Meng Ruji was familiar with every part of Hengxu Mountain.

Qing Rao led her to a mountain forest where the spiritual energy was abnormal. Outside the forest, Qing Rao could no longer walk forward—the powerful formation pressure inside pressed down on her until her internal organs felt as if they were about to rot from the discomfort.

Meng Ruji told Qing Rao to wait outside while she controlled her techniques to resist the powerful pressure and walked in.

All the vegetation in the forest had withered completely. Meng Ruji walked to where the pressure was strongest and saw the formation on the ground. The formation was like scattered stars, and also like a gathered bonfire, with no concealment whatsoever, directly exposed before Meng Ruji.

Meng Ruji had originally planned to destroy this formation, but when she channeled her spiritual energy into the formation, she discovered that she was completely helpless against it…

The reason was simple—although the formation was exposed on the surface, the lines extending from both sides had already connected underground, invisible to the naked eye. Through spiritual energy exploration, Meng Ruji realized that this formation was connected underground to at least hundreds of formation cores with the same power in the distance…

At least hundreds of them…

So previously, when Mu Sui had been rushing between different mountains, it was to set up this formation across all the mountain ranges. Hengxu Mountain was the last one…

When the formation was completed, it would merge with the mountains and seas, interconnecting and working together, so that no matter how much power was channeled into it, it would be dispersed to all corners of the earth, like a drop of water entering the sea, utterly useless.

“Hide the star torch among a thousand mountains, following the will of the departed gods…” Meng Ruji murmured the words Mu Sui had once told her, suddenly gaining some understanding. “So that’s how it is, so that’s how it is…”

Meng Ruji suddenly turned and ran out of the forest.

“Qing Rao!”

Qing Rao was waiting in the forest, watching as more and more malevolent energy in the sky attacked the mountain protection formation. Shang Lan had already led Hengxu Mountain’s disciples to support the barrier in the air. Hearing Meng Ruji’s call, she was somewhat anxious: “Master! I can see the mountain protection formation is about to fail.”

Meng Ruji waved her hand, channeling her spiritual energy into the aerial formation to temporarily repair the already damaged barrier. Then she immediately said to Qing Rao, “In a moment, I need to sleep.”

“Sleep? Sleep at a time like this?”

“I need to go find Mu Sui.”

“Where are you going to find him?”

“In a dream.”

“What!?”

Qing Rao was beginning to think her master had gone completely mad after that trip to the Realm of No Return.

But Meng Ruji solemnly patted her shoulder: “In a moment, watch my wrist. A spiritual energy should appear on the vine bracelet on my wrist.”

“Not… should?”

“It should guide you in a direction.”

Qing Rao: “…”

“If there’s no guidance, then I’ll come out. If there is, you carry my body and head straight in the direction the spiritual energy guides you.”

Qing Rao listened in confusion: “I carry Master? Then where is Master?”

“I’ll go catch someone in the dream first.”

Qing Rao didn’t understand, but seeing that Meng Ruji had already sat cross-legged and entered meditation, Qing Rao could only obediently guard by Meng Ruji’s side, anxiously looking at the sky on one side and nervously watching the vine bracelet on Meng Ruji’s wrist on the other.

After entering meditation, Meng Ruji immediately sank into her dream world.

She had come here so often that she was very familiar with it. In the chaotic dream world, she kept searching through her past scenes until she finally found one. Meng Ruji peered inside carefully, staring intently until a voice appeared behind her.

“Little Meng.”

Meng Ruji turned around, and Mo Li saw that her eyes were slightly red, somewhat stunned: “What’s wrong? What dream did you see?”

Mo Li was about to lean over to look, but Meng Ruji pushed him away while tightly gripping this ball of mist.

Meng Ruji took a deep breath, then let this mist be tied to her body like a kite string.

“The situation is critical, things are worse than I thought.” Meng Ruji said, “Mu Sui and Mo Yi’s world-destroying formation has probably already been set up.”

