Upon seeing the drop of white blood, Tianyi understood why the contemporary Four Divine Beasts could inherit the positions of their progenitors. The Azure Dragon, Vermillion Bird, and White Tiger weren’t simply a title passed down from one demon to another, but a legacy. When the contemporary divine beast passed down the title, the original divine beasts’ blood would exit their body and enter the new one.
Although it was only a hypothesis, he felt it was likely very close to reality. Tianyi sighed in amazement. The fact that even eons after their death, the Four Divine Beasts’ blood could still have a spiritual will was amazing. More than that, the blood essence likely contained laws at the divine level.
Realizing his thoughts were straying, Tianyi quickly focused again. Demon Emperor Blacktiger’s corpse had been easily transferred into his Nine Heavens Universe without the White Tiger Blood Essence’s interference. Not even the realm artifact, the Metal Source Talons, could resist him. With his prize in grasp, he watched over the disengagement between the demons and immortals.
Demon Emperor Blacktiger’s death and Demon Empress Bluefeather’s state sharply lowered the morale of the demon clan, while Sword Empress Snowsword’s death also lowered the immortals’ morale. Even if the high echelons on both sides wanted to battle again, it was unlikely that the foot soldiers shared the same feelings.
Still, this was a world where strength spoke the greatest. If the Demon Clan had a divinity present, no amount of immortals would be able to contend with the Demon Clan. The Immortal Court and Numinous Sword Sect would have no choice but to flee and hide in the dark.
Even if there weren’t any divinities, Tianyi still had to guard against any possible sneak attacks from the demon emperors. His current conduit could only explode with the strength of a half-emperor, or an emperor for a short time at the cost of the conduit itself. He also didn’t want to continue the battle for now.
When the immortals retreated back to Shangri-La, Tianyi teleported into the core palace. Already present were the immortal emperors of the Immortal Court and Numinous Sword Sect. He didn’t wait for them to speak before waving his hand.
Not a second later, a chessboard flew out of the ripples in the air.
The Spacetime Chessboard was not his artifact, and it could resist his spacetime shifting, but why would it? Tianyi wanted to bring his allies back to headquarters, and Minister Vastlight would not resist. After all, the cooperation had already been discussed.
Minister Vastlight appeared in the main hall, as did the other passengers inside the Spacetime Chessboard.
“Did you succeed?” the field commander of the Numinous Sword Sect, Emperor Northsword, asked.
He already knew what happened on the front lines. Losing Empress Snowsword wasn’t just a large dip in a powerful combatant against the Demon Clan, but also against the Immortal Court. Even if the blitzkrieg on the Void Continent failed, he hoped that the Immortal Court losses could make up for the fall of the sword empress. Though, considering who was leading the assault, that was unlikely.
Still, what if?
Minister Vastlight’s expression turned ugly. “The Void Continent was destroyed.”
Before Emperor Northsword could be happy, Minister Vastlight’s next words made his budding smile come to a halt.
“But not because of us.” Fear appeared in his eyes, as if recalling his experience. “The Void Continent isn’t a continent at all, but a shell covering a realm beast.”
“What? Realm beast?” Emperor Northsword shouted. The other immortals also showed fearful expressions. Only those who didn’t know what a realm beast was had the leisure to show confusion.
“That’s not the worst part,” Minister Vastlight said. “The demons have a method to control it, or at least, a method to ensure the realm beast does not attack them. It could be worse. We escaped before I saw more.”
Emperor Northsword couldn’t help but show frustration. “Why didn’t you stay longer and gather more information?”
“If I stayed longer, all of us would have perished. Had I been less lucky, the realm beast would have captured the Spacetime Chessboard,” Minister Vastlight said. “It would have only been a matter of time before the realm beast destroys the Spacetime Chessboard, and us along with it. If that happened, you wouldn’t even have known about the realm beast.”
Emperor Northsword glanced at his subordinates. “Is there any information about a realm beast coming toward us?”
The immortals quickly contacted the scouts and other personnel in charge of information and the like. The result was nothing. Most of the information concerned the Demon Clan army’s retreat.
“If there are no signs about the realm beast, it means the Demon Clan does not have a perfect method to control it,” Emperor Northsword said. “It makes sense. If the Demon Clan could control the realm beast, why wait until we attacked them to unleash it? One good surprise attack is not as good as its continuous participation in the war. Even now, they should be doing damage control and trying to seal it.”
If the Numinous Sword Sect controlled a realm beast, they would have already initiated war against the Immortal Court.
“Then, should we attack them while they are preoccupied?” Minister Vastlight suggested. Although he feared the Realm Beast, it was undeniable that this was a prime opportunity.
“No.” Emperor Northsword rejected Minister Vastlight’s proposal. “We are at a critical juncture. It would be best to establish a new war plan in light of recent information.” His eyes flickered toward Tianyi. “Not to mention that we are not without losses.”
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Minister Vastlight nodded. “The Demon Clan also has another sovereign, the Qilin Patriarch. He only exposed it during our attack.”
“Troublesome,” Emperor Northsword said. He glanced toward Tianyi openly this time. “Emperor Nine Heavens, how are you? You were attacked by Five Element Annihilation, and also self-detonated. Your current state should not be perfect, right?”
Perhaps he was attempting to gather more information for the inevitable confrontation, or he really wanted to know if Tianyi was injured or not, but Tianyi didn’t hide it. “I can’t bring out my full strength in my current state. I can probably only exhibit the power of a half-emperor now. To return to my full power, it would take a long time.”
