Sage Monarch (Sage Emperor)

There were over a thousand marshals gathered here, all of them on the level of God-Lords. Their combined might was so incredible that if they attacked Yang Qi’s lands, nothing could stop them.

Of course, it seemed unlikely that they would truly act in unison.

Yang Qi had already made a decision: he absolutely had to subjugate the two top leaders, Yang Primal-Chaos and Dugu Sheji. They were the key to controlling both armies.

One had a psychic scale of more than fifty billion, and the other was at sixty billion. It was hard to say what the two of them could accomplish together. Sadly, the idea of subjugating them seemed completely insane right now.

There was simply no way that Yang Qi could pull it off.

“What? You're saying that everything happening with the Spritefolk is actually Proud Heaven’s doing? If that’s the case, then we can’t just attack them. What if people from the Central Dynasty are actually with the Spritefolk? If we go in and start a war, the ramifications will be hard to deal with.”

“No, we have a perfect excuse to attack them,” Dugu Sheji replied. “They backed out of an arranged marriage, which is a clear violation of the rules of the House of the Invincible. The Central Dynasty can’t send in troops considering we have a justification like that.

“Furthermore, the Spritefolk have openly declared themselves an empire. If Proud Heaven is behind that, it’s a clear case of subterfuge. Think about it. What happens if that Spritefolk Empire joins the Central Dynasty? Just what level of destiny will that form? Furthermore, it seems that someone has organized the Dragonfolk into some sort of empire. Dugu Yunkong suffered greatly in the Myriad Dragons Lair, and your own Yang Jian has gone missing. I’d say that’s more of Proud Heaven’s meddling.”

“You're right. Our Lord of the Chiliocosm said exactly the same thing. It’s definitely Proud Heaven. He’s the only one strong enough to do that. And he’s been to the impure lands, where he collected all sorts of magical treasures.

“The fact that he's doing all of this secretly means that he doesn’t want open conflict, but can we really afford to take action? There’s no way he doesn’t have countermeasures in place in case we do. Based on our latest information, the Dragonfolk and the Spritefolk are working together, which means they have an immense level of destiny, and are incredibly powerful. Our two dynasties could probably destroy them, but the casualties would be horrendous, and our vital energy would be seriously damaged. At that point, the Central Dynasty could gobble us up with no effort at all.”

“We need to plan things out very carefully,” Dugu Sheji said. “If we can’t afford to act openly, perhaps we should carry out a secret operation! For instance, we can kidnap Sprite Susu. She's the key to all of this. She’s their leader, and the holder of their divine authority. If we bring her back here and force her to go through with the marriage, we won’t need to attack with our armies!”

“That’s a pretty basic plan,” Yang Primal-Chaos said. “In fact, you could do it yourself. What do you need our help for? You’re really making a big fuss over a minor issue here.”

“No, if Proud Heaven is manipulating all of this from behind the scenes, and we send people in, he’ll just kill them. We need to pick one person to go in undercover and handle the mission.”

“Oh, that’s what you mean,” Yang Primal-Chaos said. “You want us to send in our Fateless One, Yang Voidprime.”

“Exactly. If a Fateless One does it, Proud Heaven won’t have any clue what's happening. Sprite Susu will be gone before he knows what’s happening. Besides, Yang Jian is an imperial prince, and considering he's being held captive by the Spritefolk, there’s no way you can just sit back and do nothing.”

“But how do we benefit from all this? If Yang Primal-Chaos brings Sprite Susu back here to marry Dugu Yunkong, you’ll have a formal alliance with the Spritefolk. And we’ll come out empty-handed.”

“It's simple. Our patriarchs have already agreed that if you send Yang Voidprime on the mission, we’ll pay you with a huge lot of Invincible Gold Pills. You’ll gain a lot of top-level experts with those pills. Remember, the formula for Invincible Gold Pills is top secret. Nobody but us knows how to make them. We’re making this offer in good faith, and we hope you’ll respond in kind.”