Hearing this, Mo Li’s face changed: “So fast!?”

Meng Ruji smiled coldly: “He even complained that I returned to the mortal realm too quickly.” She steadied herself. “I need you to do something—search for Mu Sui’s dream in this world.”

Mo Li frowned: “I can search, but what if he doesn’t dream?”

“He will dream.”

Seeing Meng Ruji’s certainty, Mo Li was somewhat puzzled: “Previously, when you were captured by Zhan Ye, he never dreamed.”

“This time is different.” Meng Ruji analyzed, “How vast are heaven and earth? Destroying heaven and earth is no easy task. Even Mo Yi hasn’t accomplished this until now, so she needs Mu Sui to return to the mortal realm. I only realized this just now when I saw their formation core.

“What formation core?”

“Previously, Zhan Ye followed the Human God’s words and set up a cloud-gathering formation in Zhuliu City, do you remember? When the cloud-gathering formation was destroyed, a black hole that devoured heaven and earth appeared. The appearance of that formation is extremely similar to the formation Mu Sui set up in the mountain ranges of the mortal realm!”

Mo Li was stunned: “You’re saying that the formation Mo Yi told Zhan Ye about was the formation they planned to use to destroy the world? Mo Yi had Zhan Ye experiment in the Realm of No Return?”

“She tested it, succeeded, so she wanted to bring Mu Sui back to the mortal realm.”

“But Mu Sui has only been back in the mortal realm for how long! How could it be so fast!”

“Hide the star torch among a thousand mountains…” Meng Ruji’s lips moved slightly. “Before coming to the Realm of No Return, he had been doing this all along, hadn’t he? Only he knows where he previously buried the formations in which mountains, and only he knows where else formations need to be set up. So Mo Yi wanted him to return to the mortal realm.

“The formation Zhan Ye set up over Zhuliu City required enormous power to activate, so he used Zhuliu City’s Golden Staff, while the formation among these thousand mountains in the mortal realm…”

Meng Ruji touched her dantian area.

“Requires this Inner Core to activate.”

So, the first time Mu Sui spent a fortune to return to the mortal realm, he immediately came to find her. He wanted her Inner Core with Creation Power to be the key to his world-destroying formation.

After hearing Meng Ruji’s reasoning, Mo Li’s face turned pale: “If that’s the case, why are you still looking for Mu Sui? If I connect your dreams, you’re both in the mortal realm—he might be able to sense your location.”

“That’s exactly what I want! I want to sense his location! I must go find him.”

“You’re going to deliver the key to him!?”

“Without me, they will still activate this formation. Mu Sui previously used malevolent energy to take form and see me—he already knows where I am, but he didn’t touch my Inner Core. This shows that he and Mo Yi haven’t set their target on me. They never thought I would return to the mortal realm so quickly. He told me there’s still one day left. He and Mo Yi must be trying to create a new ‘key.’ To condense such a powerful force, they must concentrate in meditation!

“So, Mu Sui will dream.”

Seeing Meng Ruji’s determined expression with bright light in her eyes, Mo Li was silent for a moment, finally sighing deeply: “I’m searching. If he enters meditation, I can connect your dreams.”

“Thank you.”

“For this matter, you don’t need to thank me. But you, after you see him in the dream, what then?”

“Once the dreams are connected, you help me locate his position. I’ve entrusted my body to Qing Rao, and she’ll follow the guidance to find Mu Sui.”

“And then?”

“Then…” Meng Ruji looked at the ball of misty dream she was holding. “Then I can only gamble with my life.”

Mo Li asked no more questions. He quietly closed his eyes, seemingly working hard to search among the world’s dreams.

Meng Ruji knew this couldn’t be rushed, so she waited around him.

During the waiting time, besides the mist ball Meng Ruji was holding, the surrounding mist balls also drifted over. She looked up at those mist balls—inside were her dreams and her past.

From childhood to now, there were magnificent mountains and rivers inside, as well as the shattered mortal realm. Crises that seemed to want to destroy the entire world had occurred many times during her past years of cultivation.

