Sovereign of the Ashes

Besides paying visits to those three Daoist Overlords, members of the delegation would also need to establish contact with the Yao Clan, the Dragon Clan, the Blood Sea Asura Clan, and several other factions within the Immortal Realm Civilization in the coming days.

This did not mean the Magus Civilization urgently needed assistance from the Yao Clan and the others right away. Rather, they were laying the groundwork to make future negotiations smoother.

At the same time, the Magus Civilization was not eager to pull the entire Immortal Realm Civilization into the war.

After all, this was ultimately the Magus Civilization’s own Clash of Civilizations. If too many outside forces became involved, dividing the spoils afterward would become a problem.

The Magus Civilization also worried that if too many Immortal Realm legions entered the battlefield, they could eventually become difficult to manage.

Because of this, the Magus Civilization had not taken the initiative to contact the Buddhist factions this time.

In truth, Magus World actually maintained fairly good relations with the Buddhist sects.

Those ties simply were not as close as their relationship with the Daoist faction and the Yao Clan.

Still, whether the Buddhist sects would eventually be invited to join the Clash of Civilizations would depend on how the war developed.

Buddhist cultivators would likely be just as effective against the creatures of the Amenkha Empire as the lumimancers of Magus World.

Naturally, such a force would not be left unused if the situation demanded it.

Palace Master Yunmeng at Tianyi Palace had dealt with the Rank Six mage named Tomov many times before.

After listening to the purpose behind Tomov’s visit, she pondered for a long while before finally agreeing to allow the delegation passage through Qingyang World.

From there, Tomov and the others would continue deeper into the Immortal Realm by using the massive network of teleportation arrays established by Tianyi Palace.

It was no exaggeration to say that Tianyi Palace maintained direct spatial routes to more than eighty percent of the Immortal Realm’s well-known cultivation worlds.

However, just as the Magus Civilization delegation was preparing to depart Qingyang World, violent spatial fluctuations suddenly erupted around the world’s major teleportation hubs.

At the same time, urgent alerts rang out from the teleportation channels.

The spatial turbulence was so intense that every living being in Qingyang World could clearly sense it.

The sky changed color, and fierce winds swept across the land.

As mountains shook and seas churned, countless low-level beings cried out in panic.

“I saw a dragon!”

“So many dragons!”

Tens of thousands of dragons soared through the rolling clouds.

Because the space-time portal operated in sequence, the first to arrive in Qingyang World were naturally the Immortal Realm’s most elite dragonkin with the purest bloodlines.

The auras of several overlord-level beings spread across the heavens as one massive figure after another appeared above Qingyang World.

None of these overlords showed any hostility. They were just passing through

At this moment, five overlord-level dragonkin had gathered here.

They were Suanni, Bi’an, Fuxi, Torch Dragon, and the Flood Dragon King.

The sudden appearance of so many overlords immediately disturbed Dong Fangbai, the previous sect master of Tianyi Palace, who had been deep in seclusion refining pills.[1]

The disturbance outside broke his focus, ruining an entire batch of Seven-Refinement Golden Pills on the spot!

Not even a furnace explosion in the past had ever shaken Dong Fangbai this badly.

Without caring about the still-burning ingredients or the ruined pills, he immediately rushed out of the alchemy chamber engulfed in True Fire of Samadhi.[2]

For the true pillar of Tianyi Palace—a sage-level alchemist revered throughout the Immortal Realm—to lose his composure to such an extent, it was obvious the situation outside had far exceeded all expectations!

High in the sky, the five overlord-level dragonkin quickly noticed this supreme native expert of Qingyang World.

The Dragon Clan had always maintained a good relationship with Tianyi Palace.

After all, dragons were famously wealthy.

Whenever Dong Fangbai and the cultivators of Tianyi Palace refined high-grade pills or elixirs, they often had to obtain rare materials from the Dragon Palaces.

Suanni, the hottest-tempered of the five and also the strongest, immediately noticed Dong Fangbai flying out in a panic as his enormous fiery-red dragon eyes swept downward.

