Lord of All Gods

Xiao Heng and Cui Daoran had also acquired a considerable amount of equipment such as warships and flying vessels, making it entirely feasible for them to build their own armies. As for the Death Legion and the Black Armor Elite, those were in even greater supply.

All the artifact refiners currently within Ye Liuyun’s spatial world were busy upgrading the Death Legion’s armor. After several major battles, they had captured more than enough weapons and armor.

The Death Legion’s weapons had been almost entirely replaced—all of them seized from various imperial guard units, each ranked at the ninth grade of the True Tier. However, the armor had yet to be fully refitted.

Tong Xin, Elder Tianfire, and the other master refiners were focused on researching improvements to the fire-powered war chariots.

Jiang Yuntian still had two Poison Soul Flowers in his possession, which Ye Liuyun gave to Lei Ming and the Dragon Girl. The Poison Soul Flower, defensive shield, and attack spear that had been stored in Jiang Yuntian’s sea of consciousness were all handed over to Bai Hu. Not a single resource was left for Jiang Yuntian himself.

All Jiang Yuntian now had was a sound-transmission talisman for contacting the Fire Seal King, and a formation plate for receiving resources.

This left him feeling utterly wretched—he had never been this poor in his life.

He was also deeply curious about the method Ye Liuyun used to control him, wondering when exactly Ye Liuyun had planted that special slave mark on him.

He clearly remembered entering the main tent with the intention of activating a teleportation formation, only to suddenly find himself under Ye Liuyun’s control.

Yet Ye Liuyun kept him firmly in check with the slave mark, preventing him from dwelling on it too much, simply telling him that he had fallen under an illusion technique.

He was also made to help devise strategies and negotiate a ransom from the Fire Seal King. The list of resources Jiang Yuntian drew up amounted to nearly one-tenth of the entire Fire Seal Dynasty’s total wealth.

Ye Liuyun handed over all matters related to negotiating with the Fire Seal King and confirming the handover directly to Jiang Yuntian, leaving him and his father to work it out between themselves. Under the control of Ye Liuyun’s slave mark, Jiang Yuntian had no thoughts of betrayal whatsoever, and devoted himself entirely to securing the best possible terms for Ye Liuyun.

Ye Liuyun, meanwhile, took his two clones and returned to the spatial world to cultivate.

The Black Armor Elite, the Death Legion, and the two Demon Clan legions were also recalled into the spatial world to rest and train.

Zhu Que’s cultivation realm was the first to break through, reaching the seventh level of the Returning Unity stage. He had participated in several recent major battles and absorbed a vast amount of yin souls, finally enabling his breakthrough.

Chi Lian, on the other hand, transferred the power of bloodline she had absorbed to Ye Liuyun first, without rushing to break through. The other demonic beasts had not yet reached a sufficient quality of true essence to break through their realms.

Tang Xinyao and the others broke through to the sixth level of the Returning Unity stage. Although their realm advancement was somewhat slow, their divine souls, bloodlines, and physical bodies had all improved considerably in recent times, so their overall strength was growing at a respectable pace.

Among the women who had participated in the battles, Ye Tiandao’s realm broke through to the sixth level of Returning Unity, while Fyeng Wanru, A Xing, and the others reached the fourth level of Returning Unity; the rest had yet to advance for the time being.

Their divine souls, bloodlines, and physical bodies had all grown stronger across the board, and they frequently sought out soldiers with powerful spatial energy and heaven-and-earth force to spar against for practical training.

As for their weapons, those who had not cultivated their own life-bound battle soldiers had all upgraded to Void Tier weapons.

As a result, the true combat strength of these women had already reached the level where they could fight against martial cultivators at the sixth level of Returning Unity, and even when facing those at the seventh level, they could hold their ground for a time with the aid of their weapons and treasures.

Shortly afterward, after receiving a large influx of resources, both the Death Legion and the Demon Clan legions began a new wave of realm advancements. The two Demon Clan legions advanced by an entire realm across the board, as they always did whenever resources were plentiful.

