However, seeing how fiercely the Elemental Divine Planes were already at war, the other planes had no intention of sitting idle and risking invasion themselves.
As a result, large numbers of soldiers from the Sovereign Armies were dispatched to guard the various interplanar teleportation arrays.
The Underworld, having only two such arrays, stationed three Sovereign Army legions at each. With such concentrated defenses, it was both easy to defend and difficult to assault, making it arguably the safest plane at present.
As for the six Divine Planes already engulfed in war, with their teleportation arrays firmly under the control of the Sovereign Armies, the various factions within those planes had no choice but to participate.
Whether on the offensive or defensive side, no one was willing to bleed and fight only to have others reap the rewards. Thus, all factions were inevitably dragged into the conflict.
At a time like this, the forces under Locke couldn't help but feel fortunate. Having followed his instructions earlier and relocated portions of their families to the Underworld, they had secured themselves a measure of safety.
Moreover, with a considerable stockpile of Sovereign's power in their possession, they were able to avoid being swept into the war—for now.
After all, even a Six-Star Fiend, once empowered by Sovereign's power, could rival an Asura.
Without an opponent of comparable strength, a single empowered individual could easily wipe out an entire Sovereign Army battalion within the duration of that power.
…
"The War of Faith has finally begun."
Within Shadowmoon Prefecture of the Underworld, Oakes stood with his hands behind his back, gazing into the distance.
Though Locke had long warned him that war between the Divine Planes was inevitable, the sheer scale of it—engulfing six Divine Planes at once—still came as a shock.
Not long ago, Oakes had witnessed three Sovereign Army legions flying overhead from Shadowmoon Prefecture, heading toward the Necropolis Mountain teleportation array to reinforce its defenses.
Each legion had at least one Asura wielding a Sovereign artifact, over twenty Seven-Star Fiends, and more than three thousand Six-Star Fiends.
Although Oakes was a soul mutator capable of fusing divine power to amplify his strength tenfold, he still wouldn't necessarily stand a chance against an Asura armed with both a Sovereign artifact and Sovereign's power.
After all, the tenfold boost from fused divine power would be overridden by Sovereign's power.
And when both sides used Sovereign's power, a Sovereign's Emissary wielding a Sovereign artifact would still hold the advantage.
While Oakes could fuse two types of divine power, without Willpower, he couldn't fully control Sovereign's power, let alone fuse different types of it into a superior form.
"If only I had strength like Lord Locke…"
The thought surfaced in Oakes' mind as unease crept into his heart.
In times of chaos like this, aside from the lofty Sovereigns themselves, perhaps only someone like Locke could remain truly unshaken.
Holding a cloak in her hands, Yagonia approached from behind and gently draped it over his shoulders.
"Don't worry, Oakes," she said softly, clasping his hand. "Lord Locke already told us—the Underworld is the safest plane once war begins."
"The Death Sovereign is the strongest among all Sovereigns. Even if war breaks out between them, none would dare enter the Underworld to fight her."
"I know, Nia."
Oakes tightened his grip on her hand. "In all these years, Lord Locke has never been wrong."
"In fact… I suspect this war—one that spans the Seven Divine Planes and the Four Higher Planes—may very well be part of Lord Locke's design."
Such speculation wasn't unreasonable.
Oakes knew that Locke had already fully fused one set of Laws—he was an invincible Paragon.
That meant Locke had reached the very end of the path of the gods.
And given Locke's obsession with cultivation, he would undoubtedly seek the next step beyond that.
If the path of the gods had reached its limit, then the only path forward was the path of the Sovereigns.
But in this era, all seventy-seven Sovereign positions were filled. There were no vacancies.
For Locke to become a Sovereign, there was only one possibility—trigger a war among Sovereigns and wait for one to fall.
Only with the death of a Sovereign would an opportunity arise.
From Locke's arrangements over the years, it was clear he understood Sovereigns extremely well.
Otherwise, how could he know that the Death Sovereign was the strongest among them, and that no other Sovereign would dare challenge her within the Underworld?
