However, what Grant had never expected...
Was that Great-Grandfather hadn't shown the slightest dislike toward the now-grown Rena.
This wasn't fair!
They had all grown up.
So why was he the one who got disliked, while Rena could still enjoy Great-Grandfather's doting affection?
Just because Great-Grandfather had been in seclusion when Rena became a Sovereign, he had now made such a promise to her.
If this continued...
Wouldn't Rena be spoiled beyond measure?
At that point...
Would his dignity as her father still have any use?
Perhaps...
One day Rena would even climb over his head.
No...
To be more accurate...
She had already climbed over his head.
Ever since the day he had escorted Rena down Mount Nether.
Even now...
Whenever Grant recalled how Great-Grandfather had nearly beaten him to death that day...
...
Upon the Death Chief Sovereign's throne...
Locke glanced toward Veer and Grant below before softly snorting.
With his current attainments in the soul...
And since the two of them had no intention whatsoever of concealing their thoughts...
Locke could tell exactly what they were thinking just by observing the fluctuations in their souls.
What a joke.
How could adults possibly compare to children in cuteness?
And how could sons compare to daughters?
A son was just a "brat."
A daughter was a treasured jewel.
A grown son became a troublemaker.
A grown daughter became a caring little cotton jacket.
Ignoring both his grandson and great-grandson...
Locke continued chatting with Rena.
"Oh, right, Great-Grandpa."
"I've got something interesting to tell you."
"A few thousand years ago, the Light Chief Sovereign Augusta had a conflict with the Four Divine Beast Sovereigns..."
"Hm?"
Locke was slightly startled.
The Four Divine Beast Sovereigns had actually been killed this early?
If he remembered correctly...
In the original Coiling Dragon novel, when Linley became a Sovereign, Death Chief Sovereign Lilia had mentioned that the Planar Wars had already taken place eight or nine million times.
Taking the average...
Approximately 8.5 million.
One Planar War occurred every trillion years.
One Ordinal eras contained six thousand Planar Wars.
In other words...
The true protagonist of Coiling Dragon, Linley Baruch, had been born around the 1,400th Ordinal eras.
Locke silently calculated.
Before entering seclusion...
More than one thousand Ordinal erases had already passed within the Magic Universe.
This time, he had cultivated within the Elemental Plane for another two hundred-plus Ordinal erases.
At present...
The Magic Universe had already existed for 1,437 Ordinal erases.
At this moment...
Locke secretly felt fortunate.
Fortunately...
He had chosen to leave the Elemental Plane after concluding this round of cultivation instead of continuing his secluded training.
Otherwise...
If he had accidentally missed Linley's rise...
That would truly have been regrettable.
After all...
From Linley's birth...
To becoming a Sovereign...
To finally breaking free from the universe's shackles and becoming a Hongmeng Controller...
The entire process had taken less than five hundred thousand years.
After all...
From the time Linley entered the Netherworld's Planar War as the Nine Nether Prefect...
Until he became a Sovereign and gathered with the other Sovereigns in the Destiny Higher Plane to obtain ten consecutive victories...
He had participated in the very same Planar War.
Each Planar War consisted of five separate battles.
Excluding the Life Realm...
The remaining ten Divine Planes fought one another in pairs.
Even assuming the Planar War Linley joined happened to be the first battle...
And every subsequent battle lasted the full hundred thousand years...
Linley still wouldn't even have reached four hundred thousand years of age.
For Locke...
That amount of time probably wasn't even enough for him to complete a single observation of the fusion of the four elemental essences within the Elemental Plane.
Of course...
The reason Locke looked forward so much to Linley's appearance...
Wasn't merely because he wished to relive Linley's growth from another perspective.
More importantly...
The moment when Linley was forced by the Fate Chief Sovereign Orloff to fuse the four elemental Laws of Earth, Wind, Water, and Fire...
Was something Locke absolutely intended to obtain.
This was because...
The four elemental Laws Locke currently possessed had all been derived by decomposing the Space Laws.
As a result...
Whenever he fused those four Laws...
He instinctively fused them back into the Space Laws...
Rather than into the Hongmeng Laws.
When Linley eventually fused the four elemental Laws into the Hongmeng Laws...
If Locke could record that process...
Then use the ability of Mirror Flower, Water Moon to make illusion reality...
He would possess a guaranteed path toward forging both a Hongmeng Body and a Hongmeng Soul.
However...
The deaths of the Four Divine Beast Sovereigns also gave Locke a renewed sense of urgency.
Within the Hongmeng Space...
There could only ever be four first-grade Hongmeng Controllers.
After Linley broke through...
Only two Ordinal erases later...
An even greater prodigy, Qin Yu, appeared within the Linmeng Universe.
Locke didn't know when the fourth Hongmeng Controller had broken through.
Nor did he dare gamble on it.
Thus...
After Linley's birth...
The margin of time Locke left for himself...
