On the shore of the Pond of Life, Qianye had fallen between a rock and a hard place. The distant six-armed giant, after figuring out his movements, had circled around to intercept.

Qianye would bump into it if he were to advance, but the other direction was the core region of the Pond of Life. Heading in that direction was akin to walking under the eyes of the aquatic behemoth. Compared to challenging an unknown enemy, Qianye would rather face the six-armed giant. At the very least, he wasn’t entirely helpless against this fellow.

Qianye sat close to the water and began channeling the Glory Chapter to replenish origin power. He found, to his surprise, that its speed had increased again and was much faster than in other places. The chapter was already faster in the Great Maelstrom compared to the outside world, and now, it was even more terrifying in the Pond of Life. The rate of channeling was even faster than in the high-gravity region. Qianye estimated that one day of training here would equal ten in the outside world.

He controlled the cultivation art at a steady rate for fear that he might alarm the giant creature in the water. Qianye opened his eyes after a quarter of an hour. This time was short, but it was akin to two hours of cultivation outside of the Great Maelstrom. It wasn’t enough to improve one’s cultivation rank, but enough to recover over half of one’s origin power.

With origin power, there were many things he could do.

At this moment, the six-armed giant had taken up position on the other side of the forest, waiting for Qianye to appear. Gazing at that distant figure, the latter began thinking of things he could do.

Only two things could actually injure the monstrosity: Heartgrave and the Shot of Inception. Or perhaps a shot from Heartgrave enforced with the Wings of Inception.

This would boost Heartgrave’s firepower close to the peak of grade nine, but the consumption involved would increase exponentially as well. It was simple—if Heartgrave’s original power was ten, it would be raised to twenty, but the origin power consumption would increase from ten to fifty. Such a drain would completely exhaust Qianye, even though his cultivation had improved quite a bit.

Yet, without the Wings of Inception, the gun’s firepower was somewhat lacking. If he couldn’t kill the enemy in one blow, using Heartgrave in this dangerous place was like digging one’s own grave.

Pondering over this matter, Qianye inspected the Wings of Inception again. There was a black feather on each of its wings, plus two ordinary luminous feathers, which meant that he had accumulated four shots, and two of them were mutated. It was near impossible for Qianye to fire all four shots since there was a limit to his blood energy. One had to know that the mutated Shot of Inception would cost twice the energy to fire compared to an ordinary one.

He fell silent as his gaze landed on the two black feathers. He might be able to injure the six-armed giant if he were to use two Shots of Inception. It would, however, be rather difficult to kill that monster… that was unless he could strike at its vitals. Then again, where were the giant’s vitals?

Its head? Probably not.

Could it be the heart? No one knew.

Its eyes? That was a possibility, but the giant’s perception was so strong that it could track Qianye’s Spatial Flash. Whether the eyes were usable or not would make little difference it seems.

Its crotch? That was also probable. Reproductive organs were important to all male creatures… right?

Truth be told, Qianye had no way to confirm this, and the giant’s ragged loincloth possessed shockingly high defensive capabilities. It truly makes one wonder what beast skin it was made from.

After much deliberation, Qianye finally thought of a method that wasn’t quite a method. The six-armed giants might not have any weakness, but this one before him did. A piece of its skull had been blasted away a few days ago, and although it had grown back, the new bone would surely be weaker than the rest of its skeleton. Qianye needed only to fire at the same spot again, and his chances of producing results would increase exponentially.

Having reached a decision, Qianye was no longer in a rush. He decided to channel the Mystery Chapter for a quarter of an hour before launching a surprise assault on the six-armed giant.

If he could heavily injure the opponent, Qianye would immediately flee toward the Imperial fortress.

Just as Qianye had finished preparations and was about to deal a powerful blow to the six-armed giant, a streak of black energy appeared and circled lightly around its neck.

Immediately afterward, the six-armed giant’s great head left its body and fell to the ground.

For a moment, Qianye could hardly believe his eyes. The six-armed giant was dead? Dead?

This truth was too unbelievable. The giant had been distracted by Qianye’s impending attack, but even Elder Lu from the Heavenschild Pasture would only be able to injure it with a sneak attack. It wasn’t certain if the old man would last very long in a head-on battle.

If even Elder Lu could only do that much, there was no need to think about other people.

Even if Qianye were to take action personally and the six-armed giant were to stand there without doing anything, there was no way he could’ve slashed through that steely neck in one move.

Qianye’s bewilderment soon turned to joy. The familiar figure that had emerged with the giant’s collapse… wasn’t that Nighteye?

Qianye took a hurried step forward but stopped in a rare case of hesitation.

He hadn’t seen Nighteye for a good while. The several times that he did talk to her, they only did so with the airship walls between them.

