This begged the question, however: How could he pit the two sides against one another?

The answer was very simple. By using himself as bait and entering the darkness. If the Sage wished to kill him, then they must enter the darkness as well. At that point, it was guaranteed that they would clash against the entity.

Was it not obvious that he was trying to use the Nine Nethers Demon to rid himself of his pursuers? Of course it was. Unless the Sage pursuing him had a giant hole inside their brain, they would understand his plan as soon as they saw the zone of darkness.

That was the thing about most Sages, however. They were very prideful. Their dignity would not allow them to balk in the face of some danger.

Besides that, Ye Qing was sure that the Sage pursuing him had seen the Buddhist light as well and made the accurate guess that it was an Ancient-class Strange Artifact. Even for a Sage, the Strange Artifact represented a massive opportunity. He was certain that his pursuers would be tempted by it.

In conclusion, Ye Qing was confident that the combination of responsibility, pridefulness, and temptation would draw his pursuers into the zone of darkness even though they knew exactly what he was doing.

In fact, things went exactly as he expected. Only two things strayed from his expectations.

One, he underestimated how much West Kunlun was determined to kill him. He did not expect that not one, but two Sages were coming after him.

Two, he underestimated how powerful the bride was. She was singlehandedly suppressing the two Sages right now. Although this state of things was temporary, it did not change the fact that she was beyond powerful.

Of course, it was also likely that the two Sages had underestimated the bride. Otherwise, the situation might have been more favorable for the Sages.

This was good though. A one-sided fight was usually quite short. A stalemate, on the other hand, would buy him the maximum amount of time necessary to make his escape.

“Good luck, have fun!”

After observing for a moment longer and confirming that the bride could not spare the time or effort to squish him, Ye Qing carefully shifted his paper body forward and prepared to leave.

“Hmm?”

Right as he was about to do so, he suddenly saw something out of the corner of his eyes.

It was a speck of sand. Just like him, it was slowly moving toward the nearby bush.

The speck of dust rolled forward one time before coming to a stop. A short pause later, it performed a second roll before stopping once more. As if confirming that the coast was clear, it began rolling toward the bush more boldly than before, though it never moved more than a few rolls at a time. Not only that, Ye Qing had the distinct feeling that it was constantly looking left and right and checking its surroundings. It was… kinda vulgar.

Ye Qing was stunned by his own evaluation. He could hardly believe that he thought a speck of

sand

was vulgar. What on earth was going on here.

The distance between the sand and the bush was less than thirty meters, and yet the sand took nearly an entire teatime to cross the distance. Finally, when the speck of sand reached the edge of the bush, a couple legs suddenly grew out of its bottom, and took off like the wind.

“Interesting!”

Ye Qing lifted his eyebrows and decided to follow the speck of sand. Sneakily, of course.

After he entered the forest, a small flicker of profound light appeared in Ye Qing’s eyes. It looked as weak as a candle flame, but as pure as the first light of dawn. ṙ𝘼𝐍ỐΒЕ𝘚

The first light of dawn carried many meanings. One of them was protection of the mind and soul. The next moment, an inexplicable, profound energy spread across Ye Qing’s paper body, burning away the scorched papers and exposing his true self.

The strange magic the bride used to transform his flesh and blood into paper was, to put it bluntly, a curse. Without her active interference, all he needed to do was to break the curse to restore himself.

After Ye Qing regained his true body, the first thing he did was to wave his sleeve and dispel the remnant energies in the air. Then, he chased after the speck of sand.

The chase continued for over an hour or so, and every time Ye Qing thought he had seen the depths of the speck of sand’s vulgarity, it would renew his perception yet again. The speck of sand only ever ran toward the most secluded, unlikely places one could think of. For example, Ye Qing had seen it run into mouse holes, stone crevices, quagmires… it never failed to run head first into the most unsavory of places. It was to the point where Ye Qing sincerely wondered if the speck of sand was missing a brain or two.

On a related note, the speck of sand was

fast

even though it was tiny. They had covered over fifty kilometers of distance in just a little over an hour.

“Hmm? Where did it go?”

