Although Sonia had displayed the awe-inspiring momentum of "opening Heaven with her sword," "bringing an angel to its knees with a single slash," and being virtually "invincible in the mortal realm" during the battle against the Law Angel, she fell back into a deep sleep after chatting with Yaxiu for only a short while.
To keep the Sword Princess's mother from worrying, Yaxiu had no choice but to carry her back to the Sevier residence to bid Martha farewell. Frankly speaking, the atmosphere was so awkward that Yaxiu wished he could dig out a three-bedroom apartment with his toes and crawl inside. Martha knew Yaxiu was the scumbag who had broken her daughter's heart, and Yaxiu knew she knew. Yet, to make matters worse, Yaxiu had returned to tell her, "Your daughter was originally getting better, but after coming out to look for me, she passed out again, and now I'm taking her away." Just piecing together the clues gave an unmistakable sense of deja vu—a female college student who had nearly climbed out of the fiery pit, only to fall back into the clutches of a cult leader.
However, Martha did not make things difficult for him. She merely asked him to wait a moment while she prepared some of the snacks Sonia liked to eat. When Yaxiu swore that he would protect Sonia, Martha only gave a helpless smile and said that as long as her daughter was happy, that was all that mattered.
Only then did Yaxiu notice that Sonia, sleeping peacefully in his arms, wore a faint smile. Yet right until they returned to Gospel, the Sword Princess showed no sign of waking up.
Not only her, but the Witch, who theoretically should have completed her six-wing trial, also remained in an unconscious slumber. Yaxiu vaguely guessed that it might be due to Vichy—the Dramatic Poet had said that the trials of the three of them were interconnected, and it only counted once all three completed them.
It was as if they shared a joint project performance quota. The Sword Princess and the Witch had finished their parts, but as long as Vichy had not completed hers, they couldn't leave the project, and the two of them even had to share the burden of Vichy's performance pressure.
If Yaxiu guessed correctly, the difficulty of Vichy's trial was probably lowered because the Sword Princess and the Witch were shouldering part of it. Honestly, he felt somewhat disgruntled about this; if Vichy had been willing to let him participate in the trial instead of insisting on clearing it alone, the Sword Princess and the Witch wouldn't have had to suffer extra. But on the other hand, he also understood Vichy's stubbornness. Even a shameless devil like her, full of deceit and calculated schemes, was bound to harbor certain obsessions that looked utterly foolish to outsiders—because only foolishness could sustain someone in chasing a dream day after day for thousands of years.
In truth, Yaxiu had wondered whether he might also be part of Vichy's six-wing trial—such as facing her true self and baring her heart to him, or something of that sort... But such a thing had not been easy even for the Sword Princess and the Witch, let alone Vichy.
Perhaps Vichy would never bare her heart to him in her entire life. It had nothing to do with whether feelings existed; each person simply preferred a different intimate distance. The Witch preferred a clingy, zero distance; the Silver Lantern preferred a close distance of sharing the same room; the Sword Princess preferred a moderate distance where each busied herself by day and snuggled together at night; and Vichy... if Yaxiu ever allowed her to roam freely, aside from occasionally returning to make a deal with him, she would definitely never want to travel with them, running as far away as she possibly could.
Leaving the three women in the imperial palace under the care of Daedalose and the others, Yaxiu toured Gospel with Weise: Fanmula, Mengfeila, the Nabistin Underground City... Walking against the flow of time, they gathered up every trace Igola and Harvey had left behind in Gospel.
Weise seemed to have vaguely guessed something, seizing every opportunity to reminisce about her past with Yaxiu. Yaxiu played along while straining to recall. He had only lost the memories related to Weise, while his other memories remained intact. For instance, he remembered visiting the Transcendence Building, undergoing the Divine Fire Trial, and going to the dead city where time was infinitely close to standing still.
