In The Void
"Di Cangqiong! You're going too far!" the Demon Emperor yelled, his voice piercing violently through the void.
"Which one of you would sit by and watch your race grow closer and closer to its annihilation?" Di Cangqiong replied with a sigh, watching calmly as runic laws warped violently around the restless Demon Emperor.
"Di Cangqiong! You hypocrite! You're just looking for an excuse to widen your encroachment!" the Demon Emperor roared, his raging aura clashing furiously against Di Cangqiong's invisible energy barrier.
"Cang Yunxiao, what do you think?" Di Cangqiong said, turning toward the Sky Lord as they both gazed intently at the Weiqi game board, deliberating on their next move.
"Yan Wuyuan, you have always been rash, failing to see the bigger picture," the Sky Lord replied, casually placing a white Weiqi stone onto the board.
"Pretentious liar! You've really become a lackey of the God Realm," the Demon Emperor spat in reply before releasing a sharp, devastating burst of energy directly toward the spot where Di Cangqiong and Cang Yunxiao were sitting.
"Wuyuan, mind your tongue!" the Sky Lord replied sternly, effortlessly dispelling the incoming attack with a single flick of energy from his eyes.
"That's enough. The plan has been set in motion; you can't stop it by fighting me here," Di Cangqiong replied. He placed the final black Weiqi piece onto the board, winning the game in one fell swoop.
"I still can't compare to the mighty Empyrean when it comes to tactical skills," Cang Yunxiao said, accepting his defeat with a soft sigh as he nodded his head slightly.
"What a mighty Empyrean! What tactical skill!" Yan Wuyuan mocked, turning around angrily with his hands clamped behind his back. With one step forward, his figure covered a distance of millions of light-years across the void.
"Yan Wuyuan, you should learn how to play Weiqi with us one day," Cang Yunxiao called out as he watched him traverse the endless expanse.
"I'll be joining you very soon," the Demon Emperor whispered back, his voice echoing from the distance.
– In The Abyss –
"Chief! We can no longer hold the frontline, they're advancing effortlessly!" a young soldier shouted, rushing frantically into the main hall where the Chief, the elders, and all the high-ranking generals were gathered.
"Yen Shui, what do we do now?" an elder asked the Chief, bowing his head in bitter frustration.
Yen Shui didn't reply immediately. He simply shook his head and sighed deeply as he watched the distant explosions rattle closer and closer, pushing past the frontline of the Abyss.
"Can someone tell me what is going on? What are these things attacking us? Why are they attacking us?" an anxious general yelled, slamming his hand hard against the table. He received no reply.
The high-ranking generals and some of the elders were just as confused as he was, but looking at the stark despair written on the Chief's face, they had partly guessed the answer. All of this, somehow, had to be connected to the God Realm.
"How many are they?" Yen Shui suddenly asked, breaking the oppressive silence in the room.
"Reporting to the Chief, there are seven of them carrying out the attack," the young soldier replied, hurriedly handing over a jade slip containing the critical information of the battlefield.
After reading through the contents carefully, Yen Shui sighed deeply, letting everyone catch a glimpse of the absolute inevitability of what was happening.
"It's the God Realm, isn't it?" the anxious general muttered to no one in particular, his head bowing low.
"I've always wondered why the God Realm was so keen on imposing the 'no cultivation' rule on our Devil Clan. They even went as far as getting verdicts from the Divine Lords of the three realms to manipulate the Great Dao just to enforce this restriction on us," the general continued, his eyes flooding with tears.
"It turns out this day was their goal all along to completely wipe us from existence," the general said as tears flowed profusely down his face.
"Now, in this Abyss, except for the Chief, no one possesses any cultivation. We have absolutely no chance of escaping this calamity," an elder said, turning a grim gaze to face Yen Shui.
"But why?"
That was the singular question running through everyone's mind. The God Realm's sole justification for subduing them was that their founding father was a sinner, the progenitor of the Great Chaos that caused the fall of the Eternal Creator and that his ancient sin still ran through their bloodline.
The Empyrean believed that the only way for them to atone for their sins was to sign a pact with the Heavenly Dao, forbidding them from practicing the way of cultivation forever. This was their karma; this was their burden to bear.
"None of them, including the almighty Empyrean, participated in the Great Chaos! They don't even know what our founding father looks like, yet they somehow know he is a sinner? What a scam!" a general yelled in absolute rage.
"It is the law of the jungle; the strong prey on the weak. Exterminating us must be of great benefit to them," an elder replied hollowly.
"Now that the God Realm has accused us of breaching the pact, even if they don't deal with us themselves, the Great Dao will intervene," Yen Shui said, standing up from his chair as everybody's eyes remained locked on him.
"Our trump card has to be used early," Yen Shui said emphatically, causing everyone to furrow their eyebrows in deep confusion.
"Mo Lingtian? He is too young. What can he possibly do to avert this predicament?" an elder asked, looking intensely at the Chief.
"Although he is a genius, he is not going to touch the helm of the path of a Divine Lord even in the next seven hundred thousand years. Countless geniuses like him have risen across the three realms, and yet the best of them are at most Divine Saints. That's far from enough to confront the Empyrean," the elder continued.
"We don't even have time to wait for him to become a Divine Saint! He is still in the Qi Refining realm, for God's sake!" a general said, his voice shaking with a mixture of disgust and frustration.
"I'm not stupid. We are not going to send him to his death. The only thing we can do at this point is to give him the opportunity to grow, and grow fast," Yen Shui said, looking at the two elders by his side, the only two people in the room who truly understood what he was driving at.
"Give him what opportunity? I don't understand... Am I the only one seeing the destruction getting closer and closer to this hall?" a general voiced in utter confusion. Everyone present murmured in agreement; nobody understood the hidden meaning behind Yen Shui's words.
"The only way we survive this is to force his first steps down the path of revenge. That is our final glimpse of hope," one of the two elders by Yen Shui's side explained, trying to shed light on the plan.
"Force his steps? I don't..."
Yen Shui cut the elder off before he could finish his words.
"Forget it. We once had a powerful being in our lineage. He was a half-step Divine Lord, but unfortunately, he was jointly sealed during the joint verdict decree by the three Divine Lords of the three realms and the Great Dao.
He left behind a single drop of blood from his heart, a keepsake we've kept for several centuries. Perhaps the residual power within it can buy us some time," Yen Shui said, walking slowly toward the entrance of the main hall.
"Can someone explain to me what is happening? What do you need to buy time for? What are you guys planning?" an elder demanded, triggering a wave of anxious murmurs throughout the hall.
"Everybody, leave!" Yen Shui yelled, releasing a powerful gust of wind all over the hall that forced everyone into an immediate, stunned quiet.
"Everyone, we and the Chief are about to perform a forbidden spell. We hope everyone can buy us some time outside the hall," one of the elders by the Chief's side added smoothly, easing the rising tension in the room.
"Bring me Mo Lingtian," Yen Shui commanded the two elders as the rest of the assembly began to hastily exit the hall.