"Still not enough" Pef sighed softly, while measuring the dissolving speed of his newest Formation. Four seconds in eight years of constant training.

"Hmmm. Stop comparing your own diagram with that Tier 11 relic. We don't even know what materials or Daos were used in creating it." the glove answered in a calmer tone.

Pef nodded gently, then jumped out of the Unreal River, to find his wife Vela simply standing on the surface of the river, as if it was solid.

He shook his head to clear away his bad thoughts. Cultivation did not make any sense, what was one more impossible thing? He decided long ago that common sense was not the tool he needed in this world, only willpower.

"You should try skating now, Vela. Improve your control." he suggested with an innocent voice, then sat on the side of the cliff beside Xie.

As years passed, his purple-haired wife had begun to integrate her second self into her mind, and could sometimes even manifest the wings and the sword of that self. Pef patted her shoulder, then drew the woman into a half-sided hug. "Vela is pretty amazing, right?"

"The Angel can do anything she does, and more. It's me, who is still weak." Xie complained in a somber voice.

Pef ruffled her hair a bit playful. "An Angel and a Devil, both living in your mind. You know, that was supposed to be a parable, not a literal truth..." he observed with a wry voice, and his blue eyes twinkled.

"Oh...like that Daoist scripture about the good and bad wolves living in your soul. Ha! My Devil self has died. I still miss her, you know?" Xie said in a sad tone.

"She was quite cool. Her aloof pride and superior knowledge made Xia rather likable. But greed, that's one trait that can ruin anyone. Something that's extremely common among all cultivators, not just Devils." Pef added with a shrug.

Greed was also the main reason why cultivator worlds were considered death worlds by most thinkers or philosophers. It only took a single high tier immortal, hoping to acquire some rare resource and entire universes would be annihilated, and uncountable numbers of lives lost.

"And that's why we exist. We are the law and the vindication. We bring justice, or die trying." The Lady of Justice said in a clear voice, as she simply appeared beside Pef and Xie.

"Welcome back, Lia." Pef offered towards the new Tier 8 immortal. And then read the logs of the glove, noting the increase to the third Star, two minor realms crossed in less than five years. Then again, Lia did have a potent cheat with her immortality diagram.

"Would you be surprised to know the Dragons are even greedier than the rest of the cultivators combined?" Lia asked, perhaps a bit ironical.

"Aren't Dragons greedy by default?" Pef wondered with a small grin.

"Stupidly strong too. A single Dragon Elder managed to kill me with one breath. Dragonfire." Lia complained as she took out a blue mind crystal and began recording her scouting expedition. Pef only needed to brush the blue stone with the back of his glove, and obtain the Dragon Realm map and all the valuable datapoints needed for their assault.

It did make sense to send Lia as a scout for the Legion, both because of her abilities as a Tier 8 to sneak about, aided by masterful control over Light and Dark, and their byproduct of Shadow Dao, but more importantly her ability to self-resurrect via the Tao Seal.

.Lia glanced down at the glove, then shook her head. "It already has a plan?" She deduced with her Oracle Skill.

Pef just nodded. To call it a plan was utterly simplistic, as the near-Tier 9 glove could construct billions of strategic, logistic, operational and tactical plans for a campaign to conquer a thousand multiverses at once, down to squad and even individual Soldiers.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

He would bet on the glove even against the General now, not that it would ever come to that. Everything the General would do, had already been accounted for, predicted from previous logged campaigns and constant direct observation.

It was also highly possible the General had also done something similar, predicting what Pef and the glove would do next, and chose to support their actions. Of course, there were still unknown variables, like the actions of other Tier 9 entities, or new Ascensions, and up direct or indirect Heavenly intervention and anything in-between.

A single random Tier 9 or higher Artifact being found and used by anyone involved could shatter most plans, as would a sudden allegiance shift from any of the known forces.

War was a complex business even on mere planetary scale, and it only got worse on galactic and universe scale fronts.

Pef didn't care about all of it that much, and only kept a single self as a combat operation controller, leaving most of the work onto the glove.

"And you don't even need that controller self to maintain overwatch, to be fair. I'm more than capable of conducting this campaign by myself." the glove boasted confidently.

Perhaps correctly as well, Pef admitted inward. The glove was highly competent in the area of its expertise, and more so since its newest upgrades via Formation Arrays and Taotie flesh for a computing substrate.

"Let's go to war!" Pef announced as he stood up and drew his giant sword.

"And so it begins." Lady Kalima commented as she appeared next to Pef, and flared her own qi. Almost at the peak of eighth Star or Tier 8, and close to her next realm, give or take a few Chaos Cycles or some random insight during a hard fight.

Pef stepped away, while Recalling his wives into his inner world as he departed the Fay Realms.

Step 1. Meet the General at the Breach.

It took only a few seconds to achieve the first step. The General arrived almost instantly, followed by a hundred Legion Captains and various other allies.

Step 2. Transmit the campaign objectives to all Veritas Legion officers. Send secondary objectives, the disinformation and harassment objectives to the Legion Allies.

Achieved in the next second. High-band secure qi transmissions were quite efficient for that task.

Step 3. Dimensional Bridge to the Dragon Ovipositor.

Ten seconds to translate to new universe. Pef just aimed the Heart Ruler at the point indicated by the glove, then flared his qi, transposing the entire Legion into the heart of the Dragon Realm. Wards and traps lad by millions of Dragons were simply bypassed via dimension insertion. Still easy.

Step 4. Disperse one billion Legion Ants in pattern Sigma-19.

Almost one second. Detection imminent.

Step 5. Deploy Prison Array, version 11.031

Pef tapped his foot on the marble floor of the ovipositor, and the entire star system became a giant trap, full of qi-draining and qi-suppression arrays, plus time-stasis and void-locking formations to delay a rescue by outside forces.

Step 6. Free time until an enemy arrives.

Pef grinned at the silly step sent by the glove, then bent down to pick up a ripe Dragon egg, the size of a watermelon. "I guess we can try that folded omelet recipe of yours, Kalima." he said a bit amused.

To his side, the General glared at Pef, then at the Fay Godmother. Since when did Kalima care about cooking recipes?