Against the Gods

Everything had simply happened far too quickly and far too abruptly. Xia Qingyue had suddenly grabbed ahold of Yun Che’s hand, stunning everyone in the area, but before they even had time to react, the two people had already fled far away using the Vanishing Moon Celestial Palace.

The Vanishing Moon Celestial Palace did not besmirch its name as the fastest profound warship in the universe. In just a single instant, it had already crossed over to the horizon that was extremely far away, and even its shadow had vanished completely.

It was the Moon God Emperor and the Moon God Empress’ wedding ceremony, but the Moon God Empress had used the Vanishing Moon Celestial Palace to run away with Yun Che…

This result was something that everyone thought was impossible, a result that they had not even bothered to imagine, yet it had happened right before everyone’s eyes. It felt as if they were suddenly completely shaken, turned inside out by the innumerable lightning bolts and angry tidal waves that were raging around in their hearts...

The impact this scene had on them was absolutely no less than the impact they had felt when witnessing the nine stage heavenly tribulation at the Conferred God Stage!

Everyone was absolutely stunned into insensibility as they stood there dumbfounded. The profound practitioners of the Eastern Divine Region, the moon god envoys, the gathered realm kings, the god emperors… including the Star God Emperor who had been eager to start all of this trouble, and even Qianye Ying’er, who had remained hidden in the clouds above. Each and every one of them had been completely and utterly shocked and stupefied by this turn of events.

The Moon God Emperor simply stood there with a blank stare on his face. But gradually, the features on his face started to twist and his body started to quake. His originally tranquil and dignified face started going a dreadful ghastly pale and his features were swiftly contorting into a face that resembled a sinister demon’s visage.

He extended an arm that shuddered so violently that it seemed like it was going to fall apart and pointed in the direction that Xia Qingyue had left, before he roared in what was perhaps the most hoarse voice he had ever let out in his life, “Go… and capture… them! Go and capture them!!!!”

After he let out that hoarse scream, the Moon God Emperor’s vision went black and his entire body swayed. He had actually nearly fallen to the ground.

That dreadful roar of his caused everyone present to be roused from their shock like sleepers waking from a dream. Divine Moon City was immediately thrown into great chaos as a large number of people soared into the sky and rushed in the direction the Vanishing Moon Celestial Palace had fled.

Furthermore, among those who had taken action, there was a golden figure that suddenly flashed across the sky like a comet, instantly leaving all the other figures in the dust… The speed that golden figure displayed was actually nearly no less than the Vanishing Moon Celestial Palace that had already fled into the distance!

Divine Moon City was in a complete uproar, everyone looked at each other only to discover that the other person was completely and utterly shocked as well. It was as if nobody dared to believe the events that had just taken place before their very eyes.

“How could… this… sort of thing happen?” Mu Huanzhi asked in a trembling voice.

“Oh no…” Mu Bingyun sighed quietly.

“Heh heh heh,” the Star God Emperor put away his shock and amazement while giving a bland laugh. “Marvelous, this is absolutely marvelous.”

The Star God Emperor and the Moon God Emperor were very near one another. So his words had undoubtedly splashed hot oil into a raging fire. The Moon God Emperor’s eyes turned scarlet as if they had been stained with fresh blood. He pointed at the Star God Emperor, the profound energy in front of that finger rioting wildly, “You! Get out of here right now… OUT!!!!”

“GET OUT!! EVERYONE GET OUT!!”

“ALL OF YOU GET OUT!!”

“GEEEETTTT OUUUUUUTTT!!!!”

The fury of a god emperor could shake the very heavens and earth. Under the power of his extremely hoarse and furious howl, all of the jade bottles and jade cups shattered as space itself began to faintly tremble. A majority of the young profound practitioners vomited fresh blood amid furious coughing, their internal organs suffering heavy wounds. There were also some profound practitioners who saw black, then and there, as they fainted dead away.

Who would still dare to linger near the berserk fury of a god emperor? The various big star realms did their utmost to protect their young profound practitioners as they fled towards the outskirts of Divine Moon City in a panic. In an instant, Divine Moon City, which was being graced by the light of a bright moon, was thrown into complete and utter chaos.

“Go… quickly!” Mu Huanzhi swiftly rallied all the Snow Song Realm disciples and fled towards the outskirts with the greatest speed possible… If the Moon God Emperor decided to vent his anger on the Snow Song Realm, they would not make it in time if they tarried any further.

