However, Lin Xiao had also said that this thing was practically a weapon of mass destruction against cultivators. Only in extraordinary circumstances should extraordinary measures be used. Under normal circumstances, the Binding Spirit Cage’s only fate was to remain sealed away in the sect’s treasury.
It was not to be used unless absolutely necessary.
Overusing something like this would make every cultivator wary. It could easily breed all sorts of negative repercussions within the cultivation world and seriously damage the positive image they had built in everyone’s eyes.
The Binding Spirit Cage was so sturdy that Venerable Gui Jia and his subordinate were driven to despair. No matter what they tried, they simply could not break out.
Nascent Soul cultivators generally comprehended a trace of the Laws of Space. Those with particularly high comprehension might even be able to tear open a tiny spatial rift for a brief moment—just barely large enough for one person to pass through.
However, doing so consumed a tremendous amount of spiritual power, and the distance one could cross was not particularly great. Even so, at a critical moment, an escape method capable of ignoring many external restraints could prove vital.
Unfortunately, Venerable Gui Jia’s cultivation had been piled up with resources, and his comprehension of the Laws of Space was practically nonexistent. Still, he had been a Nascent Soul cultivator for many years and had conducted some research and study in that area.
The spatial rift he could create was only the size of a needle’s eye.
With the situation growing dire, he had no choice but to give it a try. Yet he discovered that he could not tear open even the slightest spatial rift within the iron cage!
Who would have thought that this iron cage could not only neutralize spells, but even suppress the Laws of Space? Venerable Gui Jia could not help feeling that he had finally run into a truly formidable opponent.
What he did not know was that although using the Laws of Space also required spiritual power, if a Nascent Soul cultivator with profound attainments in spatial laws and a solid cultivation base had been present, they would still have been able to open a spatial rift inside the Binding Spirit Cage and escape.
Of course, that was assuming Liao Pantu had not noticed anything amiss and taken measures to counter it.
Venerable Gui Jia simply lacked the ability because, after the Binding Spirit Cage drained part of his spiritual power, the needle-eye-sized opening he could normally create could no longer be opened at all.
The two people inside the iron cage were at their wits’ end. Apart from bombarding the cage with spells nonstop, they had no idea what else they could do. All they could hope for was that the enormous iron cage would eventually buckle under their successive waves of attacks.
Venerable Gui Jia even considered having his subordinate self-destruct his Golden Core and take a gamble.
But the subordinate valued his life greatly. They had only been imprisoned, after all—it was not yet a life-or-death situation—so he naturally refused. He was afraid that even if they were rescued later, Venerable Gui Jia might cause trouble for him or deliberately make things difficult for him, but that would only matter if he got out alive. If he self-destructed, he would lose everything.
The subordinate understood this perfectly. No matter how nicely Venerable Gui Jia tried to persuade him, he refused to listen.
Thus, the two of them continued bombarding the Binding Spirit Cage while arguing with each other. With the cage silently absorbing their spiritual power, combined with the power they were consuming themselves, it did not take long for the spiritual power within both of them to be completely exhausted.
Liao Pantu paid no attention whatsoever to what they were doing inside the Binding Spirit Cage. He simply carried the enormous iron cage and headed back to Xiushui City.
Along the way, he first used the Lock Ring to tell Lin Xiao about what he had gained this time.
He took out the luxurious spirit ship he had collected in the past, locked the Binding Spirit Cage to the bow, and then leisurely reclined on a lounge chair across from it.
Beside the lounge chair was a small table piled high with all kinds of dishes, pastries, fruits, and vegetables, along with a jug of spirit wine that Jiang Youfu had brewed just a few days earlier.
He lifted a small wine cup, took a sip, and savored the lingering fragrance on his palate. Then, holding a jade slip in his other hand, he asked the subordinate, who was slumped weakly inside the Binding Spirit Cage, “What’s your code name in Wanwantong? And where’s your station?”
The subordinate glared at the old man opposite him with what he considered to be the fiercest, most vicious look he could manage, but said nothing.
