There was a loud gasp as a giant wolf opened his eyes. Jerking to its feet, the wolf glared warily around himself before a confused expression manifested upon his face.

Why was he so tense?

The wolf was actually a wolf demon that was equivalent to a cultivator's Nascent Soul Realm or Soul Nourishing Realm. He had just recently ascended to his current realm, so he was the weakest of the demon general's twelve commanders, both in ability and descendants. His full name was Radiance Devouring Wolf. It was both his personal name and the chosen name of his species.

Radiance Devouring Wolf lay down once more and placed his head above his paws as he tried to recall why he was so agitated. There seemed to be something wrong with his memories.

The wolf's eyes gleamed as he tried to recall his missing memory. Right, he was angry because three of his descendants that had formed their demonic cores had been killed, but upon recalling this information, Radiance Devouring Wolf felt that something was wrong.

Why was his body so tense as if he was in danger?

He had already investigated his surrounding, yet he found nothing threatening. The wolf's frown deepened as the hairs on his body stiffened. Why did everything feel so wrong?

The Radiance Devouring Wolf suddenly leaped up to its feet. Right, how could he have forgotten?

The demon general had summoned him and the other demon commanders for a meeting concerning the foreign structure that appeared in their realm. This wasn't the first time that this had happened. In fact, it occurred every thousand years.

Demon Commander Radiance Devouring Wolf even heard rumors that the demon general was a survivor of the previous descent of immortals. Worry began to fill the Radiance Devouring Wolf's heart as he questioned whether he would be so lucky.

He was a follower of the demon general, the overlord of the surrounding land. Originally, it was supposed to be a small part of the Leviathan Clan's territory, but since the Leviathan Clan only cared about the waters, the land was fought over by numerous demons like the demon general.

Radiance Devouring Wolf even dreamed of one day entering the same realm as the demon general and proclaiming a piece of land for himself, but now he regretted not allying himself with one of the three great demon clans.

As clans with a true demon backing them, the three great clans were far more equipped to fend off the descending immortals. History had proven that it was the rogue demon forces like them who suffered the most whenever the immortals appeared.

Unable to delay it any longer, Demon Commander Radiance Devouring Wolf leaped into the air and flew towards the demon general's territory, but after flying for several hours, the giant wolf realized that it was taking longer than usual.

Was something wrong?

The eyes of Radiance Devouring Wolf glazed over before regaining clarity. That's right, the distance between his territory and the demon general's had always been long. He just had forgotten about it.

Radiance Devouring Wolf couldn't help but be worried. The demon general's true name was Earth Burning Venom Serpent, and was famous for being short-tempered. Although he wasn't the strongest regional overlords, the demon general was the one that others feared fighting due to his venom. Even his subordinates, like Radiance Devouring Wolf, had to tread lightly around him.

City Lord Azure Leaf felt a sinking sensation in his stomach as he watched the young woman floating in the air, playing her instrument. His eyes could make out the ethereal silver glow that covered her body. Occasionally, he could even see ghostly figures swirling around her. He only had one thought.

Ghost Cultivator!

It was something he had chanced upon, a record of a slain senior who once had the grace of interacting with an immortal. The immortal described the worst opponent he had ever faced, a ghost cultivator.

A ghost cultivator's means were unfathomable and insidious. Chances are, you would never be able to defend against them. And the worst part was that they could enslave the souls of the dead. Even the living weren't spared as the ghost cultivator could extract their soul and refine them into a slave.

The Demon Cage Realm didn't have many ghosts due to the unique nature of the realm, but the ghosts that could survive always brought tragedy. Often, the ghosts were those of departed humans who attacked their surroundings indiscriminately. City Lord Azure Leaf had only heard tales and never witnessed one himself.

Looking at the ferocious wolf demon that had become docile and floated in the sky with vacant eyes, City Lord Azure Leaf felt that his plans had fallen through. If the trio were to discover what he had done, he might not live till the next day.

Daoyi sensed none of this as all her attention was placed on controlling Radiance Devouring Wolf. She had tried directly controlling him earlier, but his soul was too strong, and, as a result, she suffered a backlash. Now, she was using various means to control him.

First, Daoyi injured the Radiance Devouring Wolf's soul. As he was newly ascended into his current realm, his soul hadn't been strengthened enough, so Daoyi was able to hurt it. And then she lulled Radiance Devouring Wolf demon's awareness using an illusion before finally being able to control him.

