Chapter 456: Aftermath
Hearing Yaoguang ask her to hold her hand just to abruptly cut down the Abyssal Ruins Dao Lord himself, the Penglai Dao Lord could not make sense of it. But she did not press.
Perhaps Yaoguang meant to build his own confidence for attempting Dao Integration by slaying a void Dao Lord. Cultivation was a private matter, and even the closest of friends had no business asking too much. The goal had been achieved, and that was enough.
"A level 15 array." The Penglai Dao Lord glanced at the great array covering the whole of the Heavenly Dao Sect, and her confidence that Yaoguang would one day be able to lay out an immortal array rose even further. "I'll go see whether I can still catch Black Lunar and Jade Scale. They dared to join hands and provoke me. One way or another, they're going to pay for what they did."
"Please, go ahead, Dao Lord," Yaoguang said, then added, "When it's done, I'd trouble you to come back once more. I need your power for the final refinement of the Human Emperor Sword."
"It's almost finished?" A gleam of light crossed the Penglai Dao Lord's eyes. "Already?"
"I'm famous for being fast," Yaoguang said with a smile.
"Good. Then I'll sweep the surrounding area first and make sure they behave themselves, and after that I'll give you everything I have for the last stage of the Human Emperor Sword," the Penglai Dao Lord answered, clearly pleased.
She seemed about to depart when Yaoguang quickly produced a high-grade Dao Artifact and the remnant core of a grotto-heaven. "Killing Abyssal Ruins was entirely your doing, Dao Lord. These items..."
"Keep them for now. Things belonging to a void Dao Lord might be helpful when you make your own attempt at Dao Integration. If you succeed, we can advance and retreat together, and these will count as my gift to you. And if you fail... I won't be shy about taking whatever you leave behind," the Penglai Dao Lord said bluntly.
Yaoguang did not press the matter and simply nodded. "I won't disappoint you."
"Be careful. If you are in danger again, call for me at once." With that, her figure flickered and vanished without a trace.
It was spatial travel achieved by using the Great Dao of origin to lever the Great Dao of void. A person of great strength was never particularly slow, and the three thousand Great Dao naturally resonated and interacted with one another.
Once the Penglai Dao Lord was gone, Yaoguang turned his gaze back to the six Void-Shattering cultivators inside the array, led by the Void End Perfected Lord.
He stepped across the void and appeared directly on the battlefield where the Void End Perfected Lord and Zhen Xuanyuan's group had fought to a standstill.
He closed an empty hand, and the power of the Twelve-Fiend-God Heaven-Sealing Array surged forth, each fiend god manifesting strength far beyond the Void-Shattering Realm as it seized and pinned down one troublemaker after another.
But these Void-Shattering Realm cultivators, including the Void End Perfected Lord, had seen the tide had turned, and as they saw Yaoguang descending as the victor, they immediately dropped their weapons and begged.
"Sect Master Yaoguang, see clearly, we were forced into this by Abyssal Ruins. We had no choice but to stand against the Heavenly Dao Sect. In truth, we bear the sect not the slightest ill will."
"Sect Master Yaoguang, though we are followers and disciples of the Abyssal Ruins Dao Lord, circumstances left us no other path. He envied our talents. Either we pledged ourselves to him, becoming his disciples and subordinates, or he would kill us on the spot. In that position, we had no choice at all..."
"We are willing to pledge ourselves to the Heavenly Dao Sect. From this day on we will add brick and tile to the sect's growth and give what strength we have to make up for the wrongs we committed here today."
Yaoguang glanced up at the twelve fiend god projections that had reassembled overhead. These cultivators had almost certainly surrendered so quickly because they understood perfectly well that against the power of a level 15 array, surrender was the only alternative to death.
But just as he was directing the projections to deliver the killing blow, Zhen Xuanyuan spoke up, "I can't speak for the others, but a thousand years ago the Void End Perfected Lord really did take Abyssal Ruins as his master only to preserve his own life..."
Then he added, "And his true body is human."
Yaoguang's eyes settled on the Void End Perfected Lord. Past a certain level of cultivation, one could shift life form at will; although the Void End Perfected Lord kept a human shape, due to his status as Abyssal Ruins' disciple, Yaoguang had assumed he belonged to the star race or the void race.
"A thousand years ago I was called brilliant myself. Three hundred years after setting foot on the cultivation path, I advanced to the Void-Shattering Realm," the Void End Perfected Lord said bitterly. "It was precisely because the talent I showed was so exceptional that Abyssal Ruins turned his attention to me during one of my journeys. He picked a random pretext and meant to bury me, so taking him as my master was the only way to save myself..."
He went on at once. "In fact, though I've served at his side for a thousand years without complaint, he never trusted me in the slightest. Three hundred years ago he came by a karma Dao Artifact through a stroke of luck, and he used it to plant karma in us and control and influence us through the artifact."
"A karma Dao Artifact?" Yaoguang was mildly surprised.
His perspective had broadened beyond measure compared to before, yet the domains of fate and karma remained outside his experience.
He swept through the Abyssal Ruins Dao Lord's remnant grotto-heaven core, and a profound Dao Artifact soon appeared in his hand.
The moment he held it, Yaoguang felt a perception form between himself and more than a hundred targets. Among them were the six Void-Shattering cultivators standing before him, including the Void End Perfected Lord.
Over countless years, the Abyssal Ruins Dao Lord had instructed the Void End Perfected Lord and the others in cultivation, whether sincerely or not, tying karma between them.
