Sage Monarch (Sage Emperor)

Grand Emperor Ragefire Broilheaven had become Yang Righteousness.

And the four suzerains of hell became Yang Mahānata, Yang Misery, Yang Unrestrained, and Yang Never-Ending. The Dao Defense League had shot to new heights of glory, and all of the old-timers and patriarchs could sense that they were entering a golden age in which destiny burned like fire. Everyone was going to benefit as a result.

The leadership of the league had been purged, and the next thing Yang Qi did was make changes to the ranking system.

Under the league-lord were the two emissaries, one of radiance and light, the other of righteousness. Beneath them were four heavenly kings, who were the former suzerains of hell. Next were eighteen dharmarajas and thirty-six god-generals. Further down were the numerous elders, and of course, the common members of the alliance.

Yang Qi also instituted a system of contributions in which elders were required to make monthly donations to the alliance storehouses. Any who failed to meet their quota would be stripped of their title and possibly face other punishments.

Of course, the system of law enforcement wasn’t brutal and rigid; it was actually designed to encourage participation. Those who properly contributed would acquire cultivation techniques, medicinal pills, secret texts, or even energy arts.

The Dao Defense League was already becoming more united, instead of being a dish of loose sand like before. Yang Qi was the center of it all, and he commanded full loyalty from all of his subordinates.

After all, the Emissary of Radiance and Light was Patriarch Annalist, who had supported him from the very beginning. And the Emissary of Righteousness was the former Grand Emperor Ragefire Broilheaven, who was now Yang Righteousness, a believer in Yang Qi who would climb mountains of blades and swim through seas of fire for him.

As for the four heavenly kings, they were former devil lords who were just as strong as the Grand Emperors, but had become even stronger thanks to the angelic transformation they had undergone. All of the dharmarajas and god-generals also supported Yang Qi, and as for those they commanded, they couldn’t act out of line even if they wanted to.

If Yang Qi had simply appointed the four suzerains of hell as the new heavenly kings, there definitely would have been misgivings on the part of the elders. But everyone knew that they weren’t monsters any longer. Yang Qi had used a holy technique of some sort to cleanse them and turn them into angels.

The old-timers who were particularly knowledgeable were all convinced that Yang Qi was the true lord who would bring salvation to the world.

“Ladies and gentlemen, the various rules and regulations of the Dao Defense League are now fully established. Our forces are championed by my Army of Holy Sages, which is made of holy angels free of greed or corruption, who will follow any and all orders. The rest of you do not need to fear becoming cannon fodder; I can call upon the endless hells to summon hell-born fiend-devils to help defend the dao of heaven and save our age from the future world.”

People were already feeling less nervous. After all, the angels in Yang Qi’s army had such incredible fighting prowess that even multiple cultivators of the same level would have difficulty fighting them.

“For now, the main responsibility of all members of the alliance is to further your cultivation. Gather and store power. And of course, I know that most of you are people who control entire immortal worlds of your own, filled with countless cultivators. Make use of them. I need faith. Incredible amounts of faith. For the purpose of growing my Sage Monarch Society, I require that all of you erect Sage Monarch Temples on the worlds you come from.”

Truth be told, it wasn’t the old-timers that Yang Qi valued, but rather the immortal worlds they came from, and the innumerable cultivators therein.

By this point, the Dao Defense League had somewhere around a hundred trillion immortal worlds in it, and the combined faith of all of those cultivators would provide almost incalculable benefit to him.

“The more faith I have, the more hell-born fiend-devils I can summon to become angels. And that will make us even more well-equipped to fight the future world, the Demonfolk, and the armies from ancient times. Therefore, return to your worlds, erect the temples I need, and begin making the required contributions.”

RUMBLE!

The old-timers exchanged awkward glances, but knew that there was nothing else they could do but comply.

Yang Qi had all the power. Besides, it wasn’t as if he were asking them to sacrifice their lives. To people as strong as these old-timers, the ordinary cultivators of the immortal worlds were like crops; harvest some, and they would grow back.

