Chapter 411: The Reason
Half a day later, Qi Sha appeared on Nine Cauldrons Peak, his bearing composed despite the malevolent qi wreathing his body.
"My lord, the entire core of the Jing family has been put to death! We have also issued orders for the sect's administrative offices everywhere to arrest the Jing family members scattered across its territories. They'll all be brought in soon." The battle hall's Void-Refining cultivator delivered his report in a low voice.
"Good," Yaoguang replied calmly. "Handle the rest at your own discretion. As for the spoils from the Jing family's destruction, distribute them among the powers that took part in the operation. No need to report back to me."
At those words, Qi Sha's pupils constricted. The Jing family was a top family that had been backed by Jing Yuntian, a Void-Shattering Realm supreme elder!
Even with that supreme elder's Dao Artifacts and storage treasures claimed as his lord's trophies, the family still counted several Void-Refining and Void-Piercing cultivators, and Jing Zhengyang had also owned a Dao Artifact.
If one were to include the family's businesses, deeds, and assets spread across tens of thousands of cities in the Heavenly Dao Sect's territory, the total would hardly be less than three or four billion!
𝑓𝘳𝑒𝑒𝓌𝘦𝘣𝘯ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝑚
Many Void-Refining cultivators' entire fortunes came to a tenth or a fifth of that. And now his lord meant to hand the disposal and division of this colossal wealth entirely to him?!
Such complete trust...
Qi Sha drew a deep breath and gave a firm fist-and-palm salute. "I will not disappoint you, my lord."
Yaoguang gave a slight nod, and Qi Sha soon departed to take care of the aftermath of the Jing family's destruction, and Yaoguang remained on the peak, taking stock of what he had learned from his battle against Jing Yuntian, Zhen Xuanyuan, and Gu Li.
In truth, his wealth of experience allowed him to gauge his strength precisely. Before coming to the Heavenly Dao Sect, he had made sure to have enough power to shake things up; only then had he made his move.
By his estimate, even if every surviving supreme elder of the Heavenly Dao Sect attacked him at once, he had the strength to crush them, and if they had hidden cards left, his Void Flicker, which had reached the grand-perfection stage as his life-bound Dao Technique, would easily allow him to escape.
Events had proven his estimate correct. He had fought Jing Yuntian, Zhen Xuanyuan, and Gu Li, three Void-Shattering cultivators, one after another, with the last two even joining hands, and he had still handled them with ease.
Even if Supreme Elder Chi Yun had stood against him and joined Zhen Xuanyuan's side, nothing would have changed.
Still, knowing was one thing; living it was another. Only after a real battle could he determine his power with true precision.
My life-bound Dao Technique is the Void Flicker, which lets me come and go as I please. Yet with the top-grade Dao Artifact's amplification, even the Void Sword, which is not my life-bound technique, overpowered Zhen Xuanyuan's Great Void Disintegration Technique, and that with a high-grade Dao Artifact in his hands.
If he had really made the Void Sword his life-bound Dao Technique, a single stroke might have finished Zhen Xuanyuan before he could even react.
Not that he regretted choosing the Void Flicker as his life-bound Dao Technique. At the grand perfection stage, amplified by a top-grade Dao Artifact, it already gave him the power to roam the world freely.
As long as he did not face a Dao Lord, he could enter any dangerous place. He could storm the headquarters of the Six Great Fiendish Dao Sects, the Nine Demon Race Lineages, or the Ten Divine Races, cut down a sect master, and still safely withdraw; however many experts they fielded, no one could touch him.
"Although... Charging into the headquarters of one of the top sects on the North Sea Star and killing its master without just cause will make their Dao Lord act. The Penglai Dao Lord may have agreed to be my protector, but I can't stake my safety on someone else's hands." Yaoguang's eyes narrowed slightly.
Without cause, no. But if he had a pretext... that was another matter.
The Yin Lunar Sect, for instance. Decades ago, its Eight Desolations and Dark Fiend Lords had led five Void-Refining fiendish cultivators into the southern domain to try to kill him before he could develop.
Courtesy demanded reciprocity. If the Yin Lunar Sect's fiendish cultivators could come to kill him, he could return the favor and pay a visit to their deputy sect masters and sect master.
"Once the southern domain's Sky Net system is fully assembled and the Southern Capital's arrays are perfected, I'll pay the Yin Lunar Sect a visit," Yaoguang said calmly.
A war between sects, grounded in legitimate grievance, would never escalate enough for Dao Lords to get involved.
As long as he did not kill off every last Void-Shattering fiendish cultivator the Yin Lunar Sect had, its Dao Lord would not act, lest a war between Dao Lords erupt on the eve of the Dao Contest.
As Yaoguang weighed his next move against the Yin Lunar Sect, two streams of light descended together on Nine Cauldrons Peak.
They were Supreme Elder Zhen Xuanyuan and Supreme Elder Chi Yun, and had arrived side by side. Evidently, Zhen Xuanyuan had been uneasy about facing Yaoguang alone and had deliberately brought Supreme Elder Chi Yun along.
"Sit," Yaoguang said.
Zhen Xuanyuan began apologizing the moment they met. "Forgive me, Deputy Sect Master Yaoguang. Earlier, I..."
"You had your own position to hold." Yaoguang declined to dwell on it. "For the near future, just keep watch over the Heavenly Dao Sect and see that no chaos breaks out."
