Against the Gods

Chapter 2033: Shortcut

Meng Jianzhou did kill Meng Jianyuan. Although Yun Che had never heard of the name before, Meng Jianyuan was really a household name in the Abyss because it was the name of the former Dreamweaver Divine Son.

Meng Jianzhou did give up his biggest weakness after all the pressure Yun Che had piled on top of him, and the fact that Yun Che didn’t recognize it would’ve been a huge flaw in his disguise.

Although Meng Jianyuan wasn’t the son of the Dreamless Divine Regent’s first wife, he was the son of his latest and most beloved concubine. At the time, all other Kingdoms of God had already found their Divine Sons and Divine Daughters except his, so of course Meng Kongchan was quite worried.

Meng Jiangzhou was one of his only two sons his first wife gave birth to, and he had awakened sixty percent of his divine essence. Although it wasn’t enough for him to become a God Bearer—one must possess eighty percent divine essence to be able to become one successfully—he was the best of the failures, and his talent in the profound way was pretty high.

The amount of divine essence a person could possess wasn’t decided since birth. Although very few people awakened their divine essence at a later date, it was by no means an impossible thing. At the time, everyone including Meng Jianzhou was hoping that a miracle would happen, and that he would awaken eighty percent of his divine essence and become the new Dreamweaver Divine Son.

Then, Meng Jianyuan was born with eighty percent of his divine essence already awakened.

Meng Kongchan’s frustration was wiped clean in a single night. Words couldn’t describe how happy he felt. It was said that his laughter lasted three days and night across the entire Dreamweaver Kingdom of God, and countless gazes, compliments and expectations were heaped upon the newborn.

On the other hand, Meng Jianzhou’s status and influence fell in a single night. Some people would work twice as hard to fix their situation. Even if they were destined to lose, they would still strengthen themselves and manage what was within their capabilities as best they could. Some people would be frustrated and perturbed until they finally decided to get rid of their competitor, even if their victim bore the fate of the kingdom on their shoulders, and the consequences would be unimaginable if the assassination attempt was exposed. Meng Jianzhou undoubtedly fell in the latter category.

When Meng Jianyuan was ten years old, Meng Kongchan made him the Dreamweaver Divine Son immediately. That was the moment everyone in the Abyss learned of Meng Jianyuan, and Meng Jianzhou’s jealousy and hatred of Meng Jianyuan had reached its peak.

As the son of the Dreamless Divine Regent and Meng Jianyuan’s closest brother, he knew better than anyone that his younger brother was weak in temperament and unguarded against him. So, he hid his emotions and patiently waited for the right opportunity to present itself.

On the three hundredth day since Meng Jianyuan became the Dreamweaver Divine Son, when he wasn’t even eleven years old yet, Meng Jianzhou finally found the opportunity he was waiting for. With the cover provided by a Dimensional Divine Jade he procured in secret and Meng Jingzhe’s Bewitching Soul, he finally killed Meng Jianzhou with his own hands. He even destroyed his body completely and used the abyssal dust of an abyssal core to wipe clean all traces.

So, Meng Jianyuan became the youngest and most short-lived Divine Son ever in the history of the Dreamweaver Kingdom of God. He didn’t even leave behind a trace of his existence.

During that time, Meng Kongchan was gripped by indescribable frenzy and anger. He even wanted to break the taboo of the Dreamweaver Kingdom of God and cast his Dreamweave on his own people and descendents to find out the truth. However, everyone came together to stop him because their great ancestor himself decreed that Dreamweaving must never be used on their own. No one was willing to go against their great ancestor’s teachings and break the taboo.

This was the main reason Meng Jianzhou was certain that no one would ever find the truth, though his fear was far greater than his excitement considering how angry and borderline insane Meng Kongchan was at the time. The only silver lining was that Meng Jianyuan had left absolutely no traces behind, so no matter how hard his father searched for his brother, he would never discover the truth.

The good news was that Meng Kongchan’s desperate efforts were in vain. The bad news was that Meng Jianxi, his low-key and inconspicuous brother, somehow awakened another thirty percent divine essence to gain a total of ninety percent divine essence! He was literally better than Meng Jianyuan.

Meng Kongchan had gone from heaven, to hell, then back to heaven in less than two decades. Naturally, he valued Meng Jianxi like nothing he ever valued in his life. Having learned his lesson, Meng Kongchan went so far as to split his soul and left a soul double in Meng Jianxi’s soul to protect him. Just in case someone said that he was biased in favor of Meng Jianxi, he symbolically implanted some much weaker soul imprints in some of his more important descendants including Meng Jianzhou.

After becoming the Dreamweaver Divine Son, Meng Jianxi finally revealed the fangs he had been hiding all this time. As it turned out, Meng Jianzhou’s younger brother was a thousand times more ruthless and cunning than he ever was. He might as well be a different person compared to the Meng Jianxi he remembered.

Over time, all of Meng Jianzhou’s ambitions were crushed into fear. He completely lost the willpower to compete against his younger brother.

Unable to have a dream and having let himself go completely, Meng Jianzhou kept accumulating hatred and resentment despite not daring to show so much as a shadow of it before his younger brother. As a result, his progress was completely stalled, and he gradually became an utter piece of trash.

……

“That more or less sums it up,” Yun Che ended his explanation to Li Suo in an utterly bored tone.

