Chapter 405 - Developing Dominion

There were a few more questions lingering in the minds of the old scheming Deities, they wouldn’t have survived to this point if they weren't astute and intelligent individuals. However, for now, Yaan brushed off their questions pertaining to the Paradise Sect’s future plans for expansion and management.

He promised to go through these plans in detail soon enough, but before that, it was time to properly bring the Four Divine Star System under their dominion.

This star system was undoubtedly the Paradise Sect’s territory, this fact had spread throughout the world and nobody would dare to casually step into this star system any longer. Protecting their territories from all outside forces was no longer the primary concern. What needed to be attended to, was establishing their rule throughout the entire cultivation world of the star system.

Usually, this would be a vulnerable period of time for any group that had just acquired so much territory, but right now, the chaos created by the Qi Plane’s fusion into the Blood Plane had inflicted turmoil upon every single territory throughout the world. Nobody had the time or resources to spare on the Paradise Sect.

The Divine Court was of course the major faction that would oppose them from hereon, but even the Divine Court couldn’t act recklessly. Unless they mounted an all-out war and they were willing to endure some serious losses, they couldn’t crush the Paradise Sect now, not even in its early stages of establishment.

And so, the Divine Court could only sit back and deal with their own territorial troubles. They watched helplessly as the Paradise Sect rapidly spread throughout the many stars in the Four Divine Star System, implementing its rule onto each and every life-planet, life-moon, and Solar Planet.

Originally, the Four Divine Star System was one of the mid-level star systems in terms of size and prosperity, with 120,000 life-stars and 300,000 life-planets. After Law Empyrean used that shocking formation in Divine Heaven, half of the life-planets were destroyed. After the Qi Plane fused into the Blood Plane, the Four Divine Star System lost a further 10% of its celestial bodies. Those celestial bodies either crashed into one another, fell down to the continent, collided with the crimson moon, or were swallowed up by the Blood Plane’s sun.

As of right now, there were around 100,000 life-stars and 140,000 life-planets in the star system. They had lost many life-planets, but the number of life-stars hadn’t declined by too much, meaning that the number of life-planets would eventually rise back up…or at least it would, if the world wasn’t set to end in 30,000 years. This wasn’t long enough for many life-planets to naturally form. Even artificially restoring the number of life-planets would require a shocking formation and a terrifying expenditure of resources.

The other major loss, was the Chaotic Sector. Yaan didn’t explain why, but he banned the Paradise Sect from even entering the Chaotic Sector; they were abandoning it completely. He did this because of the golden spatial tear, the strange prophet, and the fact that this related to the invasion of incomprehensible beings from the Chaos Era.

Fortunately, The Chaos Sector had sustained far more damage than any other during the Qi Plane’s transfer to the Blood Plane, so their actual losses in abandoning this sector weren’t overly concerning.

Of course, all of this was ignoring one crucial point…originally, they did not invade this star system for the star and planetary territories. These things were merely a bonus to supplement their true objective - the Divine True Inheritances and Primordial Treasures!

They had set out with the aim of taking seven Divine True Inheritances and four Primordial Treasures. Two of those ‘inheritances’ were not what they seemed, and had vanished, with many rumours surrounding this matter. As for the Primordial Treasures, they had obtained all bar one - Infinity Lake in the Divine Phoenix Sector.

Giving up on Infinity Lake really was a shame, it was an excellent treasure that could be used as the foundation upon which any manner of grand things could be placed or built. Most importantly, the Spirit Palace was built into the centre of Infinity Lake, this was one of the most famous Divine Treasures in this world!

A Divine Treasure that was refined using a Primordial Treasure as its core was leagues ahead of most ordinary Divine Treasures. The Spirit Palace was one of the few treasures that could alter the flow of time without affecting how one perceived the flow of dao around them. Usually, time-distortion treasures made it very difficult to comprehend dao, but the Spirit Palace didn’t have this flaw.

Of course, its fame and profundity was exactly why they had to let it go. In order to hold down the Primordial Asura, and to a lesser extent the Primordial Spirit, Yaan gave up on these treasures and moved on.

When he saw some unwillingness amongst the Paradise Sect members, he asked if any of them were willing to fight the Primordial Asura to the death over that treasure. He also reminded everyone that this treasure was originally refined by the Primordial Asura, and now, she had definitely bound it, making it her own.