He burst into loud laughter. “Did we interrupt your work?”

“That looked like a batch of Seven-Refinement Golden Pills. We’re not going to have to compensate you for that, are we?” he added with a grin.

Hearing this, Dong Fangbai instinctively turned to look behind him.

The alchemy chamber he had just left, along with several surrounding buildings, had already been reduced to ruins by the explosion.

The True Samadhi Fire continued to spread wildly, and the cultivators below would not be able to extinguish it anytime soon.

Only Celestial Immortal cultivators or above could bring the flames under control.

After all, the True Samadhi Fire was one of the Ten Divine Fires of the Immortal Realm, a legendary flame that had existed since the ancient primordial era.

Even now, among the countless new flames born within the Immortal Realm Civilization over the ages, very few could compare to the Ten Ancient Divine Fires.

It was only a batch of Seven-Refinement Golden Pills, so Dong Fangbai naturally had no intention of asking the notoriously overbearing Dragon Clan of the Immortal Realm for compensation.

Over the past hundred thousand years, the Dragon Clan had gradually recovered from the decline caused by the Dragon-Phoenix Great Tribulation of the primordial era.

The entire race had entered a period of explosive growth, to the point where even the major immortal courts were reluctant to provoke them.

One only needed to look at the several overlord-level dragonkin currently gathered in Qingyang World, along with the sheer number of pure-blooded five-clawed dragons, to understand how powerful the Dragon Clan had become.

And the forces currently present were merely a small portion of the dragonkin Suanni and the others had brought from the Immortal Realm.

Beyond the space-time passage, enormous numbers of three-clawed dragons, flood dragons, young horned dragons, horned dragons, coiled dragons, winged dragons, mirage dragons, snake dragons, fish dragons, and water lizard dragons were still waiting to be transported over.

The bloodlines within the Immortal Realm’s Dragon Clan were extraordinarily diverse.

Among them, the five-clawed dragons possessed the purest bloodlines, followed by the three-clawed dragons.

As for the flood dragons, young horned dragons, horned dragons, and the others, they were all considered collateral bloodlines.

By Magus World standards, these would all fall under the category of “sub-dragon species”.

However, the sub-dragon species of the Immortal Realm were far from weak.

After all, the Flood Dragon King managed to ascend to the sage realm and became the Great Sage Who Overturns the Seas.

The Torch Dragon lineage, despite its extremely small population, had also produced an overlord.

And because these collateral bloodlines were less pure, although they still faced reproduction difficulties, their fertility was far greater than that of pure-blooded dragons.

This time, the total number of dragons mobilized by the Dragon Clan of the Immortal Realm had already surpassed ten million!

Of course, not all of those ten million were pure-blooded dragons.

More than ninety percent consisted of collateral dragon species such as flood dragons, young horned dragons, and horned dragons.

That was not all of the Dragon Clan’s forces.

Within the Immortal Realm Civilization, any dragonkin that reached Rank Four and above over the past hundred thousand years had been granted the right to establish its own Dragon Palace.

Where there were Dragon Palaces, there would naturally be countless subordinates—shrimp soldiers, crab generals, aquatic tribes, and even some land-dwelling creatures serving as vassals.

These Dragon Palace servants and subordinate races formed the cannon-fodder legions of the Dragon Clan.

And when all those forces were added together, the final number became truly terrifying!

Calling it an army of billions would not be an exaggeration at all!

Translator’s Note:

1. Dong Fangbai’s name can be literally translated to White of East. ☜

2. The True Samadhi Fire (三昧真火) in Journey to the West is a divine, inextinguishable fire produced by the demon Red Boy, capable of burning even through rain or wind. Developed over 300 years of cultivation, Red Boy (the son of the Bull Demon King and Princess Iron Fan) breathed this fire, which nearly killed Sun Wukong, who was vulnerable to it despite his immortality. He was eventually subdued by the Goddess of Mercy and became the bodhisattva’s attendant. Now, he is worshipped as the Child of Wealth (善财童子). This is an idol of him:☜