Through this artifact, Yaoguang could make them repay that karma and strip the cultivation from their bodies.
In the Void End Perfected Lord's case, stripping his cultivation away would send his strength plummeting, from a figure in the top ten of the Dao Lord Candidate Rankings to an utterly unremarkable Void-Shattering cultivator.
That was not all. The Abyssal Ruins Dao Lord seemed also to have "saved" the lives of the Void End Perfected Lord and the rest.
He had been the one to drag them into dangerous places to begin with. That also counted as karma, which is why they had gone through the motions without real effort when he faced mortal danger a short while ago. But the fact remained that he had saved them in the end.
If Yaoguang activated the Dao Artifact, the backlash would not necessarily demand a life for a life, but it would strike the Void End Perfected Lord all the same.
And now the artifact had fallen into Yaoguang's hands...
"From this day forward we will follow your orders without question. Should we break so much as half a word of it, let the karmic backlash make our cultivation deviate, condemning us to death," the Void End Perfected Lord said gravely.
The other Void-Shattering cultivators agreed, all willing to join the Heavenly Dao Sect and atone through merit.
Yaoguang glanced at Zhen Xuanyuan, who said, "The Heavenly Dao Sect is short of capable hands right now. If you're willing to take them in, Sect Master Yaoguang, we have no objection."
After all, in the recent battle, had the Void End Perfected Lord not been holding back, the strength of a man ranked sixth on the Dao Lord Candidate Rankings would almost certainly have cost the Heavenly Dao Sect one or two supreme elders. They owed him for that.
Yaoguang considered it for a moment.
"The Black Lunar Fiend Sovereign and Jade Scale Demon Paragon joined forces to besiege the Penglai Dao Lord this time, and she'll certainly retaliate against that demon and that fiend afterward. If nothing else, the Yin Lunar Sect will likely be uprooted. Once it is, we'll need enough strength to hold that territory and face the counterattacks that the Yin Lunar Sect's fiendish cultivators will mount over the next several decades. It could even take centuries for the region to calm down. During that time, we will need someone powerful stationed on that land, defending it until the Yin Lunar Sect has spent every last bit of its strength..."
His gaze returned to the Void-Shattering cultivators. "So I'll give you a chance to turn over a new leaf. Assist the Heavenly Dao Sect's southern domain, assist the Penglai Dao Lord, attack the Yin Lunar Sect, and hold their territory afterward. Perform well, and I'll release the karma this artifact holds over you."
"Thank you for your mercy, Sect Master."
"Sect Master Yaoguang, you have delivered us from a sea of suffering. We're grateful beyond words and will serve the Heavenly Dao Sect with everything we have to repay your kindness."
One after another, the Void-Shattering cultivators spoke up.
Yaoguang waved a hand at that. "Enough. Zhen Xuanyuan, Gu Li, Dong Xi, I'll trouble the three of you supreme elders to take the Void End Perfected Lord and his people to the southern domain and expand the war against the Yin Lunar Sect. This time we will wipe them out completely."
"Yes," Zhen Xuanyuan and the others answered solemnly, departing shortly after with the Void End Perfected Lord and the others in tow.
"Chi Yun, Liao Chen, Yuan Xing, the three of you handle the aftermath," Yaoguang continued. "Treat the wounded disciples with everything we have, compensate for the ones we lost, and rebuild the damaged peaks quickly. I want the Heavenly Dao Sect back in order and out from under the shadow of this battle as fast as possible."
The three supreme elders accepted the orders and set about their work.
Yaoguang, for his part, took in the surroundings.
Brief as his battle with the Abyssal Ruins Dao Lord had been, it had caused serious damage to the Heavenly Dao Sect.
The collision between the Golden Book Venerable, supported by the Twelve-Fiend-God Heaven-Sealing Array, and the Abyssal Ruins Dao Lord happened in the void, yet the storm raised by the shockwaves had still ravaged hundreds of thousands of kilometers in every direction.
Countless buildings had collapsed, countless arrays had shattered, and who knew how many cultivators had died on the spot during that storm.
Against power at the Dao Lord Realm, cultivators below the Void-Piercing Realm were simply too fragile.
Yaoguang watched a while longer, then appeared beside the Golden Book Venerable. "Venerable."
The Golden Book Venerable was studying the Twelve-Fiend-God Heaven-Sealing Array, and asked with some curiosity, "When did this array get so powerful?"
Seeing the Venerable's expression so calm, as though what had just happened barely registered, Yaoguang settled as well. "I made a series of improvements to it. It's become a level 15 array now."
"A level 15 array?" The phrase rang a bell for the Golden Book Venerable. "That grading system you've been pushing through the sect for arrays, artifact refinement, and alchemy?"
"Mhmm. The old descriptions, such as grandmaster-level array and top-tier array, were too vague," Yaoguang answered.
"Fair enough." The Golden Book Venerable nodded. "If there's nothing else, I'll be off."
With that, his figure flickered and vanished.
An artifact spirit's logic was entirely different from a human's. Perhaps even life and death were, to them, nothing more than a normal evolution of one life form into another, and they felt no sorrow at all.
With the Golden Book Venerable gone, Yaoguang took one more look at the Heavenly Dao Sect elders already busy in every direction. With them at work, the sect would not descend into chaos.
The two top-tier Dao Artifacts he was refining were another matter. The tremors through the sect could shift the earth veins and ruin the refinement.
His figure flickered at once and returned to the Heaven-Forsaken Valley.