Across the canopy of the Hongze Realm, the phenomenon marking the demise of the Alliance of Ten Thousand Immortals' squad suddenly flared to life.
"Nascent Soul cultivator Lin Bai, having pursued the Dao for a mortal span of one hundred and sixty-five years..."
"Vying for Kongming Flowing Crystals in the Hongze Realm, besieged by Qian Sheng, Qian Ming, and Qian Su, succumbed to grievous wounds and perished."
"Body dead, Dao extinguished, returning the Dao to heaven!"
...
Though Lin Bai had clearly been slain by the Sacred Dynasty's vanguard squad, the cause of death proclaimed across the sky was a feud with the Qian family.
This was Sun Erlang's first time using a Heaven-Tampering Talisman, and the outcome seemed quite satisfactory.
Sun Erlang used a projection stone to carefully record the scene in the sky, a cold glint flashing in his eyes.
Following the remnant message left by Zhang Ming, he located the local vein of Kongming Flowing Crystals.
He painstakingly harvested it down to its very roots, deliberately scattered some residual debris from the main body across various parts of the Hongze Realm, and erased all traces of battle.
Only when all this was done did Sun Erlang slip away into the shadows.
A long time passed before the concealed, altered heavenly secrets of the Hongze Realm slowly returned to normal.
***
Alliance of Ten Thousand Immortals, Yueyang Province, the Qian family.
Qian Wanling, head of the Qian family and a cultivator at the peak of Soul Formation, wore a stormy expression. Standing before him, Qian Sheng, Qian Ming, and Qian Su were thoroughly bewildered.
"Care to explain what you've done?"
"What we've done?" Qian Sheng froze on the spot.
"Eldest Brother, calling us over so suddenly with a face like thunder... what on earth happened?" Qian Su asked, equally puzzled.
Qian Wanling slammed the table. "Still playing dumb! The Lin family is already at our gates! Lin Bai was their prized successor, the hope of their clan! You killed him—did you think they would let this go?! Kongming Flowing Crystals are treasures, but you have to be alive to enjoy them!"
"Blinded by greed! Utterly brainless!"
Sparks seemed to erupt from the patriarch's eyes as he glared at his brothers. Were it not for blood running thicker than water, he would have struck them all dead with a single palm strike right then and there.
"Wait!" Qian Ming suddenly caught on. His face shifted drastically, and he asked in panic, "What Lin Bai? What Kongming Flowing Crystals? Eldest Brother, you must have made a mistake! We killed Lin Bai? What kind of sick joke is this?"
Seeing that they still refused to admit it, Qian Wanling was thoroughly disheartened. "Hiding it even from me for the sake of some crystals? Fine! Fine!"
Beside himself with rage, Qian Wanling produced an image-recording stone on the spot and projected the death anomaly from the Hongze Realm.
Beholding the heavenly phenomenon before them, the three Qian brothers were struck dumb.
"This isn't right, Eldest Brother! We truly never did this!"
"Someone is framing us! Brother, you have to believe us!"
After a momentary stupor, the three brothers cried out together, clamoring their innocence.
Qian Wanling stared fixedly at them, yet he could not detect a single flaw or sign of deceit in their expressions.
*These fools aren't capable of acting this well. Could it be...*
Now, even Qian Wanling began to hesitate.
"Then where were you three recently?"
Hearing this, Qian Sheng and the others hesitated.
Yet under their eldest brother's murderous gaze, they had no choice but to confess the truth.
"That day, we were cultivating in a lakeside pavilion at Yueyang Lake, absorbing solar qi, when we suddenly felt an unusual disturbance in a nearby earth vein, as if some treasure were about to emerge. So we went to investigate. Who could have guessed that the moment we arrived, the earth vein erupted into violence? We were swept into the subterranean currents, losing control, unable to break free..."
"We only managed to escape recently," Qian Sheng recounted truthfully.
Seeing Qian Wanling's gaze darken further, he hastily added, "It's the truth! If you don't believe me, look! Because we were submerged in the earth vein for so long, our spiritual energy was unavoidably steeped in heavy earth vein aura."
At that, Qian Wanling swept his divine sense through the three of them, finding unmistakable traces of earth vein power saturating their bodies.
He fell into a deep silence.
Thinking their brother still doubted them, the three were about to argue further when Qian Wanling let out a long sigh.
"What if I believe you? Will the Lin family believe you? Will the world believe you?"
"The footage preserved in this image-recording stone has been authenticated. It is no forgery."
"Furthermore, it involves a treasure like Kongming Flowing Crystals..."
"Our Qian family is in grave trouble."
Qian Sheng's eyes opened wide with fury as realization struck him. "Who went to such painstaking lengths to frame us?!"
Qian Ming's eyes turned bloodshot. "Don't worry, Eldest Brother. We won't bring disaster upon the clan."
With that, he turned to leave.
"Bastard! You want to throw your life away by walking out now?!"