If Locke truly became a Sovereign after this war, Oakes would undoubtedly become one of his Sovereign's Emissaries.
Perhaps even…
His grip on Yagonia's hand tightened slightly before he forced himself to calm down, suppressing the ambition rising in his heart.
Now was not the time to dream.
…
On Mount Nether, Locke raised his head slightly toward the summit before turning to the woman beside him.
"Lilia, did something happen?"
"I sensed your Sovereign clone leaving the Underworld."
"Yes. I detected fluctuations from a Sovereign battle in the spatial turbulence, so I went to take a look."
"Oh? A Sovereign clash this soon?"
Locke raised an eyebrow, somewhat surprised.
He had long known that Sovereigns would eventually fight. After all, if no Sovereigns fell in this War of Faith, how could their number drop below sixty after a thousand cycles?
Even accounting for later replacements, at least twenty-five Sovereigns would have to die in this war.
"Which two were fighting?" Locke asked.
Lilia shook her head. "I don't know them. One from the Darkness element, the other from Light."
"They're both Lesser Sovereigns. Nothing much to see."
Locke nodded.
That made sense. If both were Lesser Sovereigns, they could at most determine a victor, but killing the other would be nearly impossible.
At the Sovereign level, even a tenfold difference in strength wasn't enough to guarantee a kill—let alone when both sides were evenly matched.
At most, they would vent their frustration before disengaging.
"Oh, right—Locke," Lilia suddenly asked, "how is your body cultivation progressing?"
More than a hundred thousand years ago, Locke had claimed that with the blood essence of creatures whose bodies rivaled Sovereign artifacts, he could create a method to strengthen his own body to that level.
It had taken him over twenty thousand years just to emerge from that seclusion.
"It's going fairly well," Locke replied with a smile. "My body is now comparable to a Highgod artifact."
Lilia sighed. "I really don't understand you. It took you a hundred thousand years just to reach the level of a Highgod artifact, and you call that 'fairly well'?"
"Do you even realize the gap between Highgod artifacts and Sovereign artifacts?"
Locke chuckled. "This is about transforming one's bloodline. Slow progress is to be expected."
Hearing that, Lilia said nothing further.
After more than twenty thousand years of seclusion, Locke had consumed half of the blood essence she had given him, along with ten drops from the Azure Dragon Sovereign, before finally uncovering the key—
Transforming one's bloodline.
In the magical universe, even with divine power enhancement, an ordinary being's body could at most reach the level of an artifact.
Only divine beasts and special lifeforms could continuously strengthen their bodies until they rivaled Sovereign artifacts.
To go further, one had to fundamentally change their bloodline—becoming a divine beast or a special lifeform.
Odin's Samsara Body followed this very principle, transforming his body into that of a special lifeform.
Locke, however, intended to take a different path—he would transform his bloodline into that of a divine beast.
Just as Odin had created his own special lifeform bloodline, Locke would create his own divine beast bloodline.
He named it… Di Jiang.
In the myths of his previous life, Di Jiang was an ancestral being who governed space itself.
Naturally, Locke's goal was to completely transform his bloodline into one aligned with space.
Thus, over the past hundred thousand years, he had analyzed every drop of divine beast blood he had collected—those with spatial innate abilities—extracting the fragment of "heaven-bestowed bloodline" that connected them to the spatial origin of the Coiling Dragon universe, and integrating it into himself.
However, for a human bloodline to devour that of divine beasts… the process was agonizingly slow.
The first strand of such bloodline essence alone had taken over seventy thousand years to fully assimilate.
But when Locke began to faintly sense the spatial origin of the universe through his own blood, he knew—
He had succeeded.
Once he integrated all spatial-type innate bloodlines from divine beasts across the universe, his affinity with space would reach an unimaginable level.
And he would undergo a complete transformation—
Becoming the first spatial divine beast in the universe: Di Jiang.
At that point, by relying on the connection between his bloodline and the spatial origin, Locke would no longer need external blood essence to comprehend spatial Laws.
