When the members of the expeditionary force to the Celestial Realm saw Li Chang’an return, they knew they had won the lopsided battle.
Li Chang’an, however, didn’t feel particularly happy. He turned and headed toward the location of the Celestial Realm’s core.
He was going to completely destroy this pocket dimension. Its existence siphoned off too much Heaven and Earth Energy, making it impossible for anyone in the Lower Realm to even begin cultivating.
The so-called core of the Celestial Realm was, in fact, a vast and intricate Array.
Li Chang’an observed it for a long time with his Heaven-defying Comprehension, eventually understanding and replicating the entire Array. He then modified it with his own mastery of the Dao of Arrays, effectively installing a forced self-destruct program. Once he left, the program would activate. The Array would then shatter, and the Celestial Realm, deprived of its operational Energy Core, would plummet from the heavens.
After finishing all this, Li Chang’an plundered the many ruined palaces of the Celestial Realm, seizing countless rare and priceless treasures seldom seen in the Lower Realm.
Many of them were even potent enough to be useful to Li Chang’an at his current level.
Having extracted every last bit of value, Li Chang’an led his men away from the Celestial Realm without a second glance. As for the Celestial Realm’s soldiers, those who surrendered were spared. For those who refused to surrender and insisted on a futile last stand, Li Chang’an had no patience to annihilate or persuade them. He simply left them in the collapsing Celestial Realm to fend for themselves.
The expeditionary force returned, victorious, from the Celestial Realm...
The moment this news broke, the entire Mortal Realm erupted in an uproar.
At first, no one believed it.
And they couldn’t be blamed. After all, the idea that ’the Immortal Gods of the Celestial Realm are untouchable’ had been branded into the minds of everyone in the Mortal Realm for years.
Even though Li Chang’an’s fame and power had soared in recent years, their opponents were the high and mighty Immortals who looked down upon the Mortal Realm and saw all life as mere ants!
Normally, a mortal even daring to face the Immortal Gods was an act of commendable bravery. How could a small, weak Expeditionary Army possibly achieve victory?
Yet no matter how much they refused to believe it, the truth was laid bare before them, raw and undeniable.
The Celestial Realm’s army in their special armor was defeated. Thousands of captives were being herded by the expeditionary force like declawed pets. Everything they saw indicated that Li Chang’an and his followers weren’t just boasting this time. Or if they were, it wasn’t by much...
Following Li Chang’an’s departure, the colossal, high-and-mighty Celestial Realm began to teeter on the brink of collapse as its Array disintegrated.
Meanwhile, as the Celestial Realm crumbled, something was felt on a distant planet at the edge of the universe. The Immortal Gods of the Celestial Realm, currently in the middle of conquering that world, all sensed it at once. Their eyes flew open, as if they could see what was happening to their home base across tens of thousands of light-years.
But no matter how shocked, furious, and disbelieving they were, the fact remained: while they were away conquering other worlds, their own nest had been raided!
For Cultivators of the Incense and Candle Divine Dao, all their power comes from Incense.
Now that their home base had been raided and their source of Incense destroyed, they wouldn’t be affected in the short term. However, if they failed to restore their authority to its peak for a prolonged period, a fall in their Realm was inevitable!
After repeatedly confirming that their senses weren’t deceiving them, the Celestial Monarchs leading the army unanimously decided to abandon their plan to conquer the planet. They would immediately return to the Main World and see just who had the audacity to shake their very foundation.
An ancient and exquisitely crafted spaceship slowly ascended. It bore several obvious patches, signs of past repairs. The Immortal Gods of the Celestial Realm piloted the vessel, turning it back toward the coordinates of their home planet.
If the Seventh Generation Human Emperor were still alive, he would have instantly recognized it as the very same ship that had landed on his planet tens of thousands of years ago.
...
At Li Chang’an’s direction, news of the Celestial Realm’s destruction spread like wildfire. Humans in many regions even witnessed it firsthand, seeing giant boulders and fragments of mountains fall from the clouds. Palaces shattered into dust upon impact with the ground.
Once the news was confirmed, the power and influence of the Human Race surged everywhere. Courage and hope filled every human heart. In stark contrast, the various other races, the Guardian Gods, and even the lapdogs of the Celestial Realm were thrown into a panic. Discovering that the Celestial Realm had been destroyed, they lived in constant fear, feeling as if the apocalypse had arrived.
Seizing the opportunity while their enemies’ morale was in turmoil and their foundations were shaken, the God Eater Alliance led its armies to conquer several major cities in the southeast. More and more humans began to follow the Martial Dao, and the Incense and Candle Divine Dao weakened at a rate visible to the naked eye.
The only remaining bastion of resistance for the Incense and Candle Divine Dao was the Central Plains, the region once most tightly controlled by the Immortal Gods. At this rate, however, it was only a matter of time before the Central Plains also fell to the God Eater Alliance.
As for Li Chang’an, the architect of all this chaos, he had scarcely been seen in public since returning from the Celestial Realm.
This wasn’t because he was injured, as many speculated, but because he was taking stock of his gains.
After conquering the Celestial Realm, Li Chang’an had seized innumerable treasures from its Treasure Pavilion and Library Pavilion. Of course, common valuables like gold and silver held little interest for him; he simply tossed them aside without a second thought.