity and lacking personal, individualized expression.
Whether the two sides were related at all, and if so, how, was an incredibly hard question to pin down.
They passed through a kiloter-long corridor draped in wisteria blossoms, and ten-odd minutes later, Yvette led her two grand-disciples back to the central manor, where they saw Ice Rain lying on a lounge chair, seriously reading so kind of handwritten journal.
This was the main reason she’d brought them back ho. The church’s future developnt would largely depend on Ice Rain, this “God of Machines” overseeing the big picture, so naturally they had to let her and these key mbers get acquainted to make future communication and task assignnts easier.
On Ice Rain’s side, after Yvette’s introduction, she quickly hit it off with Tertia and Shuanghua. The three of them got along splendidly.
To her, being alone on the island was terribly boring. Now that she finally had new friends to keep her company, of course she was thrilled. Plus, these two were juniors who greeted her with respectful cries of “Senior” the mont they t, which made her feel like a mature, reliable elder. That was even more to her taste.
After that, Yvette left Shuanghua—whose social anxiety was acting up so badly she looked about ready to lt into a puddle on the spot—at the manor to keep this sunny extrovert Ice Rain company, chatting and playing. anwhile, Yvette had Tertia bring her into the Knowledge Divine Realm. She planned to see how this place differed from Shuanghua’s Snowwind Divine Realm.
It wasn’t her first ti here, but floating in this vast, boundless space and looking at the spectacular sight of what seed like countless libraries stacked and extending infinitely in all directions, Yvette still found herself a little awed. She took her ti admiring it before finally asking, “Where does your divine realm rank among divine-realm experts?”
“It’s said the Night Demon King’s divine realm is also enormous, but ever since the previous Demon King died, I’ve never fought the current Demon King, the Demon Marshal, or the First Demon General, so I don’t know much about them,” Tertia said, pursing her lips, her tone unable to hide a hint of pride. “Limiting it to the Radiant Continent, there shouldn’t be anything larger than the Knowledge Divine Realm.”
“You’re number one on the Eastern Continent?” Yvette asked.
“Probably,” Tertia said, looking at Yvette. Her eyes behind the lenses shone brightly, the implication in them all too obvious.
“Your teacher would be proud of you,” Yvette said.
Hearing her Grandmaster ntion her teacher, Tertia’s eyes dimd a little, but that emotion quickly sank back down. She went on, “What about you?”
“Sa,” Yvette said.
“That’s good.” Tertia smiled faintly. Her outfit was rather plain—a simple, solid-colored robe and underskirt like so literary girl who didn’t know how to dress up—but perhaps because her identity had suddenly dropped a generation, every frown and smile of hers carried an unexpectedly bright, youthful air, a little different from usual.
She pushed up her glasses and gave a small wave. A thick book quickly flew out from one of the floating bookshelves and landed in her arms.
Yvette knew this was her divine realm Authority—the Book Without Words.
The bigger the divine realm, the more massive the divine arts system that Authority could hold. And when it ca to divine arts, Tertia’s repertoire truly eclipsed the world.
Even Shuanghua, the dignified Snow Emperor, only had a set of a dozen or so divine arts combined into her Snowwind divine arts. When sparring with Yvette, she just cycled through that handful of moves over and over. It was like bosses in those soul-gas—once you’d seen all the moves and all the fast and slow swings enough tis, you could practically recite the entire pattern.
Tertia’s divine arts reserves, however, were terrifyingly vast—nearly a hundred different divine arts. In any situation, she could pull out a solution: from raw firepower to utility support, everything existed. She was almost flawless.
And as it happened, Yvette was not far behind her in this regard.
The 16w-spec super spell patterns she used were essentially divine arts that could be parsed and compiled. And she had a lot of those. She could even fight while letting the “spell-structure engine” in her soul-brain interface help her handcraft new ones on the fly.
She had no idea what their future sparring would look like.
Both sides constantly countering each move with a move of their own, forming so kind of loop, then fighting for ten thousand years?
Yvette’s examination of Tertia’s divine realm went on for several hours.
In the end, she did indeed discover so subtleties.
It was just like a big single-player ga where everything beyond the map the player can move around in is just background textures.
Tertia’s Knowledge Divine Realm looked like a super-library: layer upon layer, stacking and stretching into infinity. But there simply weren’t enough books in the world to fill a spherical space with a radius of at least sixty or seventy kiloters.
So once she approached the realm’s edge, Yvette found that many of the books on the shelves were duplicates. Their function was mostly to set the mood.
She wasn’t surprised. The divine realm’s scenery existed to help with understanding nature and deepening one’s grasp of divine arts. Focusing on atmosphere was perfectly normal.
It just left Tertia feeling a little embarrassed.
Seeing her pride take a hit, Yvette said, “Want to spar with a bit?”
Tertia froze for a mont. “Grandmaster, do you an… you want to fight ?” she asked uncertainly.
Yvette nodded. “You know that you, Shuanghua, and I are all different from each other. Since you’re one of the top experts in the divine realm, sparring with you will help gauge my own state, using you as a reference.”
Tertia understood imdiately. Shuanghua had already told her about the Grandmaster’s special traits. Shuanghua had even offered her own conclusion—that Grandmaster had probably fallen from the True God realm, and the ability to create multiple divine realms might well be one of the capabilities at the True God level.
Tertia agreed strongly, though not for that reason. For her, the key evidence was how, during their first eting more than half a year ago, Grandmaster had left her Knowledge Divine Realm without relying on any domain at all, silently and without leaving a trace. Back then, she’d felt it had to be so kind of True God–level law at work. Now, Shuanghua’s assessnt only reinforced her guess.
But whether she’d fallen or not didn’t affect Tertia’s eagerness for this spar in the slightest. After all, she was already the person on the Eastern Continent most qualified to face a True God head-on. Her respect for Grandmaster ca from the bottom of her heart, but she didn’t believe she would lose.
She even felt she had to win. If she couldn’t even beat a Grandmaster who had fallen, how was she supposed to defeat a True God and beco one herself?
“How much strength do you want to use?” she asked.
“All of it,” Yvette said.
Tertia hesitated. “Even the Book Without Words?” she asked.
“Use it,” Yvette said.
Her first spar with Shuanghua had also been fought with Shuanghua using the Snow Emperor Staff and going all out—yet Shuanghua had been suppressed the entire ti. It wasn’t until Yvette used Shadowtouch once to lash Shuanghua’s divine arts apart head-on that the situation flipped.
After that, their spars turned into pure magic duels: Yvette refrained from using her tentacles, and Shuanghua didn’t use the Snow Emperor Staff or domain amplification. In that kind of contest, Yvette had a slight edge, and Shuanghua had to rely on combat experience and technique to react in the mont, while Yvette simply let her soul-brain provide aim-assist and dodge-assist—using tech to improve her quality of life.
But this was also her first ti facing Tertia, so she naturally had to follow the “first match” rules. If her tentacles could still deliver significant results even against a continental peak powerhouse like Tertia, then she’d have that much more confidence when infiltrating a divine kingdom in the future.
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