The surrounding Demon Race members scrambled over one another, frantically lifting their claws to show their submissive loyalty.
"Oh?"
Li Xuanxiao slightly turned his wrist, controlling the rampant world Luck to hold it back in the air without releasing its kinetic force. The massive, sky-obscuring blade light that filled the firmament also came to an absolute standstill, hovering like an executioner's axe above the trembling horde.
The Origin Realm Demon officers exhaled ragged sighs of relief. The sheer martial pressure radiating from this human youth was simply too immense for their bloodlines to bear. Even the supposedly invincible Lord Eton had been violently cut down by his hands; what did small fries of their level even count for?
"Speak!" Li Xuanxiao ordered indifferently, his voice cold and flat.
Several Origin Realm Demons originally harbored designs of bargaining, hoping to secure an absolute guarantee of survival from Li Xuanxiao before parting with their secrets. But the moment they looked up and caught the bone-chilling impatience swirling within his eyes, they tactfully swallowed their words, placing their foreheads flat against the earth.
"Beings like Lord Eton... like that exalted member of the Devil Race, there are at least nearly a thousand of them currently deployed within the Southern Region of the Central Continent!"
"Their core objective is to assimilate the local human populations, systematically accumulate the Power of Faith, and offer it as a cosmic sacrifice to their supreme Demon God."
"The entire power system of the Devil Race is a superstructure built upon the Power of Faith as its absolute foundation. The more abundant and concentrated the Power of Faith they gather from their subjects, the higher the cultivation tier and destructive strength the Devil Race can exert accordingly!"
Li Xuanxiao listened in absolute silence, a ripple of genuine surprise passing through his thoughts. He truly hadn't expected these lower-tier Yao Beasts to be privy to such granular details. They actually possessed a coherent understanding of the Devil Race's underlying power mechanics.
As the frantic narration continued, the puzzle pieces in Li Xuanxiao's mind gradually aligned into a clearer picture.
Beings like Eton held a highly specific designation within the hierarchy of the Devil Race—they were known as 'Preachers'. Their primary administrative duty was to launch massive spiritual brainwashing campaigns among human populations, coercing them into offering worship to the foreign Demon God to steadily feed their specialized Power of Faith pools.
According to these trembling Yao Beasts, the Preachers rarely operated in complete isolation. In major operational theaters, they would be paired alongside a corresponding counterpart known as a 'Divine Envoy'. They traveled as a binary unit, executing a coordinated strategy.
Li Xuanxiao's eyes narrowed slightly as he deduced the truth. The terrifying, martial-focused member of the Devil Race he had encountered and slaughtered back in the borderlands was almost certainly a so-called 'Divine Envoy'.
In short:
The Preacher was responsible for spiritual subversion and domestic brainwashing.
The Divine Envoy was responsible for military conquest and external protection!
The division of labor was exceptionally clean and precise. In terms of pure, unadulterated combat prowess, a 'Divine Envoy' was structurally superior to a 'Preacher'. However, when deploying to small or medium-sized peripheral countries, the spiritual subversion could generally be completed by a single Preacher acting alone.
The massive numbers of Yao Beasts currently present were merely raw logistical tools meant to accelerate the terror campaign. After all, if the human populace did not first encounter a horrific, apocalyptic crisis where their desperate cries to heaven and earth went entirely unanswered, the stubborn Human Race would never easily yield their souls to the foreign brainwashing of a Preacher.
Therefore, the standard operating procedure was brutally simple: the Demon Race vanguard would first be unleashed to run rampant across the mortal cities, posing a massive, lethal threat to the lives of both secular commoners and local Martial Artists.
When the timing was absolutely perfect—when the entire human kingdom was plunged into the darkest depths of despair and primal fear—the 'Preacher' would make a grand, theatrical entrance!
They would either manifest in the skies as a benevolent savior, rescuing the weeping masses from fire and water while casting down the blinding radiance of their god to preach a seemingly merciful doctrine, or, like Eton, they would openly align with the Demon horde, utilizing brute force and semi-coercive terror to systematically break the people's will until they abandoned their ancestral ways and turned their faith toward the Demon God.
One had to admit, the operational efficiency of this combined strategy was terrifyingly high. If Eton hadn't run headfirst into an absolute anomaly like Li Xuanxiao, the subversion and assimilation of the entire Silver Deer Kingdom would have already entered its final stages by tonight!
Li Xuanxiao's brow furrowed tightly as he recalled the exact words of the Demon officer: Nearly a thousand Preachers scattered across the Southern Region.
This meant that at this very moment, countless human nations were actively being targeted by the Devil Race's unholy campaigns of conversion and assimilation.
"The Dayu Dynasty..."
Li Xuanxiao's expression gradually turned heavy. Strictly speaking, according to the ancient geographic divisions of the Zhuxia Divine Land, the Dayu Dynasty fell squarely within the peripheral borders of the Central Continent's Southern Region. It, too, was at extreme risk of being targeted by a Devil Race Preacher at any given hour!
At this realization, a cold weight settled in his chest. He had to find a way to return to Dayu immediately. As a small-scale peripheral nation, Dayu's highest baseline combat power peaked only at the ordinary Origin Realm level. If a master of unholy arts like Eton descended upon its borders, the dynasty wouldn't be able to hold out for more than a few days! Very soon, the entire population would be warped into mindless, fanatic puppets of the Demon God, happily sacrificing their lifeforce and heritage for the sake of an alien deity.
In the quiet theater of his mind, familiar faces suddenly surfaced one by one, moving from the gruff countenance of Wang Debiao to the elegant form of Ming Yanxia. Finally, his thoughts settled upon a specific image—a gentle smile accompanied by beautifully curved, crescent eyes.
"Miaoyin..."
