Chapter 891: You Are My Real Boss

Chapter 891: You Are My True BOSS

Ye Wuming’s aura suddenly erupted, trying to shake off Zhao Changhe’s demonic grip on her wrist.

Unfortunately, given the gap between them now, mere aura bursts could no longer break that hold.

Ye Wuming struck with her other hand, and Zhao Changhe parried back and forth in a rapid exchange, yet his hand remained clamped tight, refusing to let go.

Ling Ruoyu couldn’t bear to watch—it felt like watching herself and Queque bicker, so childish. Especially this fight, with neither daring to use overwhelming force, it was like a game of kitten paws.

She wondered how other children felt watching their father flirt with their mother. Ling Ruoyu was so embarrassed her toes were practically digging a school district out of the ground, wishing there was some soy sauce to go buy just to escape.

Ye Wuming had to admit that when she couldn’t unleash excessive power, relying solely on technique, Zhao Changhe no longer feared her at all—she couldn’t subdue him.

Seeing Zhao Changhe lean in toward the hand he held, his lips almost puckering, Ye Wuming was both angry and anxious, nearly bursting out with power beyond the limit. But just as she was about to, Zhao Changhe grinned and let go, casually rubbing her hand: “Xiaxia…”

Ye Wuming hastily withdrew her power, fuming: “Do you have any sense of the bigger picture?!”

“That’s rich,” Zhao Changhe said cheerfully, pulling his hand back to sniff it. “The one about to unleash excessive power was you, not me. I’m the one who pulled back in time. Who lacks a sense of the bigger picture?” He sniffed again: “Still this fragrant, smooth and soft, just like before.”

Ling Ruoyu lowered her head, the school district she’d dug out already expanding into a Night Palace.

Ye Wuming sneered: “As if you’ve ever touched it before.”

“I have, actually, a long, long time ago.” Zhao Changhe grinned. “Back then, I was so weak. How could someone like Lord Night Emperor ever be touched by me? Thinking it over, the only explanation is that you were deliberately seducing me back then…”

Ye Wuming paused, then realized he had indeed touched her once, and it was indeed very early. At that time, Zhao Changhe had just started martial arts, barely at the first level of the Mystic Gate.

Even Ye Wuming herself didn’t know how he’d managed to touch her then. She must have been distracted handling some important matters, and never imagined he’d dare reach out, so it happened by accident. But that was hard to explain—such a vast gap in power; even brushing her sleeve was unbelievable. Who would believe you weren’t deliberately flirting?

Ye Wuming could only mock: “Me, flirting with you back then? How cringe.”

Zhao Changhe said: “So you mean you’d flirt with the later me?”

Ye Wuming slammed the table: “Zhao Changhe, are you insane?!”

Zhao Changhe took a leisurely sip of wine: “I just want to piss you off. What’s the matter? Didn’t you ever think this day would come when you deliberately led me to oppose you?”

“You…”

Before she could finish, a sound came from afar, as if someone was approaching.

Ye Wuming stopped talking, and Zhao Changhe laughed: “Alright, alright. Dignity, detachment, lofty as the moon, still as night. Don’t break character.”

Ye Wuming shut her mouth.

What a lunatic.

Of course, her deliberate attempt to set him against her was partly to prevent him from developing improper feelings, and partly for that doomed final battle. Since she intended to die together, it was better not to have a good relationship. Zhao Changhe, with his Nine Nether and ethereal nature, would gladly see her die.

What she had imagined as “this day” referred to life and death, not this nonsense!

“Are you all a family?” The shopkeeper from before came into the back courtyard with a smile, holding a piece of pitch-black meteorite. “This is the Void-Breaking Star Iron. Please inspect it, friend.”

Zhao Changhe laughed: “My wife is more knowledgeable about these things than I am. Let her appraise it.”

Ye Wuming choked: “Who’s your…”

Zhao Changhe interrupted: “It’s for fighting the Heavenly Dao. Are you going to appraise it or not?”

Ye Wuming took the star iron in frustration. She felt that the Heavenly Dao, which everyone considered the greatest enemy and she herself was ready to trade her life for, was just part of a game for Zhao Changhe—existing only to tease her, otherwise he wouldn’t even bother with it.

Thinking about it, Zhao Changhe wasn’t a being of this world and had no direct conflict with the Heavenly Dao. He didn’t share her or Jiuyou’s resentment over a manipulated fate. He was only involved because he was dragged here for her sake.

Moreover, before Night Wuming tore the sky in the previous era, the Heavenly Dao hadn’t committed any villainous acts like destroying the world. It had no effect on ordinary beings. The real villain of that era was her, Night Wuming. In this era, the Heavenly Dao’s revenge had a villainous flavor, but the root could be traced back to her.

If Night Wuming hadn’t resisted, would none of this have happened?

Thinking this, Ye Wuming suddenly asked: “Do you have little interest in fighting Him?”

Zhao Changhe smiled: “Wrong. I do.”

“Why?”

“Because He bullied the woman I love.”

Ye Wuming looked up at him.

Zhao Changhe continued: “Her name is Ye Jiuyou.”

Ye Wuming pressed her lips together, her heart a tangle of indescribable feelings.

