Chapter 1000: Xuanwu Gate

“Uh.”

Xu Xiaoshou quickly averted his gaze and accidentally caught sight of a lump of Greed God slumped on the ground in the distance, not even bothering to refine pills. A lightbulb went off above his head.

“Little fatty, come here!”

“Meow!”

Greed God, summoned, confirmed it was indeed being called, instantly sprang back to life, and flew over, completely forgetting the moment it had been slapped away by someone earlier.

Greed God never lacked enthusiasm for its master and mistress.

“I might need to take Greed God away for a while. During this time, you’ll have to stay in the Yuan Mansion,” Xu Xiaoshou said, stroking the cat, feeling a little awkward, as if he were imprisoning someone.

“What for?” asked Lei Xier.

“Just some... small matters,” Xu Xiaoshou chuckled, then casually pulled out a jar of honey refined by Greed God, opened it, and fed it to the cat.

“Meow!”

Greed God immediately buried its head, slurping and licking away.

“Does it taste good?” Xu Xiaoshou flashed a devilish grin.

“Meow, meow!”

Greed God lifted its head and cheered. It refined elixirs, but it rarely got to eat them so openly. Naturally, its answer was that it tasted delicious.

“If it tastes good, then activate your ‘Three Abhorrence Child’s Eye.’ You don’t need to close it now. I’m taking you, little fatty, outside to get some exercise, burn off some energy, and lose some weight,” Xu Xiaoshou said, stroking Greed God’s fur.

“Meow!”

Without another word, Greed God’s left eye materialized three gray flowers, which quickly spun.

Lei Xier keenly noticed the abnormality, glanced over, and her light voice carried a hint of suspicion: “Something’s happened again?”

“A small problem,” Xu Xiaoshou said, stroking the cat’s head, meeting her gaze with a chuckle, and then materialized a spatial passage. “I’ll take Greed God first; I’ll pick you up to play later.”

Lei Xier’s red lips parted, as if she wanted to speak but held back.

Xu Xiaoshou noticed, but didn’t intend to explain.

Even though he knew Lei Xier’s God-Demon Eyes were powerful and could help, he was afraid of unexpected dangers.

After all, this time, it was the Blasphemy Bureau.

“Your burden is too heavy; don’t take on unnecessary risks. Let Greed God handle it,” was Xu Xiaoshou’s inner monologue.

Stepping into the spatial passage, holding the constantly eating Greed God, Xu Xiaoshou suddenly stopped and looked back, hesitatingly asking, “The Yuan Mansion must be boring, right?”

Lei Xier pursed her red lips, as if she had a thousand words of complaint, but they condensed into a few simple words: “It’s alright, I can grow flowers and plants.”

Xu Xiaoshou chuckled at her words.

A dignified Throne, a dignified heir of the Lei family, actually growing flowers and plants in the Yuan Mansion world—who would believe that?

He raised his hand and solemnly promised, “The next time I come in, I’ll take you to a place you’ve definitely never been before, but it’s really fun... for a stroll!”

“Where?” Lei Xier’s eyes instantly lit up, and between her parting lips, her pearly white canine teeth gleamed.

Xu Xiaoshou felt two faces overlapping before his eyes, finally merging into an oval face flushed with a faint blush, subtly turning away, almost as if shyly hiding.

It took a while for Xu Xiaoshou to recover from his trance; he shook his head, and smiled, “It’s a secret.”

Lei Xier: “...”

“Received a curse, passive value, 1, 1, 1, 1...”

East Heaven King City.

During the daytime, the entire East Heaven King City remained shrouded in darkness.

“Rumble...”

The thunderous rumbling overhead echoed the real thunder in the Cloud Ridge Mountains. The people of the King City had long grown accustomed to it, hearing it without noticing.

On the street, a woman holding a child left a vendor’s stall, a vegetable basket still hanging from her forearm.

The world of spiritual refiners also needed food, because they too had burdens – once they had families and their children hadn’t grown up yet.

“Mommy, mommy, look, look! The thundering sky is about to fall!”

The little girl with pigtails sticking up, clinging to her mother’s neck, pointed at the sky and shrieked incoherently, her rosy cheeks trembling with excitement, yet failing to attract a single glance from passersby.

“Whack!”

The woman rolled her eyes, slapped her daughter’s bottom, and scolded, “You jinx, shut your mouth! Last time we went out, you jinxed us into stepping in dog poop, it was all your fault!”

The innocent little girl’s attention immediately shifted. She turned her head and curiously asked, “Mommy, mommy, but didn’t you say there are no dogs in our King City? I’ve never seen a dog before. I heard dogs bite people! But the dogs in the pictures are so cute...”

The woman adjusted the heavy bundle in her arms and grumbled, “Exactly! So from now on, you little scamps, don’t just poop and pee anywhere!”

“What’s a scamp?” The little girl tilted her head.