He had merely forgotten that he had fallen in love at first sight with the Silver Lantern back in the Transcendence Building; that he had passionately pursued and adored her during the Divine Fire Trial; and that he had taken the initiative to confess his feelings in the dead city, spending an inseparable, blissfully intimate time together...
He had not expected so much of their important past to be lost. Fortunately, the Silver Lantern had helped him remember.
Still, Yaxiu found it a bit strange. He remembered himself during that period as having been fairly upright. After all, he had struggled so much to choose between the Sword Princess and the Witch—could he really have provoked the Silver Lantern in the mortal realm on top of that? Was that upright self merely an illusion produced by his amnesia, and he had actually been an irredeemable piece of trash even back then?
By the time Yaxiu finished gathering up all the traces in Gospel, Vichy had finally completed her trial, and the three of them woke up at the same time. Once everyone gathered together, before the Sword Princess and the Witch could interrogate Yaxiu and Weise about their sightseeing trip, Yaxiu performed an action that left everyone dumbfounded—he made Vichy lie across his lap and, right in front of everyone, gave the elven maid several hard spanks on the rear, the sound loud and flesh trembling.
Vichy, for her part, said nothing. When she learned that the Sword Princess and the Witch had been dragged down by her into sleeping for several extra days, she had expected that Yaxiu wouldn't let her off easily. Afterward, Yaxiu apologized together with Vichy; since he had permitted Vichy to clear the trial on her own, he naturally had to share responsibility for the consequences.
In truth, Sonia and Diya had few grievances. Although they harbored numerous prejudices against Vichy in their hearts (accurate prejudices, to be sure), having gone through the Star Bridge Divine War and the Senluo Divine War, they had already accepted Vichy as a companion deep down. Sharing a curse for a companion was no big deal. If anything, after Yaxiu pulled off this performance, they felt even more annoyed—if you want to apologize, just apologize! Why are you rewarding her?!
However, once Yaxiu announced that he was going to enter Hell again, the little team immediately shifted into tense preparations. That was when an extremely awkward problem arose: the team's most valuable war assets, three world secret realms, could not be transferred to Yaxiu.
It wasn't that it was completely impossible; the cost was simply far too steep.
Upon completing the six-wing trial, Sonia and the others' Temples of Sorcery began to merge with and encroach upon the world secret realms. To put it simply, they were devouring the world secret realms to expand their own Temples of Sorcery.
Furthermore, because the world secret realms would slowly regenerate on their own, the Temples of Sorcery could theoretically continue expanding indefinitely. In reality, of course, no such windfall existed. After all, the regeneration speed of a world secret realm was far slower than the rate of devouring. Before a world secret realm was "eaten clean," Sonia and the others had to cease devouring to prevent the realm from vanishing completely, after which they would slowly spend hundreds of years nurturing the world secret realm back to health.
Yet even devouring a world secret realm just once was enough to expand their soul territory by several thousand palaces.
Only now did everyone understand why the God-Leaders could all raise a "Kingdom of Heaven"—as long as one completed the six-wing trial, any demigod's Temple of Sorcery could expand to the size of an entire realm!
Depleting heaven and earth to benefit oneself, stealing from the world to forge one's own domain—such was the path of growth for a God-Leader. Little wonder the Void Realm targeted God-Leaders so relentlessly. If a demigod was merely stealing treasures from the Void Realm's house, a God-Leader was practically stealing its bricks and tiles to build their own independent establishment.
It was also for this reason that Sonia and the others could not transfer their world secret realms to Yaxiu. Not just any world secret realm could be devoured; only a world secret realm bound through the six-wing trial could integrate into their Temples of Sorcery.
Once Sonia and the others transferred the Ancient Battlefield, Wind, Flowers, Snow, and Moon, or the Garden to Yaxiu, this bound state would be broken. Even if transferred back in the future, they would no longer be able to devour the world secret realms.
Even if they stepped into Heaven in the future, they would end up as the weakest God-Leaders with the smallest Kingdoms of Heaven.
Chapter 1219