Watching the Immortal Court grow more prosperous and robust by the day, the East King Duke's personal ambition grew in kind.
Everything was unfolding precisely according to the grand blueprint he had envisioned. If the current trajectory held, it would only be a matter of time before his Immortal Court unified the entirety of the Honghuang World, commanding every soul under heaven with none possessing the audacity to disobey his decrees.
From his current vantage point, there was only one remaining flaw in his tapestry: the Opportunity for Sanctification!
"If only I could wrest that single strand of Primordial Violet Qi from the grasp of Kunpeng, everything would be absolute perfection."
The East King Duke sat atop his golden throne, his eyes flickering with a calculating light.
He understood that becoming a Saint was the ultimate and only true guarantee of absolute power. Recalling the events at the Three Immortals Island, he felt the familiar burn of resentment; as the dignified Head of the Male Immortals, he had been humiliated and beaten by Ling Xiao as if he were a mere child.
This was a stain upon his soul that could never be fully scrubbed away.
Had he possessed a truly peerless strength, or had he already ascended to Saintship, how could he have been forced into such a passive, humiliating role?
He would not be reduced to his current charade—leveraging Ling Xiao's fearsome reputation just to recruit immortal talents to his cause.
Consequently, he viewed his own lack of raw power as his greatest shortcoming, a deficit that had to be remedied at any cost.
The East King Duke eventually broached the subject with Empty Abyss, signaling for his subordinate to draft a viable plan for the acquisition of the Violet Qi.
Although Empty Abyss had handled their previous venture with a staggering lack of competence, the Duke still wished to hear the man's strategic input. The two soon became locked in a heated, hushed discussion over the logistics of a potential strike...
On this day, a fresh rumor ignited a significant stir throughout the Honghuang World.
Word began to spread: during the titanic clash at the Three Immortals Island, the Ling Xiao who had slaughtered his way through the world's elite and swept aside every obstacle was actually nothing more than a Clone.
According to a mysterious powerhouse from within the Dragon Clan, the entity that had fought at the East Sea was not the True Body, but merely an Incarnation.
The news hit the world like a physical blow. Those who had personally set foot on the Three Immortals Island were especially stunned.
They had felt the raw, suffocating terror of Ling Xiao's presence; to now be told that such a force was merely a shadow of the original was something they simply could not bring themselves to believe.
In the aftermath of that battle, many had perished and even more had fled in terror. By the time the Old Dragon had pointed out the truth of Ling Xiao's identity, most of the great powers had already vacated the area, leaving only a few minor cultivators to witness the revelation. Thus, the truth had been slow to permeate the world.
Now that the news had finally reached the ears of the great powers, their reaction was one of pure, stunned incredulity. It was too shocking—too fundamentally ridiculous—to be true.
The vast majority of beings concluded that the rumor was a fabrication.
Rumors, after all, were notoriously unreliable. They remembered the old whispers that claimed the Three Crows were inferior to the Sanqing and unworthy of comparison. And the result of that rumor? A single battle had inverted the entire hierarchy of the world.
At Yujing Mountain, the Sanqing were gripped by an immediate, visceral shock upon hearing the report.
If the opponent they couldn't overcome, even while fighting as a unified front and giving their absolute all, was merely a Clone...
Then what would have happened if the True Body had manifested? Would they have been extinguished in a single heartbeat?
"Impossible! Absolutely and utterly impossible!"
Yuanshi's face was a mask of shock and white-hot anger. From the deepest core of his being, he refused to believe the rumor; he simply could not accept it as reality.
Losing was a humiliation that already sat heavy upon his soul. If it were proven that they had been thrashed by a mere shadow, who could possibly endure the shame?
His legendary pride had suffered a severe, staggering blow.
"Second Brother, maintain your composure. This is merely a groundless rumor; do not allow it to fester in your mind." Laozi, sensing that Yuanshi's spiritual state was beginning to fracture, spoke quickly to anchor him.
It had been a monumental effort to stabilize Yuanshi after their last failure. To be hit with this news now—his arrogant second brother would surely find it unendurable. If the wound to his pride wasn't treated, it might very well manifest into a permanent Heart Demon.
"There are even rumors circulating that the East King Duke fought Ling Xiao for three hundred rounds before suffering a narrow defeat. Do you truly believe those to be true as well?"
Laozi let out a soft chuckle. When he had first heard the report of the Duke's "heroic" struggle, it had brought a genuine smile to his face.
