Chapter 482: Ambush

Li Hanqiu, Wan Liugui, and a small handful of other core figures had been told in advance and were already waiting for Yaoguang in the Southern Capital. As soon as he stepped out of the teleportation array, every face lit with delight.

"Sect Master Yao—" Li Hanqiu started to call out, then caught himself and immediately bowed. "Dao Lord Yaoguang!"

The others beside him saluted in turn. "Greetings, Dao Lord."

Yaoguang glanced over them. Only four had come to receive him: Li Hanqiu, Wan Liugui, Li Qingshan, and Su Yaoxue. All of them were his own people.

He smiled. "There's no need for all that. You know I don't care about pointless ceremony."

"Getting to salute a Dao Lord is the honor of a lifetime for Void-Piercing cultivators like us. Just humor us this once," Li Hanqiu said, the joy on his face almost overflowing.

Su Yaoxue, Li Qingshan, and Wan Liugui were staring at Yaoguang wide-eyed, and when they felt the Dao resonance he released with every movement, their excitement went beyond anything they could hold in.

Wan Liugui, in particular, with his deep foundation and the same void path Yaoguang walked, sensed that resonance for only a moment before his own comprehension of void Dao Techniques began climbing to an entirely new level.

If he could remain at Yaoguang's side for a while, the Void-Refining Realm might well be within reach in a matter of years.

"You really don't see Dao Lords often, do you? In a while I'll be spending several hundred years refining artifacts in the Heaven-Forsaken Valley, and all of you can come along. Call it looking after my daily needs or call it studying the void Dao resonance around me, either way. A few hundred years should be enough for the novelty of a Dao Lord to wear off," Yaoguang said with a smile.

"A Dao Lord represents the Great Dao itself. Unless a man comprehends the Great Dao and becomes a new Dao Lord himself, every moment spent beside one brings new insight," Wan Liugui said at once, and Li Hanqiu and Li Qingshan nodded in agreement.

Yaoguang didn't say more. "I'm heading to the border. Get things ready here and keep the city-protecting grand array running. There will be a period of upheaval. If it turns against us, fall back through the teleportation array to the Heavenly Dao Sect. If it all goes well, the Nine Cauldrons Sect is going to be reborn out of the fire, on the Yin Lunar Sect's ground."

Li Hanqiu's mind stirred, and he guessed at it quickly. "Are you going after the Black Lunar Fiend Sovereign?"

Only by destroying the Dao Lord behind a top-tier great sect could they truly take its territory. Then instinct told him something was off. "Isn't this a bit rushed?"

"Catching him off guard is the only way to kill him in one blow," Yaoguang said, and left it at that. "I know what I'm doing. Just get everything ready on your end."

Li Hanqiu, Wan Liugui and the others asked nothing further. After all these years together, their trust in Yaoguang was close to blind. If he said he knew what he was doing, they took it as fact.

Yaoguang gave them a few more instructions and did not linger in the Southern Capital, since the Penglai Dao Lord had already set out.

She was not like him. A void Dao Lord could keep his movements hidden and his whereabouts impossible to track, while she, in a head-on fight, could take on three opponents or even four without retreating an inch thanks to the strength of the Great Dao of origin, but her movement arts and concealment were not as impressive.

That was exactly why the Jade Scale Demon Paragon had been able to keep dodging her around the Deep-Blue Sea for centuries.

***

Each time Yaoguang drew on the power of the Great Dao and used Void Flicker, he crossed several million kilometers with ease, and that was at a comfortable pace. Otherwise, a single step would have covered not millions but tens of millions of kilometers.

Before long, he arrived at a fortress on the Wuzhou border. Inside, he sensed not only Mo Ye's aura but also three Void-Shattering cultivators of the void Dao, including the Void End Perfected Lord.

One Void Flicker brought Yaoguang into the palace without any of the man noticing a thing. Appearing and vanishing like that finally gave Yaoguang a little of the mystique the Penglai Dao Lord used to carry whenever she appeared out of nowhere.

Since he was standing in the middle of the hall, though, the Void End Perfected Lord reacted quickly enough, crying out in shock, "Who's there—"

Then he made out who it was, and horror, fear, and delight all surged through his eyes at once. A full half breath later the first two had drained away, leaving only an expression of joy that did not look entirely real. "Dao Lord Yaoguang!"

Using that joy to force everything else down, he bent into an exaggeratedly deep bow. "Greetings, Dao Lord! Congratulations on integrating with the Dao and becoming a Dao Lord! The universe is wide yours to roam now."

Yaoguang understood why a Void-Shattering cultivator on the Dao Lord Candidate Rankings would run through that sequence of feelings.

Their faces showed astonishment and disbelief at how swiftly Yaoguang had achieved Dao Integration. Beneath their outward delight, however, lay emotions that were harder to conceal—envy, jealousy, and the like.

He did not ask much of the Void End Perfected Lord and the others, though. Being useful was enough.

And now that news of his becoming a Dao Lord had reached these men, whatever thoughts they might have been entertaining would be buried for good.

Void-Shattering cultivators, even top figures on the Dao Lord Candidate Rankings, had no shame serving a Dao Lord. If that Dao Lord was willing to grant them a position, it was an honor.