Evil demons appearing out of nowhere, immortal masters going mad with cultivation, and most commonly, the earth itself trembling and storms raging endlessly…

All of these had happened.

Crises threatening all living beings never stopped.

They say heaven is indifferent and treats all things as straw dogs, but heaven also treats all things equally, letting wind and rain favor no single thing. All living beings survive tenaciously between heaven and the earth’s breathing.

And it is precisely this will to survive that allows withered trees to meet spring again and solid walls to bloom with flowers.

Meng Ruji lowered her eyes. She believed that this time would be the same.

“Found him.” Mo Li opened his eyes. With a movement of his fingertip, the surrounding atmosphere instantly changed.

Before Meng Ruji, the dream world ahead became even more profound, with cold air seeming to emanate from ahead.

“That’s Mu Sui’s dream.” Mo Li pointed for her to see. “His power is very strong now. I need to exert all my strength to maintain the connection between your dreams.”

Meng Ruji nodded: “Can you locate his position in the mortal realm?”

“He’s at Mizong Mountain.”

Meng Ruji was stunned, not expecting to hear that mountain’s name at this time.

This could be considered… fate…

Meng Ruji circulated her energy slightly. Even in the dream, she could control her body’s spiritual energy to manifest outside.

The moment she channeled her spiritual power, she felt her dream world tremble slightly. She knew that Qing Rao outside was carrying her body and moving in the direction she had guided.

Next was what she needed to do, and this could only be accomplished in the dream.

Meng Ruji carried her dream mixed in the mist and stepped toward the dark abyss ahead.

Previously, Mu Sui had come to the abyss to save her once. This time, she was going to find him.

But it wasn’t as difficult as Mu Sui’s previous effort. In the dream, Meng Ruji didn’t search long before finding Mu Sui floating in the air.

His dream world had more mist than last time.

Moreover, these mists had become clear. Meng Ruji could see the scenes within the mist at a glance.

There were scenes from the past Divine Realm, scenes from the Realm of No Return, but most of them were mist balls about Meng Ruji.

From their meeting in the Realm of No Return until now, Meng Ruji walked through these mist balls as if walking through their past. She continued without stopping, rushing toward Mu Sui, but was repelled by the aura around him just before touching him.

Mu Sui opened his eyes in a dream.

Looking at Meng Ruji before him, he seemed to harbor countless words, but in the end, he only said: “You get out.”

Telling her to leave his dream.

Meng Ruji had come with solitary courage, but hearing this, she laughed: “Are you sulking with me? Qianshan Jun?”

Mu Sui only said: “At this time and moment, what are you doing in my dream?”

“I came to give you a choice.”

“I never had a choice.” Mu Sui said, “Born to live, dying to die. I stripped away my divine status and gained human fate, but I, this lost wanderer, never had a path to choose. Meng Ruji, you saw my past at the Nai River. You should know.”

“Is that so? But in my view, you’ve always been making choices.”

Meng Ruji walked toward Mu Sui. She felt the rejecting aura around his body, like a huge wind wall surrounding him, refusing all emotional approach.

He sat steadily within the wind wall, looking at Meng Ruji with distance and indifference.

“In Zhuliu City, you exposed your divine identity to save me. This wasn’t your so-called ‘not knowing why’—this was your choice. Later, on the Nai River, you came to save me. After coming out of the Nai River, you returned the Inner Core to me. These were all your choices.”

Hearing this, Mu Sui’s cold expression moved slightly.

“Before leaving the Realm of No Return, you told me you hid the star torch among a thousand mountains…” Meng Ruji looked directly at him, walking into his defensive wind wall. “You told me your past schemes in a secretive way. This was your choice. Previously, when you came in malevolent energy form to see me at Hengxu Mountain, telling me there was one day left—this was also your choice!”

The fierce wind pulled at Meng Ruji’s body. The mist ball she dragged behind her trembled in the wind, but the mist continued to pour out from within the ball, never being blown away.

