"Li Tianming is the reinforcements? What does that mean? It doesn't sound logical. Who's the corpse?" Yueling Xiao muttered, and when he saw that his daughter kept silent, he suddenly recalled that she mentioned someone else aside from the Adjudicator. "What do you mean by 'the other one?'"

She knew that he would ask that question. With the most respectful tone she could muster, she said, "Who else? That legendary figure of course. He has never made an appearance before, but his existence is confirmed. He is a being above the Adjudicator. I believe that this is his plan."

"That person..." Yueling Xiao's expression turned manic at the thought. He felt so agitated that he couldn't even speak, for he knew that once that entity joined their camp, it meant that they had the final say in the Realm of Chaos! No matter what they had lost so far, they could make up for all of it! "You're right! With those two supreme beings on our side, we will win the war even after we lost this battle!"

"Be more quiet, lest you disturb the fallen souls, Yueling Ji whispered.

"Ah, alright..." Thinking about the souls of the fallen added a tinge of grief into the mix with his excitement and rage. "My poor grandsons! What would Yueling Starcage do without them?"

Yueling Ji rolled her eyes. "Enough, stop crying. It didn't cost me much to make eight of them. I'm still young, after all. Once we conquer the Realm of Chaos, I'll make another batch. From that point onwards, the Yueling Clan will dominate the Realm of Chaos for countless generations to come!"

"Good! Good!" Her father nodded excitedly. After a while, he asked, "Aren't those two beings immortal? Won't we just be the puppets that they control in the background?"

"Dad, that's not a good line of thought to explore. They are supreme beings that we can't even begin to fathom. Even Li Muyang is constantly wary of them rather than my sisters and I. Focusing on their nature like you just did is just plain pointless. To those two entities, conquering the universe is meaningless. They are lifeforms outside this universe, so they don't care about conquest or legacy. What they need are people who will carry out their will. We just have to do their bidding to be given the role of their emissaries."

"I see! We have them to thank for our rise, after all, especially with the achievements of you four. If the Adjudicator really cared about conquering the realm, he wouldn't have needed to bother with so much effort to nurture you all. That can only mean that we are worth something to them!"

"It's good that you've finally come to reason." Yueling Ji looked back at the Ruinless Zone, her voice incredibly cold. "Resisting those two supreme beings only means one thing: complete eradication."

"Those sky-plunderer outsiders definitely deserve it! They have to be wiped out!" Yueling Xiao said.

***

After a month of rest, Tianming returned to Nullity. He knew that Imperator Jian, Lin Xiaoting and many others were there to watch the battle, but Li Muyang remained in Nullity the whole time. As such, Tianming went back to personally meet him.

"Do you see this? I can't get that green spot off my head no matter what I do," Tianming said in Plunderlord Palace.

"Old Man, help your son, quickly! His wife is far away in the Sun and that speck of unlucky green on top of his head is making him panic," Ying Huo said. [1]

"Shut up," Tianming said, pinching Ying Huo's beak shut.

Li Muyang's expression was incredibly stern. He studied the green leaf and tried to destroy it with his Sky Plundering Hand. In theory, there was nothing it couldn't crush, not even the Grand-Orient Sword. Yet, the green leaf was completely untouched. Furrowing his brow, he said, "He has come prepared. The green leaf must have cost him quite a bit of effort. If I use all my power to crush it, I will hurt you."

"Who is he?" Tianming asked.

Wei Jing said, "Another being like the Adjudicator. He almost never shows himself. The two of us have only seen the vague outline of a green figure behind the Adjudicator once by coincidence and felt the pressure that he exuded."

Li Tianzi grit his teeth. "It's bad enough that they trapped us to go through with that bet with them, and still, we have to suffer from such an underhanded method! That shady prick that can't bring himself to show himself in public must be behind Yueling Starcage's rise in the past two hundred thousand years as well. It's only a matter of time before they make their move against us if they've stooped to the point of doing something like that."

"I see." Tianming had wondered why Li Muyang would let a few mere imperatores in the Realm of Chaos cause him so much trouble. He was finally certain who the mastermind behind all this was. They were beings like Di Yi and Huang Qi, two of them, at that! Unlike Di Yi, who had weakened after becoming a parasite, the imprisoned Huang Qi and reborn Tian Jiu could recover their full power. Tianming had no idea of the scale of power they wielded.

"Dad, we might have made huge gains this time around, but we've also brought this conflict to the forefront. What will we do next? This matter concerns the survival of all in the Realm of Chaos, so we must tread carefully," Li Tianzi said.

Li Muyang looked at his empire from his window, seeing the joyous smiles of his subjects as well as the vast galaxies in the Realm of Chaos. "Life in oblivion, Dao in plundering, such things are beyond us."

1. TL Note: in reference to being 'wearing a green hat', as in, being cucked ☜