The Undying Immortal System
Chapter 332: Life 77, Age 74, Martial Sovereign 1

While the battle against Zhuge YeDu had been far more tense than I would have liked, Yan’s meticulous planning had been enough to ensure that everything had worked out well in the end. Likewise, while we hadn’t had much, if any, control over what had happened in the Li Clan, Emperor Li’s schemes had laid the groundwork for our inevitable victory.

The Nine Rivers Sect would be different. None of us, not even Ning ZeKun, had any real understanding of what defenses the Summit might or might not have in place, so Yan’s ability to develop an effective strategy for our assault was severely limited. Additionally, while Emperor Li may have been able to put any number of contingencies in place to support us, we couldn’t plan a strategy around them without knowing if they even existed.

So… What were we supposed to do? Attack a powerful Sovereign who was already entrenched in a fortified position? We already had the essence cultivation techniques we wanted. Why not just reset and try again?

Every single person on my clan’s leadership council disagreed with this assessment. They wanted to move forward with a direct confrontation. Unlike the rest of us, retreating through time wouldn’t allow them to regain their youth, and they didn’t want to waste what few years they had remaining on rebuilding our empire yet again. And since these were the people who would be most impacted by our decision to revert the timeline, they were the ones whose voices carried the most weight.

Still, if we were going to attack, we needed to be smart about it.

During my recent decades in the Nine Rivers Sect, I had been focused on learning to make Rank 7 formations, and I hadn’t paid much attention to how quickly my inner world had been growing. At the start of this life, it was a cylinder with a height of 500 meters and a radius of about 860 meters. Over the past six decades, while its height had remained fixed, its radius had grown to an impressive 1.5 kilometers, giving us nearly three times the area to work with.

When I checked in on things, several hundred members of the Zhuge Clan were still trapped within this new outer ring. With no storage bags and only a 300-meter-tall wall of stone to keep them company, there wasn’t much for them to do out there, but a few of the earth cultivators had decided to try their hand at boring through the Rank 4 stone that comprised my world’s bedrock.

As these were all just Grandmasters and Lords, their progress was rather slow. However, as they were headed straight toward a hidden dome that was filled with all manner of high-level weaponry, I didn’t have any time to waste.

I immediately portaled to an area near Lang’ya City and, without even a word of explanation, unceremoniously dumped my captives onto the top of some random mountain. This left me with a large volume of space that was perfect for temporarily housing all the members of my time-traveling clan. We only had three more months until the people on the Central Continent would expect their next shipment of goods, so we didn’t have enough time to do anything too fancy with this space, but GuiMing immediately got to work on a rough plan that we deemed to be ‘good enough.’

His teams of earth cultivators used the most easily accessible Rank 1 stones to construct 30 massive, flat stone rings that encircled my entire inner world and layered them one atop the other, with only a few meters of space between them. Each ring stretched from the old border of the world, at 860 meters out, to the new border, at 1,500 meters out, giving each one an area of over 4.5 square kilometers. With 30 such rings in place, we had enough room to temporarily house several million people. No one would want to live in this kind of cramped, spartan, concrete bunker for any longer than necessary, but as a protective shelter for use during our assault, it was good enough.

After taking in every member of the Su Clan who was willing to abandon their homes in the Wastes, I then filled the remainder of this bunker with every ‘loyal’ member of the Zhuge, Li, and Ning Clans who wanted to join us.

It took us nearly two full months to finalize our preparations. Then, once we were ready, I met with Ning ZeKun in the large courtyard at the front of the Su Clan’s palace complex.

We had decided to attack the Summit from two different directions. I would go through the front door, and Ning ZeKun would go in through the back—through the entrance reserved for the Sovereigns. While the back entrance was likely protected by more powerful traps, having now experienced a ‘second life,’ ZeKun was still willing to risk assaulting it.

He wasn’t going alone, though. He was taking an assortment of a dozen Emperors from the Ning, Li, and Zhuge Clans with him. These were all people who were too old to travel back in time through my inner world and who had decided to take this opportunity to try and earn a bit of goodwill from a future powerhouse.

As for me, while no Emperors stood at my side, dozens were holed up within my inner world, waiting for me to call on them. This group included Emperor Shen, my Revered Elders, and my clan’s entire leadership team. While I was worried about the potential for ShouLi’s and the others’ deaths, they were all Peak Emperors and Peak Rank 6 body cultivators. They were exactly the kind of people I wanted by my side when the fighting commenced.

Once everyone was ready, Ning ZeKun and I tapped the air simultaneously, created two separate portals, and vanished.

Upon stepping through my portal, I appeared at the exit of the path between Earth City and Heaven City.

With the unique rules of the Nine Rivers Sect in place, aside from Sovereigns, the only people who could enter this small strip of land were Emperors who had just completed the path’s trials. Anyone from Heaven City who tried to leave the village and return here would be teleported to the bottom of the mountain. Therefore, I considered this area to be one of the safest places in the sect.

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After checking my surroundings for any signs of ambush, I focused on my target: the temple at the peak of the mountain. Then, by tapping the air, I created a small portal to an area several hundred meters above me and used it to get an aerial view of my surroundings.

This allowed me to see that the temple complex was quite a bit larger than I had initially thought. Inside its tall, red walls, there were dozens of smaller buildings that could hold any number of traps or secrets. However, the first place I planned to search for the Li Sovereign was the giant, elongated, rectangular building that stood upon a thick stone foundation and towered above everything in its surroundings.

That was where I had first met the Sovereigns, and that was where I expected to find the final one hunkered down behind several layers of protection.

