Looking back over the hundreds of thousands of years spanning the ages, there was absolutely no doubt that Fu Guang held the record for the most Ink Clan Royal Lords slain.
Back during the Ink Battlefield, while there were precedents of human Ninth Rank ancestors successfully slaying Royal Lords, no single Ninth Rank had ever accumulated such a staggering number of kills against Royal Lords.
Fu Guang's extraordinary record was the product of a unique situation, one that could never be replicated.
Under Wu Kuang's full control, the Primordial Grand Restriction's gap allowed Innate Domain Lords to pass through safely, but Royal Lords could not. Any who attempted to force their way through were invariably wounded by the Restriction.
None of the Royal Lords who burst through the Primordial Grand Restriction emerged unscathed. Most were left with only seventy or eighty percent of their strength. Against a powerhouse like Fu Guang, they stood no chance of survival.
Wu Kuang had paid a tremendous price for this. Though he now possessed Ninth Rank cultivation, controlling the Primordial Grand Restriction demanded his undivided attention, to the point where even his own personal cultivation had been neglected. When Yang Kai had come to him seeking information, Wu Kuang had exchanged only a few brief words before swiftly cutting off contact, fearing that the slightest distraction might cause a critical error.
With the Primordial Grand Restriction temporarily stable, Yang Kai had no need to worry — and in truth, there was nothing he could have done to help even if he had wanted to.
He had also made time to visit the Chaos Death Domain, delivering a generous supply of Five Elements resources to Ruoxi. The last time he had seen her, he had left behind some cultivation materials, but they were only enough to sustain her for a thousand years. Now, with several hundred of those years already passed, Ruoxi's reserves were likely running thin.
After years apart, Ruoxi's strength had improved remarkably. Her aura was undoubtedly several times denser and more refined than when she had first ascended to the Eighth Rank.
Several factors had contributed to this. One was the continuous refinement of her Heavenly Punishment Bloodline. Another was the expansion of her Small Universe's foundation.
The latter was especially significant. Ordinary warriors cultivating and refining resources needed to process all seven varieties — Yin, Yang, and the Five Elements. But Ruoxi had Brother Huang and Sister Lan to assist her. For her Yin and Yang attributes, she merely needed to absorb the essence of the Sun and the Supreme Yin, with no need to bother refining Yin-Yang elemental resources at all. This shortened her cultivation time by a full twenty to thirty percent compared to ordinary practitioners.
Both Brother Huang and Sister Lan attached great importance to Ruoxi's cultivation, and over the years had been pushing her to refine the Five Elements resources without a moment's rest.
Ruoxi herself was the sort of person who could endure solitude and hardship. She understood all too well that only by making herself strong could she shine with her own light in the great battles to come. As such, she had redoubled her diligence over the years.
With all of this combined, her advancement in strength was naturally swift beyond measure.
In the blink of an eye, a full thousand years had passed since the agreement with Manaye and the acquisition of thirty percent of the Ink Clan's resources. During those millennia, apart from his visits to the Chaos Death Domain and the Primordial Grand Restriction, Yang Kai had been perpetually dashing between the Non-Return Pass, the human race's resource extraction bases, and the Human Race's General Headquarters — serving as a living transport courier to ensure the best possible conditions for the cultivation of the human warriors.
When one's strength was modest, centuries and millennia stretched out endlessly. But once one had truly grown powerful — especially in the current era where the two races had been locked in warfare for millennia — a thousand years was no longer anything worth noting.
Yang Kai had not actively cultivated during these years. In his spare time, he had devoted himself to contemplating his own Dao of Space-Time.
Even so, he had already reached the pinnacle of the Eighth Rank. The expansion of his Small Universe had reached its absolute limit, and he could clearly perceive the invisible barrier at the borders of his Small Universe's territory, constraining any further refinement of his power.
This was the innate bottleneck created by the Open Heaven method. Throughout all of history, aside from Zhang Ruoxi, who possessed the Heavenly Punishment Bloodline and could disregard this limitation, no one had ever managed to break through it.
At the Non-Return Pass, inside the great hall, Manaye was reviewing the flood of intelligence pouring in from the front lines — which battlefields had come under heavy human assault and suffered devastating losses, requiring reinforcements; where a Domain Lord had fallen and strong fighters needed to be redeployed…
In recent years, he could clearly sense that the war between the Human and Ink Clans had grown more intense than ever before. This was not merely the natural progression of events, but also a result of both races' continued accumulation of powerful warriors.
After all this time, the numbers of both human Eighth Ranks and Ink Clan Domain Lords far exceeded what they had been in earlier days.
With more powerhouses on both sides, battles naturally grew fiercer.
Manaye had a nagging feeling that the current balance between the two races could not last much longer. Once the number of powerhouses on either side crossed a critical threshold — or if some other catalyst emerged — the tide of war between the two races could sweep across the cosmos in an instant.
He had been handling the Ink Clan's affairs on behalf of the Royal Lord Mo Yu for many years, and processing intelligence of this nature was second nature to him.
The only headache was the Ink Clan's other False Royal Lord, Meng Que.
Ever since ascending to the rank of False Royal Lord, the fellow had grown restless, itching to venture out and slay human powerhouses to prove his strength. Fortunately, the Royal Lord had not permitted it. Setting aside the prior agreement with Yang Kai that False Royal Lords should not appear so openly on the battlefield — even without that agreement, Meng Que was a hidden trump card of the Ink Clan. How could they expose him so carelessly?
Killing a handful of human powerhouses would not change the larger picture. Meng Que needed to appear at a far more critical juncture, ideally one that could turn the tide of power between the two races in a single stroke and lay the foundation for the Ink Clan's victory.
Moreover, Manaye suspected that the humans had produced a newly ascended Ninth Rank Open Heaven cultivator. Xiang Shan, for instance, had not been seen for many years. If Meng Que were exposed, the humans might very well have countermeasures prepared.
He was thinking of the Ink Clan's interests, thinking of Meng Que's interests — yet Meng Que showed not a shred of gratitude. Over the years, the fellow had grown increasingly insolent in his presence. The Royal Lord had forbidden him from leaving the Non-Return Pass, and Meng Que had even begun harboring notions of splitting authority.
This secretly infuriated Manaye. Back when over a dozen Innate Domain Lords had performed the Art of Convergence, how was it that only Meng Que among them had succeeded?
Manaye did not consider himself someone who clung to power. Everything he did was for the Ink Clan's unification of the heavens. But Meng Que's bid for shared authority was something he absolutely could not permit. After commanding the Ink Clan for so many years, he understood better than anyone the difference between orders issued by one hand and orders issued by two.