Ye Qing saw the speck of sand running up to a small pond. After checking its surroundings once more, it jumped straight into the pond.

To Ye Qing’s surprise, he lost track of the speck of sand the instant it made contact with the pond.

So, Ye Qing appeared in front of the pond and examined it with puzzlement on his face.

𝙧𝙚𝙚𝔀𝒆𝓫𝓷𝙤𝓿𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝙤𝓶

The pond was only three meteor wide and extremely murky. Frankly, calling it a pond might be an exaggeration. It was more akin to an average, maybe even small-sized puddle.

Anyway, Ye Qing probed his demonic thought into the pond and found exactly what he saw: nothing. That made no sense, however. After all, he clearly saw the speck of sand jumping into the pond, and yet he could neither see nor perceive it.

“It couldn’t just vanish into thin air, could it?”

Ye Qing raised his eyebrows and mulled over his options for a moment. Then, he leaped into the pond.

What happened next was quite confusing. The pond was neither big nor deep. From what he could tell, it was barely deep enough to fit him up into his waist. When he entered the pond though, he found himself sinking without end. It wasn’t long before he was completely submerged inside the pond.

The next moment, it was like he had entered a new world. The scenery inside the pond became utterly strange.

He was no longer looking at a pond of narrow, filthy mud water. No, the pond had somehow transformed into an

ocean

.

Everything inside the ocean was impossibly big. He saw gigantic, star-like objects bobbing up and down inside the ocean. He also saw many strange two-headed, insect-like fishes eating the dirty soil on the objects.

At the bottom of the ocean, the water grass looked to be over three hundred meters. Swimming carefully between the water grass were tiny, two-winged snakes with sharp rows of teeth.

There were also giant fishes the size of ships swimming about inside the waters and pecking away at small trees covered in red fruits.

From time to time, mayflies and insects the size of hills would feed on palm-sized animals with a turtle’s body and a dragon’s head. Their blood turned the waters red.

“How did these things become so big?”

Ye Qing was astonished. He actually recognized these star-like objects, these ship-like fishes, these hill-sized insects and so on. They were ordinary specks of dust, water grass, tiny fishes, insects and other creatures. Most of them were barely large enough to be seen by the naked eye, but here, they became impossibly big.

In fact, he was seeing some sort of pattern. The smaller the object originally was, the bigger they became inside the pond. Just the same, the bigger the object originally was, the smaller they became inside the pond.

Take the two-headed strange fishes pecking away at the mud for example. It was a Phenomenon-class Stranger called the Mountain Whale. It lived in the ocean and was as big as mountains, hence the name. But here in this pond, it was barely bigger than an ant.

The tiny snakes entrenched in the mass of water grass were called Kui Water Profound Snakes. They were all Disaster-class Strangers. Normally found inside a river, they were thousands of meters long and were famous for their humongous size. Every time they made an appearance, they would stir the rivers with their massive bodies and kick up towering waves that engulfed both ships and people alike.

But here? They were barely bigger than a finger and looked like earthworms.

The trees overgrown with red fruits were called the Bountiful Tree. It was a strange tree that lived underwater and could easily grow to a height of three hundred meters, and a width of a dozen people. Its fruits were the size of an entire house and could easily feed over a dozen people. That was why it was called the Bountiful Tree.

Here in this ocean though, it was only as big as a water grass, and the fishes were merrily pecking away its originally house-sized fruits like nothing.

……

This was not an ocean, of course. It was the pond Ye Qing had jumped into. It was just that everything seemed to be inverted in this pond.

He was no exception. His body was now only half as big as it was before. He could feel that his powers had decreased by half as well. Maybe it was because he was now half-sized, or maybe it was something else. In any case, it was quite unusual.

Whoosh!

It was at this moment Ye Qing’s vision darkened. He saw a hill-sized insect opening its massive jaw and charging straight toward him.

Ye Qing did not wish to cause a commotion. So, he tapped his finger and wiped away the insect’s consciousness with the swing of his demonic thought.

Unfortunately, it looked like his action had the opposite effect. Every single giant creature in the pond abruptly turned around and charged at him like sharks who smelled blood in the water.