Chapter 498 |
Cole was soon resurrected and brought to the Central Command.
“…Those were definitely not ordinary wandering monsters. They were conscious, organized,” Cole recounted everything in detail, his mental state seemingly stable—for now, at least he was alive. “The ninth-level monster was nothing like the ones we’ve encountered before. It didn’t just rely on instinctive physical and energy attacks. It had a weapon, a combat style—a complete system.”
On the light screen, the split feed repeated the footage of the giant sword splitting the Kara Plane and the Cole. Cole pointed to the final frame before his suicide, saying, “It locked onto both the macro and the micro simultaneously. That strike pierced the barrier between thought and matter. Too fast, too sudden—we had no way to escape.”
“If there’s nothing else, I’d like to withdraw from the Cataclysm Zone campaign and return to the Mage World.” Cole sounded defeated. The destruction of his starship legion had been a devastating blow—it meant that nearly all the resources he’d accumulated since becoming a Super Dimensional Mage were gone. Worse, the cost of reviving and compensating his war mages would further carve a deep wound in his already thin reserves.
He was nearly bankrupt.
For independent mages like him, freedom came at the price of near-zero tolerance for failure. Had this been a Holy Tower Legion, the Council would shoulder much of the reconstruction and compensation—but he had to bear it all alone.
The True Spirits in attendance approved his request. After his departure, the operations staff drew up a new chart connecting Xinyati, the destroyed planes, and the nearby Demon-Suppression Abyss. The lines were clear and direct.
“The destroyed legions and planes—including the one commanded by Cole Wallace—were all ordinary small-scale planes recently assigned for expedition,” Adam said. “From Central Command’s planning to the actual deployments, there’s no discernible pattern at all. It’s just standard operational distribution.”
“But something still feels wrong,” Wendy noted.
Nehem asked, “You mean Daoyuan?”
“Yes. Only he stands to gain from our losses—and only he could possess such power.” Adam’s eyes darkened. “The attitude he’s shown doesn’t quite match what the Vientiane Heavenly Sovereign said about his Daoist pursuit. Vientiane claimed Daoyuan represented the principle of the Dao being complete within oneself, dependent on nothing external. At such a stage, his needs and desires should approach zero. So why was he so obsessed with that Left Arm? Could he be trying to do something for the Immortal Civilization before his ascension? That makes no sense—whether he acts or we do, what difference does it make?”
“The Demon-Suppression Abyss is there, and so are the limbs of that Transcendent Void Creature. He ignored it for countless ages, but when the mages came and began unlocking it, then he appeared to stop us. I can only conclude he doesn’t want those limbs to fall into anyone else’s hands—not the Immortal Civilization’s, nor ours.”
“If that’s the case,” Adam continued, “then perhaps his so-called ‘ascension’ isn’t as simple as it sounds. His invitation to the Heavenly Sovereigns might have another purpose entirely.”
———
After the successive annihilations of expeditionary legions, Xinyati’s alert level rose sharply. All envoy delegations from external planes were confined to the embassy district under strict lockdown. Support and subjugation operations were suspended entirely—the Immortal Civilization envoys included.
For the first time in over a decade, Adam met with the Vientiane Heavenly Sovereign and Congzhen True Sovereign. But to long-lived beings like them, that lapse of time was insignificant. Adam immediately displayed the footage brought back by Cole, pointing at the monster legion and the sword: “Do you recognize them?”
Congzhen’s expression changed. “Where did you encounter them?”
“As I suspected—it’s related to the Immortal Civilization,” Adam thought. Aloud, he said, “In many places. The mage legions have suffered catastrophic losses because of them.”
Vientiane gestured for her daughter to remain silent, then said, “They look like genuine Outer World Heavenly Demons.”
Outer World Heavenly Demons—if Vientiane hadn’t mentioned them again, Adam would’ve forgotten the term entirely. He had assumed all monsters were called that, but from her tone, this was something different.
Without reservation, Vientiane began recounting an ancient secret.
Her tale was long, but Adam summarized it: When the Primordial Heavenly Sovereign first came into existence, other high-level beings were born alongside him. Whether they were manifestations of demonic thought or demonic bodies, none but the Primordial Sovereign himself knew. But they were powerful—many in number—and they inflicted grievous wounds upon him. The Primordial Sovereign paid a terrible price to defeat them, killing only a few while the rest were banished.
Over the ages, these beings launched repeated assaults on the Immortal Realm. The Immortal Civilization responded with their own crusades against the Heavenly Demons. Both sides suffered heavily—stalemates that drained both worlds. Eventually, the Heavenly Demons hid away, and the Immortal Realm sealed itself. That was the original reason immortals distrusted the Mage Civilization.
“But I’ve never seen this one before,” Vientiane added. “He doesn’t seem as strong as a true Outer World Heavenly Demon—otherwise your people wouldn’t have had the chance to resurrect—but he certainly resembles one.”
Adam asked, “Do the Outer World Heavenly Demons possess intelligence?”
Vientiane nodded. “Extremely high intelligence. Their essence is superior to ours—on par with the Great Heavenly Sovereigns.”
As the conversation was relayed to Command, Adam cross-referenced the exploration data from reconnaissance automatons to triangulate possible hiding locations for these demons. “What’s the relationship between the Outer World Heavenly Demons and the Demon-Suppression Abyss?” he asked.
“The Heavenly Demons came first; the Abyss came later. They have no interest in it—it’s us they wish to destroy. Their goal is the annihilation of our kind and the Great Heavenly Sovereigns.”
Adam raised his gaze and looked her in the eye. “Have you considered why Daoyuan Heavenly Sovereign chose this exact moment—right after we entered the Cataclysm Zone—to declare his intention to ascend?”
Vientiane’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that his timing has a purpose. I know you pursue enlightenment, and that epiphany can come suddenly—but at his level? I find it hard to believe that such a breakthrough just happened out of nowhere.”