“I know what you want to ask,” Zhao Changhe said suddenly. “You’re right. In my heart, He’s on the must-kill list, but He’s not the biggest BOSS… He doesn’t deserve it. The biggest BOSS in my heart has always been Ye Wuming, no matter the battlefield.”

Ye Wuming recalled the fortune-telling booth in the present world, where she’d asked him: What result do you want to achieve?

His answer: Kill that enchantress.

It had nothing to do with anyone else. She, Ye Wuming, was the final hurdle. Round and round, it never changed.

Zhao Changhe concluded: “He was never my end in stepping into this world. You are.”

Ye Wuming didn’t reply to this aggressive statement. She calmly handed back the meteorite: “It’s indeed top-tier material across the heavens, able to cut through void, unbreakable. If you want to reforge the Dragon Sparrow, this is enough.”

Zhao Changhe pocketed the Void-Breaking Star Iron and stood up: “Ruoyu, do you want to play here a bit longer?”

Ling Ruoyu rested her chin on her hand, watching her parents’ conversation. Earlier it seemed silly, but those last few lines stirred something hard to describe in her. The girl felt a strange melancholy. Her literary side flared up, and she wanted to hear more, but it was over…

It seemed in her father’s heart, her mother held a special place—a distant, unreachable dream from humble beginnings?

Cough… The girl shook off her youthful, artsy thoughts and stood up: “Dad, don’t you want to pick some more treasures?”

“I’ll pick some gifts for your aunties… But for real battle…” Zhao Changhe glanced at Ye Wuming again. “It’s not these.”

Ling Ruoyu seemed to understand: “Then let’s go back. If we’re away too long, your aunties will kill you…”

The shopkeeper, having heard a bunch of incomprehensible talk, watched as the family of three vanished without a trace, not even a trajectory. No matter how hard he tried to sense or calculate, he couldn’t detect any sign they had ever existed, as if they had never been in this world.

Only three half-drunk cups of wine remained on the stone table, proof that someone had once sat here drinking and chatting, like a dream.

…

“Friend, please stay.”

In the dimensional rift, Ye Wuming suddenly halted.

She traveled between realms using the great technique of folding time and space, appearing to cross directly to another world, but of course there was a passage, a certain distance.

But being stopped in this folded void of dimensions had never happened before. It meant the other party was also a top-tier being who had touched the origin of a world.

Turning around, she saw an old man in a high hat and wide sash behind her: “You have repeatedly invaded my realm, showing me no respect. I let it slide before, but this time you even killed a top expert within my domain. Have you considered the karmic turbulence and energy disruption you’ve caused?”

It seemed what Ye Wuming had feared had come to pass—the Heavenly Dao of this world had come knocking.

Ye Wuming said coolly: “I had no intention of interfering with your realm. But he harbored evil intentions first. Were we supposed to just let him?”

“That’s still because you brought people here. If you hadn’t come, would any of this have happened?” The old man said coldly: “Do you think this place is a free-for-all, come and go as you please?”

Ye Wuming sneered: “Realms are different from human territories. Accidental travelers are everywhere; there’s never been any convention protecting them. You suddenly bring this up, I suspect it’s not because I come and go freely, but for another reason…”

The old man said coldly: “Sophistry.”

Ye Wuming said: “In my opinion, you are not the Heavenly Dao of this realm. If you were, you would have trapped me within the realm to fight, where it is strongest, not intercepted me in this space-time passage. You are impersonating Him to make me feel guilty. But I tell you, your calculation is wrong, because I am not a good person, and I never feel guilty.”

Zhao Changhe whispered to Ling Ruoyu: “Learn from this.”

Ling Ruoyu: “…”

The old man was stumped by Ye Wuming’s words, clearly not expecting her judgment to be so sharp. For a moment, he didn’t know what to say.

In that fleeting moment of hesitation, a delicate hand had already struck.

With that strike, the entire space collapsed, dimensions shattered, and all returned to nothingness.

The old man flashed away in alarm, but the temporal chaos swept around him, nearly tearing his soul apart.

"What a ruthless woman. What origins does this family have?" The old man staggered back, and when he reappeared, his feet touched solid ground. He was utterly perplexed: "In this sea of stars, I've never heard of them. Divination yields nothing—they seem to exist in this world, yet not entirely, as if present and absent..."

The place he stood was a sea of stars, belonging to the main realm universe. Countless planets filled this star sea, each occupied by immensely powerful cultivators. The immortal realm that family had just visited was merely the evolved cave heaven of a formidable cultivator here—a hidden world within a world.

But that cultivator had already fallen, and this old man was preparing to subdue that cave heaven.

Ye Wuming's guess was slightly off, for there was no Heavenly Dao here, so naturally no plot of the Dao coming to trouble her. It was simply that when she constructed a temporal passage to traverse realms, the old man sensed the temporal disturbance and thought someone was vying for his cave heaven, so he came to investigate.

In the star sea, there were naturally many powerful artifacts, some even stronger than humans. Among them was a celestial scripture artifact inscribed with martial laws, born and nurtured in the void of the star sea, gradually gaining sentience and evolving into a realm. It was identical in nature to a cave heaven realm, except the celestial scripture was half a grade higher.

