Sage Monarch (Sage Emperor)

One after another, the spacetitans rushed forth to attack.

All of the spacetitans were huge, but had various forms. Some looked human, some looked like animals, some looked like magical treasures or even swords.

Roar!

A group of them were charging in formation, making something like a gigantic mountain pulsing with the vital energies of death, water, fire, and wind.

RUMBLE!

Yang Qi thrust his hands out and a primal-chaos elder-snake appeared behind him, its mouth open so wide it gobbled up the incoming mountain like a python swallowing an egg. Then cracking sounds rang out, after which the snake burped, exhaling a stream of baleful energy.

Yang Qi wasn’t saying anything; he was simply bowling people over by his actions. Some of the old-timers were analyzing what they were seeing and began conferring via divine sense.

“Was that... a consummate technique of King Heaven-Devourer?”

“We have to be very careful around this Mister Second. It won’t be easy dealing with him. Could it be that he really is some sort of ancient devil?”

“I think so. And I bet he's going to be even more formidable once we get to the Bastille of the One God.”

“How are we supposed to handle him?”

“Calm down. The more strength he reveals, the more it stirs my fighting spirit. This situation couldn't be better. Heh heh heh.”

Some of these people obviously viewed Mister Second as a worthy opponent. Yang Qi ignored them. After consuming each spacetitan, he would send its quintessence straight to the sage monarch magistrates, causing more duplicates to appear.

‘This kind of slaughter is great. I now have a few hundred sage monarch magistrates. If we keep having fights like this, and they’re all with spacetitans, I bet I’ll end up with a few thousand of them. Maybe even ten thousand or more. At that point, I won’t even need to fear Patriarch Deva. Furthermore, I’ll be able to take advantage of the situation in the Bastille of the One God to either kill or enslave all of these people going in with me. They’re the cream of the crop from three powerful sects. If I take control of three organizations like that, how many resources would I have at my disposal?’ Yang Qi felt like his path forward was as bright as could be.

“Die!”

The other experts present had already banded together to fight the incoming spacetitans.

Grand Prince Yi attacked with the other experts from the Deva Dynasty, shooting out something that looked like a spider web, which spread out and captured several spacetitans. Any who were trapped quickly fell asleep and physically shrank.

Of course, Grand Prince Yi and the others couldn’t assimilate the spacetitans. The spacetitans were a combination of divine power and space-time elements that couldn't be easily broken down.

The best thing to do would be to subdue them and take them back to the headquarters, where they could be safely kept in a god kingdom and used for training disciples. As for trying to turn them into pets or thralls, that was too unrealistic.

The fact that spacetitans could pierce through space-time made it very difficult to keep them tame. If they regained their thoughts, they could easily slip free and cause chaos.

“Nine Dragons Hegemony!” shouted the people from the Nine Dragons Court.

Nine enormous dragons appeared, swirling through heaven and earth to surround some of the spacetitans, causing them to drop like flies.

As for the monks from the Sumeru Temple, they summoned a huge buddha dragon that unleashed dhāraṇī incantations, causing shining buddhist halos to shoot out. When the light hit the spacetitans, they instantly turned on each other and started tearing each other to pieces.

It was an act of purification, although the spacetitans couldn’t be permanently purified. They would only remain in that state for about ten breaths of time. However, that was long enough for them to damage each other and allow the monks to swoop in and finish the attack.

“Incredible,” Yang Qi said at the sight of it. He was very impressed with the monks.

He had a remarkable ability from the buddhist schools, the Secret-Ensconcing All-World Anything-Everything Fundamental-Law Magic. Because of that, he had a deep understanding of buddhist arts and their methods of purification. Once such arts were used on someone, they would become free of all mortal thoughts and willing to devote their life to buddhism.

As for the spacetitans, they would revert from a state of purification within a few short moments. The upside was that in those short moments of purification, they would ruthlessly attack each other.

Another primal-chaos elder-snake appeared behind Yang Qi, which swept back and forth gobbling up spacetitans like ants.

It even grabbed the corpses of those killed by the Nine Dragons Court.