Liao Pantu looked at him as though he were an idiot. “If you refuse to talk, I can kill you. At worst, I’ll just have to make one more trip afterward.”
With that, he immediately gave the two people inside the Binding Spirit Cage a full-force taste of a Deity Transformation cultivator’s pressure.
The two of them had already exhausted their spiritual power. Under this sudden, overwhelming pressure, they were instantly flattened onto the ground.
The subordinate was only at the Golden Core stage, so he suffered far more than Venerable Gui Jia. Venerable Gui Jia merely felt stifled and struggled to breathe, but he could still endure it.
The subordinate, however, began foaming at the mouth, his eyes rolling back until only the whites showed as he teetered on the verge of unconsciousness.
“You’re… actually a Deity Transformation cultivator!” Judging by his condition, Venerable Gui Jia was still holding up fairly well. He even had enough energy left to speak.
Liao Pantu merely glanced at him and could not be bothered to respond to the fool.
Neither of the two men from Wanwantong had expected the person before them to be a Deity Transformation cultivator!
This was the mortal world!
They had been in the mortal world for far too long and had long since grown accustomed to Nascent Soul cultivators being the strongest existence here. When a Deity Transformation cultivator suddenly appeared, their first thought was that some other force from the cultivation world must be trying to enter and seize control of the mortal world’s market.
But that did not make sense. The sects of the Northern and Southern Spirit Regions all knew that Wanwantong controlled the mortal world. They should not have intervened so casually.
Could it be another Spirit Region?
Just before the Golden Core subordinate truly passed out, Liao Pantu withdrew his pressure. These two would be excellent hands for reclaiming wasteland and farming in the future; he could not actually kill them.
Every laborer was extremely precious.
“Well? Are you talking now?”
“I’ll talk… I’ll talk! Please spare me, Senior!” Clearly, the subordinate’s mouth was no match for his stubborn resolve to die rather than yield.
Under Liao Pantu’s intimidation through his pressure and the suppression of his spiritual sense, the subordinate did not dare conceal anything or lie. He honestly gave them his code name and the location of his station.
Liao Pantu happily marked the man’s location off on his jade slip, indicating that he had been successfully captured. That meant one less place for him to visit.
Once Venerable Gui Jia, Wanwantong’s chief administrator in the mortal world, was successfully captured, Lin Xiao immediately sent a message to Li Zhanying.
In fact, before Senior Liao had set out to capture Venerable Gui Jia, Lin Xiao had already informed Li Zhanying of their plan to capture all of Wanwantong’s informants. The two sides had reached an agreement: as soon as the Lingxian Sect successfully captured the leader of the informants, the Li clan would use its network of connections to notify all the sects and royal families, asking them to help capture the remaining informants.
The mortal world had suffered under this group of cultivation-world informants for far too long.
The vast majority of sects and royal families took action as soon as they received the Li clan’s message.
The Li clan made it very clear to everyone that a sect in the Pusi Kingdom had already captured the leader of the informants, and that all the informants within the kingdom had been completely purged. If anything happened in the future, Wanwantong would inevitably hold the Pusi Kingdom—the one that had taken the lead—responsible. Besides, the law could not punish everyone, and Wanwantong naturally would not have the time or inclination to make an enemy of the entire mortal world.
They appealed to everyone with reason and emotion, speaking with such heartfelt sincerity about how the mortal world had been monitored, controlled, and suppressed by these informants for so many years that everyone felt they had no reason to refuse.
u Chenyuan transmigrated into a female-oriented novel about a real and fake heiress, becoming the CEO elder brother of both. Unfortunately, the entire Lu family—including himself, the CEO—were mere cannon fodder in the story. Determined to save himself, Lu Chenyuan took action. The spoiled, attention-seeking fake heiress? Thrown into the harsh realities of the working class to learn humility. The love-struck real heiress? Pushed toward academic excellence, so lofty goals would blind her to trivial romances. As for the betrayed, vengeful arranged marriage wife… the plot hadn’t even begun yet. There was still time—if he couldn’t handle her, he could at least avoid her. "CEO Lu, are you avoiding me?" Mo Qingli fixed her gaze on Lu Chenyuan. For the first time, the shrewd and calculating Lu Chenyuan felt a flicker of unease.