Was only two Ordinal erases.
If...
Two Ordinal erases later...
His Space-Time Laws still hadn't fully fused...
Then Locke would have no choice but to fuse the four elemental Laws into the Hongmeng Laws...
Condense Hongmeng energy...
And break through by that route instead.
He didn't want to gamble that...
Before he completely fused the Space-Time Laws and evolved a universe...
The fourth Hongmeng Controller still hadn't appeared.
The Hongmeng Space...
Could only accommodate four first-grade universes.
Locke absolutely couldn't abandon one of those first-grade universe slots.
After all...
The difference between a first-grade universe and a second-grade universe...
Couldn't possibly be measured by a mere hundredfold.
Take the Magic Universe and the primary Hongmeng Universe, for example.
The Magic Universe occupied only one percent of the volume of Hongmeng's primary universe.
In other words...
Even a first-grade Hongmeng Controller's subsidiary universe...
Was as vast as the primary universe of a second-grade Hongmeng Controller.
Within the Magic Universe...
The strongest beings were the Sovereigns.
Equivalent to Heavenly Deities within the primary universe.
As for the Overgods...
They were manifestations of the universe's rules themselves.
Although they possessed strength comparable to Godkings...
They were not a realm living beings could reach through cultivation.
Within the primary universe...
Above Heavenly Deities stood Godkings...
Above Godkings stood Heavenly Exalts...
That represented a difference of two entire major realms.
Locke even suspected...
That within a third-grade universe...
The strongest level of existence might be no greater than the Material Planes of the Magic Universe...
Where even the strongest experts could perhaps reach only the Saint-level.
Locke would rather inscribe his name upon the Hongmeng Golden Ranking first...
Securing one of the creation slots for a first-grade universe...
Than wait until after completely fusing the Space-Time Laws...
Only to discover that the universe he evolved was merely a second-grade...
Or even a third-grade universe.
Setting these thoughts aside...
Locke smiled as he listened to Rena recount the battle between the Light Chief Sovereign Augusta and the Four Divine Beast Sovereigns.
At several points...
He couldn't help bursting into laughter himself.
"Hahaha!"
"Hahahahaha!"
"This Sovereign Redding really is something."
"If he couldn't kill his enemy..."
"He could at least disgust him to death, huh?"
Locke didn't know much about how the battle between the Four Divine Beast Sovereigns and Augusta had unfolded in the original story.
He only knew...
That Augusta had obtained the soul-protecting Overgod artifact from the Fate Chief Sovereign Orloff...
Endured one strike from the Four Divine Beasts' fused innate divine ability...
Then killed all four Sovereigns with a single move.
Locke remembered...
That the bodies of the Four Divine Beast Sovereigns which Beirut later obtained...
Had all been completely intact.
In other words...
Augusta had originally killed them with soul attacks.
But now...
In this battle...
The bodies of the White Tiger, Vermilion Bird, and Black Tortoise Sovereigns were all damaged.
They had all been slain by Augusta using his Overgod artifact.
Only the Azure Dragon Sovereign...
Because he had thoroughly disgusted Augusta...
And because Augusta feared Redding might perform yet another outrageous stunt while slowing time...
Was ultimately killed directly by a soul attack.
Rubbing his chin...
Locke recalled that...
Whether it was the Four Ultimate Warriors of the Yulan Continent...
The "Temporal Chaos" created by the Destruction Chief Sovereign Wordred...
Or even the "Transcending Samsara" later developed by the Fate Chief Sovereign Orloff based upon Temporal Chaos...
All of them were related to the Sovereign blood essence of the Four Divine Beast Sovereigns.
Now...
Among the Four Divine Beast Sovereigns...
Only Azure Dragon Sovereign Redding's body remained completely intact.
In that case...
Would Beirut still possess enough Four Divine Beast Sovereign blood essence to trade with the Destruction Chief Sovereign Wordred...
And to conduct his own experiments to create the Four Ultimate Warriors?
Should he perhaps...
Provide Beirut with some assistance?
Give him a portion of the Four Divine Beast Sovereigns' blood essence?
After all...
Over all these years...
The amount of Four Divine Beast Sovereign blood essence Locke had obtained from the Four Divine Beast Clan's ancestral baptism ceremonies had long since exceeded what he could ever use.
Setting aside several dozen drops...
Was nothing to him.
Immediately...
Locke spread out his soul power...
Instantly extending it into the spatial turbulence.
Very quickly...
His soul power found the Yulan Continent...
And locked onto Beirut.
"Is Beirut..."
"Creating the Necropolis of the Gods?"
Within the Yulan Continent...
The newly ascended Sovereign Beirut was surrounded by a circle of emerald-green Sovereign power.
Locke wasn't unfamiliar with Beirut's current state.
This...
Was cultivation that nearly every Sovereign undertook after becoming one.
Creating a Divine Plane!
Of course...
That didn't mean a single Sovereign possessed the ability to create an actual Divine Plane.
