Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
The information Lao Ai sent back was taken seriously by Dong Hai’s top administration. Such actions by Heaven and the Buddhist League would lead to far-reaching consequences.
Heaven and Buddhist League had no shortage of almighty experts who had mastered time-related divine abilities. In theory, they could, like Wu Qi, speed up time to produce a large number of immortals and cultivators. But, two conditions prevented them from doing so.
Firstly, these almighty experts had to use their own divine power to accelerate time, so they could only speed it up by a few thousand times at most, unlike Wu Qi, who could accelerate time tens of thousands of times with the help of foreign objects. As it usually took hundreds of thousands of years for immortals and cultivators to break through a tier, merely accelerating time thousands of times did not mean much to them.
Moreover, Primordial Immortals and Buddhas were generally selfish. Even though Wu Qi could use Dark Yin Celestial Tower to accelerate time, it would still take a huge amount of his blood essence and energy essence to do so. If he did not have the means of rapidly replenishing himself by devouring foreign objects, he would not have been able to sustain such an incredible consumption for too long. For Primordial Immortals and Buddhas, every drop of their blood essence was accumulated through tens of thousands or even several periods of hard work, which contained infinite power and was the source of their lives. How could they sacrifice themselves for the sake of nurturing their juniors?
Secondly, even if those almighty experts were willing to cultivate younger generations by spending their own blood essence to accelerate time, outer heavenly realms would not have as much natural energy for them to use. As mentioned before, even a Gold Immortal needed an entire galaxy to provide the resources for his cultivation, and outer heavenly realms simply could not supply enough natural energy for them to train juniors in large numbers like Wu Qi.
But, things had changed now. Outer heavenly realms were invading Pangu Continent on a large scale, and Great Yu was already struggling to cope with those invading immortal sects and mortal kingdoms. In such a chaotic time, if a handful of Primordial Immortals and Buddhas sneaked into Pangu Continent and occupied several giant energy veins, they could easily produce a large number of lower-ranking immortals and cultivators in a short time. Of these juniors, there were likely to be a few gifted ones who could quickly grow into Gold Immortals and Bodhisattvas, providing a great help to their seniors.
With the richness of Pangu Continent and a variety of rare spirit pills, those almighty experts were able to quickly replenish themselves even if they lost some of their blood essences. In this case, they were naturally willing to expand the number of their disciples, and eventually, their power.
While Heaven and Buddhist League both could benefit from the situation, Wu Qi was under even greater pressure.
Great Yu had always been able to stand up to Heaven and Buddhist League not just because of Empress Wa’s backing, but also because of the speedy result provided by the human cultivation techniques, which allowed them to produce a batch of formidable warriors and Oracles in just thirty to fifty years. Even though human warriors and Oracles both had different weaknesses, so long as they cooperated with each other, they were strong enough to fight against Heaven and Buddhist League.
And Great Yu’s population was so enormous that hundreds of millions of warriors and Oracles could be quickly assembled if needed. The immense size of its military forces made it hard for Heaven and Buddhist League to challenge Great Yu.
But, once Heaven and Buddhism League began to train their forces on large scale like Great Yu, the consequence would be far too severe. When Great Yu could not maintain absolute numerical superiority in military power, it was bound to be in an absolute strategically passive position. When it came to conspiracy and deception, the top figures of Great Yu were far inferior to those of the Heaven and Buddhist League.
Once Great Yu was completely suppressed by Heaven and Buddhist League, Wu Qi’s days would be over. Now that he had killed the Great Celestial Emperor’s son and sacrificed him to the banner, he would certainly bear the brunt once Heaven had accumulated enough forces to deal with Great Yu. If Dong Hai were destroyed, his vast foundation and all his friends would be affected as well.
Lao Ai’s secret military intelligence was quickly sent to Liangzhu, and Wu Qi and a group of Dong Hai’s top figures secretly went out to different places to find out more news. Meanwhile, the Pangu’s Map in Dong Hai was monitored day and night. Any places found to have abnormal consumption of natural energy would be reported immediately, and Dong Hai Army would be dispatched to eliminate any existences that caused the abnormality.
Wu Qi and Princess Zhang Le roamed the eastern provinces together for two months. According to his estimation of the methods used by those almighty experts, their disciples should have been cultivated for more than a thousand years by now. In such a time, those with sufficient aptitude should have become Heaven Immortals and Arhats.
But, the eastern provinces were calm. The immortal sects were still fighting each other for blessed cave abodes, and mortal kingdoms were waging wars against each other. Other than that, he did not find anything unusual.
Ao Buzun, Lord Xiansheng, and the others were also on separate missions, but the news they sent back was the same—nothing was wrong.
Guigu’zi had also carried out an inspection along the few large underground energy veins in Dong Hai with a group of disciples, carefully surveying tens of thousands of spirit caves of all sizes along the way. But, they got nothing as well. No one knew where those almighty experts of Heaven and Buddhist League were hiding, as there were no traces to be found.