Her tamed spiritual beast, the Dreamsilk Weaver Beast Shuijing's thread played a significant role in allowing Daoyi to accomplish such an act as a core formation master. The dreamsilk produced by it was a nearly perfect conduit for soul attacks. Through these various reasons, Daoyi was able to place the wolf demon under her control.

"Tianyi, can you take down the barrier? I want to try puppeteering it to fight the other demons." Daoyi turned towards Tianyi and asked.

Tianyi nodded. He was also interested in how the demon controlled by Daoyi would fare against the other demons. With a snap of Tianyi's fingers, another demon was separated from the others and couped up with the controlled demon. As for why Tianyi continued to snap even though it was needless?

Because it looked cool.

He needed no other reason.

The demon that was separated from the group resembled a giant snail. It had been forced away from the group when Tianyi's lightning struck towards it, and now, it stared warily at its controlled comrade. Tianyi's lightning barrier didn't prevent them from witnessing what happened to their comrade, and the events sent an unbearable chill down their spines.

Under her control, the radiance devouring wolf began to charge towards the snail demon. However, the ensuing could only be summed up in one word: disappointing! Even the snail demon was surprised at how easily he was smacking Radiance Devouring Wolf around like some poor ragdoll.

Under Tianyi's judgemental stare, Daoyi averted her eyes as she extinguished the radiance devouring wolf's soul. "I'm still a core formation master, in the end. Controlling that demon was already the limit of my ability. I can't replicate the demon’s technique when it is a puppet's technique at my current level. At most, it can only serve as a meat shield."

Tianyi didn't say anything, but the palpable disappointment was evident. He had gotten excited when he saw the Daoyi control the demon and even asked him to allow her to fight another demon. Return all his expectations! Tianyi looked towards Xi Ri, hoping for him to make up for Daoyi's disappointing show.

Xi Ri quickly coughed and averted his eyes. "Daoyi can control a demon as a puppet. I can probably only last a few strikes before you have to pick up my corpse."

Tianyi sighed and looked at the sky. Without another word, his body ascended and entered the sealing formation he used to entrap the remaining eight demons. His earlier banter wasn't pointless.

Even now, Tianyi felt an unnatural nervousness when facing the remaining Nascent Soul Realm equivalent demons. From all the information he had gathered, he knew it was impossible for the eight demons to even harm a single hair of his body unless they had some special circumstances like the Dragon Emperor, unlikely as that was. His mind tried to calm his heart, but his heart disturbed the calmness of his mind.

Tianyi rose onto the same level as the eight demons. No matter how tense he was, outwardly, he showed a calm and collected disposition. The demons showed an adverse reaction to Tianyi's presence as they huddled together. These eight demons that were proud lords of their territory were frightened to the point that they had to group together like a bunch of weaklings. If any of their acquaintances saw them, their eyes would probably pop out in shock.

When Tianyi saw the demons acting so defensively, Tianyi felt a bit calmer. He raised a hand and pointed it at one of the demons, and his true qi of chaos surged out from within his sleeves. The black qi was far too fast for any of the demons to react to, and it instantly swallowed one of the demons. Moments later, when the true qi of chaos dispersed, a corpse fell out of the sealing formation.

If the demons were humans, their faces would have paled at the sight of their ally dying so easily. No longer able to stay calm, all the demons unleashed their strongest long-ranged techniques against Tianyi.

Waving his hand, more true qi of chaos emerged from Tianyi's sleeve and erected into a translucent black membrane. All of the demons' attacks were dissolved by the black membrane and turned into pure demonic qi. Tianyi clenched his hand, and his true qi of chaos and the demonic qi was absorbed into his sleeve.

Tianyi's research into developing the liquid and solid state of qi was not totally fruitless. Through his deeper understanding of his true qi of chaos, Tianyi was able to create a technique that would allow him to break down his opponent's spells and absorb them for his use.

Naturally, it wasn't a perfect technique. If the opponent had a greater mastery of their spell, Tianyi would only be able to disrupt the spell and not absorb it. And the technique only applied to him due to his unique true qi of chaos. If anyone else tried to replicate the technique, they would fail and injure themselves instead.

The battle between Tianyi and the remaining seven demons couldn't even be called a battle. It was a one-sided massacre.

None of the demons could withstand Tianyi's onslaught and were dispatched one by one until only the leader remained. The snake demon watched with great apprehension at Tianyi. If it could sweat, its entire body would have been covered in it.

Tianyi looked at the snake demon with a frown. He had wanted to grow more confident and eradicate the shadow the Dragon Emperor left in his heart. However, he discovered that even after dispatching these demons easily, he still felt apprehensive. Maybe it was due to him only attacking and not receiving any attack?

