Feeling bored, Tianyi took out a Xiyi Talisman and started to fiddle with it. He entered the Xiyinet manually with his fingers and not his immortal sense, like most cultivators liked to do. As someone who grew up in modern society, he preferred the feeling of swiping the screen.
Even to this day, most of the denizens of the Primordial Realm and Numinous Realm did not know of the war in the Divine Beast Pseudo System. The cultivators did not want an outsider like the Buddhists to intervene. To keep this secrecy, Tianyi created a subnetwork of the Xiyinet for the people partaking in the war to communicate in. Still, the sub-Xiyinet only worked in the areas near Shangri-La and the conquered realms.
When invading unclaimed territory, the Xiyinet would become hindered. It wasn’t impossible to use, just extremely inconvenient. Tianyi hypothesized that the anti-teleportation measures the Demon Clan adopted interfered with the Xiyinet, since the core of it was built using the Law of Spacetime.
“Hm?” Tianyi saw a new video upload titled [Monarch Thrallsong is so terrifying, but my heart can’t help but beat for her!]
Tianyi’s expression immediately darkened. He knew Daoyi was popular. She had many fans among the mortals too, since even mortals could use the Xiyinet as long as they had enough gold. Many mortals dreamed of marrying a beautiful immortal like her, and Tianyi just pretended to not see it. It wasn’t like he didn’t have his fair share of fans that wanted to marry him.
However, they were mostly in the background, and Tianyi selectively ignored those comments and forum posts. This video, however, was too blatant. More importantly, it got a lot of likes and views, which made the algorithm suggest the video to even more people, forming a vicious cycle. At least, in Tianyi’s eyes.
Before deciding to lower the exposure of the video, Tianyi clicked on the video. He had upgraded the Xiyinet, so that it could record everything the user could sense within their spiritual or immortal sense, making it a 3D video. So, to Tianyi’s surprise, the recorder was actually Daoyi’s fangirl.
Tianyi’s jealousy instantly halved, and he focused on watching Daoyi’s latest achievement. Daoyi carried his conduit, but watching it from another angle was always refreshing.
Daoyi sat in the void of the Divine Beast Pseudo System. On her lap was her lifebound artifact, the Nine Nether Note Zither. Her fingers danced madly across the guqin. Despite the speed at which she plucked the strings, he could see each slender finger without any blurriness. Even her painted nails would become embedded in those that saw it.
‘She’s improved,’ Tianyi thought. Before, Daoyi only used sound to transmit her illusion. Now, she could cast an illusion on anyone who so much as glanced at her. Of course, the power of these illusions paled in comparison to her sound illusion, but it was still a nice passive technique.
Her music echoed in the void, ripple after ripple. Behind her were hundreds of true immortals, and charging at her was an even greater number of demons, including three demon kings.
At first, everything seemed normal. It wasn’t until they neared the immortals that the demons showed signs of abnormality. Instead of fighting the immortals, they started to fight amongst themselves. The demons kept scolding the shamelessness of the humans while fighting other demons. Even two of the demon kings had lost their senses!
They had fallen under Daoyi’s illusions. Without her having to lift a finger, the demons would eliminate themselves for her. It almost made the true immortals that followed behind Daoyi appear useless.
Almost.
One of the demon kings, an avian demon descended from the Phoenix Clan, stayed awake. He couldn’t be called a soul cultivator, but he had an innate technique that invalidated all soul methods below a certain level. Within the range of this technique, the demons stayed sober.
Daoyi could forcibly overpower the innate ability, but that would force her to shrink the range of her technique, which wasn’t worth the cost. Instead, the true immortals behind her formed several war formations and met that demon king and his subordinates head on.
While the sober demons and the true immortals waged war, Daoyi stayed there, playing her guqin. It was like a concert. Unfortunately, neither side was in the mood to enjoy her music. Well, the demons under her illusion certainly enjoyed it in a twisted way.
Because the sober demon king’s innate ability could only affect a certain range and the war formations held him back, the number of demons dwindled and dwindled. The demon king knew that if this continued, the demons present would die and the battle would be lost. He wanted to reverse the situation, but he couldn’t find a way.
Finally, the demon king gave up. He abandoned the demon lords around him and shot toward the two demon kings. Originally, he was always inching closer to his fellow demon kings, but Daoyi would always control them to leave. Coupled with the war formation, the demon king couldn’t rescue his compatriots.
Now that he finally decided to retreat, he wanted to save the two demon kings first, before the other demon lords. He succeeded, and then he focused on flying around the battlefield to absorb as many demons into his innate ability’s range as much as possible.
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How could Daoyi allow him to succeed? She increased the intensity of the bloodshed between the demons under her illusion. Although this would increase the chances of them breaking out of her illusion, it was still much better than allowing the demon kings to rescue as many demons as possible.
Alas, under Daoyi’s hellish song, nearly half of the demons the demon kings tried to save died under her illusion. The demon kings glared hatefully at Daoyi, but now they were the outnumbered ones. If they continued, their disadvantage would only grow, so they continued to retreat.
Daoyi didn’t order to give chase. Instead, she entered the realm for which she fought those demon kings for. The true immortals settled down. Some secluded themselves to heal, others rested, and a select team terraformed the realm to suit their needs.
