When Yang Kai laid out the current situation, Mo Na Ye immediately realized he had been outmaneuvered once again. Yang Kai had deliberately left that sealed Domain Gate open to alert the Ink Race, prompting them to recall the Pseudo-King Lords from the frontlines. The realization filled Mo Na Ye with a deep sense of powerlessness and fury.
Yang Kai stood outside the Domain Gate, spreading his arms wide. "The momentum is on my side now. Your Pseudo-King Lords across every battlefield are pulling back, and I can seal this Domain Gate at any moment to intercept them. Even if you manage to break through the seal by force, it'll take you some time—and I can seal more than just this one gate!"
If he set out right now to hunt down the Pseudo-King Lords currently en route, every Domain Gate along their path would be sealed. Mo Na Ye wouldn't be able to pursue even if he wanted to.
With Yang Kai's current mastery of the Space Dao and his personal strength, sealing a Domain Gate was nothing more than a casual gesture. But for the Ink Race to forcibly break through those seals? That would require enormous effort.
The time and energy each side would need to expend were completely asymmetrical. The time gap Yang Kai could create through this method would be more than enough to cost the Ink Race a devastating number of Pseudo-King Lords.
"What exactly do you want?" Mo Na Ye asked in a low voice.
Yang Kai smiled faintly. "Now that's more like doing business." Dealing with someone as sharp as Mo Na Ye could sometimes be surprisingly easy—he didn't need everything spelled out for him to grasp the full picture, which saved a great deal of pointless argument. If the person in charge had been some short-tempered, reckless fool, things might have already devolved into a fight.
And that was precisely what Yang Kai wanted to avoid.
"The Ink Race's next generation of King Lords hasn't emerged yet, so your Pseudo-King Lords are your most critical fighting force—every single one of them is indispensable. And you don't have any more Innate Domain Lords to spare. Every Pseudo-King Lord lost is one fewer for good." Yang Kai spoke with an easy confidence. "So here's what I'll do—I won't push you into a corner. One Pseudo-King Lord, one million units of Grade-5 resources. You can count how many Pseudo-King Lords you have out there and pay accordingly."
"Have you lost your mind?" Mo Na Ye stared at him in disbelief, shocked by the enormity of his demand.
Even if it was only Grade-5 resources, a million units per Pseudo-King Lord was an absurd price. And how many Pseudo-King Lords were deployed across the frontlines? Across twelve battlefields, there had to be close to two hundred.
That meant nearly twenty million units of Grade-5 resources!
Mo Na Ye had known Yang Kai's appetite would be large, but he hadn't expected it to be quite this enormous. It was nearly impossible to accept.
Yang Kai said calmly, "Resources are nothing to the Ink Race. But Pseudo-King Lords are a different matter entirely. Think it over carefully."
Mo Na Ye said through gritted teeth, "That's too much!" At this point, he was perfectly willing to trade resources for the safety of those Pseudo-King Lords. But Yang Kai's asking price was beyond the pale. Every unit of resources the Ink Race handed over would become capital for humanity's growth. The more they gave, the stronger humanity would become in the future.
At that thought, Mo Na Ye suddenly realized—this might be Yang Kai's true objective in coming to the Gate of No Return!
He knew that humanity was currently starving for resources. The Ink Race had the entire Ink Battlefield as its logistical backbone, funneling supplies to the frontlines. But what did humanity have? Only the accumulated reserves of their major Sects, and no matter how vast those reserves might be, they wouldn't last forever.
When that day came and humanity had no resources to fuel their cultivation, the progress of every warrior would stall—and the birth of new Open Heaven Realm masters would dry up entirely.
So no matter what, humanity had to solve its resource crisis. Yang Kai's outrageous demand suddenly made perfect sense.
As for the previous trades he'd made with the Ink Race, that had simply been a slow escalation, applying pressure layer by layer…
Now that he thought about it, that earlier deal had been utterly pointless for the Ink Race. All it had done was hand over an entire fortress to Yang Kai for nothing in return.
"My terms are non-negotiable. You have the time it takes for one incense stick to discuss it among yourselves. If you don't agree, then there's nothing more to talk about—I'll set off immediately to intercept your Pseudo-King Lords. Let's see how many of them make it back alive. I think the Domain Gate connecting Shattered Heaven to the Three Thousand Worlds would be a good battlefield for that!" Yang Kai's tone left no room for compromise.
Mo Na Ye's eyes nearly split with fury. The cluster of Pseudo-King Lords behind him seethed with rage, their interrogative gazes constantly flicking toward Mo Na Ye, as though a single command from him would send them all charging forward to tear Yang Kai apart.
Mo Na Ye's expression shifted several times. He was visibly struggling to suppress the killing intent roiling within him. But in the end, he gave no order. His towering rage was forced back down.
Because he knew that even if he did give the order, there was nothing they could do to Yang Kai. The Domain Gate was right behind him—the moment the Ink Race made the slightest move, he could slip through it in an instant.
In truth, Mo Na Ye didn't object to trading resources for the safety of those Pseudo-King Lords. What infuriated him was that Yang Kai's asking price was completely outrageous, and he wasn't even allowed to haggle.
They had been able to negotiate before, after all!
But he couldn't deny it—Yang Kai's strategy had struck directly at the Ink Race's weakest point. If he truly carried out what he'd just described, a great many Pseudo-King Lords would fall.
When those Pseudo-King Lords withdrew from the frontlines, they would necessarily pass through the Domain Gate leading into Shattered Heaven—that was a chokepoint with no alternative route. All Yang Kai had to do was wait there, and the prey would walk right into his hands.
Meanwhile, any Ink Race rescue force would have to travel through the Void Domain and cross the entire breadth of Shattered Heaven. Never mind that the journey would take far longer than Yang Kai's route—just breaking through those sealed Domain Gates would consume a considerable amount of time.
By the time they arrived, everything would likely be too late.