Ye Zichen came to life like a local thug. He shook his shoulders, smiled until his eyes narrowed into slits, and stuck out his hand.
The warlock retreated uneasily; Ye Zichen’s transformation from a vicious asura into a benevolent deity terrified him out of his wits. He truly didn’t want to get slapped anymore. The Great Pilar couldn’t tolerate this insult!
“What kind of compensation do you want? The Great Pilar can return your hair.” As he spoke, he prepared to reach into the flames and recover Ye ZIchen’s lost hairs, good as new.
However, to Ye Zichen, those hairs cost him nothing at all. Simply taking his hairs back would be too much of a waste.
With his personality, he wouldn’t let anyone off easy; he couldn’t possibly accept the warlock’s offer.
He stopped the dwarf and looked him over. The warlock looked back at him timidly.
“I don’t need the hairs back. Given that you don’t have a single hair on your body, I’ll leave them for you. Even just three hairs would look good on you, like a cartoon character.”
“Then what do you want? The Great Pilar has nothing else to offer you.”
“It seems you want another beating.” His fierce gaze bore down on the warlock, who felt as if the temperature in the Time Corridor had dropped dramatically. That intense gaze made him thoroughly uncomfortable.
The dwarf reached his hand into his loose black robes and fished around. When he pulled it back out, he held a pitch-black tome. He reluctantly passed it over to Ye Zichen, who arched his brows and reached for it. He tried to take it, but found that something was stopping him.
The warlock tightly clenched the other end of the tome and refused to let go.
“Hm?” He glared, and the warlock’s hands trembled instinctively. The book slipped from his fingers.
It was now in Ye Zichen’s hands, but even so, the warlock stared intently at it, his gaze brimming with reluctance.
This only made Ye Zichen curious; what was so special about this book to make the dwarf go this far?
“The Devil’s Tome.” The book was pitch black, with three blood-red words emblazoned on its cover. Ye Zichen flipped through it, only to discover that it contained a supreme-level dharma body technique.
Supreme dharma bodies were a shortcut to becoming an expert amongst supremes. What a coincidence! Ye Zichen had just been wondering how to get his hands on one of these techniques. The warlock had arrived to give him one just in time.
It’s just, he didn’t know what grade the Devil Dharma Body was.
Ye Zichen put the tome into his spatial ring, then looked over the dwarven mage several times.
“What do you want? The Great Pilar already gave you your compensation.” He practically shouted, but his rage wasn’t even the slightest bit intimidating to Ye Zichen. At most, the dwarf was making himself feel tough.
Ye Zichen licked his lips and cocked his head to the side. “I don’t know how to use that worthless tome. What kind of compensation is that?”
“You dare slander the treasure the Grand Devil left behind? You…. You’re going to infuriate the Grand Devil. This won’t end well for you!”
“Beat it.” Ye Zichen slapped him on the head, then glowered down at him. “Hurry up and give me satisfactory compensation. If not, I’m afraid you won’t have that life of yours much longer.”
“The Great Pilar has nothing else to offer,” said the warlock. His expression was sincere, but did Ye Zichen believe him?
Of course not!
He was now playing the bandit. Would a bandit back down just because his target said he had no treasures left?
It was impossible to make the warlock voluntarily offer up his treasures, so he had no choice to take matters into his own hands.
He reached out and picked the diminutive mage up with one hand, then stretched the other into the dwarf’s loose black robes and fished around.
“You…… this is a grave insult to the Great Pilar!”
“Shut up,” barked Ye Zichen. He searched and searched but found no spatial rings. Eventually he decided to just strip off the black robes completely.
“You really are that poor.” Ye Zichen looked at the warlock. He couldn’t help but shake his head; the dwarf didn’t have so much as a single gold coin on him!
“The Great Pilar…. Will definitely… avenge this insult!”
The stripped warlock curled up in a corner of the corridor like a woman who’d suffered an unwanted touch. This situation really was easy to misunderstand, so Ye Zichen tossed the robes back over. This also meant that he no longer had to look at the alien’s bizarre figure; it saved his eyes some pain.
“Didn’t you say you had a kingdom or something? Why are you so poor…. Forget it. I’m in no mood to talk to you. I’ll let this slide; this book will due as my compensation. It’s a bit of a loss, but I’ve always been softhearted, don’t you think?”
He patted the dwarf’s head, slipped his hands into his pockets, and laughed. “Tell me how to get out of here. If you keep me trapped here, who knows what I’ll do to you?”
When he considered Ye Zichen’s earlier behavior, the warlock curled up. He feared this encounter would haunt his future nightmares; he didn’t this devil to stick around a moment longer.
He snapped his fingers and opened a portal. He pointed to it and roared, “Go! The Great Pilar never wants to see you again.”
Ye Zichen smiled, stepped towards it, and waved goodbye. “We’ll meet again.”
He left, leaving the still-aggrieved warlock alone in the Time Corridor. Before long, however, the dwarf froze. He looked at the door, then back down at his hand. His connection to the corridor! It was back!
After leaving the Time Corridor, Ye Zichen appeared in a flowery field filled with birdsong. This was nothing like the chaotic void of stars he’d been in before, nor was there any trace of the pitch-black walls of the Time Corridor. This place was vibrant with life and was nothing like the endless craggy rocks and ancient trees of the Upper Three Realms.
He could hear birdsong in the distance, and on a pine tree not far in the distance, he saw a squirrel holding an acorn and looking curiously back at him.
This tranquil scenery didn’t exist in the stagnant Upper Three Realms.
He knew he was back.
To his surprise, he discovered that the spiritual power was no thinner than in the God Realm’s Lower Lands. In fact, it was greater than all but the Sky Great Districts.
This was doubtlessly due to the leyline.
He stretched leisurely, then pointed to the sky and swiped. The surrounding space seemed to crumble around his finger; just drawing a line in the air was enough to form a spatial rift.
When he saw this, Ye Zichen hurriedly stopped.
Indeed; the space in the Lower Three Realms was nowhere near as durable as in the Upper Realms. So long as he willed it, he could destroy the whole plane with the wave of his hand.
That’s what it meant to be a supreme.
He looked into the distance, towards the north, where Maple City was located. After a while, Ye Zichen set aside his complex emotions and smiled. “I’m back.”
