Beginning Of Multiverse Saga

Chapter 178: Meeting Again Emperor

"Huh? What does this mean?" Catherine asked, she didn’t understand anything.

"Azure Dragon, White Tiger, Vermilion Bird, and Black Tortoise are the four aspects that represent the four stellar domains of the cosmos. The Azure Dragon is also known as the First Monarch, the White Tiger as the War General, the Vermilion Bird as the Light of Tombs, and the Black Tortoise the Holder of Wisdom. These sentences refer to the corresponding time and positions... Hm, but as for what they’re being paired up with, it’s too hard to say as the stele is lacking information. We don’t have enough information to make any deductions."

Catherine said seriously, "Then we should keep moving to see if we can get more information from other places."

"Alright. Let’s try to reach that highest sacred peak from earlier." Sharky nodded.

Their group continued onward. The two of them chatted for a while, and time passed quickly. Eventually, they stopped just before a cliff’s edge before they realized it. They were already practically at the end of the first floating continent. The second floating continent was just a hundred meters in front of them.

Sharky tried to see if he could move across. Jumping a short distance was fine, but any further and flight would obviously be restricted. He looked down from the edge of the cliff. There were no floating platforms like those they had taken on the way up.

"How do we get up there?" he mused, feeling a huge headache.

Just then, Catherine spoke. "Sharky, hurry and come take a look over here."

Sharky walked over when he heard her. He saw Catherine crouching, pulling at some weeds. He used the Fire Phoenix to burn away all of the weeds, exposing a large array of stone slabs.

"This place is..." Sharky was surprised. The stone slabs’ material was extremely special, not suffering any damage even after coming into contact with his flames. They were made of a shiny, dark material that resembled black jade. A layer of light flickered across their surface. They were definitely something extraordinary.

Some of the stone slabs had some circular holes in them, but Sharky and Catherine had no idea what they were supposed to be used for. Many of the smaller slabs had some fine lines on them, and it almost seemed as if there were some type of pattern to it all, but they couldn’t really figure it out. Some slabs had designs on them, but they looked as if they had been scrambled up.

"A puzzle?" Sharky’s eyes lit up. " This seems to be a star atlas."

"Star atlas?" Catherine hurriedly asked.

"Do you still remember the words on that stele we found underneath that weird fish temple?" Sharky said.

"...left, Azure Dragon First Monarch, right, White Tiger War General, up, Vermilion Bird Light of Tombs, down, Black Tortoise Holder of Wisdom, the noble lunar moon at the center..." Those words appeared in Catherine’s head. Her eyes widened in understanding when she looked at the stone slabs before her again. "I see!"

Just as Sharky was about to move the stone slabs, he quickly took Catherine in his arms and frowned. "Careful, we have company."

Sure enough, loud laughter echoed through the place as a voice exclaimed, "What a surprise! Sometimes, you can do your best to look for something and not find it, but it’ll show up right in front of you when you stop looking!"

The nearby tree leaves rustled from the sounds of laughter. Catherine’s face paled. She grabbed Sharky’s sleeve and said with a shaking voice, "Sharky, let’s just jump if there’s no other choice. We can at least pass on painlessly that way."

As a part of the royal family, she understood just how vicious the emperor could be. With everything that had happened between the two of them, there was no way they would have an easy death if they ended up in the emperor’s hands.

Sharky gently patted her hand. "Don’t worry, I am stronger than before."

Catherine was stunned. She really couldn’t figure out why he could still remain calm in this situation, but his composed voice had a strange calming ability. Her pounding heart also gradually relaxed a bit.

A bright yellow figure vaguely appeared on the horizon. Then, with a flicker and a streak of afterimages, he instantly appeared in front of the two of them.

Sharky sighed inwardly. This level of speed was something the emperor had even after this world had suppressed him. His crazy cultivation really was enough to leave Sharky in despair...

"Didn’t the two of you wish to die together as lovers? Too bad, that’s no longer your decision." Zhao Ruizhi looked coldly at Catherine’s hand. Their conversation earlier hadn’t escaped his ears. Now that he was close enough, the emperor believed that the lives of the pair were already in his grasp.

"Does your majesty plan to kill us?" Sharky sighed.

"Kill you?" Zhao Ruizhi sneered. "Letting you die just like that would be letting you off too easily. I’m going to castrate you and bring you back to the palace, then make you scrub the latrines day and night. Then, each year, I’ll chop off a part of your body to make you fully experience the fear of death. Finally, when your four limbs and five sensory organs are gone, I’ll throw you into the feces pit and keep you alive through medicine. Then, you can experience the palace eunuchs’ urine day after day..."

Catherine’s knuckles turned white from how tight her fists were clenched. At several points, she wanted to throw up. She regretted not having decided to die earlier, because she couldn’t even choose to die now.

Sharky was also speechless. This bastard really is something else, "Unfortunately, not only can you not do that to me, you must beg me."

"Me? Beg you?" Zhao Ruizhi roared with laughter, as if he had heard the world’s greatest joke.