Halted by Qian Wanling's furious rebuke, he froze.
Looking at his three brothers' aggrieved and incensed expressions, Qian Wanling sighed once more.
At last, he displayed the resolve befitting a family head. "As things stand, a misunderstanding is unavoidable."
"Our only option is to report this to Lord Fan Li..."
Fan Li was the Dao Integration cultivator garrisoning Yueyang Province. Disliking the confines of Yueyang Heavenly City, he had built a small retreat by the shore of Yueyang Lake to live in quiet seclusion.
"I will go in person. Remember: stay inside and do not step one foot outside."
After warning them sternly, Qian Wanling altered his appearance and departed through a secret passage, leaving the three brothers terrified and at a loss.
Not long after, Fan Li, who was resting in his lakeside pavilion, frowned as he listened to Qian Wanling's account.
Just then, Lin Yufei, patriarch of the Lin family, came knocking.
"Lord Fan, you must seek justice for our Lin family!"
The lookouts the Lin family had posted outside the pavilion had immediately alerted Lin Yufei the moment Qian Wanling showed himself.
Lin Yufei arrived in haste. Seeing Qian Wanling sitting upright within the pavilion, he made no attempt to conceal the murderous intent in his eyes.
"Your Qian family has gone too far! You treat the Alliance's laws as nothing!"
"Brother Lin, calm your anger. Someone has framed us," Qian Wanling said with a bitter smile, offering an apology.
"Framed you?! Could the proclamation of the Heavenly Dao be false?! Could the footage preserved in the image-recording stone be false?!"
Had he said nothing, it might have been better; to Lin Yufei, Qian Wanling's words sounded like nothing more than evasive sophistry. In a towering rage, he was ready to strike right then and there.
"Silence."
Fan Li snorted coldly, stifling their bristling hostility.
He studied the scenes in the image-recording stone again, his brow deeply furrowed.
The footage was not fabricated.
Yet he had indeed noticed the earth vein's recent upheaval.
The Qian family would not dare fool him with such a laughable excuse.
What on earth was going on?
Fan Li felt a throbbing headache coming on.
He knew that if this matter were handled poorly, it could blow up into an open scandal known across the realm.
"You two, come with me to the Hongze Realm," Fan Li said in a heavy voice.
...
Yet even with Fan Li visiting in person, the faint residual traces in the Hongze Realm failed to establish the truth.
However, there was indeed a pervasive lingering aura of Kongming Flowing Crystals.
"Old thief Qian! Lord Fan personally cast his spell to replay the Heavenly Dao death anomaly. Having seen it with your own eyes, what more do you have to say?!"
"Brother Lin, is it possible that this heavenly anomaly is fake...?"
"Cut your dog shit! From this day forth, the Lin family and the Qian family are irreconcilable foes—until one of us dies!"
Seeing that the feud had only deepened instead of resolving, Fan Li felt another headache brewing.
He looked up toward the sky of the Hongze Realm.
"Has the Heavenly Dao... changed again?"
Upon returning to Yueyang Province, after several experiments and multi-faceted verifications, Fan Li confirmed that the Heavenly Dao death anomalies were still functioning normally.
Nevertheless, doubts lingered in his mind, and Qian Wanling stubbornly insisted that the three Qian sons were innocent.
Furthermore, after Fan Li personally interrogated their souls, he became certain they were not the killers.
Left with no other choice, Fan Li could only submit a report to Alliance Headquarters.
What he did not know was that this was already the second such report received by the Alliance of Ten Thousand Immortals.
Yet due to the inherent inertia and operational mechanics of the Alliance's system, matters of this sort had not yet caught the attention of the true upper echelon.
Silently, the seeds of chaos had been sown.
***
Great Qi.
Synthesizing the intelligence gathered by agents throughout the Sacred Dynasty, Sun Erlang was quite satisfied with the efficacy of the Heaven-Tampering Talisman.
Because the accuracy of Heavenly Dao death anomalies had been rigorously proven over thousands of years, the ingrained mindsets of Alliance cultivators would not easily lead them to question it overnight.
"Still, it can only serve as a surprise gambit. Use it too often, and it will lose its magic."
"It must be reserved for critical junctures."
Sun Erlang shook his head.
He had already reported the heroic sacrifice of Zhang Ming's squad to the Sacred Emperor.
In a rare move, the Sacred Emperor proclaimed the incident to all the realm and used his formidable might to forge a floating divine palace high above Shengjing City.
The palace radiated golden light, suspended high in the heavens.
From every corner of Great Qi, one could see the shrine shining as dazzlingly as the sun in the sky.
The Sacred Emperor declared that every soldier who fell for the Sacred Dynasty would have a statue formed within the divine palace upon death.
Though they lost their physical bodies, they would achieve immortality as heroic spirits.
The radiant phantoms of Zhang Ming and his squad soaring forth from the floating palace bore witness to the Sacred Emperor's words.