"Rest assured. The Heavenly Dao Sect's inheritance runs deep, and with the Golden Book Venerable present, our stability far exceeds other sects'. No power that values its own skin would dare strike our headquarters," Zhen Xuanyuan said.
With no audience present, his attitude was impeccably correct. But then, did not every Void-Shattering cultivator conduct themselves with utmost deference before a Dao Lord? How the accomplished elites of the ordinary world behaved in the presence of the true giants was beyond most people's imagination.
A strong man's pride? For the strong to bow to the stronger was no disgrace at all.
Yaoguang nodded. "So tell me, what exactly is Sect Master Zong Wenxian playing at? He's been gone for decades. Is he really so at ease about the Heavenly Dao Sect, or has he given up on the sect master's position altogether?"
"Sect Master Zong Wenxian has indeed made an enormous discovery in the outer stars." Zhen Xuanyuan hastened to explain. "Deputy Sect Master Yaoguang, you surely know that for Void-Piercing, Void-Refining, and Void-Shattering cultivators, crossing a star system is not impossible, yet still incredibly slow. That's why experts of this level rarely wander once they've found a decent cultivation environment. Even a Void-Shattering cultivator has only ten thousand years; squander too much of that precious time roaming the stars, and the hope of becoming a Dao Lord plummets. The only ones who can truly sail the Star Sea are the Dao Lords, as they are merged with the Great Dao, and their power is inexhaustible."
Yaoguang nodded. Though he had lived on the North Sea Star since his Golden Core days, he knew roughly where cultivators of their level stood in the wider starry sky.
Outside, many regarded the nine realms of Golden Core as the nine realms of immortal ascension; reach the Void-Piercing Realm, with its boundless lifespan, and you were counted an immortal king. Above that, a Void-Refining cultivator was an immortal emperor and a Void-Shattering cultivator an immortal sovereign, mirroring the demon race's demon kings, demon emperors, and demon sovereigns, and the divine races' divine kings, divine emperors, and divine sovereigns.
Every Void-Piercing demon king or divine king ruled thousands or tens of thousands of star systems, and some divine sovereigns governed an entire galaxy as its uncrowned king.
A power like the Heavenly Dao Sect, set loose in the starry universe, could govern a galaxy without struggling at all.
"The universe's power is boundless. Materials born of cosmic cataclysms and cosmic wonders are precious even to Dao Lords, so many of them roam the stars hunting for such resources. The lucky ones sometimes even find brand-new Gates of the Immortal Realm." A hint of passion crept into Zhen Xuanyuan's eyes. "A brand-new gate means almost no Dao Lords know of it, which means virtually no Dao Contest. Any Dao Lord who reaches it can simply enter the Immortal Realm. For the many Dao Lords weak in combat or unsuited to slaughter, it's the best road to ascension there is. That's why so many spend their entire lives searching for Gates of the Immortal Realm."
Then his gaze dimmed a little. "But... How rare are such gates? Many Dao Lords never find a new one, or one with lighter competition, in all their lifetime. And by the time age presses them to turn back toward a territory with a known gate for one final gamble, they've wandered too far to return, or their lifespans have been so eroded that, if the schedule for the journey home is disrupted, all they can do is sit and pass in meditation where they are."
"Pass in meditation?" Something clicked, and Yaoguang looked at him in mild astonishment. "Don't tell me Zong Wenxian and the others found the death place of a Dao Lord?"
"Yes, and no," Zhen Xuanyuan said. "It wasn't Zong Wenxian who found the Dao Lord's resting place. It was the Light Divine Race of the Ten Divine Races. Not long ago, our people intercepted a divine race fleet and learned from its crew that their race had discovered a site where a Dao Lord had passed away."
He quickly added, "But the site lies extremely far from the North Sea Star. Reaching it within a reasonable time requires spatial jumps through special starry-sky nodes. So all this while, Zong Wenxian and his people have been hunting for the node locations the divine race concealed."
Yaoguang's expression turned odd. "So... as of this moment, never mind finding the Dao Lord's resting place, you don't even know how to get there? You can't even be one hundred percent sure the place exists at all?"
"The intelligence on the place should be reliable enough. As for the spatial nodes leading there... they've made some progress..." Zhen Xuanyuan could not help himself. "A Dao Lord's death place! There are, at minimum, tens of billions, even a hundred billion in materials. If that Dao Lord left behind a good number of Dao Artifacts and treasures, or perhaps even a top-grade Dao Artifact among them, a final haul of several hundred billion, or even a trillion, is no fantasy."
"Heh. What Dao Lord with a top-grade Dao Artifact on his person would ever die in meditation? Would he not win a slot at the Gate of the Immortal Realm?" Yaoguang said.
"Uhh..." Zhen Xuanyuan hesitated. "Perhaps a Dao Lord of the void?"
But that explanation immediately struck even him as far-fetched; Dao Lords who owned top-grade Dao Artifacts were almost always the elite of their kind, with excellent odds of entering the gate. He quickly corrected himself. "The chance of a top-grade Dao Artifact is small. Zong Wenxian's group surely guessed as much, which is why they appraised the site's value as being in the tens-of-billions to hundred-billion range."
"A hundred billion... A haul like that would tempt any top sect, wouldn't it?" Yaoguang said.
"Of course. Even we Void-Shattering cultivators earn only a few tens of millions a year," Zhen Xuanyuan agreed emphatically.
"Which means..." A flicker of interest rose in Yaoguang. "For a windfall that size, the Light Divine Race will surely spare nothing?"