Tianyi clicked out of the video and searched for more. After a few minutes, he clicked on the video titled [Strongest Immortal Couple!] For some reason, Tianyi felt as if the temperament of these lofty immortals was becoming more and more childish. It wasn’t just his suspicions. He already knew that the people who liked to frequent forums were immortals. And the one who caused the most drama were also immortals.
He never expected this. In his view, it should be the mortals that became addicted to the Xiyinet. No, there were mortals addicted, but compared to immortals, mortals had a far shorter lifespan. This meant that they would consciously look away from the Xiyi Talisman in order to pursue their careers or dreams.
Immortals had far more free time on their hands. When they couldn’t stand the loneliness of cultivation, they would frequent the Xiyinet.
Tianyi shook his head and focused on the video. The main character of the video was his former clone, Ba Shifang, and his wife, Hu Landie. That’s right, Ba Shifang successfully married Hu Landie. It was during the cultural exchange ceremony and, because of the marriage ceremony, he got accosted by Meng Tingfeng.
Because of that, Tianyi left early. He discovered that since Meng Tingfeng couldn’t find time to talk to him, he would find Ba Shifang instead, leaving Tianyi speechless. ‘Do you think that because Ba Shifang is my clone, he’s half a son? Or do you want to use him to get close to me?’
He didn’t think anymore as he entered the video. In contrast to Daoyi’s battle, Ba Shifang stood next to Hu Landie in the void. Behind them stood five hundred true immortals, which formed thirty war formations. Facing them were over a thousand demon lords and five demon kings.
Ba Shifang struck first. He formed several hand seals and colossal orbs formed of fire, water, earth, wood, and metal spanning several kilometers formed around him. He pointed his fingers at the demons and those colossal elemental spheres shot forward.
The demons quickly moved out of the way, and a big melee started. Ba Shifang stayed in the back to concentrate on casting spells. Hu Landie released hundreds of her bug beasts to tangle with the demons, attempting to rip her husband to shreds. Not just her, but a large percentage of the war formation stayed behind to protect Ba Shifang.
Ba Shifang was practically a humanoid artillery. No one else on the battlefield possessed the sheer destructive capabilities he wielded. Only immortal emperors had the same destructive might. As a result, whichever battlefield Ba Shifang appeared on, the best strategy was just to protect him as he unleashed spell after spell.
“Dammit! Does he have no limit to his qi or what?” a demon king that just dodged a flaming sphere shouted. He wasn’t the only one who had this question. Ba Shifang’s fellow immortals also had the same question.
He possessed a qi reservoir larger than those in the same realm because he cultivated Tianyi’s Nine-Five Scripture, but even he would run out of qi if he cast spells nonstop. And he wasn’t replenishing his qi using Tianyi’s conduit.
The reason for his seemingly endless amount of qi was because of Tianyi’s technique that transformed the state of qi into gas, liquid, and solid. Gas was the natural form of qi. When qi condensed into a liquid, Tianyi called it ye. As a solid, Tianyi named it yu.
Ba Shifang recognized his own weakness. Although he was powerful, he was still limited by his qi reservoir. While most would perfect their technique so that it used the least amount of energy for the maximum effect, Ba Shifang did the opposite. He condensed his qi into yu, multiplying his qi reservoir.
Although it would take much longer to regenerate, it was the best choice in times of war. If he had more time, he would have chosen the orthodox method as a priority. Tianyi’s Three States of Qi were like a shortcut. Although the benefits were obvious, the fundamentals should not be ignored.
At this time, three of the five demon kings broke through the barricade of a war formation. Hu Landie stepped forward and sent out several bug beasts that exuded auras equal to true immortals. The demon kings didn’t even hide their disdain and mercilessly slaughtered the bug beasts.
The moment their claws shredded Hu Landie’s bug beasts, their expression shifted. Their eyes widened in shock, but their expression remained the same, as if frozen in time. No, it wasn’t frozen, but the time around them had slowed down to an extreme degree.
Ba Shifang didn’t let go of this chance and formed several hand seals. Immortal qi of fire, water, earth, wood, and metal shot out of his body and condensed around them. They solidified and merged to form a false planet.
Nine Heavens Style — Planetary Purgatory
Unless a demon emperor used all their strength to save them, the three demon kings were doomed. Under Ba Shifang’s control, the three demon kings died, but no one figured it out yet. He controlled it to shoot toward the demons. Any demons too slow to dodge would enter the Planetary Purgatory and die, just like the three demon kings.
The morale on Ba Shifang’s side increased, while the demon lost morale. Especially the remaining two demon kings. The fur on their body couldn’t help but stiffen when they felt the dangerous glint in Ba Shifang’s eyes. After holding the line for a few minutes, they also decided to retreat, allowing Ba Shifang to claim another realm in the name of the Jade and Numinous Alliance.
Tianyi found it ironic that Ba Shifang gained the title of World Link Monarch because of his usage of Planetary Purgatory.
After finishing the video, Tianyi watched a few more videos. Many heroes stood out, especially with the proliferation of the Xiyinet. Most of the videos were about victory because people liked to watch them, not because they didn’t happen.
Those who had time to take a video, expecting a victory only to suffer a loss, didn’t upload them. One, because it wouldn’t do well in views, and two, it would lower morale.
Tianyi looked up. His eyes penetrated through the void of the Divine Beast Pseudo System and saw thousands of demon lords flying toward Shangri-La. Among the mass of demons were several demon emperors and tens of demon monarchs.