Chapter 236

You resolutely decided on this plan, deciding to use Primordial Chaos fragments to bluff your way through and slip past the Nether River's surveillance.

Although we don't know the success rate, for now the only option is to try; fear no difficulty, and as long as we try enough times, we will eventually find a viable path.

And as the major protagonist of the Primordial Chaos, your opportunities are limitless!

However, trying to fit all the people of the Primordial Chaos into this tiny fragment is naturally impossible.

Therefore, if you want to put the plan into practice, expanding the area of the fragment realm is an urgent and essential prerequisite!

You hesitated a moment, then decided to try the simplest method: stuff in some ready-made land!

You directly used Mystic Immortal means to seize a small hill, then placed it into the fragment realm, eagerly awaiting its expansion……

But you were disappointed; the small hill, upon entering the realm, did not expand it at all, but simply fell onto the existing ground.

Thus the light-speed experiment failed, and your perfect plan came to naught at the first step……

Helpless, you could only temporarily abandon these fancy maneuvers, forced to focus on arduous cultivation toward becoming a Golden Immortal.

And as the saying goes, loss in the east, gain in the west—just as your attempt to expand the fragment realm utterly failed, your Heavenly Court was rapidly developing and growing……

In the 72nd year of the Heavenly Emperor, over ten thousand cultivators successively broke through to True Immortal, then joined the expeditionary army and began sweeping the four directions' blessed lands!

In the 120th year of the Heavenly Emperor, with ever more abundant resources, the Heavenly Court's cultivators again faced a breakthrough surge, this time giving birth to hundreds of thousands of True Immortals.

From then on, nearly all of the cultivators who first joined the Heavenly Court became immortals!

And as more and more True Immortals were deployed in external warfare, the Heavenly Court's territory and population swelled, causing the number of heavenly officials to become severely insufficient……

To cope with the situation of many people but few officials, the Yellow-robed Heavenly Master, who was acting in charge of court affairs, after careful thought, believed the heavenly official corps should be expanded, and devised two plans: one was to accept many surrendering cultivators, the other was to select a batch of talented individuals from the populace for immortal cultivation training.

Both plans were good, but considering the Heavenly Emperor's extreme crackdown on outsider cultivators and his ban on civilian immortal practices, he still dared not decide on his own, so he decided to seek the Heavenly Emperor's instructions……

When you, in seclusion, learned of this, you instinctively wanted to accept the outside surrendering cultivators, for in your previous life, when faced with an official shortage, you made exactly that decision—lacking people, just fill the gaps!

But as the words reached your lips, you hesitated, because you wondered: in this life, is it truly necessary to establish a heavenly court with numerous officials and a complete bureaucracy?

In your previous life, the main reason you greatly expanded the Heavenly Court's forces was that your early-to-mid information was limited; you simply didn't know the Primordial Chaos would be destroyed, so you once wanted to create a Primordial Chaos realm belonging to mortals.

But in this life, you already know the Primordial Chaos is doomed to sink, and everyone is merely consumable material sustaining the Nether River's continuation of heaven and earth…… thus you have no need for long-term governance at all!

Since long-term governance is unnecessary, there's no need to expand the bureaucratic forces……

Furthermore, in this life you pursue speed and efficiency; you want to pack up and carry away the Primordial Chaos population as quickly as possible, so the heavenly officials handling affairs must not have low cultivation—the higher, the better!

And to raise cultivation, spiritual energy is indispensable…… If we massively absorb outside cultivators as heavenly officials, where would our spiritual energy come from? Who would we plunder? Surely we can't plunder mortals, can we?

Therefore, given this life's strategic goals and needs, you clearly cannot learn from your past life; facing the Yellow-robed Heavenly Master's question, you should not merely pick one of the two options—you should reject both entirely.

What heavenly officials? Kill them all!

Cultivators, behave! Send out the heavenly soldiers and generals one by one!

Having made up your mind, you ordered the Yellow-robed Heavenly Master awaiting imperial judgment: 'Don't choose either; the Heavenly Court needs no expansion of officials!'

The Heavenly Master anxiously asked: 'Then how are we to govern the populace? Now the Heavenly Court's territory and population grow day by day; if we rely solely on folk self-governance, I fear……'

You furrowed your brows in thought for a while, then suddenly inspiration struck, and you blurted out: 'Kill them all!'

The Heavenly Master stared at you, bewildered, unable to understand how the usually benevolent Heavenly Emperor, who always treated mortals with kindness, could suddenly utter such diametrically opposed extreme words……

Meanwhile, you had no time to care about his bewildered expression; instead, you delightedly deduced your own sudden brilliant idea.

In this life, your provisional ultimate goal is to bring all the people of the Primordial Chaos together to 'moisten' the Eternal Primordial Chaos, and the tentative means to achieve this is to use the fragment realm to contain them for transport, in order to bluff your way through!

But you had already tried this; this small realm cannot be expanded by conventional means, and under these circumstances it is impossible to fit all the Primordial Chaos people into merely a square fragment realm with a side length of 100,000 li.