There was no more discontent after that. Thinking about it, starting a fight with an Empyrean over a single Primordial Divine Treasure really wasn’t worth it, especially when they valued the treasure so highly that they would not give it up, no matter what.

And so remained 14 sectors, five Divine True Inheritances, and three Primordial Treasures.

There was Rainbow Mountain in the Divine Dragon Sector, Elemental Storm in the Star Sea Sector, and Heavenly Statue in the Divine Beast Sector. These were the Primordial Treasures.

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For the Divine True Inheritances, there was the Storm Inheritance in the Divine Hydra Sector, the Bloodline Inheritance in the Beast Burial Sector, the Dust Inheritance in the Barren Sector, the Alchemy Inheritance lay between several sectors, and the Phoenix Inheritance was in the Divine Beast Sector.

Yaan noticed that there was some degree of correlation between each inheritance, and the sector where it had ended up. Perhaps this was fate, or perhaps, daos of like attracted one another.

When it came to the Phoenix Inheritance, it was the only one of the five that was left behind by an Empyrean - the Divine Phoenix! Only those with a pure Divine Phoenix Bloodline and an immortal stage phoenix heart could attempt this inheritance.

In the present world, only Zue Yin possessed the qualifications to even attempt this inheritance.

Nobody was interested in the Divine Phoenix Inheritance, simply because it was impossible to obtain it. Upon learning that the Sect Master already had a candidate in mind, the Deities were pleasantly surprised - this was either very coincidental, or planned from the beginning.

It was a bit of both.

Anyway, if Zue Yin had any hope of ascending to the Divine Step, then she would need to do so via ascending her heart to the divine stage. If she wanted to achieve this, her best bet was to enter the Divine Phoenix Inheritance.

Yaan briefly visited Zue Yin again, informing her of the successful conquest and the creation of the Paradise Sect. The Supreme Elders around her were once again mind-blown by Yaan’s achievements, but Zue Yin felt like this sort of progression was actually very expected. Perhaps she was just accustomed to Yaan’s feats by now.

He left Zue Yin with a communication treasure that she could activate whenever she wanted to contact him. There was a chance that she would be targeted as a potential future Empyrean if she was discovered by the other divinities, so Yaan instructed her to contact him if she encountered any trouble. If there were no issues, she would contact him when she was ready to take on the Divine Phoenix Inheritance.

She needed time to prepare, and during this time, Yaan wanted Zue Yin to become his main point of contact with the immortal world.

Divinities were extraordinarily powerful beings, but most of them were still just individuals, there was only so much they could do without subordinates to help out. As such, every member of the Paradise Sect was instructed to establish some degree of contact with the immortal world, such that they could build up an overall control network across the star system.

Yaan gave instructions to the Paradise Sect divinities. They each took on certain roles, with a select few individuals focussing on building up the cultivation world of the Four Divine Star System once again.

The cultivation world was essential for multiple reasons, even though all cultivators below the Divine Step couldn’t hope to touch a hair on a divinity’s head.

Primarily, it came down to manpower.

If the Paradise Sect wanted to build a large scale formation throughout a sector, or even the entire star system, they would need to utilise the efforts of the countless cultivators across thousands of life-planets.

If the Paradise Sect wanted to cultivate resources - from natural materials, to alchemical pills, to treasures, and anything else - they needed the lower cultivation world’s full support. How could the divinities waste their time farming patiently across thousands of planets? To produce a single Divine Rank treasure, it was necessary to produce ad refine quadrillions of low quality materials, this was a massive undertaking that started with the lower cultivation world.

The cultivation world, to divinities, was essentially a giant production line. It produced manpower, resources, and lastly, future talents.

Yaan was less concerned about the ‘future talents’, since 30,000 years wasn’t long enough to nurture many, if any, Empyreans. His only real hope was Zue Yin, and a few of the Deities in the sect, especially Poison Deity.

Aside from their responsibilities in dealing with the cultivation world, the Paradise Sect divinities also got to work on re-structuring the star system.

The Divine Beast Sector had always been the largest and most prosperous sector, it also lay dead centre in the star system. It made sense to relocate their headquarters to the Divine Beast Sector, and that’s exactly what Yaan commanded.