“Alright!” Yang Primal-Chaos said with a curt nod. “We agree. However, you have to provide some experts for backup. It’s entirely likely that Yang Primal-Chaos will end up fighting Proud Heaven. And if the God-Lords from the Spritefolk and Dragonfolk get involved, it’s going to be a tough situation.”

“That’s fine, we can do that. Based on our intelligence reports, the Dragonfolk have twenty-eight patriarchs, and the Spritefolk have over forty. Without sending out our entire army, that's going to be a difficult force to deal with. How about we provide seventy God-Lords, and you provide thirty? That’s a total of a hundred, and if they operate in formation, they should be able to give Yang Voidprime a window of opportunity.”

“That should work,” Yang Primal-Chaos said. “The only question is how many Invincible Gold Pills you’re offering.”

“If you provide thirty God-Lords, we’ll give you thirty pills.”

“Absolutely not. We’ll only accept a hundred at the very least.”

“A hundred?! That’s far too many. Even our imperial princes only have one or two each. You have no idea how incredibly expensive and difficult it is to concoct Invincible Gold Pills.”

“A hundred. Any less and the deals off. That's the price to get the help of Yang Voidprime.”

“The most we can offer is fifty.”

“Ninety!”

Yang Qi watched as they negotiated, eventually reaching an agreement for sixty Invincible Gold Pills. It really was a small fortune. After all, Invincible Gold Pills could unlock the potential of even a weakling, and push them all the way to a psychic scale of a billion.

He continued watching as they selected the group of a hundred experts to go on the mission.

The plan was for them to operate an ancient spell formation that had been originally used by the Sovereign Lord’s army. It was designed to deliver killing blows to the head using something called the Purification Thorn.

Once the hundred experts were selected, they set about training together in the use of the formation.

After pooling their life essence and vital energy, each expert transformed into a mote of light, which then swirled together to create a long, sharp thorn.

The thorn was both holy and sharp, and could obviously pierce through anything and everything. In fact, not even Yang Qi could evade it if it were to fly toward him.

It was, of course, the Purification Thorn, which had been used in the past to assassinate elite military experts. Because it wasn't something the King of Godmammoths had used, Yang Qi wasn’t able to use it.

In fact, to Yang Qi’s surprise, the thorn was so formidable that he could tell the net of law in his Spritefolk Empire couldn’t even block it.

He immediately started thinking of ways to deal with the Purification Thorn, and possibly even subjugate the hundred experts who were part of the mission. All of them had ratings of ten or twenty billion, which meant he could deal with them, if he planned well.

WHOOSH!

The experts continued training in the use of the formation, and simultaneously tried to lock down Sprite Susu’s current location.

A day passed, then a night.

Eventually, they finished their training, and clearly, they were all exhausted.

“Take some time to build your vital energy back up, everyone,” Dugu Sheji said. “This joint venture between the Chiliocosm Dynasty and the Invincible Dynasty is going to work perfectly. Now we just need to wait for news about Yang Voidprime.”

“Yes,” Yang Primal-Chaos said. “Go back and get some rest while we wait for Yang Voidprime. The current plan is to set off on the mission in ten days. There’s no way Sprite Susu and her Spritely Sage Grail can block our Purification Thorn.”

“That’s a given,” Dugu Sheji replied. “The Purification Thorn is simply too powerful. Of course, in ancient times, the God-Lords who used this formation were led by the Lord of the Sword Dao, and we're not quite on his level.”

“I heard that when the Lord of the Sword Dao used the Purification Thorn, he actually reached the half Annulled level. But moments later, he perished. I wonder if that story is true. In any case, it’s definitely the most powerful attack the God-Lords could use.” Yang Primal-Chaos sighed. “I wonder if his remains are still in the ancient halls of heaven. I guess it doesn’t matter. In all the hundreds of millions of years that’ve passed, no one’s ever been able to defy the glory of the Sovereign Lord and go into the halls of heaven to hunt for treasure.”