Mu Sui watched Meng Ruji quietly from the center of the storm, but his statue-like expression was gradually cracking.

“Without your words, I couldn’t have figured out what you wanted to do, and I wouldn’t have come to see you today!”

“Stop.” Mu Sui said, “Meng Ruji.”

Meng Ruji’s response was to raise her hand and dispel his rejecting wind wall.

Mu Sui finally stood up. He raised his hand to push Meng Ruji away again, but Meng Ruji had already grabbed his hand.

“Mu Sui.” Meng Ruji approached him with a forceful attitude, but at this moment, her voice softened.

“All these years, living as a human, you’ve acquired human bad habits. Humans, because their hearts are weak, speak contrary to their thoughts. I can see it—your actions are calling for help. You want to be stopped…”

“No…” Mu Sui struggled, “I want to kill everyone…”

“Including yourself.”

“I owe them. This is their will.”

“This is not their will.” Meng Ruji forcefully pulled Mu Sui, then dragged the mist ball behind her to Mu Sui’s face. “At Nai River, I always felt something was strange, so I went to my dream to find that day’s memory. Look carefully!”

The mist ball was brought before Mu Sui, and the scene inside seemed to envelop his entire being.

In the scene, it was the day on the Divine Platform when the gods stripped away his divine status.

Fire reflected in the sky of the Divine Realm. Blood and tears covered the faces of all the gods. They chanted incantations, causing ice needles to slice through his body. Blood flowed everywhere on the Divine Platform.

All the scenes were identical to his memories, until…

The moment his divine status was completely stripped away, the gods on the cloud steps around the Divine Platform all stopped chanting. They looked at him, watched the Divine Platform crack, watched him fall from the sky like a meteor toward the lower realm.

In his memory, he heard the gods saying to him: “Kill them, kill them…”

He heard the gods’ hatred, saw the unwillingness in their eyes, so he carried this blood feud and lived until now, but…

In Meng Ruji’s dream, everything was the same as before, yet seemed different from before.

Still on the cloud steps around the Divine Platform, the gods all stopped chanting. They looked at him, watched him fall, but their faces showed relief.

They had no hatred, no unwillingness. Some gods spoke, and no matter how he read their lip movements, he could not make out the hateful words “kill them.”

They were saying:

“Live on.”

“Live on…”

Not to seek revenge, but to be reborn…

Live on as a human.

“Kill everyone” was, it turned out, only his hatred.

“Mu Sui! You’re different from Mo Yi. You never wanted to destroy this world! We can just punish the evildoers!”

Meng Ruji pulled the scene away with one motion. The mist finally dispersed around them. He was still in the chaotic dream world, and before him appeared Meng Ruji’s face.

She was telling him:

“The treacherous immortals, the villains who act in shadows—we’ll find your real enemies! I’ll accompany you! But revenge is to help you live better, not to make you carry hatred and destroy yourself!”

Mu Sui looked at Meng Ruji before him. She held his hand as if holding him who had already fallen off a cliff, firmly wanting to keep him in this mortal realm.

“You can choose to become Mu Sui himself, not just an identity, a piece of the past…”

As she spoke, tears already filled her eyes, shimmering like waves, as if wanting to drown him in warmth, too.

“Move forward.” Meng Ruji said, “Live on.”

With her words, the dream world began to tremble. The chaotic depths faded away from before them, and the surroundings seemed illuminated by sunlight, becoming bright.

Meng Ruji, before him, was also illuminated by the light, her figure gradually blurring, beginning to fade.

Mu Sui’s expression shifted. He reached out his hand, wanting to pull Meng Ruji back. At the moment he raised his hand, darkness completely receded, brilliant light shone forth, and the entire dream world collapsed!

But…

He truly grasped a hand.

It was Meng Ruji.

She appeared before Mu Sui.

Not in the dream world, but in the real mortal realm.

