Sage Monarch (Sage Emperor)

After absorbing incalculable amounts of power, Yang Qi’s godhood was transforming. The particles within him surged as his godhood erupted like a volcano, and spectacular scenery appeared as the God Legion Paradise rose up around him.

The two trees in the pure land, one representing permanence and the other impermanence, grew even larger and taller than before. Golden sutra texts were everywhere, making up the ground and the sky alike, so that every breath inside the paradise would provide huge influxes of power.

Yang Qi was stepping into the mid Paramount God level, and his godhood rating and psychic scale were reaching a major threshold. Both were at ninety-nine million, nine hundred and ninety thousand, just a hair away from a hundred million.

Of course, the distance to the next breakthrough would be more difficult than the entire journey so far. Breaking into the late Paramount God level was an incredibly difficult task.

For most people, breaking into the late Paramount God level would require a godhood rating of ten million, and it would take hundreds of billions of years to reach a level of several tens of millions. Some Paramount Gods would go their entire lives without ever reaching ninety million. For instance, the three major powers of the Sumeru Temple, Deva Dynasty, and Nine Dragons Court only had three patriarch-level individuals who had reached that level: Buddha Testimony, Dibarra, and the imperial uncle.

Everyone else in their organizations could be considered trash by comparison.

Yang Qi was essentially the first person since ancient times to go past ninety million.

Eventually, his aura shrank back down, and after a few dozen breaths of time passed, he looked like an ordinary person again.

‘It seems I still need a lot of power built up to reach the late Paramount God level. Once I break through, the God Legion Seal will undergo major transformations. That said, it's not going to be easy. My overall level has been rising far too quickly. Most people need hundreds of millions of god world years to do what I’ve done. In any case, to reach the late Paramount God level, I first need to work on a psychic breakthrough, and that won’t happen until I find another piece of the Mahātmā Jade. For now, I want to see what these four experts I’ve encountered are up to, and whether or not I can cause any trouble for them that will benefit me.’

For now, he knew he had reached a limit that couldn’t be passed without immense difficulty. He was like a water bucket that was completely full; pouring more water into it wouldn’t do any good. And unfortunately, he still needed a lot of power to propagate the sage monarch magistrates, so much so that not even the God Legion Seal could keep up with it by absorbing nearby godpower.

He now had several thousand sage monarch magistrates, which was a very insignificant number. Even the War God Commander’s Tally had forty-eight thousand thralls in it, and it wasn’t uncommon for ordinary people to have billions of thralls. For example, in ancient times, there were armies with so many angels they were like the eternal sands.

A number in the thousands was just too small.

In other words, any extra bits of power he acquired would be poured into the sage monarch magistrates. Every additional magistrate that he created made him that much stronger.

Yang Qi blurred into motion, moving as stealthily as a ghost as he continued to track the four mysterious experts. Any soul conglomerations he passed would vanish as surely as snowflakes in the sun.

The only reason he wasn’t devouring such resources even more rapidly was because he didn’t want anyone to realize what he was doing.

About six hours later, he caught up with the four experts, as they were being very careful as they moved along. They weren’t an army, so they were fearful of attracting the attention of soul conglomerations and angels. Unlike Yang Qi, they couldn’t just consume them.

The surroundings were incredibly dangerous. The palaces were enormous, and the sky was packed with soul conglomerations. Some were dozens of kilometers across, and Yang Qi even saw one that was several thousand kilometers from end to end. They flickered as if with lightning, and in some cases the conglomerations were consuming each other and growing larger.

As for the four experts, whenever they encountered a soul conglomeration, they had to stealthily move around it before they could continue on their way.

“Antiquarian Seal!”

The two men and two women suddenly unleashed a powerful sealing mark. Countless threads of light shot forth, binding one of the soul conglomerations. Intense wailing sounds could be heard as the conglomeration shrank down to a tenth of its previous size and was locked in place as if with steel bonds.

“Hurry up and get past it!” shouted one of the men. “The seal will only hold it in place for a hundred breaths of time. After that, it’ll revert to its previous condition, and we can't be around. We also need to make sure to cleanse our auras so it can’t track us down. Some of these conglomerations are on the verge of developing intelligence, and if they do, they’ll take humanoid shape and be even more impossible to deal with!” With that, the four of them altered their auras and then vanished into thin air.

Observing them, Yang Qi chuckled inwardly. ‘These soul conglomerations make things so easy for me. And these people might as well be gift-wrapping them for me. That one is so large it’s already developing a will of its own. In other words, it would be difficult for me to deal with it on my own. But now that they’ve sealed it, it's a different story. How could I not help myself to it?’

Releasing his God Legion Paradise, he dragged the sealed soul conglomeration over and quickly assimilated it.

By way of comparison, it would be like a normal person who wanted to eat shark fin soup, but had to go to the ocean and catch the shark on their own. That would be a very complicated and difficult ordeal. How much better would it be to simply have the soup served up to them in a bowl? That was essentially what Yang Qi was doing here.

As soon as he assimilated the soul convergence, the sage monarch magistrates took that power for their own. Thanks to the major influx of power, the magistrates were splitting apart left and right, and their fighting prowess was improving immensely.

In the blink of an eye, he had another thousand.

Currently, he had about five thousand in total, and considering they could unleash the firepower of the Tribulation Monarch Cannon, even Patriarch Deva would have to fear them. Of course, that still wasn’t enough for Yang Qi. He felt that he needed at least ten thousand of them to be truly effective.

After finishing with the process, he continued on his way.

He had also broken down the energy of the sealing mark so that he could use it to spy on the four experts. Never in their wildest dreams could those four ever have guessed that someone would be following them around in a dangerous location such as this.

It took him about an hour to track down the four experts, who were in a wide public square, surrounded by an army of over ten thousand ancient angels.

They had perfectly shaped bodies, and all of them were as strong as mid Paramount Gods.

That said, they weren’t true angels, but rather mid Paramount Gods who had come to explore the Bastille of the One God but had been infected and transformed. Real mid Paramount God angels would be far too terrifying.

After all, the ancient angels had been created as early Paramount Gods.

These false angels had surrounded the four experts, but the four didn’t seem particularly worried, and were cutting them down with a host of deadly attacks. Every time an angel was killed, it would transform into a white beam of light that would vanish into the depths of the earth. Then, a short while later, it would return at full strength. In other words, these angels were virtually impossible to kill.