Pure power coursed into Yang Qi.

Several hours passed in which the hordes of spacetitans didn’t seem to end. Yang Qi slaughtered to his heart’s content, and as a result, produced about a dozen more sage monarch magistrates. He was very pleased.

The other experts were already starting to pop medicinal pills to recover their spent godpower. It wasn’t that they were getting exhausted, but rather that they always needed to be at their peak level, just in case things got really dangerous.

“Die!”

Yang Qi unleashed another burst of power, cutting down a host of spacetitans.

This time, in addition to the primal-chaos elder-snake, he summoned a river of sword light consisting of millions upon millions of swords that slashed the spacetitans to pieces.

“That looks like... the Unbounded Sword River of the ancient Lord of the Sword Dao! According to the stories, he would use an endless supply of swords to create a river just like that. But wait, there’s something different about it. The aura of the Unbounded Sword River was pure and mighty, but this aura seems to contain both life and death at the same time!” [1]

“What a mighty expression of power!”

“He looks like he's hardly expending any effort at all!”

“Mister Second is really living up to his reputation. No wonder Patriarch Deva acted so respectful toward him.”

That was what the people from the Deva Dynasty were thinking.

The truth was that the members of these three groups were mostly mid Paramount Gods with mid Unbounded will convergences. Their psychic scales and power indexes weren’t particularly high, only ranging from twenty to fifty million.

The sickly young sir from the Dragonfolk, the monk with the crew cut, and the wooden-faced young man all had godhood ratings and psychic scales of roughly ninety million.

The ordinary members were so weak that, to them, the methods Yang Qi was using seemed supernatural.

Meanwhile, Yang Qi wasn’t even looking at them. He was just cutting down the spacetitans and using them to make more sage monarch magistrates. The process to split a sage monarch magistrate into a new one was actually rather slow. Even after several hours of slaughter, he had only produced about a dozen.

Twang. Strum.

All of a sudden, a sound reached their ears that resembled someone vigorously playing a zither. In response, the spacetitans seemed to surge into greater action.

Roar!

Even those that had been hit with the light of purification suddenly sloughed it off.

“Not good!” someone cried. “The most mysterious and strange of all spacetitans have appeared. Zithertitans!”

Yang Qi looked over, and to his surprise saw some spacetitans that were larger than the others, each of them as large as multiple enormous continents put together. They were zithertitans, which physically resembled ancient zithers, and emanated the constant sound of frenzied zither music.

They actually didn’t look particularly intimidating, and resembled magical treasures more than living beings. That said, they were nothing particularly unusual. There was a heaven-devil called the zitherdemon heaven-devil, and they also resembled ancient zithers, just not as large as these.

As soon as the zither music reached Yang Qi’s ears, he felt a sudden desire to run away. And the other experts weren’t faring any better! The early Paramount Gods’ faces drained of blood, and they quickly pulled out magical treasures to protect themselves. Some of them coughed up blood, while others began fleeing, their eyes blank with fear.

“Not good!” someone else shouted. “With zithertitans present, this horde of spacetitans will be even harder to deal with. How come these things have never appeared on this path before? Something is going on. Something has attracted these things. Everybody, run!”

“Run from what?” Yang Qi said, laughing coldly. “I’ll kill these zithertitans. I can't believe you people are actually scared of these things.”

All of a sudden, the mocking voice of the burly Buddha Exterminator could be heard from the Dragonfolk. “Well, why don’t you go show us how strong you are, Mister Second?”

One of the experts from the Sumeru Temple added, “Yes, let’s see what Mister Second can do. We waited a whole month for him in the Deva Dynasty because he was cultivating a special ability for use on this mission. Let’s see him use it on this horde and wipe them out!”

Snorting coldly, Yang Qi burst into motion. A huge pair of wings sprouted from his back as he shot into the spatial tempests. These weren’t the Freedom Wings from the Strength of the Hell-Crushing Godmammoth, but rather something from the Sage Monarch Grand Magic. They were the Tribulation Wings!

1. The Unbounded Sword River was originally mentioned in chapter 1101, then in a few subsequent chapters.