Taking down all his defenses, Tianyi approached the snake demon slowly. Contrary to his expectations, the snake demon immediately retreated as if Tianyi was death itself. Which, to be fair, was not far from the truth for the demons.

Controlling the sealing formation, Tianyi shrunk the sealed space so that the snake demon would have no choice but to confront him. As the space shortened, the snake demon abruptly unleashed a flurry of attacks towards Tianyi.

In response, Tianyi clenched his hands and allowed the attacks to land on him. He felt his body shake each time an attack landed on his body, but nothing the last demon did could even hurt a hair on Tianyi's body. Seeing this, Tianyi wasn't happy at all because he felt that the nervousness was growing with each move and not diminishing at all despite being unhurt. Making up his mind, Tianyi decided to allow his nervousness to reach the breaking point to see what would happen.

Against Tianyi's wishes and expectations, the snake demon suddenly stopped and just stood there as if it had given up. Seeing this, Tianyi was speechless.

"What are you doing?" Tianyi asked after a moment of silence.

"Do whatever you want with me. Whether you decapitate or pulverize me, it doesn't matter. I can't win against you no matter what I do." The snake demon said as he closed his eyes.

Tianyi became speechless. Aren't humans and demons mortal enemies? Should you give up so easily?!

Tianyi wanted to shout for him to continue but stopped himself at the last moment. Even when he knew the details of his unspoken request, Tianyi felt it was a bit too abnormal.

"Why did you know that we killed the three demons, and how did you find us?" Tianyi asked. He was very curious about the answer.

The snake demon paused before looking at Tianyi. "If I told you, would you let me go?"

"What do you think?" Tianyi retorted. Unwilling to speak? Then you'll just have to suffer first before dying.

The snake demon fell silent before closing its eyes. When he reopened, the disdain was evident within was as clear as day to Tianyi. "We had inside information. For years, Azure Leaf and the demons have an intimate partnership. As long as he sends tribute, we won't attack his city."

Tianyi had a sinking feeling as to what these tributes were, but he couldn't help but ask anyway. "What are these tributes?"

The snake demon snorted. "What else? Humans. To us demons, you human cultivators are the most delicious-"

The snake demon never had a chance to finish as Tianyi decapitated his head with a blade formed of his qi. The snake demon silently closed its eyes as it accepted his death. At his realm, he could easily survive a decapitation, but Tianyi's attack was far more profound than a mere slash. All he hoped was that the demon general, his father, received his message and quickly flee, avoiding all confrontation with the monstrous being before him.

Between his father and Tianyi, the snake demon had already determined that Tianyi was someone a realm higher than himself, in the same realm as his father, but in his eyes, Tianyi was still the stronger of the two.

Watching the demon's headless corpse land onto the ground and further destroy City Lord Azure Leaf's mansion, Tianyi felt a complicated emotion. He knew that demons and humans were mortal enemies, but hearing humans being treated as food left a bad taste in his mouth, especially since it was due to the betrayal of someone that should have been the human's leader.

Tianyi paused when he felt the immortal pill within his clothes burst and fly towards the headless demon. The snake demon's skin was like paper in the face of the immortal pill's strength, and it was easily pierced. Under Tianyi's shocked eyes, the corpse began to shrivel up at a visible rate.

When the corpse was nothing but a husk, the pill popped out once more and headed towards the head. The immortal pill repeated before returning to Tianyi.

Tianyi looked at the golden pill that had a faint red color to it. What was so special about the snake demon that the pill would suck its blood? The pill didn't have any reaction to the other demons at all. Tucking away the pill, Tianyi filed the thought away. He had more important matters to attend to.

Descending down onto the ground, the aura around Tianyi was gloomy. Under Tianyi's oppressive aura, the scene became deathly silent. Everyone had witnessed how Tianyi had easily dispatched the demons that could have squashed Azure Leaf City off the face of the realm like some ink smudge. No one wanted to do anything to raise his ire at all.

Among all of this, Lushu stared at Tianyi with shock and admiration. Even more than that was the hidden envy and desire within his gaze. Lushu was enthralled by Tianyi's strength and wanted to attain the same strength as well.

Xi Ri wanted to go up and comfort Tianyi. He didn't know what happened, but leaving Tianyi in his gloomy state was not an option for him. Before he could move up, a hand was placed on his shoulder and held him back. Xi Ri looked at the owner of those dainty hands and saw Daoyi shaking her head at him.

Tianyi ignored all this and stared directly at City Lord Azure Leaf, causing all the hair on his body to stiffen. In a low voice, Tianyi said, "We need to talk."