These lofty Divine Path ancestors of the Demon Race never could have imagined that one day they would be scratching their heads over a single young cultivator, gathering together to study one up-and-coming human.
In the ancient era, apart from the Great Glazed Divine Sovereign, hardly anyone had ever commanded such attention from the Demon Race.
It was well known that the human race had experienced the Ancient Demon Sealing War, and their strength had plummeted. For this very reason, the Demon Race had believed that once they broke free from the seals and launched the Second Demon War, humanity would have virtually no way to resist. They had assumed the Second Demon War would be a sweeping victory—yet everything had turned out to be far more difficult than expected.
The earlier speaker's view had failed to gain everyone's agreement. The moment those words left his mouth, many voices rose in opposition.
"Jiang Chen's strength is hard to gauge. The intelligence from before said he hadn't even entered the Divine Path—he was merely a Celestial-realm cultivator. Now we're hearing his cultivation is inferior to Daoist Jin Xiao's. What exactly this fellow's power level truly is remains a mystery. Only someone who has actually fought him can form a reasonably clear assessment."
"Indeed. This fellow appears and disappears like a ghost—genuinely unfathomable."
The Heavenly Demon Ancestor spoke in a deep, solemn voice: "If his strength is sufficient to contend with Daoist Jin Xiao, then that alone is enough to warrant our serious attention. But if one day his power can suppress Ancestor Jin Xiao, then he will truly become a mortal threat to our Demon Race."
The Heavenly Demon Ancestor held Ancestor Jin Xiao's strength in high regard. Although he was a notch below the Heavenly Demon Ancestor himself, among the other Demon Race cultivators, almost none could claim to decisively surpass Ancestor Jin Xiao.
"If it were merely a matter of impressive strength, that would be one thing. But this fellow has enormous audacity, and he is endlessly cunning. Our initial teams of Divine Path cultivators who entered Myriad Abyss Island were outwitted by him time and again—that is what truly demands our attention."
Being ambushed once or twice could still be understood.
But time and again—four or five consecutive times, in fact—ancestors from various Demon Race lineages had been outmaneuvered by Jiang Chen, one after another. A success rate of one hundred percent. That was the most terrifying part.
This fully demonstrated that this human named Jiang Chen possessed not just strength, but courage, strategic thinking, and the ability to strike like a phantom.
All of these elements were indispensable.
The Demon Race ancestors once again brought out these successive defeats for repeated analysis.
The battle at the Huichun Island Domain had been a case of striking when the enemy was unprepared. One could say the Demon Race side had been careless and underestimated the enemy, never anticipating that this Jiang Chen was so formidable. They had been caught completely off guard, and this defeat was marginally acceptable.
But at the Imperishable Sacred Land, the Gold Demon lineage had Ancestor Jin Xiao—a powerhouse of that caliber—stationed there, and yet they had been fooled by Jiang Chen's diversionary tactic, resulting in the total annihilation of the Gold Demon lineage's forces.
After these two battles, the other Demon Race lineages should, in theory, have been put on sufficient alert.
Yet the Demon Beast and Giant Demon lineages of the Hundred Sacred Grounds were locked in endless infighting. The two demon factions were at each other's throats, and Jiang Chen exploited the chaos between them. As a result, not a single one of their four Divine Path ancestors survived.
Half of the deaths of the four ancestors from the Demon Beast and Giant Demon lineages could be attributed to their internal strife; the other half to the sheer cunning of their enemy.
As for the Fire Demon and Wing Demon lineages, they had been completely and utterly outwitted. The two ancestors of the Fire Demon lineage had, in particular, been deceived into walking straight to their own deaths.
The two ancestors of the Wing Demon lineage had been nearly as eager to march to their doom.