The people of Great Qi cheered the Sacred Emperor's divine grace, and their dread of death gradually morphed into a zealous fervor to enter the floating shrine and become immortal heroic spirits.
Sun Erlang knew that these so-called heroic spirits were likely manifestations of remnant thoughts preserved by his Master's divine power.
While still far from true eternal life and immortality, it was nonetheless a form of salvation after death.
Compared to having one's soul scattered and obliterated entirely, leaving behind a final trace in the world was far better.
Yet for Sun Erlang, minimizing casualties among the troops remained the true path.
He arrived at the Sacred Dynasty's secret facility for crafting weapons of war.
Both the Army-Extinguishing Arrows and Heaven-Tampering Talismans hailed from this place.
"Greetings, Senior Qiaogong," Sun Erlang addressed the bustling Layman Qiaogong.
Qiaogong did not answer, his attention entirely focused on the black puppet darting at blinding speeds through the space before him.
Sun Erlang took no offense and looked toward the puppet as well.
"Remarkable speed."
The black puppet teleported repeatedly, its form flickering erratically, even slipping past the lock of Sun Erlang's divine sense.
"Slow! Still too slow!"
"Source Power supply is limited. Pushing the performance of a mass-production model to the envisioned level is still stretching it," Qiaogong remarked with regret.
"Boy Sun, go up and spar with it," Qiaogong said suddenly.
Sun Erlang nodded and instantly appeared in the testing area.
The black puppet ceased its evasive maneuvers and launched a full-scale onslaught against Sun Erlang.
It possessed two primary attack methods: one was spraying rays of black death imbued with an aura of annihilation; the other was detonating formation modules, utilizing standardized formations to trap and injure enemies.
It was capable of contending with ordinary peak Nascent Soul cultivators, but naturally, it posed no threat to Sun Erlang.
Easily dodging its attacks, Sun Erlang flicked his fingers to release several blue orbs of light.
Curving along distinct trajectories, the spheres locked onto and struck the black puppet with pinpoint accuracy.
Yet a shadowy luster flashed across the puppet's body, absorbing Sun Erlang's technique whole.
"Haven't seen that before, have you, lad?"
"This trick is called giving them a taste of their own medicine."
As Qiaogong spoke, wisps of blue light illuminated the black puppet's body.
Those blue orbs were actually reflected right back at Sun Erlang.
"And that's just a single puppet. The true strength of mass-production models lies in numbers."
At Qiaogong's words, dozens more puppets appeared within the testing space in the blink of an eye.
As he battled them, Sun Erlang discovered that these puppets operated like a single entity.
Not only did they coordinate seamlessly, faintly manifesting a battle formation, but any individual puppet could also concentrate and reflect the collective damage absorbed by the entire group.
Formidable as Sun Erlang was, without resorting to lethal trump cards, he found himself hard-pressed when facing more than thirty puppets at once.
Calling a halt to the test, Sun Erlang returned to Qiaogong's side.
"Senior Qiaogong, how many of these mass-production puppets can be deployed at once?"
Qiaogong shrugged. "Lad, that's a Sacred Dynasty state secret. Even if you're the Sacred Emperor's direct disciple, I can't go into too much detail."
Sun Erlang was rendered speechless.
Qiaogong burst into hearty laughter. "Just teasing you."
"Sacred Army puppets are organized into squads of fifty, requiring specialized cultivators to operate them to achieve maximum combat power."
"Surrounding and slaying a Soul Formation cultivator should be no problem at all."
At this, a sharp light gleamed in Sun Erlang's eyes.
"Is there an upper limit to how many Sacred Army puppets one person can control?"
"An upper limit?" Qiaogong paused slightly, then understood.
"You want to try?"
Sun Erlang nodded.
After a moment's contemplation, Qiaogong handed him a black jade disc.
"Don't force yourself."
Taking the disc, Sun Erlang instantly saw a vision in his sea of consciousness: over a thousand black puppets standing in rigid, uniform formation.
His thoughts reached out like threads, linking all the puppets together.
Each puppet seemed to possess an awareness of its own.
Upon establishing the link, Sun Erlang's soul felt tethered to something heavy, growing somewhat weighed down.
Yet through this, he achieved command over the puppets as effortless as moving his own limbs.
Sun Erlang acclimated to the puppet bodies. With a thought, one puppet flew out into the testing ground, beginning trials of flight and combat maneuvers.
After adapting for a while, Sun Erlang found that the burden on his soul had become negligible.
He began linking additional puppets.
Then the third, the tenth, the fiftieth...
Under Layman Qiaogong's increasingly astonished gaze, the total number of puppets under Sun Erlang's control surpassed one hundred.
Moreover, judging by his expression, he still had plenty of strength to spare.
"You rascal..."
"Not bad at all!"
Layman Qiaogong was suddenly struck by an idea. "If you alone were to command an entire Sacred Army of puppets, wouldn't that be even more devastating?"
Chapter 1259