Her voice was frigid as she said, "It was your weakness that allowed me to enslave you. It was also your weakness that made it impossible for you to escape from the danger that you just encountered. Yet you blame me?"
"Perhaps the only thing you could blame me for is taking your Cave Heaven and preventing you from resurrecting. But your Cave Heaven became rightfully mine when I enslaved you, so you only have yourself to blame."
Her voice was full of disdain as she spoke. Clearly, she despised him. It was also clear that she didn’t feel any regret for his death.
She shook her head in disgust one more time. Then she said to her other subordinates, "Find a replacement for him."
That was all she was going to do about his death. She wasn’t going to seek revenge for Shadow Body or feel disrespected that someone had killed her subordinate because she genuinely didn’t care about the life and death of any of her subordinates.
In her alliance, there is nothing like a communal reserve of lifespan that everyone can use. Everyone in her alliance can only rely on themselves.
She does collect a living tax from her subordinates. This living tax is the world essence that her subordinates have to pay to her every year so that they can continue living.
If they don’t pay the living tax, she will kill them and replace them with someone else who can pay. But aside from this, her subordinates are free to do whatever they want.
She doesn’t have a business empire like the Thorn House of Commerce that her subordinates have to run for her. They can do anything they want in their free time.
The freedom she gave her subordinates and the fact that they needed to pay her world essence were why Shadow Body had taken it upon himself to stalk Many Eyes without seeking permission from her.
Shadow Clone didn’t think there was going to be a problem with stalking Many Eyes. After all, even rank 8 cultivators were unlikely to discover him.
Unfortunately, he ran into a problem before he could find a world to plunder for world essence. So instead of getting world essence to pay his living tax, he had to come to her to beg her to save him.
To no one’s surprise, she didn’t save him. Her subordinates couldn’t be surprised because even begging her for more time to pay their living tax wasn’t going to work, much less asking her to take action to save people.
So even though Shadow Body was the strongest subordinate under her command, they weren’t surprised to see her refuse to help him. If she had actually decided to help, they would have started to suspect that she had been replaced by someone else.
And to no one’s surprise, she didn’t hesitate to start looking for replacements. This is something that nearly every divine being in the Nexus of Truth Sect is familiar with.
The divine beings of the Nexus of Truth Sect know that Monarch Shadow Clone replaces her subordinates frequently, which is why Many Eyes wasn’t scared despite how Shadow Body tried to use fear to convince him to help.
As soon as she gave the order, her subordinates moved into action to find a replacement. But just as they moved into action, her Cave Heaven began to rumble. The rumbling was not loud, but it still drew her immediate attention.
As she listened intently, she heard a sound akin to that of a landslide. The sound her Cave Heaven made was that of large and heavy rocks rolling down a mountainside or hill.
It was a strange sound, one that she had only heard thousands of years ago when she was a weak rank 6 divine being. Now that she was hearing it again, memories of that unpleasant experience sprang up in her mind to remind her of her loss.
As those memories flashed through her mind, she shook her head and said, "No. It can’t be."
But reality was going to he what it was regardless of her opinion and what she didn’t want to happen. She could see clearly that a section of her Cave Heaven was falling away. This sight confirmed her worst fears.
The Cave Heaven lost exactly 468 million square kilometers. This was about 16.32% of the total size of her Cave Heaven. So the loss was highly significant. It wasn’t something she could brush away as nothing.
As soon as she confirmed that her Cave Heaven was truly shrinking and had lost 468 million square kilometers, she turned to look at the three Divine Metacs that had once belonged to Shadow Body.
She saw that the three Divine Metacs had dimmed. They looked like ordinary objects to her. As a deceiver who was proficient in hiding herself and other things, she knew exactly what had gone wrong.
So her face became contorted as she said, "They’ve been sealed. That bastard sealed them."
Then she roared at her subordinates, saying, "Go and find that bastard for me. I want to know where he is now."
The last remaining rank 7 divine being among them asked her, saying, "What about the replacement?"
His question seemed to make her angrier because she raised her voice at him and said, "What kind of stupid question is that?"
Then she pointed at the three lifeless Divine Metacs and asked, "How are we to find replacements for the three of them when we can’t even activate them?"
The rank 7 cultivator didn’t say anything in reply. Instead, he bowed and kept his head low. Meanwhile, in the physical world, this rank 7 cultivator and her subordinates had begun to search for Loki.
On Loki’s side, Shadow Body had just died. The rank 7 deceiver’s body fell apart. His charcoal-like body turned into soot. Then the soot scattered in the wind.
When Loki sensed that the Seal Ability had taken effect on the Shadow Body Metac, the Disappearing Mist Metac, and the Shadow Blade Metac, he smiled.