The conflict between Meng Jianzhou, Meng Jianyuan and Meng Jianxi didn’t surprise or interest him in the slightest. No, the only thing he truly cared about was the Meng Family’s ability to Dreamweave. It was the foundation of a Kingdom of God and the strongest soul power there was in the Abyss.

“Would you happen to be familiar with Dreamweaving, Li Suo?” he asked tentatively.

“No,” Li Suo replied quietly, “but even if I was, it is quite possible that its name isn’t what it was millions of years ago.”

“That’s true.” Yun Che nodded and stopped his questions.

“You were quite bored when you told me the story,” Li Suo asked, “so why did you look so pleased just now?”

“It’s because I saw someone important when I was looking through Meng Jianzhou’s recent memories.”

Yun Che furrowed his eyebrows as he revealed the answer. “I saw Hua Caili.”

To be more specific, Meng Jianzhou hadn’t actually seen the woman. It was Meng Jingzhe who had sensed her aura from far, far away and messaged Meng Jianzhou to leave the area as quickly as possible. That was four days ago.

Hua Qingying was the one who cut off Meng Jianzhou’s left arm, and she forbade him from regrowing it until much later. Naturally, Hua Qingying and Hua Caili occupied much space in Meng Jianzhou’s mind, and why Yun Che’s stolen memories contained much information regarding the duo.

As expected, Hua Caili was the Heaven Breaker Divine Daughter. But he didn’t expect that her protector, the Sword Fairy Hua Qingying, would be the strongest profound practitioner of the entire Abyss beneath a True God.

He expected the protector of a Divine Daughter to be powerful, but Hua Qingying’s reputation was stunning even to an outsider like him.

She was the Fairy of the Way of the Sword, the number one profound practitioner under the True Gods, and she cultivated the Heartless Sword. The short description was enough to chill anyone to the core.

Now he understood why Meng Jingzhe, a Half-God had acted the way he did when he dragged Meng Jianzhou away from the Qilin Abyss Realm.

“Hua Caili?” Li Suo’s impression of the name was very faint. It took her a while to finally recall the woman’s brief interaction with Yun Che during his stay in the Qilin Abyss Realm and asked, “Is she the cause of your pleasure?”

“That’s right!” Yun Che nodded and looked toward the deeper areas of the Endless Fog. “She’s inside the Endless Fog right now.”

Li Suo asked in a puzzled voice, “The two of you aren’t even acquaintances. Why would she elicit such a response from you?”

“That’s because…” Yun Che gave her an answer he was sure she wouldn’t understand, “She’s the best shortcut I can think of.”

“Shortcut?” As expected, Li Suo’s puzzlement only grew.

Yun Che explained, “My goal is to overturn the Abyss, a world that the Abyssal Monarch spent millions of years to create, and I only have less than fifty years to do it.”

“That is why I need to find a shortcut at all costs. It’s not a choice, but a necessity!”

“... Can you explain what this shortcut is?” Li Suo knew the predicament Yun Che was facing, but she still didn’t understand how Hua Caili factored into this or how she was his “shortcut”.

“You’ll understand soon,” Yun Che replied after a moment of consideration.

Seeing that Yun Che wasn’t willing to explain, she fell silent and stopped asking questions. Yun Che also fell silent and didn’t move or speak for a very, very long time. It looked like he was contemplating something.

“What are you thinking about?” Li Suo asked after a while.

Still maintaining the same posture, Yun Che answered, “I’m wondering how I can create curiosity.”

“Create… curiosity?” Yun che’s answers seemed more puzzling today.

“Curiosity is the most important beginning,” Yun Che explained somewhat distractedly. “This applies to men, women, and maybe even Creation Gods.”

“...” Li Suo was starting to understand some of Yun Che’s intentions, but she didn’t say anything because of a certain unnecessary line he added in the end.

“Little Li Suo,” Yun Che said but was really talking to himself, “how can I make a pure, noble woman who spent her whole life growing up in the best possible conditions, getting anything she wanted, and witnessing the most excellent men… become interested in another man?”

“That’s your territory, not mine.”

“...” That caught Yun Che a little off guard.

In his impression, Li Suo had “awakened” after he entered the Abyss.

In reality, she had been observing him for years just like He Ling.

Yun Che raised a finger and slowly formed the word “Heaven Breaker” using the abyssal dust. Once done, he created the word “Boundless” next to it. These were the names of the strongest Kingdoms of God in the Abyss.

It was the Devil Queen’s habit to manifest something to clarify her thoughts, and he was borrowing it for the moment.

He drew a thin line between the two words, but he was moving very slowly almost as if the thread was too heavy or fragile. It looked like a simple gust of wind could blow it apart.

Yun Che’s eyebrows were locked together as he fell into a long silence once more. The thread between the two words had soundlessly disintegrated as well.

Just when Yun Che let out a small sigh and about to lower his raised finger, inspiration suddenly flashed inside his mind.

He raised his finger and wrote the word “Dreamweaver” between the two words!

“Meng… Jian… Zhou…”

His eyes shone with infinite darkness as he muttered a name he had almost completely forgotten until now.

Dreamweaver…

It is such a beautiful name, isn’t it?

Allow me to weave a beautiful dream for you all!

Buzz!

He swiped his hand across the air, and all three words—Heaven Breaker, Boundless and Dreamweaver—disappeared into nothing.