And Yaoguang treated them far better than the Abyssal Ruins Dao Lord ever had. Once they truly accepted that he was a Dao Lord, they would only feel lucky and glad they had surrendered when they did.

"Save the courtesies. I'm about to move against the Black Lunar Fiend Sovereign of the Yin Lunar Sect. I'll be notifying Qi Sha of the battle lineage shortly. Gather your elites, join up with them, and come with me to the Yin Lunar Sect. Once I've killed Black Lunar, wipe out as many of the remaining fiendish cultivators as you can. I want zero risk of them troubling this land in the future," Yaoguang instructed.

"Killing Black Lunar!" Hearing him describe slaying a fiend sovereign of the Dao Integration Realm so casually sent a chill through the Void End Perfected Lord.

After the chill came the memory of what Yaoguang had done when he achieved Dao Integration, a record that had already spread across the whole North Sea Star. Killing the Black Lunar Fiend Sovereign was no empty boast. He had earned the title of top-tier Dao Lord with real kills.

At that thought, the Void End Perfected Lord's spirits lifted, and he cupped his hands forcefully. "I obey your decree!"

Yaoguang nodded. Speed was everything. After giving his orders to the Void End Perfected Lord, Mo Ye and the other senior figures in the city used Void Flicker again and made straight for the Yin Lunar Sect's main stronghold.

***

Inside that stronghold, the sect-protecting grand array was already running.

A level 15 array burned up to a million Pure Yang Grand Pills for a single day of operation, which came to three hundred million over a year, and running it for eight or ten years meant billions gone. Even for a Dao Lord, that was no small sum.

Outside the few decades when the Dao Contest was truly underway and the fighting was at its worst, few sects kept their sect-protecting arrays open for long. But to be certain, the Black Lunar Fiend Sovereign had accepted the cost.

Yet, that was as far as it went.

He seemed to think the attack of not long ago was over and done with, and that the curtain had fallen; it had never occurred to him that Yaoguang would come after him now.

After all, a man who had already cut down several Dao Lords in a row would give a bad impression by striking again so soon.

So he hadn't gone into hiding, nor had he taken shelter at the Heavenly Fiend Sect or any other great sect to let the wind pass. He had stayed in his own sect, refining certain rare objects behind the protection of his array.

Unfortunately, the sect-protecting array he trusted for his safety was something Yaoguang had studied a hundred years earlier.

Yaoguang had always intended for the Nine Cauldrons Sect to take the Yin Lunar Sect's territory and become the eleventh sect of the Immortal Dao, and the Yin Lunar Sect's sect-protecting array was one of the biggest obstacles in the way, so he had been working on it for a long time.

Even with the array active, a level 16 array caster striking who had prepared in advance could easily bring it to a standstill. A few moments after Yaoguang broke into the array and messed with it a little, that was exactly what happened.

The array was not entirely useless, though. The moment it stalled, Yaoguang's position was exposed.

The Black Lunar Fiend Sovereign's psychic thought caught the intrusion immediately, and his expression changed drastically. "Yaoguang?! You dare?!"

With the array suppressed, Yaoguang did not hesitate, immediately sending a Great Disintegration Technique crashing down on the Black Lunar Fiend Sovereign.

The Great Disintegration Technique was built on the foundation of the Great Void Disintegration Technique, in turn derived from the Great Void Technique that Yaoguang still could not perform. Put plainly, it was a quasi-immortal technique on par with a semi-immortal artifact.

As it smashed down, the void tremors it raised instantly ground every secondary array above the Yin Lunar Sect to dust, along with the fiendish cultivators manning them.

Feeling that horrifying momentum, as if the void itself were collapsing, the Black Lunar Fiend Sovereign showed no intention of fighting Yaoguang. He immediately turned into a stream of black flame and rushed for the foundation of the array Yaoguang had suppressed, apparently meaning to bring the array back to life.

At the same time, he sent an urgent message to the other eight great fiend sovereigns of the Six Great Fiendish Dao Sects. "Yaoguang has gone mad! He wants to completely slaughter our Six Great Fiendish Dao Sects! He's killing his way through my sect as I speak. We're all one family, so come quickly. I'll ensure you are all richly rewarded afterward!"

The message sent one fiend sovereign after another into a rage.

"Yaoguang?! How dare he! The nerve of that boy!"

"Have the Dao Lords of the Ten Great Immortal Dao Sects all gone mute? Can none of them discipline him? He has no sense of the rules at all! The Dao Contest hasn't even started, and he's killing Dao Integration cultivators for sport, just to show off his edge. Isn't he afraid we'll join with the other Dao Lords and come at him together?"

"Whatever else, bring Black Lunar back first and drive off this newly risen Dao Lord who doesn't know his own limits."

One fiend sovereign after another answered the call. But the Dao Lords actually willing to go support Black Lunar were exactly those Yaoguang had predicted. Only three Dao Integration cultivators: the Innate Fiend Sovereign, the Yellow Springs Fiend Sovereign, and the Nine Hells Fiend Sovereign.

And on the road they took to reach him, the Penglai Dao Lord had already arrived in time.