“That’s you, you silly goose!” The woman poked the back of her child’s head, smiling as she replied.

The little girl sucked her thumb, thought seriously for a moment, then her expression became excited, and she yelled, “I’m a scamp! I’m a scamp!”

Passersby turned back in surprise.

“Shut up!” The woman was mortified, feigning fierceness as she slapped the scamp’s little bottom again.

After a series of odd yelps, the little girl leaned back, hugging her mother’s head, her big eyes twinkling as she asked again, “Mommy, mommy, aren’t I your child? If I’m a scamp, what are you, mommy?”

“???” The woman with the vegetable basket instantly froze on the spot.

“Hahahaha...”

The surrounding vendors and passersby burst into laughter.

A minstrel passing by, munching on an apple, sighed with emotion, “A dog gives birth, named dog-child; dog-child, dog-child, a dog’s own child... Good poem, good poem!”

“Hahahaha...”

This time, the roaring laughter was completely unstoppable.

Passersby pointed and scoffed at the mother and daughter.

“Scamp... troublesome child, just shut up, why so many questions!” The woman slapped her again, making the little girl yelp in pain.

At this moment, though the street was wide, there was no longer any place for the mother and daughter to hide.

The woman, holding her child, wished she could teleport home. She immediately activated her wind attribute, intending to flash away.

Just then...

“Boom!”

A giant rock fell from above, creating a crater in the ground with cracks crisscrossing like a spiderweb.

The woman was startled, her eyes wide.

Because the falling rock landed directly in front of her feet.

If not for that little “scamp” interlude just now, the rock would have undoubtedly smashed directly onto her head.

And the first to bear the brunt of this falling rock would clearly not be herself, but the dog... *cough*, troublesome child on her head!

“What’s going on?”

“How can such a large rock fall from the sky?”

People nearby stopped in shock, because although there was a city above the city in East Heaven King City, sometimes indeed fragments from the Sky City would fall off due to spatial extraction.

But there was a city’s protective barrier!

These falling fragments were all repelled outside the city. How could one suddenly break through the barrier and smash into the city?

The city’s protective barrier wasn’t made of paper; how could a single falling rock break its defenses?

“Mommy, mommy, look, a tree meteor shower! Such a big meteor shower! This is the second meteor shower this silly girl has seen!” The little girl kicked wildly in her mother’s arms, seemingly wanting to fly.

“You silly goose, I told you ‘silly goose’ isn’t used like that...” The woman instinctively cringed, afraid of being mocked by passersby again.

But her words suddenly stopped, because she saw that everyone around her was no longer focused on the word “silly goose,” but had all looked up, their faces filled with shock and fear, as if their souls had been simultaneously extracted.

This scene was too terrifying!

The woman seemed to realize something, her eyes widened, and she immediately pulled the “silly goose” from her head, looking up at the sky.

“This...”

With just one glance, her scalp tingled.

High in the sky, the Sky City, which had previously only extracted less than a third of its corner, had now, at some unknown point, detached from the spatial currents by as much as seventy to eighty percent.

At this moment, most of the Sky City was exposed and tilted, as if the heavens were about to fall; even its mottled ancient city gate was revealed.

The “rumbling” continued.

The speed at which Sky City was detaching became visibly faster.

The cracked stones on the city, etched with the marks of time, fell in large chunks due to the cutting of spatial rifts, densely bombarding the city’s protective barrier.

“Is this... a meteor shower?”

The woman recalled her daughter’s earlier words.

But what she saw now was nothing like the treasure meteor showers of the Cloud Ridge Mountains.

This was a disaster!

The “rumbling” continued incessantly. This time, observing the celestial phenomenon and listening to the sounds, everyone felt a sense of dread, a feeling of powerlessness against fate.

“It’s not actually going to fall, is it...?” Someone murmured.

The low, self-spoken words, echoed by the falling rocks hitting the ground, became incredibly jarring, and also seemed to gain the power of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Because the Sky City, high in the heavens, with that ancient city gate as its base point, if it fell any further, it would definitely smash directly onto East Heaven King City.

“Impossible, absolutely impossible!”

“Our East Heaven King City is protected by the Holy Temple! With the Holy Temple here, nothing can happen to the King City!”

“That’s right, we must trust the Holy Temple. For so many years, their glorious deeds are well-known; they even managed to seal off alternate dimensions. What’s a mere Sky City?”

Everyone was deluding themselves.

The minstrel, munching on his apple, suddenly pulled his gaze back from the sky, swept it across the crowd, and uttered an untimely remark:

“Alternate dimensions are minor troubles, but isn’t this Sky City also known as one of the ‘Seven Prohibitions’? Have you all forgotten?”

“Uh...” This made everyone speechless, then they erupted in furious unison, throwing vegetable leaves and eggs indiscriminately at the disheveled minstrel’s face.

