Sage Monarch

Yet again, Yang Qi's empire's destiny was burning like fire.

The leaders were the first to get the new medicinal pills, allowing them to generate their own resources.

The entire empire surged with excited activity as everyone thirsted to get their own First Energy Primordial Chaos Pill. As a result, the people worked even harder to perform services, resulting in an immediate ten percent increase in destiny.

Time sped by.

Destiny improved constantly, and the Everlasting Aegis expanded with even more rapidity. By now, the Everlasting Aegis was a treasure superior to even the Myriad Worlds Monarch Chart.

Meanwhile, Yang Qi was scouring the Halls of Heaven for more medicinal pills.

His empire had been growing for ten years.

Back when Yang Qi had first ascended to the god world, he hadn't even been a Paramount God. But now, his empire was thriving so incredibly it was hard to say how many top experts it could produce. There were some god-spirits there, who, because of the superior nature of the empire they lived in, could reproduce at an incredible rate.

Furthermore, Yang Qi had subjugated large groups of Demonfolk, and had transformed them on a genetic level, turning them into true humans. And they had incredible reproductive capabilities. They could produce a hundred offspring at a time! In fact, the sage monarch magistrates started recruiting their nursemaids to join the learning institutes of the empire and train everyone else on how to raise children.

Eventually, Yang Qi cleared out the final First Energy Primordial Chaos Pill.

Yang Qi looked at his empire, and saw that the destiny was like a mighty pillar climbing into heaven, where it spread out into the void, sending out tendrils that could absorb everything it touched.

His destiny was now at about eighty to ninety percent that of the Invincible Dynasty!

In other words, he had nothing to fear if the Invincible Dynasty invaded. Of course, if all three of the other dynasties joined forces to attack him, he would be in extreme danger.

Having finished with the First Energy Primordial Chaos Pills, Yang Qi continued his exploration, gathering up medicinal pills of all sorts to send back to his empire. However, he now needed to reduce how much he was sending back. He had already reached the point where the pills couldn't be used fast enough, and had to go into storage.

And when stores built up unused, the destiny would grow more slowly.

For now, he stopped looking for pills designed to improve destiny, and instead focused on pills similar to the Invincible Gold Pill, which could be used to boost individual cultivation bases.

"Lord of the Sword Dao, what sort of pills can be used to achieve a cultivation base like you God-Lords of old?" Yang Qi asked.

"Quit dreaming," he replied with a cold smile. "You think the Sovereign Lord could literally do anything? The God-Lords had psychic scales of at least ten billion, and were considered completely invincible. That requires personal enlightenment. Even with a blessing of destiny, you can't just make a peak Paramount God into a God-Lord. It has to be done on one's own merit."

Yang Qi chuckled coldly. "You're wrong. God-Lords aren't half-Annulled experts. With the right resources, any breakthrough is possible. All of my friends and family are peak Paramount Gods, and I want them to be God-Lords. And that's going to take medicinal pills."

"Regardless, I'm not going to help you," the Lord of the Sword Dao snarled. "As long as you don't kill me, Yang Qi, I'm going to get out of here eventually. And then I'll kill you!"

"I know. You and I are as opposed as fire and water. If I were in your position, I'd have the same attitude. Don't worry, I'll kill you as soon as I can."

When the Lord of the Sword Dao heard that, his heart went cold.

However, there was nothing he could do. King Immortal-Slayer and Proud Central were in a similar deadlock. If the latter couldn't assimilate the former, the former would eventually escape and kill the latter. There was no way to resolve the situation.

It was survival of the fittest.

Yang Qi spent a lot of time searching for rare medicinal pills, but didn't send them to his empire. It was already saturated with pills, and it would be hundreds of years before they ran out.

For now, the destiny in his empire wasn't going to suddenly surpass that of the House of the Invincible, because in terms of strength, he couldn't outdo them.

Before that could happen, he needed to push his own psychic scale to the level of a hundred billion, and also make sure he had multiple God-Lord-level subordinates, people like Dugu Sheji and Yang Primal-Chaos. With fighting prowess like that, his forces would be unparalleled in all creation.

Leaving behind the lower-level medicinal pills, he raced on, knowing full well that time was of the essence. As his empire's destiny rose, it was only a matter of time before the other three dynasties found out what was happening. And there was no way they would be happy with a fourth major power rising up to compete with them. Once they found out, it would mean war, so he needed to get as strong as possible before that happened.

After some searching, he suddenly detected the fluctuations of a powerful medicinal pill. It came from a wide-open square filled with a forest of stone pagodas. And atop each pagoda was a crystal box shaped like a coffin, filled with pills, all of which resembled śarīra left behind after some top expert experienced nirvanic extermination.

However, closer examination revealed that they didn't have the aura of the buddhist schools, but instead, a radiance and light filled with a sensation of righteous justice.

As Yang Qi looked closer, he realized that they weren't made of pure medicinal ingredients, but rather seemed like convergences of psychic scale and godhood rating, with destiny thrown in. And as it turned out, they were filled with the aura of the confucian schools.

Yang Qi couldn't help but let out a laugh. "Do you know what pills these are, Lord of the Sword Dao? As it turns out, the legends are true. The Sovereign Lord slaughtered countless confucians in the ancient era. It was a bloodbath that later came to be called the Sovereign Lord's Confucian Purge, and even the most elite experts lost their lives in it. I used to be skeptical about whether it really happened, but after seeing these medicinal pills, I understand the truth."

The legend of the Sovereign Lord's Confucian Purge stated that, as the confucian schools gained power, they began establishing empires throughout the god world. And because they excelled at governing nations, other empires would invite them to send advisors and counselors to help them. Even the Sovereign Lord had confucians as government officials.

But as time went on, they got stronger and stronger, eventually gaining such immense influence that they earned the right to disagree with the Sovereign Lord. It reached the point where they wanted the Sovereign Lord to be a figurehead ruler, while they took responsibility for governing the god world.

That was when conflict broke out.

In his fury, the Sovereign Lord slaughtered all of the confucians he could find.

The confucians fought back, but they couldn't counter the might of the Sovereign Lord. He wiped them out in bloody fashion, although a few survived. In the countless years that followed, they eventually came back, to the point where the three major dynasties in the modern god world all had confucians as government officials.

Based on what Yang Qi was seeing, the countless confucian experts that were slaughtered had been used by the Sovereign Lord as ingredients in medicinal pills.

The pills were called The Lord's Wrath.

After concocting them, the Sovereign Lord didn't give any to his subordinates, but rather kept them sealed here.

"I wonder how strong these pills are," Yang Qi said, reaching out to open one of the crystal boxes.

Taking out a pill, he peeled it apart, until he could tap into the quintessence of the pill. Intense rumbling shook the area as confucian ideals, divine abilities, and other things poured into Yang Qi, causing his psychic scale and godhood rating to jump by several hundred million!

Although that wasn't very much considering his overall level, it went to show how impressive the pills were.

Most people would get an increase of several billion if they took the pill.

"Incredible! With these pills, my friends and family will definitely experience huge boosts. Even if they can't become God-Lords with psychic scales of ten billion, they'll at least get up to the level of nine billion. They'll be just on the verge of breakthroughs!"

Yang Qi couldn't have been more delighted.

1. The term I'm translating as "confucian purge" could be translated as "bury alive the confucians" and is most famously associated with an incident purported to have been carried out by the first emperor of China, Qin Shihuang. It was called the "burning of books and burying of confucians", which he supposedly did to strengthen his own philosophy of Legalism. Nowadays, many historians question whether that event really happened. .