Chapter 959: Sword Breaks the East Sea Divine Court

Boundless azure waves, the sea wind briny and fishy.

Amid a flash of spatial runes, a green-robed youth with a long sword at his waist appeared in the sky.

Jiang Ding spread out his divine sense, gauging the surrounding human geography and environment, the coordinates, cross-checking them against the information gleaned from the Divine Guard's memories.

"This is the area west of the East Sea, locally called the Star Sea. Its surface is like a mirror, rarely rippled; mortals also call it the Dead Sea…"

"However, cultivators' warships and flying vessels can pass through normally. Resources are abundant, exotic beasts and strange spiritual fish are plentiful. Several thousand years ago, sects large and small, and demon tribes, existed here. Later, they were all wiped out one by one by the divine army of the East Sea Sword Court…"

Jiang Ding locked down the location of the East Sea Incense Sword Court without much effort, concealed his form, and flew toward his target.

His speed was not fast; he always maintained his magic power at peak condition, unhurriedly weaving through space, casting his gaze from time to time at the ocean below and the human towns scattered across the islands like stars on a chessboard.

In the ocean lived Merfolk, Shark demons, Turtle clans, Sea Serpent clans, and other aquatic demon races—numerous and thriving, firmly occupying the ecological niches of the sea.

Yet they were not the rulers of the ocean.

The true rulers were the various incense temples built on the seabed, and the human devotees within them. Serving as temple keepers and receptionists for the gods, they wielded divine power, ordering these sea races about at will, beating and scolding them as they pleased, preaching that demon races were born lowly and meant to be slaves and servants for life.

Their only chance at deliverance was to pray devoutly to the gods and make offerings, so that in the next life they might be reborn as humans.

The vast majority of the demon races believed this rhetoric.

Because over the past several thousand years, any demon race with a rebellious spirit, any demon race too clever, had been slaughtered by temple keepers leading Divine Guards, or broken through enslavement education spanning millennia, culled over and over.

The harder the demon races' lives, the more devout they became, hoping that after death they would be reborn human and live a happy life.

Throughout the vast ocean existed countless such Merfolk and Sea Serpent tribes, and within them temples that herded the people for the gods, and temple keepers. Every day they could provide the Incense Sword Court with a sea of incense power, lifting the Court's incense divine throne into the sky, making it a god on par with a Canghai Tianjun.

"This feels familiar…"

"The Great Sun Sword Pavilion seems to have been an extreme human-supremacist group."

Jiang Ding clicked his tongue inwardly.

This was no coincidence. Sword cultivation, as a profession unique to humans, and the races that gave birth to sword cultivators, were born with intense extreme racial tendencies; the purer the sword Dao sect, the more so.

"This kind of social structure is a fine sample."

A spark of curiosity rose in Jiang Ding's heart.

He stopped watching these sea-dwelling demons.

There was nothing to see here; Soul Transformation power pressed down upon the sky and earth.

?? Xi Ping'an did not seem like an ancient god fallen into slumber. Even if an unparalleled prodigy emerged among the demon races, they could never overturn the heavens—instantly suppressed and slaughtered.

In such an extreme racial society, rise and fall depended entirely on the ruling race itself.

The moment they weakened even slightly, ruin would come calling, with no room for compromise.

Jiang Ding looked toward the human towns.

On an island several thousand kilometers across lived over three hundred thousand people.

These people seemed to form several principalities. In one small principality there were physicians, household retainers, and a handful of capable warriors—a scene of an enfeoffment society even more backward than feudal society.

This was no isolated case. Nearly every island, large or small, was home to several independent principalities with no sign of unification. All worshipped gods, obeyed the temple keepers' instructions, and devoted themselves to serving the gods.

Between principalities, pastoral idyll, the sounds of chickens and dogs could be heard, yet they lived and died without ever visiting one another.

"The harm of incense gods is precisely this."

Seeing this, Jiang Ding felt a measure of disappointment.

To keep their incense pure, incense gods deliberately suppressed the development of social productive relations, blocked off much outside knowledge, and let their believers live in simple societies—working at sunrise, resting at sunset, pastoral idyll day after day, repeating the cycle until death.

New lives were born, only to repeat their parents' exact path, without any change.

The people living in such an environment were, relatively speaking, "simple."

Not pure and kind, but simple—simple good, simple evil—closer to human instinct, the instinct to survive and reproduce.

Such a society would never change, never advance in immortal Dao technology—a pool of stagnant water.

Yet change is the foundation of humanity's survival and development!

Humans are not demons.

Demons, especially those of top bloodlines, are born powerful, born standing at the pinnacle of all beings, with long lifespans; their future achievement as great divine ability practitioners is destined.

But humans?

What do humans have?

Even the most peerless human prodigy—whatever Dao Body, whatever Divine Body, whatever comprehension that tops all realms—without postnatal cultivation, without corresponding inheritance, without the nourishment of a corresponding immortal Dao civilization, is nothing. They can only toil like a packhorse their whole life, then die of old age in some remote village, never to rise above their station.

The potential of human prodigies needs to draw upon the fruits of immortal Dao civilization to grow strong.

Where does humanity's immortal Dao civilization come from?

From constant change and development!

The incense gods' actions are undoubtedly severing humanity's roots—all for a mere bit of incense power, they have dug up the very roots of the East Sea humans.

"All incense gods, whether human incense gods"

"or not… deserve to die."

Jiang Ding murmured.

They are a malignant tumor upon the race, and the lifelong enemy of his Dao path—they must be cleansed completely.

After quietly flying for several months, Jiang Ding arrived at the center of the East Sea, the holy land of countless East Sea believers—the Heavenly Sword Sea Region.

The waters here blazed with radiance, suffused with incense power. Every spot flowed with an incense divine sword, endlessly honing its edge under the wash of the waves, waiting until the sword body fully solidified to fly into the sky and return to the divine court.

Jiang Ding looked up.

Without needing to search deliberately, he could see the resplendent star in the sky, worshipped by hundreds of millions of human and demon beings—the East Sea Incense Sword Court.

The Incense Sword Court stood here, radiating dazzling light, its heavy pressure spreading outward in all directions—divine might like a prison, divine might like the sea.

Even a Soul Transformation cultivator here would feel their hair stand on end, alarms rising unceasingly in their heart, their divine soul warning them again and again.

This was an incense god's divine court!

Any god within their own incense divine court would see their strength greatly enhanced. A cultivator originally at late-stage Soul Transformation combat power could instantly leap to peak Soul Transformation with ease—enough to bury any Soul Transformation Canghai Tianjun who rashly stepped inside; their divine soul could not escape, becoming nourishment for the divine court.

"Are you still there?"

Jiang Ding muttered to himself.

He completely ignored the intense warning sign that seemed to arise within his Sea of Consciousness.

The reason it was "seemed" was because his flying sword and his divine soul had always remained calm; these warnings were external, emotional forces acting upon his divine soul, artificially added.

Clang!

Jiang Ding drew his sword.

A great sun rose slowly within the Thousand-Mile Sword Domain!

Then it fell!

It crashed down upon the Sword Court Star worshipped by countless humans and demons in the Eastern Sea, shattering the forbidden laws and destroying the will, spreading in all directions; in an instant, it swept away the solemn, heavy aura of all gods, and everything returned to the dominion of the Sword.

The great sun and the star made contact in an instant, holding each other in a slight stalemate for a moment.

Boom!

Amidst countless shattering spiritual lights, the star of the Eastern Sea's incense Sword Court, the star representing the divine seat of the gods' authority, crashed and shattered, exploding into countless fragments of spiritual light that fell toward the earth.

(End of this chapter)