Divine Moon City suddenly looked as if a swarm of locusts had descended upon it. Disturbances sprung up all over the city as its denizens reeled about in panic and alarm. Not a single one of the moon guards assigned to the various districts rushed out to maintain order as even they were at a complete loss at what to do.

This grand wedding celebration was originally an event of great joy for the Moon God Realm. It was supposed to have wiped away the shame the Moon God Emperor suffered all those years ago and more significantly, it was supposed to have grandly announced to the entire world that from this day forward, the Moon God Realm would be like the Eternal Heaven Realm of all those years ago, receiving the blessing of a woman of Glazed Glass.

But before the wedding ceremony could even begin, it had already become like this…

The god empress who was about to be wed left on her own, and she had even taken another man with her before running away.

Not only did this not wash away the shame inflicted by what happened to Yue Wugou all those years ago, it instead piled humiliation upon humiliation…

One of the four god emperors of the Eastern Divine Region, the realm king of the Moon God Realm, had actually completely and utterly become the greatest laughingstock under all of heaven...

The Moon God Emperor was lost in his berserk fury and he resembled a crazed wild beast.

But how could he not be enraged… Even if he was a god emperor, this matter was even more humiliating and enraging because he was a god emperor.

“Let’s leave.” In the clouds high above, Qianye Ying’er turned around, her gaze, astonishingly enough, directed towards where the Vanishing Moon Celestial Palace had fled.

Gu Zhu did not reply, but neither did he need to question or give a response. The figures of the two people slowly receded into the clouds before they vanished in the air above Divine Moon City. Perhaps, no one knew that they had even been there in the first place.

“To think that such a thing actually happened…” The Eternal Heaven God Emperor shook his head. In this world, there were far too few things that could astonish him, but the events that had unfolded before his very eyes were too far outside of his calculations, so it caused him to feel an unfathomable shock as well.

The Brahma Heaven God Emperor, however, held him back as he spoke while shaking his head, “The Moon God Emperor is truly enraged, and deservedly so. No consolation or advice will have any use at this moment. On the contrary, it might even cause him to go completely wild. We should spend our efforts protecting the gathered profound practitioners. Let’s wait for him to calm down after a few days before we try to discuss anything with him.”

The Eternal Heaven God Emperor halted in his steps before he gave a nod of acknowledgement.

…………

The vast universe.

In the Vanishing Moon Celestial Palace that had reached its maximum speed.

The internal space within the Vanishing Moon Celestial Palace was exceedingly big, yet also abnormally luxurious. A bright light that was coming from somewhere unknown illuminated this place the same way Divine Moon City was illuminated by its divine moon.

Yet Yun Che had no mood to admire or appreciate this mystical and fantastic Vanishing Moon Celestial Palace. He instead merely stared dumbly at Xia Qingyue, who was a mere hand’s breadth away from him, his mind completely thrown into disarray.

His hand still held Xia Qingyue’s hand, it was just that that jade hand was exceptionally cold, so cold that it cut his heart.

It was not only cold, it was also trembling faintly. In fact, her entire body was trembling… and the trembling was only getting more and more intense.

He stared blankly at Xia Qingyue. He was exactly the same as the rest of them, he had absolutely never thought that she would make this kind of decision.

“Qingyue… you…”

He finally gave voice to his thoughts but just as the words left his mouth, Xia Qingyue’s entire body suddenly shuddered intensely as a mouthful of fresh blood wildly sprayed out from her mouth and scattered on her white robes, a color which resembled a bright moon, as her body limply sank to the ground.

“Qingyue!!”

Yun Che was greatly shocked by this and he swiftly extended his hand to catch her midfall.

The body in his embrace was abnormally frail and soft, and it was filled with a weakness and helplessness that would cause pity and heartache to bloom in anyone who saw it. She was shivering like a kitten who had been caught in a snowstorm in the dead of winter. He looked at the eye-catching bright red blood stains which stained her moon robes… that was heart’s blood…

It was heart’s blood that would go against the normal flow of one’s blood only when a person was experiencing extreme anger or anguish.

“I’m fine,” she said softly, yet she did not attempt to struggle free from Yun Che’s embrace. Her small and delicate head leaned against Yun Che’s chest and her beautiful eyes softly closed. The trembling of her body had finally begun to grow gentler as well.