Of course, Tianyi’s definition for a long time was different from those old monsters who took tens of thousands of years to reach their current height, like Emperor Northsword. In addition, Tianyi wanted to hide his true capabilities as much as possible.
Emperor Northsword nodded. Not only him, but Minister Vastlight felt like Tianyi would take hundreds, if not thousands, of years to recover to his peak.
When a pathfinding immortal became a seamless immortal, they would use the law they mastered to create a new body, an immortal body. It was because of this immortal body that they became almost invulnerable to attacks not from other immortal monarchs. But this feature also made it more difficult to heal once they became injured. They had to use pills or materials compatible with their immortal body, or it would have a detrimental effect.
For the Immortal Court and Numinous Sword Sect, healing the immortal bodies of seamless immortals was troublesome, but not impossible. Emperors were difficult and sovereigns almost could only rely on accumulation over time to heal. Although Tianyi wasn’t an immortal sovereign in their eyes, they deduced that he used the Law of Spacetime to form his immortal body, which made it more difficult than the average immortal emperor.
Minister Vastlight frowned. Although he hadn’t seen the confrontation between Tianyi and the Four Divine Beasts, he had seen the effectiveness of his continuous attacks. If Tianyi couldn’t unleash the same combat effectiveness, then the alliance would lose out on a powerful asset.
“Nine Heavens Elder, are you still able to launch spells continuously?” he asked.
“I can,” Tianyi said. “But I won’t be able to use my best techniques anymore.”
Minister Vastlight frowned. He thought Tianyi couldn’t use Stellar Silence, not Constellation Cessation. Even if Tianyi was unable to contribute, what must be done still must be done.
Soon, Emperor Northsword and Minister Vastlight, among the other leaders, stood in a circle facing each other. The visage of other leaders of the two hegemonic forces also appeared remotely and sat down to discuss the future trend of the war.
Tianyi was also present, being one of the immortal emperors of the Immortal Court, one still young and with plenty of potential. However, he did not take part and only listened. Unless directly asked or if it related to him, he did not speak up.
He only divided a portion of his attention to the meeting. Most of his focus was on realm beasts. Because of his young age, Tianyi didn’t know there was such a lifeform as the realm beast. His inadequate knowledge on the realm beasts did not last long as he quickly retrieved and digested the information stored in the Immortal Court.
Realm beasts had a massive amount of power, but because of their bestial minds, they could not properly utilize it. They were brutes that only knew how to rely on sheer force. If a true immortal had access to the same amount of power, they would be able to contend against divinities despite their weaker mastery of the laws.
In a way, the realm beasts reminded Tianyi of himself. Not in the way of intelligence, mind you, but in terms of being unable to utilize all the power available to them. Although he could utilize the energy of his inner universe much better than when he first transcended the Immortal Ascension Heavenly Tribulation, it was not even a fraction of the entire Nine Heavens Universe.
Tianyi wondered if he could absorb the realm beast into his inner universe. Logically, a divinity could resist being pulled into the Nine Heavens Universe, but the realm beast was just that, a beast. Even if its instincts warned him against entering the inner universe, there were a myriad of ways to lure him inside.
Once inside, the realm beast would be like a fish on the chopping block. Even if Tianyi couldn’t injure it, he had enough energy for the long grind. No matter what lifeform, it needed energy to survive. And the realm beast was no different.
While Tianyi fantasized about capturing the realm beast, the meeting came to an end.
The alliance set the objective to pressure the Demon Clan. Not to the point that they were backed into a corner, but just at the precipice. They would forcefully conquer as many territories as possible and advance the front lines, while avoiding pressuring them so much that they disregarded everything and released the realm beast to wreak havoc.
Of course, that did not mean the alliance was going to back down because of the realm beast. Both the Immortal Court and Numinous Sword Sect were searching for methods to seal or take down the realm beast. Both sides each had their own methods, but neither side agreed with the plan of the other. In their eyes, it was too risky and would only result in heavy losses.
It didn’t matter if the heavy losses happened to the other half of the alliance, it just couldn’t happen to their own side. Naturally, neither side wanted to become cannon fodder in the operation against the realm beast.
However, this had nothing to do with Tianyi. He was granted a reprieve from the front lines until he was needed. During this time, he would stay on Shangri-La to recover and return to his peak strength as fast as possible.
While on Shangri-La, Tianyi noticed undercurrents surging. The alliance had pressured the Demon Clan and moved the front lines forward. The Demon Clan did not show much resistance, as if their focus was elsewhere. Assured that the Demon Clan would not release the realm beast, the Numinous Sword Sect started to cause trouble.
It couldn’t really be called trouble.
Just that the Numinous Sword Sect lost a sword empress, so they wanted the Immortal Court to contribute more and lose power to bring balance back between the two hegemonic forces. Of course, they would not directly state their intent. Instead, they used Empress Snowsword’s death as a reason to contribute less on the basis of recovering their strength. Once they contributed less, the Immortal Court would naturally have to contribute more. Simultaneously, they would also lose more.
The most annoying part was that the Numinous Sword Sect requested an equal split of the spoils, despite contributing less.
The Immortal Court originally accepted the Numinous Sword Sect’s action, but they pushed too far. Even if they lost Empress Snowsword, the Immortal Court was not without losses. Tianyi, who could have contributed majorly, was weakened and out of commission. He hadn’t fallen, but it was still a huge loss.
Because of these primary reasons, the friction between the Immortal Court and Numinous Sword Sect surged. The honeymoon period between the hegemonic forces had come to a silent halt. Unless the Demon Clan exploded with an unexpected trump card and pressured them, the two hegemonic forces would continue to duke it out behind the scenes.