Chapter 11638 — Thus the Rewind Began, and Hard on Its Heels Came the Two Thousand and Third, the Two Thousand and Fourth...

"Just what is this kid's background?"

He was utterly certain that Wei Zhao's escape from the divine beauty had absolutely not relied on his own personal ability; there had to be some extra means beyond his own level.

Or rather, someone was secretly helping Wei Zhao!

The moment the thought surfaced, Yi Liuchao immediately grew wary.

Even by the standards of the Inner Royal Court, where monsters gathered in droves, his strength was already in the first tier below the divine level, and those capable of posing a threat to him could be counted on one hand.

Those few, he kept under close surveillance.

If any of them appeared near the Son of Heaven's palace, they could not possibly escape his perception—and at least thus far, there had been no sign of it.

But if it was not those few, then the problem was even greater.

This great upheaval in the Inner Royal Court had ramifications far wider than anyone had imagined; not only would the old monsters of the Inner Royal Court be stirred, but experts from every other quarter would also arrive on the rumor, seizing the chance to carve off a share.

Among them, there might well be quasi-divine experts like himself.

He could not afford not to guard against it.

Yet for all his wariness, Yi Liuchao had no intention of calling a halt.

After repeated provocation, even the Queen could no longer keep from beating a retreat; for the first time in her life, she felt a flicker of doubt about the charm of her divine beauty.

But then she heard Yi Liuchao's flat command.

"Continue."

The Queen was gradually going numb.

Strangely enough, as the seduction of the divine beauty stacked ever higher, she did not feel herself drawing nearer to the critical point—on the contrary, she felt herself growing further and further away.

As the one casting the art, it was she herself who tasted despair more and more deeply.

Was this really a man?

By any reasonable measure, to say nothing of a mere mid-stage Earth-rank venerable, even a Heaven-rank great-perfection venerable should long since have become a captive of her divine beauty after so many accumulations—how could he possibly be growing more and more clear-headed instead?

Another two thousand rewinds passed.

The Queen could not help asking, "Steward Yi, shall we continue?"

Yi Liuchao was silent.

As a quasi-divine expert, there were few things left in this world that could astonish him, and still fewer people—mere phoenix feathers and unicorn horns—yet today, it seemed, he had met one.

The Queen herself could not perceive it, but he, as a bystander, saw it perfectly clearly.

After each rewind, an invisible force would wash over the whole of Wei Zhao's primordial spirit, wiping clean every accumulated trace of the Divine Beauty's enchantment.

At this rate, no matter how many times he helped rewind, it was doomed to be wasted effort in the end.

The Queen alone would never be able to capture Wei Zhao.

In the end, Yi Liuchao made his decision. "Let me do it."

Since the Queen could not get a grip on Wei Zhao, then he would have to step in himself.

But just as he was about to trigger another rewind, a violent warning flared in his heart, and his expression changed drastically!

He was startled to discover that deep within his own primordial spirit, a power of an exceedingly high order was gradually taking root and sprouting.

Upon it, he actually caught the scent of the gods.

Could the gods have already intervened?

Yi Liuchao displayed a degree of dread, unprecedented for him.

With upheaval on such a scale in the Inner Royal Court, the gods could not possibly have remained indifferent; he had long expected as much.

But for the aura of the gods to appear so early, and in such a manner, genuinely caught him off guard.

In his eyes now, Wei Zhao was no longer a trinket to be toyed with at will; he had abruptly become dangerous.

Could it be... that the gods stood behind this boy?

The thought flashed past, only to be overturned by himself in the very next instant.

For he had once again sensed that power upon Wei Zhao: utterly pure, utterly profound, of an order so high that even he instinctively looked up to it, and yet within it there was not the slightest trace of the gods' aura.

"Could it be an illusion?"

Yi Liuchao's thoughts raced wildly. At his level, illusions could not possibly arise at random.

The only explanation: the aura of the gods was real, and the power of such high order within Wei Zhao was real as well.

All at once, matters had grown tangled and complex.

What Yi Liuchao saw now was no longer Wei Zhao alone, but at least two quasi-divine experts behind him, no weaker than himself!

Amid his mounting paranoia, what shocked Yi Liuchao even more was that the power rooted at the deepest core of his primordial spirit—he simply could not suppress it!

This was no small matter.

"Steward Yi? Steward Yi?"

The Queen stood dazed for a moment; the rewind still did not come, and no matter how she called out, Yi Liuchao gave not the slightest response.

The Queen could not help but be somewhat dumbfounded.

What on earth was going on?

Matters had developed to this point, and she was well aware that she had no say in anything. Without Yi Liuchao's approval, whatever she did would be wrong, and in the end it would never end well for her.

She had already resigned herself to being a puppet on a string.

Who could have imagined that Yi Liuchao would suddenly vanish into thin air?

Surely he had not run off?

The moment the thought surfaced, the Queen hurriedly banished it from her mind. The man was a quasi-god expert, and in the Inner Royal Court, now teeming with monsters, he was a figure who could walk wherever he pleased. How could he possibly flee midway?

Little did she know that Yi Liuchao really had run off.

After a round of speculation, the Son of Heaven's palace had come to seem to Yi Liuchao a place riddled with hidden perils and unfathomable danger, where even he might capsize at any moment.

In such circumstances, the most rational choice was to steady himself first, find somewhere to take shelter, resolve that force deep within his primordial spirit, and only then emerge from seclusion once more.

As for the Queen, well, the mess was of her own making; he was under no obligation to clean up after her.

The Queen refused to believe it.

She was convinced that Yi Liuchao must still be hidden in the shadows, controlling the situation, and at once continued to work her art on Wei Zhao.

"Look into my eyes!"

Wei Zhao gave her a bland glance. "I'm looking. What do you have to say?"

"......"

The Queen felt a pang of unease. She now held out no hope at all of subduing Wei Zhao with her divine beauty; cornered as she was, she could only hang on by relying on Yi Liuchao's rewind.

But now Yi Liuchao had gone silent, and she was instantly left in a dire fix.

Wei Zhao laughed inwardly.

Yi Liuchao, spooked by his own suspicions, had been frightened into flight—and that had been Wei Zhao's doing.

Admittedly, Yi Liuchao's rewind ability was formidable stuff; at first, even he had been unable to detect it.

But after all, he was running a cheat like the World Will. Once the rewinds piled up, Wei Zhao naturally caught on.

What followed was a matter of turning the enemy's scheme to his own account.

His opponent meant to use the rewind to accumulate the effects of divine beauty, while Wei Zhao, for his part, used his opponent's rewind to quietly invoke the Puppet of the Gods.

The Puppet of the Gods could, at its limit, control a quasi-god expert!

Yi Liuchao chose this moment to appear, and Wei Zhao was not about to let him off so easily.