Those scarlet bloodstains on her moon robes cut at Yun Che’s very soul constantly. He did not ask her anything, instead he quietly hugged Xia Qingyue tightly… Besides that one time in the Heaven Basin Secret Realm, this was the first time they had held each other so closely.

…………

Who would dare approach the berserk rage of a god emperor?

He could not imagine such a result, and it was even harder for him to believe such a thing had happened. He was simply unable to accept what had happened to him. A disordered and chaotic aura hung around him and he teetered and tottered with every step. Wherever he went, that astonishing baleful aura he radiated caused even the Moon Gods themselves to not dare to approach him.

BOOM!!

The palace hall’s doors were blasted open by him with a single palm. He took one step inside before he saw a red-colored human figure.

It was a woman who was dressed in bright-red wedding robes who was decked out in luxurious pearl and jade jewellery. Even though her face seemed to have been etched with the vicissitudes of life, it was still beautiful enough to bring ruin to a country. It was just that her jade features were far too pale, they were so pale that they resembled white wax that was about to be burned up.

Upon seeing her, the Moon God Emperor felt as if both of his eyes had been stabbed by needles and his wild rage was now laced with several degrees of panic, “You… why are you here?”

As he spoke, he swiftly waved a palm and an isolation barrier instantly sealed the area above the collapsed doors of the palace hall, sealing in all the sound and light.

“I saw everything… cough… cough cough…” The woman said softly, but just as she spoke, it brought on a painful bout of coughing, causing her face to go even paler.

The Moon God Emperor swiftly stepped forward before bringing the woman into his embrace. A white light congealed in his hand as he pressed it against her chest.

Gradually, the color of her face became slightly better. She quietly leaned against the Moon God Emperor, her palm also pressed against the pit of his chest as she softly caressed him.

Feeling the warmth against his chest, the Moon God Emperor’s feelings actually calmed down little by little… In this whole wide universe, only she could calm him down so quickly when he was in the midst of such an explosive rage.

“Qingyue, why did she do this…” The Moon God Emperor shook his head, pain still etched on his face, “Why exactly did she… Could it be that she doesn’t understand what will result from her actions…”

This decision of hers had not only caused him to become the greatest laughingstock in the entire Eastern Divine Region. It had also caused his hopes and that final wish of him and her to go to complete waste.

“Because… she did not wish for her husband… to repeat the disaster that occured to you all those years ago…” the red-robed woman said in a soft and gentle voice.

“Even if she still has feelings for that kid, she clearly could have used a sound transmission to explain everything!” The Moon God Emperor roared in a low voice, “Just a few short words would have explained things to him… Why did it have to be like this!?”

The red-robed woman softly shook her head, “He might know… but will the rest of the world… know as well…”

“...” The Moon God Emperor was struck dumb by those words.

“Who would have thought that she would actually be like me all those years ago, that she would have to face such a painful choice.” Her voice was incomparably soft and gentle but the look in her eyes grew more and more distressed as she spoke, “Could it be that… this is also a kind of… twist of fate, a cycle of destiny…”

“She isn’t to blame. But even if you were to blame her or even hate her, that would not be wrong either. And that child called ‘Yun Che’, one can find no fault in him either… The only thing that can be blamed is destiny…” She said this before laughing softly, “Wuya, all these years, we had always thought that there was something missing in her emotional makeup and that has always worried us. But it turns out that her heart… was actually occupied by someone that she would be willing to go to such lengths for… Shouldn’t we… be happy for her instead…”

The Moon God Emperor, “...”

“Foster father, can Qingyue make one request… Could foster father please bestow the Vanishing Moon Celestial Palace upon Qingyue…”

“Foster father, Qingyue has something to say. I beg that you remember this always. In the future, no matter what happens, Qingyue… will never ever let down the Moon God Realm.”

“Qingyue only wants foster father to forever remember those words… No matter what happens in the future, I beg that foster father remembers these words.”

…………

“...” Following the gradual recovery of his sense of reason, those words of Xia Qingyue that he had found strange at the time reverberated in his mind. His heart fiercely leapt in his chest, and after that he felt a fierce pain stab his heart.