Soon, a buzz of activity spread through the hundred trillion immortal worlds as temples were erected everywhere. The idea of a hundred trillion immortal worlds was hard to even think about. For example, the Titan Emperor Heaven was only a first ranked immortal world, and even its population had been enormous.

And the Dao Defense League already had dozens of thirty-third ranked immortal worlds.

Even the number of twentieth ranked worlds was impossible to count, with those tenth ranked and below being like the eternal sands of the universe. Of course, the stronger the Dao Defense League became, the more immortal worlds would flock to join it.

Eventually, Yang Qi went into seclusion, drawing on the new influx of faith to push his own destiny to an even higher level. He needed to get a lot stronger before he could advance his cultivation base.

**

Somewhere out in the primal-chaos paleo-energy, five fierce figures could be seen deep in a hidden lair, emerging from meditative trances. This was the group of five who had escaped the showdown with Yang Qi, namely, Grand Emperors Myriadmagic Heavenspan, Ninelimits Paragon, and Heavenearth Vastocean, plus Eldest Brother Secundus and Leaf Dao-Denier.

Having escaped by the skin of their teeth, they found a hideout in primal-chaos where they could settle down and recover.

By this point, they were roughly back to normal. Sadly, there seemed little hope for them in the overall scheme of things. The beast king clones that they had hoped would give them the ultimate upper hand had ended up being taken by Yang Qi. Now more than ever, they knew they weren’t a match for him.

“We have to steal those beast king clones back,” Leaf Dao-Denier said. “Otherwise Yang Qi’s going to assimilate them. Then we’ll be even worse off.” Of course, he had the weakest cultivation base out of the entire group, so it was little wonder he was so focused on the clones. Without them, he had little hope of holding his own.

The Tusita Heaven was now in Yang Qi’s hands, and there seemed little chance of taking it back. Leaf Dao-Denier could sense Yang Qi devouring the Tusita Heaven’s essence, and could also tell that he was erecting Sage Monarch Temples there to harvest the faith of the people.

“The beast king clones won’t be easy to assimilate,” said Eldest Brother Secundus. “After all, they were created with Eternal Fortuned blood. Unfortunately, Yang Qi is a Fateless One, so if he does manage to assimilate them, he’ll gain the constitution of an Eternal Fortuned One, which will make him even more difficult to deal with. Let’s see how things play out. There’s still a lot of internal conflict in the Dao Defense League and we might as well see how Yang Qi deals with it all.”

“That’s true,” Grand Emperor Myriadmagic Heavenspan said. “If you know yourself and know your enemy, you’ll always be victorious. Unfortunately, we have no way of finding out how Grand Emperor Ragefire Broilheaven is doing. He knows a lot of our secrets, and if someone captured him and forced that information out of him, the consequences would be too horrible to contemplate.”

The Four Emperors of the Heavenly Court had previously been working with each other out of interests of mutual profit. The fact that Grand Emperor Ragefire Broilheaven had met with such misfortune didn’t cause the other Grand Emperors to worry about his safety, but rather their own self-interest.

Meanwhile, Eldest Brother Secundus couldn’t help but inwardly sneer at how superficial Grand Emperor Myriadmagic Heavenspan was being. Normally speaking, he would never truly ally with people like this, but right now, he had no other choice when it came to trying to handle Yang Qi.

“Why don’t we just pool our powers and techniques to see what's going on in the Dao Defense League?” Grand Emperor Heavenearth Vastocean said.

“That’s fine.”

They did so, summoning an enormous mirror which revealed the Dao Defense League as a whole. Instantly, they saw that the hundred trillion immortal worlds were like a huge vortex of stars surrounding an area of boundless radiance and light that was almost impossible to peer into.

Meanwhile, they could all see tiny, glowing seeds in all of the immortal worlds, causing that radiance and light to expand and grow.

At the same time, the power of faith was growing larger and larger, flowing in great rivers to the central region.

The sight of so much faith power caused the hearts of the grand emperors to grow cold.

“Dammit! That damned Yang Qi is already gathering faith!? With so many immortal worlds powering him, who knows how high he’ll climb?”