The Seven Divine Planes...
Could only be opened through the combined efforts of seven Sovereigns of the same element.
A single Sovereign...
Could only create a personal divine plane.
Furthermore...
Creating a Divine Plane mainly relied upon the immense power contained within the Sovereign spark.
The Sovereign himself merely acted as an enormous battery supplying Sovereign power.
Naturally...
Since the Sovereign was also the master of the Sovereign spark...
During the creation of that divine plane...
He could still shape its environment according to his own wishes.
At present...
Beirut was attaching the divine plane he had created to the Yulan Continent...
Then dividing that plane into eighteen levels.
Locke paid little attention to Beirut creating his divine plane.
Instead...
He directed his soul power toward the corpses of the Four Divine Beast Sovereigns.
"Hm?"
At this glance...
Locke smiled.
Previously...
He had assumed that because the bodies of the White Tiger, Vermilion Bird, and Black Tortoise Sovereigns had been damaged...
The amount of Sovereign blood essence Beirut could extract from them would be very limited.
With Locke's current soul power...
He could already determine approximately how much Sovereign blood essence each body still contained.
From the White Tiger Sovereign's body...
Sixty-one drops could be extracted.
The Vermilion Bird Sovereign possessed the least.
Perhaps only forty-eight drops.
The Black Tortoise Sovereign's corpse could yield fifty-four drops.
Although the Azure Dragon Sovereign had repeatedly used his innate divine ability...
His body itself remained intact.
It could still produce fifty-eight drops of divine beast blood essence.
Second only to the White Tiger Sovereign.
Although those numbers seemed fairly high...
In reality...
If one completely refined the corpse of a divine beast that hadn't excessively consumed its own blood essence...
One could normally extract around one hundred and twenty drops.
In other words...
The battle between Augusta and the Four Divine Beast Sovereigns...
Had directly consumed more than half of all their Sovereign blood essence.
Naturally...
This wasn't what made Locke happy.
Originally...
Even before his soul power had reached the Yulan Plane...
Locke had already intended to replenish each of the Four Divine Beast Sovereigns' blood essence back to one hundred and twenty drops.
Judging by the amounts he had just detected...
He would have needed to supply more than two hundred and sixty additional drops altogether.
However...
Just as Locke was preparing to replenish their blood essence...
He unexpectedly discovered...
That within the interspatial rings of all four Sovereigns—except Azure Dragon Sovereign Redding—
There were still around one hundred drops of Sovereign blood essence stored inside.
Clearly...
These drops had recently been refined and stored away by the Four Divine Beast Sovereigns...
In preparation for granting them to members of their clans for the ancestral baptism ceremonies.
Unfortunately...
No one had expected disaster to strike before those blood essences could be delivered to their descendants.
As for why Azure Dragon Sovereign Redding's interspatial ring contained no Sovereign blood essence...
Locke understood that as well.
After all...
Whenever a divine beast used its innate divine ability...
It consumed not only soul power...
But also divine beast blood essence.
Redding had carried his three younger brothers while fleeing from Augusta's pursuit for half a day.
The Sovereign blood essence stored within his interspatial ring...
Had undoubtedly all been consumed while activating his innate divine ability.
Even the Sovereign blood essence within his own body...
Had been largely exhausted.
Otherwise...
An intact Azure Dragon body couldn't possibly yield only fifty-eight drops of Sovereign blood essence.
Within the Sovereign Palace...
Under the puzzled gazes of his descendants...
Locke tore open the space between the Netherworld and the Yulan Continent...
Allowing everyone inside the Sovereign Palace to see the Four Divine Beast Sovereigns' corpses.
"So..."
"This is the Material Plane where that little fellow who stole the Light Chief Sovereign Augusta's spoils is located?"
Upon seeing the Four Divine Beast Sovereigns' corpses...
Loran, Veer, Grant, and Rena all turned their attention toward them.
None of them were surprised that their father (grandfather, great-grandfather, great-great-grandfather) could accomplish such a feat.
They had long known...
That after reaching Paragon in all four elemental Laws...
The higher Law one cultivated was the Space Laws.
With their father (grandfather, great-grandfather, great-great-grandfather)'s attainments in the Space Laws...
Accomplishing something like this wasn't the least bit surprising.
Even they themselves...
If they were within the spatial turbulence surrounding this Material Plane...
Could also tear open a spatial rift leading into the Yulan Plane.
Among everyone present...
Only the youngest, Rena...
Had been born after Beirut had already become famous.
Even now...
Rena still remembered that until they had returned together to Mount Nether...
Reisgem had always believed she was one of Beirut's descendants.
However...
Now...
Rena already possessed strength comparable to an Intermediate Sovereign.
As for Beirut...
Even after refining White Tiger Sovereign Ersi's Wind Sovereign spark...
He was still merely a relatively powerful Lesser Sovereign.
(End of Chapter)
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