Was that not even more patently ridiculous than the Clone rumor?
Hearing this, Yuanshi's features froze, and the manic tension in his face began to gradually relax.
As he thought it through, his brother's logic was sound. He realized he had been reacting with a touch of paranoia.
"Second Brother, you must never lose sight of the truth: we are the Saints personally appointed by the Dao Ancestor. Our ascension is an absolute destiny of the heavens. Do not allow yourself to be fixated on the petty struggles of the present; our primary and only goal is to achieve Saintship."
"Once we have ascended to the throne of a Saint, all of these worldly affairs will be like passing clouds. In that era, will a single Golden Crow even matter?"
Laozi spoke with a solemn, earnest authority, directing his teaching toward both Yuanshi and Tongtian. As the eldest brother, his dedication to their collective path was absolute.
With these words, the clouds in Yuanshi's mind finally began to clear, as if a heavy shackle had been struck from his spirit. He broke through the limitations of his current despair and swept away the gloom.
His fighting spirit, though battered, rose once again.
His brother was right; he had been far too focused on the immediate present.
The one who truly mattered was the one who laughed last.
Once one attained the status of a Saint, the world became an entirely different reality.
"Now, we must focus our efforts on Cultivation. We must slay our remaining two corpses as swiftly as possible!"
Laozi's voice turned deep and solemn. When it came to the pursuit of the Dao, he was never anything less than absolute.
Yuanshi and Tongtian nodded in heavy agreement. Even as the destined elite of the heavens, they understood they still had a long road of Cultivation to walk.
In the West, upon Mount Sumeru.
Jieyin and Zhunti stood up abruptly the moment the news reached their ears.
"Senior Brother... is such a thing truly possible? Was the entity that fought us truly just an Incarnation of Ling Xiao?"
Zhunti asked the question with a mixture of suspicion and a deep, gnawing uncertainty. Recalling the clash at the East Sea, he couldn't help but feel a surge of icy palpitations. They had been dismantled by Ling Xiao as easily as a butcher chops through melons, yet they were being told the opponent was only a Clone.
Jieyin sank into a deep, silent thought, his eyes flickering with various calculations. He felt a profound unease and found himself unable to immediately determine the truth or falsehood of the claim.
After a long silence, he spoke slowly.
"This rumor... it might very well have been released by the Golden Crow himself. However, judging from every sign we witnessed, Ling Xiao's cultivation is likely far beyond our own. He is firmly treading the Path of Laws."
He weighed the words, his mind constantly turning over the implications.
"Laws?" Zhunti was startled, asking hurriedly, "Did the Dao Ancestor not proclaim that the Path of Laws is an evolutionary dead end? If that is the case, why is Ling Xiao's magic power so staggeringly high?"
He found the contradiction impossible to reconcile.
Jieyin offered a thin, knowing smile. "It is not necessarily a dead end. I suspect the Golden Crow possesses some hidden treasure or a unique Opportunity that allows him to Cultivate with such abnormal speed."
While the Path of Laws was undeniably difficult, it was not strictly impassable. He suspected the Dao Ancestor had labeled it a dead end primarily to promote his own Method of Slaying the Three Corpses.
He harbored these thoughts in the shadows of his mind, yet he dared not speak them aloud, fearing the karmic retribution of questioning the Saint's teachings.
"A treasure... a unique Opportunity..." Zhunti murmured, finding himself in agreement with Jieyin's assessment.
"If that is the case, is there truly no hope for our revenge?"
His face soured. From their first collision with the Three Crows until this day, they had never once tasted victory.
Every time they sought to settle a grievance, they were merely beaten again. New grudges were layered atop the old, yet they remained powerless to retaliate. The feeling was a constant, sharp pain in his chest.
"Become a Saint," Jieyin uttered the two words softly, yet with a terrifying weight.
"First, we must slay our second corpses. Once we have ascended to the rank of a Saint, what fear will we have of a Golden Crow? Revenge will be ours for the taking."
Hearing this, Zhunti nodded and spoke no more, immediately sitting down to begin his Cultivation.
Beyond Mount Sumeru, the Yao Race, the Wu Race, and every other major power in the world formed their own opinions on the matter.
Some chose to believe, while others remained skeptical, but without exception, they all felt a renewed, crushing sense of pressure.
The Sun Star.
When Ling Xiao learned of the rumors from the boy Ziwei, he found himself caught between a laugh and a sigh of exasperation.
"So... the matter of my Clone has already been exposed?"