Shifting my gaze, I took a moment to study the area around the temple complex. After noticing a stone arch at the end of the path that led down from the temple’s entrance, I realized what I was looking at: the Path of the True Chosen.

Making an abrupt decision, I closed my viewing portal and tried to open a new portal that led to the beginning of the Path. When that didn’t work, I tried making several more portals that led to various spots along the Path, but those failed as well. Only when I tried to make one directly in front of the temple’s gates, at the very end of the Path, did I finally succeed.

Nodding in suspicion, I stepped through this portal and made my way to the Summit.

After arriving and doing a quick check of my surroundings, I turned back to study the Path of the True Chosen. When it came to confronting the Sovereigns on the Summit, one of my biggest fears was that they would be able to use the Path’s suppression field to block me from accessing my inner world. So, I wanted to take a moment to get a better understanding of the situation while I had the chance.

Knowing that doing this on my own would take more time than I was willing to spend, I reached into my inner world and pulled out both Shen and Mo to assist me.

Shen waved a hand through the air in front of him. “Hmm, exactly like the Wastes. The moment any part of your body enters the suppression field, you lose all access to qi.”

I shook my head. “Not just qi. Everything fails. Qi, soul, refined items. Only body cultivation seems to remain effective.”

After waving his hand through the air a couple of times, Mo pulled a dagger from a belt sheath, used his left hand to hold it up inside the Path’s suppression field while striking it with his right knuckle.

The metal blade snapped like a dry twig, and Mo nodded contentedly. “Ancestor, this is indeed just like the formations inside the Wastes, and… I think I know how it works.”

I raised an eyebrow at that.

Mo waved toward the man who had been mentoring him for several decades now. “Master Shen has been teaching me about Rank 7 formations, about how they are… ‘thicker’ than normal. About how they exist… outside of this world.”

Mo gestured wildly with his hands as he tried to come up with the right words. “Just… imagine you are a piece of paper. You’re thin. You don’t have much… ‘substance.’ Your energy body is another sheet of paper about a meter to your right. Your soul is a third sheet of paper, a meter to your left. Okay? Well, this formation is a kind of spatial lock. It hardens space and makes it impossible for you to… communicate with those other two sheets of paper.”

I furrowed my brow in thought. “Why would something like that affect a refined item, though… It’s all… here. On the same ‘plane’ as my… sheet.”

Mo shook his head excitedly. “No. No, it isn’t. Refined items are more powerful than normal because they contain energy. Yes, a bit of that energy is here. That’s why my dagger took a little more force to break than it should have. Most of it, though… If your energy body is a meter to your right, then most of the dagger’s energy is maybe a centimeter to your right, maybe less. The exact distance seems to vary based on the refiner’s ability and the item’s quality. But the point is, almost all of it is slightly… offset.”

Mo looked down at his hands as he tried to explain. “The way this… ‘spatial lock’ works isn’t much different from the conference room. The conference room hardens space to prevent Sovereigns from creating portals. This suppression field does the same thing. It’s just vastly more powerful.”

I began tapping my foot as an interesting thought appeared in my head. “So… you’re saying this is all just… spatial manipulation?”

Mo gave me a rapid series of nods, and I stroked my chin. “Interesting.”

Ever since my fight with Zhuge YeDu, I had left the seed of the Three Thousand Flames Fire in my soul, since I had expected to need it against the Li Sovereign. However…

With a quick series of motions, I extracted the seed and replaced it with the seed of the Expanding Realms Fire. Then, I opened a small hole in my soul, pulled out a large tongue of purple-black fire, and wrapped it around Mo.

Concentrating hard, I shaped the fire with my intent and commanded it to do my bidding.

“Alright…” A bit breathlessly, I waved Mo toward the Path of the True Chosen. “See if the suppression field still has an effect.”

He nodded and walked fully into the field. “It’s… Yes… I can’t use my qi.”

Mo took out his dagger and tapped it. It didn’t break. “It looks like refined items are working now, though.”

Opening the hole to my soul a bit wider, I sent more flames toward Mo.

Eventually, he nodded and waved a hand to pull up a spike of earth. “That did it.”

I released my grip on the fire and puffed out a breath of stale air. “So… that works, but it’s not easy… I can… Aside from myself, I can probably only protect two people from the field’s effects. At that point, it’ll be hard for me to defend myself, though.”

Mo frowned. “That’s the spatial fire, right? We have another seed. Maybe I could—”

I shook my head. “No, blocking the spatial lock is… tricky. It takes a significant amount of focused effort. Without a space affinity, it’s… not possible.”

I sighed and looked at the temple’s gates. Was I really considering assaulting a stronghold that contained an unknown number of Kings and Emperors with only two people by my side? Wasn’t that… Wasn’t that just suicide?

But… did that matter? I would either die during the attack or die at my own hands. It was suicide either way.

I nodded and looked at Mo and Shen. “Thanks for the help.”

After pulling them back into my inner world, I took out Liang and NiangBa to replace them. “Only three of us can safely enter. Are the two of you sure you want to do this?”

They both gave me a martial salute. “Yes, Ancestor.”

As I sighed, they turned, and Liang took a step forward, toward the temple’s gates.

I placed a hand on his shoulder to stop him. “Not so fast. I said that only the three of us can enter safely. That doesn’t mean that only the three of us are going in there.”

Reaching into my inner world, I pull out HongYi, TaiZu, and the rest of the Su Clan’s original elders. With a bit of help, they had all been able to reach Martial Lord, and it was time for them to prove their worth.

I pointed at the temple’s gates. “After you.”

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