Zhuge's Mysterious Strategies

Gu Changyuan was lying back in perfect comfort.

His hands were folded over his abdomen, one foot slightly raised, his whole body sinking into the rocking chair, enjoying a rare moment of leisure.

In recent days, the exchanges between the Heavenly Court and the Star Clan had been running smoothly, and the progress of the reconstruction at Sky City was being reported regularly by the elders. Everything was advancing according to plan.

"Hm?"

A feather suddenly materialized out of the void, drifting silently to his side.

Gu Changyuan opened his eyes, straightened up, and lifted his right hand from his side, palm facing upward.

The feather landed precisely in his palm.

The moment his divine sense probed into it, a stream of information flowed into his mind like a clear spring.

Zhuge Danxian had completed the formation.

Gu Changyuan rose to his feet and swept his right hand lightly across the void in front of him.

In an instant, he summoned Ye Qingxue, Bai Ling’er, and Yue Lingxi to his side.

"The formation at the Zhuge clan is ready. Would you like to go take a look?"

Joy lit up the faces of the three women at once.

Bai Ling’er was the first to react. She clapped her hands together in front of her, her eyes curving into crescent moons.

"Yes, yes, yes!"

She hopped up from where she stood, and when she landed, the hem of her skirt lifted gently before settling back down.

Ye Qingxue and Yue Lingxi weren’t as outwardly animated as her, but they both nodded, clearly eager to go along.

Gu Changyuan watched their expressions, and the curve of his smile deepened.

He waved his right hand and teleported them directly to their destination through the teleportation array.

The moment his feet touched the ground, what came into view was a dense forest.

The trees were towering, their canopies blotting out the sky so that only scattered fragments of light filtered through.

Sunlight leaked through the gaps in the leaves, casting mottled shadows on the ground.

The stillness of the forest was not natural—it had been deliberately cultivated.

Gu Changyuan swept his divine sense across the surroundings and sensed the pulse of a formation deep within the woods.

It was an even more refined and concealed “Concealment Formation.”

The atmosphere of the forest had been carefully tuned by the formation to make it look like an ordinary, untouched wilderness—nothing worth noticing.

If someone passed by from outside and extended their divine sense over the area, they would only see a common forest and naturally overlook it.

Two figures stood in the woods, waiting a few dozen feet ahead of the landing point.

One of them was someone Gu Changyuan recognized—Zhuge Dancheng.

The other was another Immortal King from the Zhuge clan, his face appearing older than Zhuge Dancheng’s.

The two of them walked up to Gu Changyuan, stopped simultaneously, and bowed.

"Senior."

Gu Changyuan nodded slightly, his gaze sweeping over them, pausing briefly on Zhuge Dancheng’s face.

Zhuge Dancheng straightened up, reached into his sleeve with his right hand, and produced a token.

The token was small, only half the size of an adult’s palm. It was pale cyan in color, its surface covered with countless densely packed runes.

He raised the token and waved it lightly toward the space in front of him.

A cyan light shot out from the token, cutting a graceful arc through the air before landing on that patch of space.

The spiritual energy in the air began to churn violently, and then a crack appeared.

The edges of the crack glowed with a faint cyan light, which spread to both sides, prying open the fissure wider and wider.

A secret realm entrance materialized there.

Ever since being fully outlawed by the Royal Court, the three remaining clans in the Central Continent had been hiding their clans through secret realm spaces to avoid detection.

Moreover, each clan maintained more than one secret realm—multiple realms, scattered across different coordinates and different spatial planes.

This was to ensure that if one secret realm was exposed, they could immediately relocate to another: one discovered, move to the next; that one discovered, move to yet another.

As long as their speed of relocation outstripped the Royal Court’s speed of discovery, they would remain safe.

And this place was one of the Zhuge clan’s secret realms.

Gu Changyuan withdrew his gaze and, leading the three women, followed the two men into the secret realm entrance.

The moment they passed through the threshold, the scene before them changed dramatically.

The scenery here was no different from the secret realms of other sect forces in the outside world.

There were mountains, water, pavilions, towers, spiritual energy, and life.

The sky was a pale cyan, light spilling down from every corner of the canopy—not harsh, not dim, but just enough to feel soothing.

Mountains rose in the distance, not tall but rolling and interconnected, their ridges covered in lush green vegetation. Occasionally, waterfalls cascaded down from the peaks, their distant murmurs faintly audible.

The scenery here wasn’t any different from the typical secret realms of forces in the outside world.

There were mountains, water, pavilions, towers, spiritual energy, and life.

The only difference was that the entire space here was an isolated, independent dimension.

Zhuge Dancheng escorted the four of them to the entrance of the palace, then stopped along with the elderly man.

He turned around, bowed slightly to Gu Changyuan, and then stepped back twice before departing with the old man.

Gu Changyuan stood before the palace gate, gazing at the tall doors.

Before he could even raise his hand—

The doors slowly swung open.

Beyond the doors lay a long passageway, flanked on both sides by towering stone pillars.

Gu Changyuan stepped inside, with the three women following behind him.

As they passed through a light curtain, the hall’s interior unfolded fully before their eyes.

In the center of the great hall stood five people, clearly waiting for them.

The one standing at the forefront, in the very center, was a man with an elegant build, clad in a deep cyan robe.

Zhuge Xuanji. The Xuanji Immortal Emperor.

His abilities were similar to those of Xing Wuyi—both had attained enlightenment through "calculation"—but their approaches were not identical.

To Xing Wuyi, all things in the world were quantifiable data; his deductions were built on the foundation of numbers.

Zhuge Xuanji, on the other hand, used celestial omens as his guide and the myriad phenomena as his reference, presenting all possibilities of the past, present, and future through his deductions before selecting the most likely path.

Heaven’s Mechanism, One Calculation; Myriad Phenomena, Deduced.

He was the true core of the Zhuge clan, the brain behind the family’s operations, and the final arbiter of all major decisions.

In the Immortal Realm, nearly every major power had at least one Immortal Emperor well-versed in causality and deduction. Not because they liked it, but because at this level, if you didn’t read fate, fate would be read against you.

If you couldn’t see the future, those who could would scheme against you.

Thus, at the Immortal Emperor level, the vast majority of cultivators began dabbling in causality and deduction.

Not for the sake of striking first—but for the sake of not being struck.