He Li and the others finally caught up while gasping for breath. They all looked at Sharky sympathetically when they heard his laughable words. Was this guy scared so badly that he had already gone crazy?

Zhao Ruizhi’s smile faded as he coldly said, "What an absurd joke. I’m going to castrate you right now. I want to see what you’ll do about it."

Sharky had just been about to say something, but with just a clench of the emperor’s hand, it was hard to even breathe, let alone speak.

"I know you’re good at speaking, and you might actually have some strange idea to save your life, so I don’t want to hear anything." Zhao Ruizhi snorted.

Sharky was speechless.

Fortunately, Catherine spoke up just then. "You can’t kill him!"

Zhao Ruizhi was so annoyed he instead laughed. "Oh? Are you going to plead in his place?"

He Li nodded in agreement. The crown princess was usually so sharp; why had she suddenly become so stupid? Anyone else could speak out for Sharky’s sake right now, except you! Isn’t pleading for your male adulterer just adding fuel to the fire?

Catherine’s face paled when she sensed the pressure in the emperor’s eyes. Despite that, she still straightened her back and said, "Because only he alone knows how to reach the palace over there. You’ve sought out immortality your entire life; there’s no way you would let this chance go."

Even though she didn’t know that the other group had also obtained some ancient text, after spending so many years in the palace, she understood how the emperor thought. She had always been a smart girl, so she immediately realized that only immortality could temporarily hold back the wrath Zhao Ruizhi felt toward Sharky. Sure enough, it worked.

Even though Zhao Ruizhi was indeed convinced, he wasn’t willing to admit it. "Hah, do you think I need someone like him to get up there?" Despite those words, his hand stopped, and he instead threw Sharky off to the side.

He raised his head and looked at the floating palace. With a tap of his toes, he instantly vanished, dashing over. Even though that highest peak was a few hundred zhang from the island they were on, for someone with his cultivation, it wasn’t hard to reach at all.

However, his figure suddenly began to plummet shortly afterward. His expression changed. He grabbed toward the island he had taken off from. An invisible claw of air grabbed the edge of the floating continent. A moment later, he instantly returned to his original location.

"Flight is still restricted," Zhao Ruizhi muttered with a gloomy expression. Fortunately, he had been prepared for this, or else he really might not have been able to come back.

"Your majesty, there seems to be a mechanism here. It might be the solution to crossing over." He Li quickly came over to earn brownie points when he noticed that the emperor didn’t seem to be too happy. He pointed at the stone slabs on the ground.

Zhao Ruizhi’s eyes lit up as he walked over to the stone slabs. However, even with all of his knowledge, he was still completely lost. "This could be a diagram of the heavens, but why is it so messy? Could it be that it needs to be pieced together in a certain way...?"

All sorts of ideas entered his head, but in the end, he rejected every single one of them. He suddenly turned around to look at Sharky and asked, "Can you solve this mechanism?"

Sharky rubbed his neck and replied indifferently, "I can, but you’ll kill me as soon as I do so. Why would I bother?"

Zhao Ruizhi’s eyes narrowed. "Are you threatening me?"

"I’m not threatening you, I’m just telling the truth." Sharky was wondering just how the emperor had incapacitated him so quickly. Why couldn’t he do anything in return? It really was a pain.

Zhao Ruizhi said just then, "If you can grant me eternal life, our past grudges will be completely meaningless. I won’t care about them anymore and will instead let you live. If you don’t believe me, I can make a vow."

He sneered. Chopping off your limbs and turning you into human swine is still letting you live, no? That won’t count as violating the vow.

"A single word from you is worth nine sacred cauldrons. Of course I believe them!" Sharky was overjoyed on the surface, but he sneered inwardly. I’d be an idiot if I believed your damn words.

But since both sides had ulterior motives, they came to an agreement in the end.

Sharky walked over to the stone slab array. "These describe the stars in the sky. As long as they’re arranged in the correct pattern, it should work." He quickly moved around the stone slabs while speaking. Sure enough, the stone slabs could slide up, down, left, and right.

"...left, Azure Dragon First Monarch, right, White Tiger War General, up, Vermilion Bird Light of Tombs, down, Black Tortoise Holder of Wisdom, the noble lunar moon at the center..." He recalled the characters from the stele and gradually matched the stone slab puzzle to the corresponding shapes.

When he put the last slab in order, a clear sound of something starting up followed. The slab mechanism, and even the ground beneath it, quaked.

Cracking noises emerged from underground. The stone slabs continued to rise and fall. Then, some of the stone slabs sank into the ground, while some other slabs slowly rose up. In the end, they formed several rectangular pillars.

The new stone pillars had different diagrams on them, some resembling beasts, some resembling astrological signs. Eventually, the rumbling finally stopped, and the mechanism became still again.

Sharky frowned. Is the mechanism still not fully activated? He tried to move the pillars, but discovered that even though they couldn’t be moved at all, they could be rotated. Furthermore, when one was rotated, it would also make some of the other pillars rotate as well.