You had previously worried about this, unable to find a solution no matter how you tried……

But now, the Heavenly Master's question actually sparked an analogy in you, and you immediately grasped a coherent logic, successfully devising a highly feasible plan!

I cannot bring all the mortals with me, but if we kill them all and turn them into formless, intangible souls, they can be stacked infinitely, no matter how many, they will fit……

This method sounds heretical and heaven-defying at first hearing, but considering that the life and death of Primordial Chaos beings are not limited to the physical body—souls count as living beings too…… it's fantastic!

Anyway, the Eternal Primordial Chaos has six perpetual motion machines working, spiritual energy is virtually limitless; worst case, after we smuggle past, we just give them all new physical bodies—wouldn't that be resurrecting them?

The logic is sound, and the feasibility is extremely high!

Unable to contain your excitement, you immediately instructed the still-bewildered Yellow-robed Heavenly Master: 'From now on, everyone outside our current occupied zone, whether immortal or mortal, shall be killed without exception! But for mortals, only their physical bodies may be destroyed; their souls must not be harmed.'

Then gather all their souls together and finally send them to me!

Upon your order, the already dazed Heavenly Master was as if struck by five thunderbolts; his gaze toward you instantly changed: originally it was reverent, loyal, and admiring, now it turned directly into……

Terror! Terror! Still terror!

Although he used to cultivate by eating people, this action is merely unavoidable; after all, this is the only path we can take, and if there were other options, he would actually not want to harm human lives.

After all, he remains a righteous person of the orthodox path, with a conscience.

But with this single command of yours, he directly launched indiscriminate slaughter…… even the cultivators who eat people think you're too extreme!

He thought it over, was about to admonish you, but because of the Blood God Son's effect he could not rebut, and could only sigh: 'I understand, my lord……'

Thus this heaven-defying indiscriminate slaughter order was quickly disseminated, causing an uproar throughout court and countryside!

Nobody believed this could be an edict issued by the usually benevolent Heavenly Emperor; they even doubted the Heavenly Master, thinking he was forging the imperial decree.

But after the Yellow-robed Heavenly Master repeatedly emphasized it, everyone had no choice but to obey the order……

Thus from this day onward, aside from the Heavenly Court's occupied zone, all cultivators and mortals ushered in misfortune!

A pack of wolf-like True Immortals roamed everywhere, indiscriminately sweeping through; they killed anyone they saw, seized the spiritual energy from slain cultivators, and snatched the souls from slain mortals!

Since no governance was needed, only a relentless crush, the advance speed directly became more than ten times faster than before; wherever they passed, white bones lay exposed in the fields, a thousand li without a rooster's crow...

Such a horrific sight, even the heavenly soldiers and generals who have been fighting year after year cannot help but feel anguish in their hearts, after all none of them is the Great West King; they, who hail from the orthodox Daoist blessed lands, ultimately still harbor kindness.

But what they are doing now cannot be said to have nothing to do with kindness; it can only be said to be even more heaven-defying than the wanton slaughter of the demonic path—at least the demonic path still considers the necessity of sustainable exploitation, lest they kill everything and have nothing left to kill…

All the heavenly officials self-mockingly said: "I thought I had joined the Heavenly Court, but I never imagined it was a demon's den!"

Now everyone has turned to the demonic path!

But no matter how they self-mock, under the effect of the Blood God Son, they can only grit their teeth and carry it out…

The mortals in the Heavenly Court's occupied territories initially didn't know about this, but as time passed bit by bit, even if they were deaf and blind, they would surely sense something now!

Since the mortals are not under the Blood God Son's control, they dare say anything in private: "Our Mysterious Heaven Emperor, fortunately only revealed his true form after subduing us! If he had stopped pretending earlier, we might have been wiped out altogether…"

"I told you so—how could a cultivator possibly be this good to us mortals? Indeed, it's all an act!"

"He has the heavenly soldiers and generals outside collecting souls for him; he must be trying to cultivate some demonic technique or forge some demonic artifact…"

"What Mysterious Heaven Emperor? He's clearly a Mysterious Heaven Demon Emperor, a Mysterious Heaven Evil Emperor!"

"..."

Bold!

The common folk's such slander of the Heavenly Emperor naturally infuriated the heavenly officials, but when they offered counsel, asking the Heavenly Court to slaughter these troublemakers all together, the Yellow-robed Heavenly Master in charge of government affairs shook his head and refused.

"Just explain to the common folk that it's not the Heavenly Emperor practicing demonic arts, but me—I'm the one practicing demonic arts, not only that, I'm forging demonic artifacts and raising demonic pets… all of it is my doing, and has nothing to do with the Heavenly Emperor!"

Amid the astonishment of the court officials, the Heavenly Master sighed: "Let me make the people of the primordial wilderness suffer a bit; I'll take the blame!"

The Heavenly Emperor must be pure!

(End of chapter)