Bloodline Upgrade, System Upgrade

Demon Immortal Realm.

The sudden opening of the Nine Empyrean Realm’s Immortal Path caught many demon clans with branch families in that realm off guard.

Over the years, though they had maintained intermittent contact with their lower-realm branches, the Immortal Path was blocked, restricting communication to mere information exchange, leaving them unable to offer any substantial support.

Those branch families were left to fend for themselves in the lower realm, their rise or fall depending entirely on their own fate.

All the top echelons of the demon clan powers were well aware of the domineering and overbearing Heavenly Balance Court in the Human Immortal Realm.

They also clearly remembered that a thousand years ago, it was the Court that had sealed the lower realm’s ascension passage, forcefully blocking the Nine Empyrean Realm’s Immortal Path, trapping countless cultivators in the mortal world to die.

A thousand years of pent-up resentment had left each demon clan simmering with bitterness, yet they remained silent, swallowing their anger without daring to act.

In the Human Immortal Realm, the strength of the five central great clans was absolute; each could easily crush the top demon clansmercilessly. Only a coalition of several demon clans could hope to contend with one of these families.

Yet even powers as mighty as these had once been no match for the Heavenly Balance Court, which had forcefully overwhelmed and expelled them from the central territory—a testament to the Court’s terrifying dominion and might.

The core formation eye sealing the Immortal Path of the Nine Empyrean Realm remained under the Court’s control, and none dared to challenge them directly in the Human Immortal Realm.

If the seal were to be broken, the only avenue lay within the Nine Empyrean Realm itself.

But that seal was woven from countless converging Laws—it required cultivators who mastered many different Laws to break it simultaneously—a condition the lower realm’s cultivators could never fulfill.

Thus, over recent years, most demon clans with branches in the Nine Empyrean Realm chose to abandon them to their fate.

They still kept tenuous contact with their branches, quietly watching the events in the lower realm.

......

In recent days, the Celestial Court had fallen silent.

Four peaks, enveloped by immortal mist, emitted a faint, radiant glow. Palace halls and towers stood gracefully among the clouds, which wreathed the mountainsides—everything serene and peaceful.

Gu Changyuan’s ten ancestral demon disciples had grown acutely aware of the transformations since they entered the immortal realm and began cultivating on their Demon Peak.

As they absorbed the supremely pure, primal immortal essence of the Immortal Realm, their ancient bloodlines—dormant for a thousand years—and their petrified demon cores began to stir.

All showed a powerful trend of evolution: shackles loosening, hinting at imminent breakthrough and transformation.

Sensing this once-in-a-millennium opportunity, the ten disciples briefly organized their dwellings on the peak, set down their necessities, and immediately secluded themselves.

They retreated into the Celestial Demon Pagoda, located at the heart of Demon Peak, where they dedicated their efforts to refining their bloodlines, reshaping their demon cores, and pressing toward the ultimate transformation of their lineage.

Atop the Celestial Demon Pagoda’s tenth story, ten beams of dazzling light flared simultaneously, shimmering and radiating, instantly engulfing the entire Demon Peak in a magnificent, luminous sea.

Torrents of vast demonic pressure radiated outward, covering the entire majestic peak in a divine, boundless splendor.

Even beyond the ten core disciples, others among the demon clan cultivators on the peak began to show similar signs of bloodline awakening and immense power surges—among them, Tushan Hanyan.

Such earth-shattering commotion on Demon Peak naturally alarmed all the disciples from the Human Peak and the Demon Peak.

The crowd stopped in their tracks to gaze into the distance, fixating on the demonic peak where colorful clouds filled the sky, auspicious vapors churned, and the resonance of the Dao surged. Their eyes brimmed with intense curiosity and envy.

Gu Changyuan lay back in a rocking chair in the rear courtyard of the Heavenly Palace, his gaze fixed on the direction of the demonic peak. He watched the ten beams of colorful light shoot into the sky, observing how the radiance wove, collided, and merged in the heavens. A faint smile curled at the corner of his lips.

All of this was unfolding as he had foreseen.

Back in the Nine Empyrean Realm, he had already vaguely sensed that this world imposed severe Heavenly Dao suppression on the bloodline levels and demon core grades of ancient demon cultivators. The bloodlines of ancient divine beasts were forcibly sealed, unable to unleash their true power.

After all, the ten disciples of the demonic ancestor included supreme ancient divine beasts such as Lu Wu, Nine-Headed Xiangliu, the omniscient Bai Ze, and the Temporal Zhulong—beings with the most exalted bloodlines.

Born as the pinnacle transcendent physiques of the cosmos, Gu Changyuan had long since conducted a meticulous examination of their bloodline origins: pure, flawless, and without any deficiency.

For a thousand years, their saint-rank demon cores and bloodlines had never been inherently deficient. Rather, they had been forcibly suppressed and sealed by the Heavenly Dao of the Nine Empyrean Realm.

The Nine Empyrean Realm’s carrying capacity was too low—it could not accommodate such advanced bloodlines. Thus, from the moment they were born, the awakening of their bloodlines had been constrained below a certain threshold.

Now that they had entered the Immortal Realm, the suppression was gone, and their bloodlines would naturally begin to evolve.

Nor was it just them.

Gu Changyuan discovered that after his own arrival in the Immortal Realm, his system had secretly undergone an upgrade over the past few days.

After finishing his cultivation practice with the two sisters, he habitually opened the system panel and was surprised to find the interface had changed.

The system’s talent rating scale, which previously went up to a maximum of ten, had now been expanded to a maximum of twenty.

He reassessed the talents of Mo Yingluo and Mo Yingyue. Their ratings had increased from ten to twenty.

According to the system’s evaluation criteria, a talent score of twenty was a rarity in the Immortal Realm—something that appeared only once in ten thousand years. In other words, there were two peerless prodigies of this caliber by his side.

No, it wasn’t just two.

Gu Changyuan scrolled through the talent assessments of his other disciples.

Ye Qingxue: twenty.

Lin Jingyu: twenty.

Bai Ling’er: nineteen.

Yue Lingxi: nineteen.

Gu Changyuan raised an eyebrow slightly at these numbers.

Nineteen was a single point lower than twenty.

But in the Immortal Realm, a talent rating of nineteen was still an unreachable standard for billions of cultivators.

Furthermore, the talents of Bai Ling’er and Yue Lingxi could not be measured by numbers alone.

Xiao Yi, Qin Yu, Fang Yuwei, Yun Tianhe, Xu Mengyao, and Han Feng—all were rated at nineteen.

The ten demonic disciples, after the system’s upgrade and reassessment, currently ranked between sixteen and fifteen.

But Gu Changyuan knew this was not their final talent level.

Once their bloodline evolution completed and their demon cores underwent transformation, their talents would likely rise to around nineteen.

As for the demonic disciples, those with the Wuxiang Demon Seeds were all rated at twenty.

Those with the Sacred Demon Seeds were rated at nineteen.