He personally undertook the task of moving Rainbow Mountain from the Divine Dragon Sector to the Divine Beast Sector. This wasn’t overly difficult for Yaan, although it was slow. This was fine though, since he could continue sitting atop the mountain peak and cultivating as he focussed on controlling the flows of the nine layers of daos around the mountain, gradually shifting the mountain through space.

It would take several years before the move was complete, but for a lone individual transporting a Primordial Treasure, this could be considered quite shocking. It was only because of Yaan’s understanding of this mountain and many different daos, combined with its relatively small size, that he could do this.

Heavenly Statue was already stationed in the Divine Beast Sector, it just needed some shifting to the centre of the sector, a task that he requested of the Sage and Poison Deity. The Heavenly Statue was a giant statue depicting a vaguely humanoid figure, standing at a height that towered well above any star. It was said to be the most favoured Primordial Treasure of the Heavenly Dao, and since these two had comprehended the entire Heavenly Dao, they had a much easier time shifting it.

The last Primordial Treasure was Elemental Storm, currently located in the Star Sea Sector.

In the end, Yaan didn’t bother moving this. It would take several centuries for ten Deities to move such a large treasure, but most importantly, it was actually very well suited to the Star Sea Sector. This sector was the smallest in size and there were very few planets, but the number of life-stars was second only to the Divine Beast Sector. The stars were all so close to one another that they each held their adjacent star neighbours in a sort of orbit, creating a rotating vortex of light when seen from above. The power of the elements was extreme in the centre of this vortex, and Elemental Storm seemed to be gradually drifting towards that centre of its own accord.

Sometimes, Primordial Treasures could change naturally over time, and Yaan felt like this might be one such case. If Elemental Storm fused with the sea of stars in this sector, he felt intrigued to see what would be produced.

Last on the list of rearrangements, came the Divine True Inheritances. Some Divine True Inheritances could be moved very easily, others were impossible to shift. Yaan instructed for those that could be moved easily to be taken to the centre of the Divine Beast Sector, whilst the rest were left alone, since it wasn’t really worth the effort.

Now that everything was in motion, Yaan combined his subordinates’ responsibilities with their promised rewards for participating in the conquest.

‘Payment’ was a very subjective thing for each divinity. When it came to wealth that he carried on his person, Yaan didn’t have all that much, only a few resources leant to him by the Sage back on the Sage Plane, combined with the loot from his slain enemies since ascending to the Divine Step.

He had taken Shi’s spatial ring as well as Bone Deity’s. Shi was really miserable, she didn’t seem to possess anything of her own, only a few spatial treasures that she managed to loot after fighting the Divine Court when she broke out of Eternal Prison. As for Bone Deity, he was averagely affluent for an Earthly Deity.

Yaan didn’t possess anything that could truly be called a Divine Rank treasure. There were some interesting texts which he valued quite highly, but honestly, he felt like material wealth wasn’t all that useful to him any more.

If there was something specific that he needed, then he would go out and get it. In terms of ‘treasures’, he valued Rainbow Mountain very highly, he supposed it could be considered his most useful asset right now.

After speaking with each divinity in the Paradise Sect, Yaan negotiated individual deals that both he and his subordinates felt fair.

Responsibility and wealth could often be grouped as one and the same. For example, Poison Deity was an alchemist with a keen interest in refining poisons, for which she needed a seemingly endless supply of basic materials, along with many subordinates to mass-produce the more basic ingredients.

Yaan’s payment to Poison Deity, was the position of Divine Beast Sector Cultivation Lord, meaning she and she alone was in charge of managing the entire cultivation world below the Divine Step throughout the Divine Beast Sector. She had some degree of freedom in the things she could command the lower cultivators to do, build, grow and refine for her, and she was allowed to skim a reasonable portion of the ongoing production for herself.

This was her first payment. Her second payment, was that she would be given the first opportunity to attempt the Alchemy Inheritance.

Aside from this, Poison Deity wouldn’t be given anything else, aside from free reign to use any cultivation haven in the Paradise Sect’s territories, just like all members.

This was just one example, each divinity had different needs and desires. In the end, Yaan found that it wasn’t too difficult to negotiate a combination of payment and responsibilities for each person. Like this, he would keep the Paradise Sect on the necessary direction of continual development and growth.