Thinking of Si Miaoyin, Li Xuanxiao unconsciously allowed a faint, genuinely warm smile to grace his lips. Before departing from Dayu, he had explicitly requested Ming Yanxia to personally oversee Si Miaoyin's martial training, ensuring her entry into the Royal Court Martial Academy for advanced cultivation. Now that more than half a year had passed, he truly wondered what heights her cultivation had reached...
Restraining his wandering thoughts, Li Xuanxiao snapped his focus back to the shivering Origin Realm Demons kneeling before him. These beasts had clearly been squeezed completely dry of any actionable intelligence; they no longer possessed any data of value.
Li Xuanxiao did not hesitate for even a single microsecond. He instantly unleashed his absolute control over the world Luck, causing the sky-obscuring blade light to violently pour down like an inverted waterfall!
Using Li Xuanxiao as the absolute epicenter, the terrifying shockwaves of the astral blade spread outward in a flawless, expanding circle, tearing through the landscape in all directions. The miserable screams and guttural wails of the Demon Race vanguard rose up in a chaotic chorus, and the crisp, textual notifications of the System rapidly stacked before his vision.
With maximum slaughter efficiency and within the briefest possible timeframe, Li Xuanxiao systematically executed every single member of the invading Demon Race within the territorial borders of the Silver Deer Kingdom!
Countless surviving commoners of the kingdom, weeping tears of gratitude as they looked upon the cleared skies, prostrated themselves upon the blood-stained earth, loudly thanking Li Xuanxiao for his boundless savior virtue. The local Martial Artists also bowed in unison, the profound, unyielding awe in their eyes completely unconcealed.
Li Xuanxiao, however, merely sighed softly in his heart. Although these Yao Beasts were massive in number, their baseline realms were simply too low to yield a premium harvest. The vast majority of the horde consisted of weaklings trapped in the Xuan Realm and Mystic Realm.
Therefore, even after systematically harvesting over ten thousand targets, the final tally only net him an additional 39.82 million Demon Value Points.
[Current Demon Value Points: 293.82 million]
Li Xuanxiao cast a brief glance at the total and silently closed the light screen. Ignoring the wide-eyed shock and the frantic, sycophantic gestures of the Silver Deer Kingdom's high-ranking Martial Artists, he shifted his weight, altered his trajectory, and rocketed straight toward the direction of Dayu!
Naturally, he had zero intention of letting any Demon Race scouts he encountered along his flight path escape his blade.
This high-tier exchange with Eton had served as a stark reminder for Li Xuanxiao. The methods of the outer domains were filled with unpredictable variables. If he hadn't possessed several hundred million Demon Value Points sitting in his reserves to authorize a sudden, massive vertical leap in his cultivation... taking down Eton so cleanly tonight might have been an entirely different story.
A cultivator must always ensure his granary is overflowing with surplus provisions before entering the winter...
While Li Xuanxiao was lost in these calculations, a subtle, rhythmic vibration suddenly rippled across his Sea of Consciousness. He immersed his divine sense inward and quickly located the source—the clump of flocculent spiritual matter he had planted as a control medium.
The Southern Demon?
Li Xuanxiao immediately established a mental connection through the medium.
The frantic, hushed voice of the Southern Demon instantly echoed within his mind: "Mas... My Lord! A highly aberrant monk has suddenly entered the borders of Dayu!"
"He has approached various major monster clans, including our local Dayu Yao tribes, promising immense spiritual benefits and territory rewards. His sole demand is that we mobilize our entire forces to launch a synchronized attack against the Dayu Dynasty's borders!"
"Furthermore, he promised that once the human defenses are systematically shattered, fifty percent of the human population will be granted to our tribes as raw flesh food."
"The cultivation realm of this monk is utterly unfathomable. This servant did not dare to openly defy him on the spot, so I could only feign submission and pretend to agree to his demands for the time being."
"Immediately afterward, I utilized secret arrays to contact the Yao Sovereigns of the neighboring Qingluan and Tianxuan nations. To my horror, they confirmed that they had received identical invitations from this exact same monk! They are all commanded to launch a coordinated invasion against Qingluan and Tianxuan on a specific chosen date!"
"My Lord, something is profoundly wrong with this situation! That monk is clearly completely different from the orthodox ascetics of the monasteries! His entire body emits a deeply disturbing, cold aura..."
Li Xuanxiao listened to the transmission in absolute silence, his expression gradually darkening until it resembled solid ice.
He had originally felt a brief wave of relief when the Southern Demon first mentioned the arrival of a spiritual monk. But as the description of the entity's geopolitical operations unfolded, the familiarity of the script became undeniable—he had literally just finished listening to this exact operational manual moments ago from the dying Demon officers!
This was the unmistakable, signature deployment style of a Devil Race 'Preacher'.
But a glaring question immediately arose in his mind: how on earth did a tonsured monk of the monasteries end up completely entangled with the unholy architecture of the Devil Race?
Did the monks of his order not dedicate their souls entirely to the worship of the primordial Buddha? Since when did the righteous paths of the monasteries shift their ultimate devotion toward an outer Demon God?
All sorts of deep, structural doubts swirled within Li Xuanxiao's mind. Originally, his decision to hasten his return to Dayu was merely an act of abundant caution, intending to establish early defensive measures and issue a stern warning to the royal court. He truly hadn't anticipated that his timing would be so remarkably precise—he was running right into the jaws of an active Devil Race Preacher!
"What is the current position and status of that monk?" Li Xuanxiao asked mentally, his kinetic speed violently multiplying as the world Luck beneath his boots roared like a gale.
"He... he has already departed from our tribal sanctuaries," the Southern Demon replied nervously. "According to his trajectory, he appears to be heading directly toward the Dayu Royal Capital!"