"Is anyone still dissatisfied?" Lingtian asked. His cold gaze shifted from Hua Ting, who was now kneeling in the air panting heavily as his heart drummed nervously against his ribs, down to the cultivators still firmly pinned to the dirt by his gravity law.
"Senior..." the elderly cultivator choked out, bowing deeply as he drifted closer to Lingtian. "We have realized our mistake," he continued, bowing even lower in submission.
"Have I earned your respect?" Lingtian asked, casually drifting past the elder.
"Senior... yes," the elder replied, his head still lowered. He turned his gaze slightly, shooting a stern, reprimanding glare at Hua Ting, prompting the chief disciple to also bow his head in deep remorse.
Lingtian looked down at the cultivators pinned to the ground below. With a subtle shift of his will, he released the crushing gravitational law he had been exacting. The oppressive weight instantly vanished, leaving them gasping for air against the soil.
"Can we go see the Patriarch now?" Lingtian asked, turning toward Wang Ping's twin, who had brought him into this ambush.
"Yes, sir..." the twin stuttered, quickly shooting through the air toward the main hall of the Eclipsed Sun Sect.
Lingtian followed suit, dashing past Hua Ting and the elder, leaving them both bowed in the sky.
"Master..." Hua Ting muttered, finally standing up straight the moment Lingtian left. Below them, the suppressed cultivators slowly picked themselves up, dispersing one by one after recovering from the terrifying weight Lingtian had pressed upon them.
"I refuse to believe that a Vessel Cleansing Stage practitioner can successfully bridge a gap of more than seven realms to battle a Late Stage Immortal without suffering severe backlash," the elderly cultivator murmured. He straightened his robes, watching Lingtian drift farther and farther away toward the main hall.
"Senior, please," the twin said, touching down at the entrance of the grand hall. He gestured inside as Lingtian slowly drifted to the ground.
Lingtian did not even give him a glance. He walked straight past him, heading through the massive, already-open doors toward the location where he and the Patriarch had shared tea the first time.
"Since acquiring the Great Transformation Art, I have not had the time to properly practice it. But I can clearly feel my energy becoming much steadier and stronger over the passing days" Lingtian thought as he walked down the long, opulent hallway. He reminisced on how swift and powerful his needles had become, marveling at how they could now completely shatter the golden bodies of immortals.
"Lingtian, get over yourself. That was a Late Stage Immortal," the Chief Commander's voice suddenly echoed from his sea of consciousness. "If the two of you were to engage in a real fight to the death, you would not survive past the time it takes for an incense stick to burn out," she continued, dragging him back to the harsh reality of cultivation realms.
"Am I really that far behind?" Lingtian asked her as he looked around. He could not see any sign of the Patriarch or the familiar table setting from his last visit.
"Do you actually think the little needle tricks you pull hold any real combat power in a duel to the death with an absolute powerhouse? Your demonic cultivation is just at the beginning of the ladder - the Vessel Cleansing Stage. Apart from the Great Transformation Art, which you have not even practiced, you possess absolutely no other demonic cultivation techniques," she lectured, her tone visibly annoyed.
"Your devil cultivation just reached the Great Perfection Stage of the Qi Refining Realm, barely putting you in the ranks of the strong men on the Demon Continent. You have mastered no actual devil cultivation techniques apart from the Devil Converging Seal, which is merely a magic array. The Coiling Sword Art and the needle techniques you rely on are just mortal sword or body arts that you fused with qi to enhance their power," she continued, standing up from her meditative posture on the coastal rock in his mind.
"Mo Lingtian, you have no real advantage. All these schemes and plots you venture into will be entirely useless when you finally face the unbridled wrath of a true powerhouse. Your primary goal should be survival, not scheming your way to the top just so you can relax and be at leisure," the Chief Commander scolded. Her tone was harsh, her voice crisp, and her face stern.
Lingtian simply sighed, nodding his head as he felt the heavy pulses of her frustration echoing through his consciousness.
"Senior, you all seem to misunderstand me," Lingtian replied, sensing that the commanding generals, including Si, shared her exact sentiment. They actually thought he had given up his pursuit of cultivation to seek leisure among the elite.
"Everything I do, every plan I make, and every connection I build is to survive. In a world where the majority are constantly fighting for survival under the thumbs of elites and powerful factions, the best way to preserve your life is to leave the camp of the majority. You must become the minority, the silent puppeteers who control the situations, instead of being bound by them," Lingtian explained calmly, spreading his spiritual probe across the entire hall to scan for any sign of the Patriarch.
The commanding generals relaxed their tense and awkward postures after giving thought to his words. Even the Chief Commander sat back down cross-legged on the rock, softening her stern expression. What he just said actually made sense; it was indeed all in a bid to survive if you looked at it from that angle.
"Never mind. What you said is actually true," Lingtian continued with a heavy sigh. "In the face of absolute power, all schemes are worthless." He quoted a line from one of the many ancient books he had studied while growing up in the devil clan.
"Although I know many sword styles and techniques thanks to the intense training the elders put me through back home, none of them require qi to use. They are essentially useless in a real confrontation with a high-level cultivator. Constantly modifying them to work with qi is not something I can rely on in the long run, especially since a fight to the death with strong powerhouses will be inevitable when we proceed with our plan to wipe out the three factions," Lingtian analyzed.
"To truly turn the tide and survive this hostile takeover, I must prepare real trump cards and quickly increase my cultivation stage as soon as possible. Needles cannot save my life," Lingtian concluded.
Suddenly, he stopped mid-stride in the empty hallway.
The Chief Commander also reacted, slowly opening her eyes when she too failed to sense any trace of the Patriarch.
"Senior, you stood back and watched while your disciples tried to humiliate me just now. What is the meaning of this?" Lingtian's cold voice echoed across the hallway. His eyes calmly paced about the hall as the ambient light slowly began to dim.
Then, on the golden lampstands fixed to the opposing walls, sparks of eerie blue flame suddenly ignited. The fire ran all the way from the beginning of the hall to the end, casting a deeply mystical and unsettling ambiance over the stone floors.
Senior? Senior... Lingtian called out repeatedly inside his sea of consciousness.
There was no reply.
For some reason, his connection to his sea of consciousness had been completely severed.
"Dao You..." a voice suddenly called out from the blue-lit shadows.
Lingtian quickly turned around, his eyes locking onto the direction the voice had come from.