In any case, because it was extremely important, Wu Qi and everyone else dared not to give up as they continued to send large numbers of people to look around for traces. Even Great Yu’s Punishment Court had sent countless smart spies and various unique races of the human race, ordering them to search every corner of Liangzhu in the hope that they could find the Primordial experts from Heaven and Buddhist League responsible for carrying out the plan, and then annihilate them with a swift and thunderous blow.
Everyone searched for a long time but found nothing. One particular day, Wu Qi and Princess Zhang Le came to a plain surrounded by mountains.
It was originally a flat grassland, but as dozens of huge landmasses that were outer heavenly realms landed here and reunited with Pangu Continent, a large cluster of lofty mountains rose into the sky. Between the mountains were winding paths that led to the outside, and in the middle was a piece of land about half the size of Zhong Province, which had become the battlefield of some forty mortal kingdoms.
In just a year, these mortal kingdoms had built countless cities here, each completed with restrictive formations that prevented anyone from flying like the ones found in Great Yu. Over forty kingdoms, each with at least thirty thousand and at most a million soldiers, dragged each other in war. There were no allies, no common causes, no reasonings…only endless slaughter.
Wu Qi and Princess Zhang Le stood on a cloud and concealed their figures with a little magic. As both of them had amazing divine power, the vast plain beneath them looked like a small chessboard in their eyes, and the thousands of cities built by those kingdoms were the chess pieces. Countless ants surrounded these chess pieces and filled the land with blood, yet they did not even know what they were fighting for.
At least twenty emperors personally led the armies into battles. In the face of their enemies, they always confidently announced that they were the new emperors of the human race, and claimed that they were the destined Sacred Emperors of the human race who would unite the people, overthrow the tyrannical and rotten Great Yu, and lead the human race into a new era.
Each of these emperors boasted that he was the new Human Emperor, the incarnation of the Sacred Emperor. Wu Qi and Princess Zhang Le were amused by that, wondering what kind of drugs the Heaven and Buddhist League had given to these people, making them so crazy about becoming the next monarch of the human race.
On this day, there happened to be a decisive war between two kingdoms. One army had marched outside the capital city of the other. Millions of soldiers surrounded the city, while there were only tens of thousands of soldiers garrisoned in the city. Blood flowed from both sides, but the attacker clearly had an upper hand, and the defenders on the city walls were killed from time to time.
A gray whirlpool hung over the city, sucking in the souls of the dead defending soldiers as soon as they flew into the sky.
Wu Qi and Princess Zhang Le had been curiously watching the war between the two kingdoms and nearly neglected the gray whirlpool with an extremely obscure aura. This was also because the overall strength of the person controlling the whirlpool was too weak, someone with the cultivation base of a Nascent Divinity cultivator. The couple had been cultivating in Dark Yin Celestial Tower and stayed in the Dao Breaking realm for tens of thousands of years, because of which, it was very difficult for them to notice the aura of those below the realm of Primordial. That almost made them ignore the gray whirlpool.
It was like how an ant could not attract the attention of the dragon, for it was too weak to pose a threat. Over time, the dragon’s sense would become dull and numb.
They looked at each other and arched their eyebrows in surprise as Wu Qi muttered, “Hell, we weren’t like this before!”
Princess Zhang Le pursed her lips and nodded silently. In the past, their senses were so sensitive that not even the gentlest gust of wind could hide from them. But now, they almost neglected a little Nascent Divinity cultivator who was playing a trick right under their noses!
Cold sweats broke out of their backs. If this were not a little Nascent Divinity cultivator, but an almighty expert who had reduced his aura to the level of a Nascent Divinity cultivator, wouldn’t they be at risk of being assassinated? Shocked, the couple immediately sent out their divine senses and raised their sensory sensitivity to the highest level.
By doing so, they immediately discovered that there were hundreds of such gray whirlpools hiding in the clouds. Three Nascent Divinity cultivators and some thirty Nascent Soul cultivators were controlling them and collecting the souls and blood essence of the soldiers who had died on the battlefield.
If Wu Qi had not seen a fallen general actually possess a rare Seven Killing destiny, whose soul was exuding a monstrous menacing aura, and glanced curiously at the soul as it flew into the sky after he was slain, he would not have found such a mystery in the clouds.
One could imagine what three Nascent Divinity cultivators and some thirty Nascent Soul cultivators were compared to Wu Qi, who was a Dao Breaking expert.
Shaking his head, Wu Qi surrounded these cultivators with his divine sense and was left stunned. Each of these cultivators wore a jade medallion on their belts, and judging by the marking, they were all Heaven’s immortal officials.
Wu Qi was thrilled. It seemed like he had found the right target.