"My master is indeed Yang Renye, Grandmaster," Hao Ya said with a deep bow. She did her best to hide the nervousness in her voice, but it was pretty much impossible considering who she was standing before.

"I was told about you," the Sky God said with a strange look on her face. "I was told you were quite talented too. But you took so long to come here. Maybe he was wrong."

Hao Ya struggled to say anything. She wasn’t sure if this was the right time to speak of it either.

"Your Majesty, where is Senior Yang?" Alex asked. He turned toward Ronron. "He wasn’t among the group that welcomed us."

Ronron showed a grim expression as she looked away.

"Renye is currently imprisoned within his small courtyard for the crimes of having stolen and run away with treasures that were under the protection of the Sky God’s palace. Not only did he shame me by doing so, but he also brought shame to the cult. As such, he is currently imprisoned without any way for others to contact him."

"Imprisoned?"

Hao Ya’s face went wide in shock as she heard what had happened to her master.

Alex said nothing. If he had to guess, he would have said that Yang Renye may even have been crippled, if not dead, for the crimes he had committed against the Sky God’s palace. He wasn’t a direct disciple or anything to be shown leniency, after all.

The fact that he was merely arrested was, in and of itself, a surprise. He had come out of the whole deal relatively unharmed.

"This is the guy that brought along those treasures to your lower realm?" Bladedance asked Alex.

Alex nodded. "He stole the treasures from here and teleported to the lower world. The treasures scattered, and many found them."

Bladedance’s eyes narrowed. "I was previously confused when I heard that, Newheaven. Why were the treasures not protected? How could your disciple just steal them so easily?"

The Sky God sighed. "It is because he is my disciple that he could do it so easily," she said. "He has more authority within the palace than anyone else, so he easily manufactured a situation where he led the guards to believe that he was there on my orders. By the time I realized what was happening, he had already run away. If I had been moments faster, I could have stopped him."

"I see," Bladedance said. "Then it is as much your fault as it is his."

The Sky God couldn’t argue against that statement, so she simply shrugged. "If you’re going to tell me that I shouldn’t have kept all the treasures in a place that was so easily accessible by others, then you don’t have to repeat everyone else’s words to me. I’ve been hounded by the same argument a dozen times already."

Bladedance continued pressing on the matter. "You do deserve to be hounded. You shouldn’t have kept all the treasures out in the open for someone to just steal them."

"Not just someone," the Sky God added. "It was my disciple. It wasn’t as though someone just came and stole them. He had deep knowledge of all matters. If I have any fault here, it is that I trusted my disciples far too much. The moment it happened, I forced the rest of them to swear oaths."

Bladedance shook her head. "I can understand for the rest, but I thought you were supposed to keep Godslayer away. He was supposed to remain safely in your Soul Space. Why did you bring him out?"

The Sky God paused for a moment before confessing her truth.

"He... he was starting to affect me too."

Bladedance looked surprised. "The Godslayer was?"

The Sky God nodded. "I tried my best to block his influence for the longest time, but he kept poking through my mental defenses, slowly getting to me. And with everything else I had on my mind, with everyone hammering me about the war and whatnot, I had to bring him out."

"I didn’t do it so frequently, mind you. I only brought him out for long enough to recover before taking him away. I could not trust the others to not be persuaded by him. So, when I did place him there, the guards were also a little lacking. I only chose those I knew could handle it. That made it easier for Renye to steal everything and run away."

The Sky God looked toward Bladedance. "You should be happy I made that mistake, though. It was because of all these accidents that you were able to be reunited with your Creation."

Bladedance didn’t know what to say. "I suppose that is true."

"And Godslayer is now safely locked away within this young man, isn’t he?" the Sky God asked, turning toward Alex. "Does he now remember his identity as Steelmind? I heard he was able to speak as to who he was 2 millennia ago in the Medicine World."

Alex slowly nodded. "He did figure out his identity in the end."

The Sky God was about to nod and ask for something when she caught the meaning of Alex’s words.

"In the end?" she asked, puzzled. "What do you mean?"

"Godslayer is dead," Alex answered.

The Sky God looked surprised. "Godslayer died?" she asked.

Alex nodded again.

The woman shook her head. "That’s impossible. He cannot die."

"He is dead," Bladedance said. "I have confirmed it already."

In the brief moment they had met each other, this was the first time the Sky God had shown this much emotion over any topic at all. She seemed properly confused and surprised on the matter.

"How is that possible? All of us have tried to kill him and were unsuccessful at doing so," she said. "How did you do it? How did you kill the unkillable spirit?"

Alex shook his head. "I did not kill him."

The Sky God’s eyes narrowed. "Then..."

Alex told her the truth. "He gave up on his life and died."