s the Eldest Princess, renowned for her cold and aloof detachment, became the most docile of lambs, obeying his every command without question. But when the final move was played on the chessboard, as Gu Chenghan seized everything and ascended on the verge of apotheosis, that very Princess suddenly embraced him from behind, her tone carrying a dependence never heard before: "Wait... you haven't yet... commanded me to love you forever." Gu Chenghan froze abruptly. She... hadn't been hypnotized?! ... [The Eldest Princess's Diary] [When my soul was extracted, becoming the sole spectator outside my own shell] [At first, there was overwhelming fury, until I saw] [How he used my sword to effortlessly shatter my inescapable doom] [How he wielded my authority to eradicate fatal conspiracies I had never even detected] [Like a deity, he rescued me from the deep mire I was trapped in] [If not for those annoying vixens, he and I would be a match made in heaven] [I think I am ill, gravely ill] [My deity should belong to me alone] ... "Hypnosis? Oh, it succeeded, my dear Master." "Only this time, it's my turn to hypnotize you."
e vast world of cultivation, where he becomes the master of the Heavenly Ruins Sacred Hall, a dying old man with barely a tenth of his former cultivation remaining. He is immediately confronted with a deadly crisis: his subordinates have rebelled, and his protectors are forcing him to abdicate. At the critical moment, the system descends from the heavens: [Ding! The host has been detected facing a life-or-death crisis. The system is now officially activated!] [As a gift, you have received the Supreme Beginner’s Pack and awakened the ultimate cheat: ten thousand years of pure cultivation essence every second!] Yin Tianjue: “Wait… ten thousand years of cultivation every second? That’s six hundred thousand years a minute, and in one day… I can’t even calculate it. Either way, I’m already invincible!” You’re a peerless prodigy rarely seen in ten thousand years? Sorry, I gain ten thousand years of cultivation every second. You’re an undying ancestor who has guarded a sacred land for countless ages? Sorry, I gain ten thousand years of cultivation every second. You’re the strongest chosen one, blessed with heaven-defying destiny? Sorry, I gain ten thousand years of cultivation every second. From this day forth, I have only one thing to say: “I gain ten thousand years of cultivation every second. Now, how exactly are you supposed to deal with that?”
e bizarre and supernatural had descended. The previous emperor was a thoroughgoing tyrant; no longer satisfied with human women, he had set his sights on a stunningly beautiful supernatural entity. He met his end in his bedchamber, drained of all his vital essence. As the legitimate eldest son and crown prince, Wang Hao was thus hastily enthroned, becoming the young emperor of the Great Zhou Dynasty. No sooner had he awakened the "Imperial Sign-In Intelligence System" than he was assassinated by a Son of Destiny—a classic villain's opening. The Great Zhou, ravaged by the former emperor's excesses, was in national decline. The great families within its borders harbored their own treacherous schemes, martial sects began to defy the imperial court's decrees, and border armies, their pay and provisions in arrears, grumbled incessantly against the central government. Fortunately, the central capital was still held secure by the half-million Imperial Guards and fifty thousand Imperial Forest Army who obeyed the court's orders, along with the royal family's hidden reserves of power, barely managing to suppress the realm. As the Great Zhou's finances worsened and supernatural activities grew ever more frequent, the court sat atop a volcano. Ambitious plotters everywhere dreamed of overthrowing the dynasty, and even some reclusive ancient powers emerged, attempting to sway the tides of the world. At the first grand court assembly, the civil and military officials nearly came to blows, fighting tooth and nail over the allocation of fifty million taels of silver from the summer tax revenues. The spectacle opened Wang Hao's eyes—the Great Zhou's bureaucracy was not only corrupt but also martially proficient, a cabinet of all-rounders. Some officials even had the audacity to suggest the emperor release funds from the imperial privy purse to address the emergency. Wang Hao suddenly felt weary. Let it all burn.