Thus, the old man's divination that it seemed present yet absent was correct. Because the celestial scripture was indeed in this star sea, and Ye Wuming, as its spirit, was also here, but in essence, they were still beings within the book. The old man couldn't figure this out for the moment, leaving him thoroughly confused.

Back when the celestial scripture first gained sentience, its energy stirred, and a powerful demonic cultivator detected it, seeking to subdue the artifact. But he couldn't, so he was forced to forcibly split the book spirit, inserting himself to gain control. For a time, it was quite successful; the celestial scripture played a vital role in his hands, allowing him to rule a planet.

But from a certain year onward, the most advanced beings within the book awakened to the truth one after another. The demonic cultivator failed to notice in time, and the Night Emperor within the book dealt him a severe blow, causing him to lose control completely. A subsequent struggle thirty years ago went awry, and he still hides in his cave heaven recuperating.

Subduing an artifact of one's own level is always this difficult; countless cultivators have died from backlash. He is neither the first nor the last.

After the celestial scripture broke free from his control, Ye Wuming hid it in the void, its location unknown to anyone. Instead, Ye Wuming herself began taking her husband and children out to frolic one by one...

Theoretically, the celestial scripture still had no master, but the demonic cultivator was anxious... because he knew the original book spirit already had a master, and the current book spirit was likely close to having one too... After all, they were twin sisters forcibly split apart; their love and hate would probably be very similar.

If he didn't act quickly, he would lose this artifact forever, lose this world.

The demonic cultivator opened his eyes in his cave heaven: "Was that a flicker of Ye Wuming's energy just now? An illusion? Does she dare to run wild in the main realm?"

...

Night Palace.

Ye Wuming, holding Zhao Changhe and Ling Ruoyu by the hands, staggered to the ground.

Zhao Changhe truly admired her ability to destroy the temporal passage they were in while simultaneously constructing another. Even for Ye Wuming, such an operation was not easy; she suffered some backlash and could barely stand.

Zhao Changhe steadied her, a hint of reproach in his voice: "Why do it like that? So dangerous. That old man's cultivation wasn't higher than yours, was it? That's why he had to invoke the Heavenly Dao to make you feel in the wrong, right? If we all ganged up on him, we could have beaten him to a pulp. Why go through this?"

Ye Wuming shook her head slightly: "I've always felt that our Heavenly Dao exists in that kind of environment, perhaps nearby. I can't afford to get entangled with others."

Zhao Changhe said, "So when you search these realms, is one of the purposes to find where the Heavenly Dao is?"

"No, it's for myself." Ye Wuming gazed into the sky, lost in thought, and said softly, "The myriad realms are full of powerful beings... That old man just now was no weaker than me. Sooner or later, other entities will set their sights on this place. I must reach the other shore as soon as possible to truly roam the heavens."

"So your journey is clearly toward the stars and seas, why do you always think about dying?"

"Because you've never truly felt the despair of facing Him. In your heart, you don't even regard Him as a major boss. Only I and Jiuyou understand that achieving mutual destruction is already incredibly difficult, requiring two eras of planning and exhausting every precondition."

Zhao Changhe stared at her for a long moment, then said quietly, "Xiaxia, I never thought I'd hear the word 'despair' from your lips."

Ye Wuming smiled faintly: "Doesn't Jiuyou also feel that the moon's cold and the sun's warmth wear away one's life? Isn't she despairing?"

Zhao Changhe was silent.

Ye Wuming said, "Because the one truly facing it isn't you. You haven't personally experienced that powerlessness and hardship. Even that arrow back then—I was the one bearing the hardest front for you, allowing you to succeed with that shot. That's why you still underestimate Him now. Not treating Him as a boss—how dare you say that."

Zhao Changhe shook his head. He wasn't underestimating, just despising strategically. How could he underestimate an enemy strong enough to drive Ye Wuming mad and make Ye Jiuyou gnash her teeth? In his actions, he was still searching for materials to reforge Dragon Sparrow, carefully observing battles involving artifacts—what was that for?

In truth, it was Ye Wuming who underestimated him, Zhao Changhe. Because in this journey to another world, while it seemed like training the child, what Zhao Changhe gained far exceeded Ye Wuming's imagination.

Ye Wuming flipped her wrist, and a complete celestial scripture appeared in her hand: "The world was born from the celestial scripture, yet we still have a scripture in hand, and you've been in contact with it for so long... Don't you find it strange?"

"It's just a manifestation. Theoretically, the face I used to wipe my gun wasn't yours, but your mold..."

"Get lost!" Ye Wuming was so angry she wanted to hit him: "Be serious! Here, I won't hold back!"

Zhao Changhe said nonchalantly, "So you're in a hurry to teach me how to truly use the celestial scripture?"

"I'm just using it as a guide to teach you how to use artifacts... After all, the artifact you're most familiar with is this one. Once you learn, what you use and how you use it is up to you." Ye Wuming casually extended a finger: "Just touch the spiritual platform with your finger. Do you want to learn or not? One word."

"No." Zhao Changhe smiled. "Because I already know how to use it."