“You rascal, shut up!”

“You jinx, no one will think you’re mute if you don’t speak, go back and finish your nonsensical ‘Scamp Poem’!”

“Take my flying kick, go to hell—”

The minstrel was so scared he dropped his apple and sheepishly retreated into the dark alley, drawing circles and silently cursing.

“Boom, boom, boom...”

Time passed, and the ground was already covered in many fragmented rocks.

The frequency of giant rocks falling into the city quickened, making people feel as if the end of the world had arrived, and that last protective barrier, the city’s defensive barrier, seemed to have become mere decoration.

“That’s not right, the barrier hasn’t even broken, so how are these rocks getting in?”

“Do they have intelligence, and can they burrow through?”

“But... the city’s defensive barrier doesn’t have holes, it doesn’t even have a crack!”

Everyone looked on, perplexed.

Because although ninety-nine percent of the falling rocks were intercepted by the barrier, some lucky stones miraculously passed through the barrier and struck certain unlucky individuals on the head.

A dirty head emerged from the alley, and with a sneering tone, it loudly mocked:

“Ignorant fools, Sky City is one of the ‘Seven Prohibitions,’ how immensely powerful is its oppressive aura?

“When this city above the city emerges from spatial turbulence, even if it doesn’t fall completely, how can ordinary space withstand it?

“Under immense pressure, space distorts, and large amounts of fragmented rocks fall, landing precisely in certain spatial nodes—isn’t that perfectly normal?

“Some are teleported elsewhere, so you don’t see them; some happen to be close enough to smash into the King City. What’s so strange about that?”

The sarcastic explanation did not anger the pedestrians on the street.

But when someone turned around and saw that the speaker was the jinxing minstrel from earlier, they immediately became enraged.

“You rascal, why aren’t you hiding back in your doghouse? Showing off, are you?”

“Everyone, get him!”

Swish, swish, swish—

Vegetable leaves, rotten eggs, and spoiled apples attacked again.

The minstrel dodged a few attacks, picked up a less damaged apple from the ground, and silently retreated back into the alley, drawing circles and cursing to himself.

“Look, there’s writing!”

People dodging the falling rocks and curiously gazing at the Sky City’s anomaly suddenly pointed towards the mottled ancient city gate tilting towards the ground, exclaiming in surprise.

Before today, Sky City had only revealed a corner of its wall, not its gate.

Now that even the gate was visible, did it mean everyone could enter to seek opportunities?

“Xuanwu Gate...”

Someone knowledgeable recognized the complex characters as ancient script and murmured, “What does that mean? Is the Sky City’s gate called ‘Xuanwu Gate’? I’ve never heard of that before. How do we get in? Does anyone know?”

“Ignorance!”

A sarcastic voice came from an alleyway opposite.

“Sky City, being one of the ‘Seven Prohibitions,’ has a total of five city gates, named after the Four Symbols: ‘Azure Dragon,’ ‘White Tiger,’ ‘Vermillion Bird,’ and ‘Black Tortoise.’

“But without a ‘Void Token,’ even a Half-Saint cannot enter Sky City, not even through the main gate.

“Because the ‘Void Token’ is the key to opening Sky City’s five gates. Without the key, even if you bash your head against it, the gate won’t open for you!”

This piece of hot knowledge enlightened everyone, filling them with respect, assuming this person was extremely learned and of distinguished status.

But upon turning around, they saw that the speaker still had egg yolk residue on his head and a yellowed vegetable leaf hanging from his nose.

The pedestrians on the street all had twitching lips.

Suppressing the urge to attack, someone asked, “Sir, you just mentioned five gates, but only named four. Why is that?”

The minstrel munched on an apple, strode out, and pontificated:

“Because this fifth gate is not within Sky City itself, but scattered across the continent. It’s called the ‘Qilin Gate,’ also known as the ‘Void Gate.’

“The ‘Void Gate,’ as the fifth gate, is the only one that can be opened without a ‘Void Token.’ As long as you find it, obtain the sacrifice ritual from it, and perform the ritual carefully, you can enter Sky City.

“Legend says that in ancient times, many such fortunate individuals found the ‘Void Gate,’ sacrificed others’ lives, and achieved Half-Saint status themselves...

“Tsk, tsk, how beautiful, how beautiful!”

He shook his head, seeming to yearn for such evil deeds of sacrificing others for self-gain.

“Are you done?” The passersby endured the absurd talk, confirming their question.

“Yes, I’m done,” the minstrel took a bite of his apple, perplexed. “There’s really nothing left out. What, do you doubt my vast knowledge?”

The crowd erupted again.

“He’s done talking, let’s get him!”

“Don’t let him run this time, this liar! He even sounded so convincing, like it was all true!”

“Charge!”

“I have a blade!”

“Damn it, no blades, don’t kill him, just teach him a lesson.”