The majority of the Death Legion’s soldiers had broken through to the Returning Unity realm. Yu Xiaofeng and the others, bolstered by an abundance of high-grade resources, were rapidly approaching the third level of Returning Unity. Concerned about the instability of their realms, Ye Liuyun had Xiao Heng assign a number of surrendered soldiers at the third level of Returning Unity for them to practice against.

After Cui Daoran and Xiao Heng completed their reorganization and training, Xiao Heng stabilized his army at one hundred thousand men: twenty thousand at the ninth level of Returning Unity, seventy thousand at the eighth level, and ten thousand at the seventh level. The remaining surrendered soldiers were used as sparring partners and were eventually worn down to nothing.

Cui Daoran’s Fierce Soldier Bandit Corps had been reduced to forty thousand men. He had originally had fewer than thirty thousand soldiers at the ninth level of Returning Unity, and this time he was allocated over thirty thousand prisoners—yet after his brutal training regimen, he only kept just over ten thousand of them, as the rest had died in combat drills.

But this Fierce Soldier Bandit Corps had truly been forged into something ferocious under his hand. Those imperial guard soldiers who had once been relatively weak in actual combat became, after turning bandit, utterly fearless to a man—savage and ruthless, as though possessed by demons.

Seeing that their training was going well, Ye Liuyun still distributed armor to them, so as to prevent unnecessary casualties from their reckless fighting style. He had recently wiped out a considerable number of dynastic armies and had no shortage of equipment. Ninth-grade True Tier armor and weapons could be supplied to them in abundance.

Cui Daoran accepted the armor, though each bandit decorated their own with colorful painted patterns to distinguish them from the Fire Seal Dynasty’s armor.

Inspired by this, Xiao Heng had his soldiers uniformly dye the shoulder sections of their armor red, to set them apart from the dynastic armies.

Once both armies had finished their reorganization and training, they were recalled into the spatial world by their commanders to rest and cultivate.

Outside, only a few dozen martial cultivators at the late stage of Returning Unity Ninefold remained on guard. These were individuals Ye Liuyun had deemed unsuitable for the Black Armor Elite Corps, yet too powerful to keep around as sparring fodder—strong figures from the dynasty in their own right.

Ye Liuyun had left them outside to watch for any surprise attacks from the dynasty, and to keep an eye on Jiang Yuntian. Jiang Yuntian was holed up in the large command tent that had previously belonged to Ye Liuyun, waiting for the Fire Seal King to deliver the ransom.

Jiang Yuntian had witnessed the full extent of Ye Liuyun’s army, and couldn’t help but marvel inwardly at how rapidly Ye Liuyun’s power had grown.

But the moment Ye Liuyun noticed, he immediately wiped away those memories, ensuring Jiang Yuntian retained no critical information.

Ye Liuyun had also let Chilian drain a considerable portion of his power of bloodline—so much so that what remained wasn’t even half of what he’d had before.

What a waste of such power of bloodline. It had originally been even stronger than Ye Liuyun’s, yet he never got the chance to face him in battle. Even if he returned to ample resources afterward, it would take at least two or three years to cultivate his power of bloodline back to where it had been.

Ye Liuyun even offered him an explanation: "Consider this the price you pay for raising your hand against me. The dynasty using resources to ransom you back—that’s the price they pay. The two are not to be confused. I won’t let you walk away without a scratch, or you might get ideas about coming after me again."

By now, Jiang Yuntian had no will to resist. Under the control of the slave seal, he was completely submissive, accepting whatever Ye Liuyun said without question.

Once Ye Liuyun had exhausted all the bloodline cultivation resources and his army’s strength had been fully elevated, they finally received word that the dynasty’s resource delivery convoy had arrived.

Among those the dynasty had dispatched were close to a thousand powerful cultivators, along with three hundred thousand praetorian.

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