From a different perspective, the awakened Nighteye was an existence Qianye had to look up to. Although emotions weren’t decided by fighting power, both the Empire and Evernight considered strength to be the most important characteristic, and it was only natural for Qianye to observe these rules. To the current him, this meant that Nighteye was of a higher class.

Qianye had always wondered if Nighteye, after awakening, still remembered that bit of love they had shared—but he also didn’t want to, or dared to, find out. Now, for some reason, she had appeared and saved him from his predicament.

Qianye gazed at Nighteye, and Nighteye gazed at him. It was just that her eyes were as deep as the boundless abyss, showing none of her emotions.

Moments later, Nighteye broke the silence with a faint smile. “Is this how you plan to help me up the Sacred Mountain?”

These words came out of the blue. Qianye was momentarily stunned, not knowing where he should start. He had entered the Great Maelstrom to seek fortunes and improve his strength, and indeed, he had made extraordinary progress. If he weren’t trapped by the six-armed giant, he would’ve probably condensed his seventh origin vortex by now.

This bit of power was far from enough to help Nighteye onto the Sacred Mountain, not even to the foot of the mountain. However, no one in the Empire was Qianye’s peer in terms of cultivation speed. As for Evernight, the dark races were more used to measuring the growth of one’s bloodline power. Their cultivation speed was much slower depending on the phase of their training, far from being a match for him.

Qianye noticed the dissatisfaction in Nighteye’s voice, but he couldn’t figure out what exactly she was resenting. Qianye’s growth in cultivation and combat strength could only be described as godly by any measure.

Before Qianye could ask, Nighteye drifted down and placed Zhuji on the ground. She then pointed at Qianye, saying, “Go to Papa.”

Little Zhuji frowned. “No! Papa doesn’t care about me, I want Mama and Aunty!”

𝙛𝓻𝒆𝒆𝒘𝙚𝓫𝙣𝙤𝒗𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

These words surprised Nighteye. She said with a gentle expression, “You want me? I never spent much time with you, either.”

The little lass said, “Aunty has a nice smell.”

A chuckling Nighteye patted her head, saying, “Good girl, follow Papa from now on. Go wherever he goes, understand?”

Little Zhuji was apparently somewhat fearful of Nighteye and didn’t dare disobey. “But what if Papa wants to leave me somewhere again?”

“Give him a mouthful if he dares.”

Little Zhuji shook her head. “No! Papa will die. I don’t want him to die, I don’t want Mama or Aunty to die, either.”

Nighteye’s smile became even more radiant. She kneaded the little girl’s head hard, saying, “Nonsense, how could Papa die? Your little poison will leave him half dead at most, but he’ll recover in less than a day. I won’t die, either. Not many people in this world can kill your aunty. Your Mama, though… maybe…”

Seeing that Nighteye was thinking about something, Zhuji asked, “What do you want to do with Mama?”

“Nothing, I was just thinking if I should kill him.” Only after saying this did she realize that she had blurted out her thoughts, but she wasn’t really afraid that Qianye would hear her anyway. She merely patted Zhuji on the back, saying, “Go.”

The little fellow had just taken a step forward when she was pulled back.

“Wait a minute.” Nighteye flew over to the six-armed giant’s body. She then sliced open its chest with her black scythe and picked out the heart.

The giant’s heart was extremely big, and it was still beating with great power. Apparently, there was an incomparable amount of vitality within it.

Nighteye tossed the heart to Zhuji, saying, "Have your father cook this for you. It’ll be beneficial."

Zhuji couldn’t stop drooling the moment she saw that giant heart. Her strong intuition told her that this thing wasn’t just slightly beneficial to her.

The little fellow ran all the way to Qianye’s side, hauling the giant heart that was even bigger than herself. With the giant’s heart in hand, this little fellow forgot all about Nighteye. It would seem she was a fairly big glutton.

The giant heart blocked Nighteye’s figure as Zhuji was running over, and by the time the girl had tossed the beating organ onto the ground in front of Qianye, she had already disappeared.

That love seemed to be there, yet it also seemed otherwise.

If she no longer cared about him entirely, why would she arrive at such an opportune moment? On the other hand, how could she have left so easily if she did care about him?

Qianye sighed in his heart.

Moments later, a bonfire rose up beside the Pond of Life, with small pieces of fist-sized meat cooking in a pot over the flames.

This pot used to be a part of the six-armed giant’s armor, the water inside came from the Pond of Life, and the meat was naturally the giant’s heart.

It wasn’t that Qianye’s knife skills were lacking but because the six-armed giant’s heart was too difficult to cut—using East Peak at full force was barely enough to dice the meat into pieces. He thus decided to do the cutting after it was cooked.

The water was boiling, but the heart hadn’t changed color. Impatient, Little Zhuji picked a piece of meat out of the boiling water and swallowed it recklessly.

The meat was so big that her neck almost bulged out as the meat slid down her throat. This method of eating drenched Qianye in cold sweat.

“No taste.” The girl seemed confused.