By burning his own blood essence, he could directly access the origin and freely comprehend spatial Laws.
In the main universe of the Hongmeng cosmos, spatial Laws were powers wielded only by Deities—existences equivalent to Sovereigns in the Coiling Dragon universe.
If Locke could comprehend even a fraction of spatial Laws and become a spatial Demigod, he would already rival a Lesser Sovereign.
And if he fully mastered spatial Laws—reaching spatial Paragon—he would stand among the ranks of Godkings in the main universe.
That was a level comparable to the Supreme Overgods of the Coiling Dragon universe.
Of course, only in a general sense. The Four Supreme Gods were manifestations of Hongmeng's will itself—invincible within that universe.
In Locke's view, completing the Di Jiang bloodline would be his first real step toward breaking free of the Coiling Dragon universe's limits.
For that goal, even if it took fifty thousand years, a hundred thousand years, or a million years to absorb a single strand of bloodline essence—he would persist.
The only true limitation… was the number of divine beasts possessing spatial innate abilities.
"By the way, Lilia," Locke said, "once your Sovereign clone returns, compile a list of divine beasts in the Underworld that possess spatial innate abilities. I'll go 'borrow' some blood essence from them."
"Otherwise, if they die in this war… who knows how long it will take for another of their kind to be born."
In the Coiling Dragon universe, divine beasts were not unique—but their birth was governed by the heavens, making it highly unpredictable.
Take the Four Divine Beasts, for instance. For over a thousand cycles, each race had only a single representative.
The Amethyst Beasts were born as a pair—but after the death of one Amethyst Sovereign, it took another thousand cycles for a new one, Reisgem, to be born.
As for the Godeater Rat, Bebe had been born less than ten million years ago, yet another had already appeared in the Yulan Plane.
"Alright," Lilia nodded.
…
"Damn it!"
In the Wind Divine Plane, a man clad in a green robe with gold trim cursed under his breath.
He was the strongest Sovereign of the Wind Divine Plane—the Wind Sovereign, Diya.
In this war, the Wind Divine Plane had been caught off guard by a surprise attack from the Lightning Divine Plane, losing two teleportation arrays at the outset.
Fortunately, learning from the earlier ambush by the Darkness Divine Plane against the Light Divine Plane, Diya had ordered the remaining five Wind Sovereigns to reinforce their arrays, successfully stabilizing the remaining three.
However, with the White Tiger Sovereign, Reis, having long since left the Wind Divine Plane, the White Tiger Army had become little more than a name.
While other Sovereigns had strengthened their forces by recruiting powerful experts, the White Tiger Army remained as it had been over two million years ago.
As a result, its overall strength lagged far behind the other Sovereign Armies.
Previously, no one dared provoke them due to the prestige of the White Tiger Sovereign.
But once war broke out, they could no longer remain on the sidelines.
With Reis absent, command of the White Tiger Army fell to Diya.
Yet who could have expected that, upon facing the Lightning Divine Plane's Sovereign Army, the White Tiger Army would be utterly annihilated—wiped out in a single clash without leaving even a ripple?
With one fewer Sovereign Army than their enemy, the Wind Divine Plane was now completely suppressed.
"Qingya!"
"Yes, Lord Sovereign."
Qingya stepped forward from among the Lesser Sovereigns and bowed respectfully.
"Reis left for the Infernal Realm over two million years ago. Go there and deliver my message—he is to immediately rebuild the White Tiger Army and return within a thousand years to join this war."
"And tell him this—if he refuses…"
Diya's gaze turned cold.
"Before I engage the Lightning Sovereigns, I will personally go to the Infernal Realm and slaughter all four Divine Beast Sovereigns."
⭐ Enjoying the story?
You can read ahead and support the translations by joining my Patreon! Your support helps me update faster and take on more projects. Thank you for reading!
Read up to 50 chapters ahead!
patreon.com/AminaSims
Next Bonus Chapter at 500 powerstones