She stood before him, looking down from above at him sitting at the formation.

In his hand, holding Meng Ruji’s wrist, the vine bracelet he had made for Meng Ruji had a faint glowing spiritual energy pointing straight at him.

She had found him.

Behind Meng Ruji, Qing Rao was panting heavily, covered in mud.

Mu Sui had just realized what had happened when Meng Ruji began circulating her power. From her dantian, she condensed out the Inner Core containing Creation Power and pushed it before Mu Sui.

Like offering him a piece of candy.

Mu Sui was astonished, looking up at Meng Ruji.

But Meng Ruji only said to him casually, “I told you, I came to give you a choice. Life or death, you choose.”

As if asking him whether he wanted something sweet or salty.

Mu Sui naturally knew why Meng Ruji would do this.

The Thousand Mountains Formation was his creation. To break it, naturally, only he could do so. Meng Ruji came to give him a choice because she had no other choice.

Mu Sui lowered his eyes, shadows like ink beneath his eyelids.

“Master!” At this moment, Qing Rao, behind them, suddenly cried out in alarm, “The sky!”

Meng Ruji looked up at the sky and saw malevolent energy rolling and surging among the clouds, like ten thousand black dragons tumbling within. The black dragons gathered, gradually condensing into a human figure.

“Meng Ruji.”

Mo Yi’s voice seemed to resonate with the mountains and rivers. She was now the only god in this world. Previously in the Realm of No Return, she was merely a strand of divine consciousness, yet could suppress everyone beyond resistance. In the mortal realm, she had seized various sects’ treasures and let netherworld creatures wreak havoc across the world. Now she had the power to collapse the sky. Thus, when her voice emerged, Qing Rao immediately bled from all seven orifices and collapsed to the ground, while Meng Ruji, having just forced out the Inner Core and being unprepared, could only endure this pressure with her body.

She wiped the blood from the corner of her mouth, looking at Mo Yi in the sky, still standing straight.

“Your return from the Realm of No Return comes at just the right time. I needn’t condense the power to activate the formation.”

With a wave of Mo Yi’s hand, malevolent energy descended from the sky, aimed at the Inner Core before Meng Ruji.

Meng Ruji was about to retrieve the Inner Core, but this glowing pearl was suddenly grasped by a hand.

It was Mu Sui’s hand.

Meng Ruji looked at Mu Sui. He held the Inner Core, raising his eyes to meet hers.

The world-destroying formation was beneath him, the key to activate it in his palm.

Facing Mu Sui, Meng Ruji said no more, because everything she wanted to say had been said.

The malevolent energy descending from the sky didn’t touch the Inner Core because Mu Sui pressed the Inner Core into the ground formation.

Instantly, light extended along the formation’s lines into the distance. In no time, like beacon fires being lit across the mortal realm, all the mountain forests with formations blazed with the same light.

The light shot straight into the sky, truly like beacon fires lit by the stars above.

Star torch…

These two words appeared in Meng Ruji’s heart.

Behind Meng Ruji, Qing Rao struggled to support her body, gritting her teeth in hatred: “Master… you trusted the wrong person…”

Meng Ruji looked at Mu Sui before her without saying a word.

But the next moment, the formation’s light columns flickering on the ground quietly changed direction.

All the light turned together, like unsheathed swords, sharply aimed at the Human God in the sky.

One ray, coming from the light beneath Mu Sui, cut through Mo Yi’s extending malevolent energy in the air.

The Thousand Mountains Formation could destroy the world, and could also save it.

Mu Sui stood up, grasping Meng Ruji’s wrist with his other hand. He also said nothing, only pulling her behind him for protection.

Just like many times in the Realm of No Return.

His tall figure shielded her, and only then did Meng Ruji finally show a smile.

“The wedding banquet should be grand.” Meng Ruji tilted her head to say to Qing Rao, “Known throughout the world.”

Qing Rao swallowed the blood in her throat, truly thinking her master had gone mad. What time was this, and she was thinking about that!?