So that… was what it was about…

“Heh… heh heh… Heh heh heh…” The Moon God Emperor’s hand grasped his own forehead as his five fingers tightened bit by bit and a bitter laugh escaped his lips, “All of this, ultimately and fundamentally, is entirely my fault… If not for the sake of my own face and dignity, why would I let Qingyue suffer all of this… Heh… this so-called Moon God Emperor that I am… from beginning to the end… I am only a coward… a coward…”

“She will return,” the red-robed woman said. “Once you have calmed down, she will return.”

The Moon God Emperor gave a faint nod of his head and his hand was already holding a jade stone which pulsed with a faint white light.

“Wuji… there’s no need to continue your chase. Return immediately.”

…………

Vanishing Moon Celestial Palace.

“The first day I arrived in the God Realm, I met the Moon God Emperor.”

Qingyue seemed to have regained some of her composure and her eyes had regained that deep and tranquil calmness. She recounted her experiences to Yun Che in a calm voice, “At that time, I did not know what kind of world this was. Furthermore, my own strength was incomparably tiny in this new world that I found myself in. So it was as if I had suddenly been thrown into a boundless cage where I could get taken advantage of and trampled on at every turn.”

Yun Che could well imagine the situation that the past Xia Qingyue had found herself in. At that time, her profound strength was only in the initial stages of the Tyrant Profound Realm. In the Profound Sky Continent, that sort of strength made her an absolute powerhouse, but in the God Realm, it was pathetically weak. Furthermore, given Xia Qingyue’s fairy-like beauty, it was bound to cause a nightmarish calamity to fall on her head… The her at that time, who was all alone, had undoubtedly faced despair everywhere she turned.

“When I had finally fallen into despair and was about to take my own life, it was the Moon God Emperor who saved me. He brought me to the Moon God Realm… the most divine and sacred place in the entire God Realm. He looked after me in every possible way, and at that time, I thought that he definitely had designs on me. This was how I felt until… I met my mother.”

“Your… mother?” Yun Che’s eyes widened, “The mother that you had always been looking for… is someone who belongs to the Moon God Realm!?”

“I resemble my mother a lot and her aura also lingers on my body. From the very first moment he saw me, he guessed that I was my mother’s daughter. So he saved me, and he also let me… finally meet my mother once again.”

“So, you were going to marry him in order to pay back the debt of gratitude you owed him?” Yun Che asked.

“...” Xia Qingyue softly turned her body around and the depths of her tranquil eyes flashed with a heartbreaking light, “You think far too little of me.”

Facing this girl who had abandoned the Moon God Emperor for him, whose heart’s blood had flowed in reverse because of him, Yun Che felt his heart get fiercely squeezed. He said anxiously, “I… I didn’t mean that… I was just…”

“He is my foster father,” Xia Qingyue said softly.

“...” Yun Che was struck completely dumb by that pronouncement, “Your… foster father?”

Foster father… Father…

The Moon God Emperor… was Xia Qingyue’s foster father!?

This… then why did…

“Don’t tell me that…” Yun Che naturally thought of something as he said, “This entire wedding ceremony was just a formality to show everyone else in the world? To use your ‘Heart of Glazed Glass’ to help him… that is your foster father, to wash away the shame he suffered all those years ago?”

“No…” Xia Qingyue shook her head instead, “He is my foster father, a senior whom I respect with the name ‘father’. Getting married to him, even if it was just a show, would be violating all laws of heaven and human relations. My foster father would not be able to accept it, my mother also would not be able to accept it, and I am naturally also unable to accept it.”

“This wedding celebration was originally just a huge lie. Moreover, this huge lie was not only for the rest of the universe to see, it was even more so for the Moon God Realm to see.”

“What??” Yun Che was stunned by those words. For the Moon God Realm to see? What was he supposed to make of that statement? The Moon God Emperor was the Moon God Realm’s emperor, so why did he need to put on such a grand “show” for the star realm that he controlled?

“Furthermore, the one who would complete the wedding ceremony with my foster father would not be me either. It would be my mother instead.”

One could clearly hear pain in her voice when she spoke those last few words.

“...” This caused Yun Che to become completely dumbfounded, “You… you said… your mother? Are you… w-what exactly do you… mean?”

Xia Qingyue’s simple few words reverberated in his head again and again. But even if he overturned all of the logic and knowledge that he held in his head, he still could not understand it… To say nothing of being able to discern the implicit meaning behind these words.

“Do you want to hear a story?” Xia Qingyue closed her eyes, her voice growing softer and softer, “It’s a very long… very melancholic… story filled with despair.”