Published: August 10, 2026
Chapter 1038: The Original Resolve Remains Unchanged, Yuan Ying Death Warriors!
The sun set in the west, reluctantly sinking below the horizon.
The last streak of crimson in the sky was its final struggle.
A black robe fluttered without wind. Liu Yu stood atop the city walls, both hands resting on the cold, hard battlements, gazing northward for a long time without looking away.
It was only when night fully descended and the three teams completely vanished into the darkness that he finally withdrew his gaze.
One general's success is built upon a mountain of bones.
Normally, out of one hundred qi refinement cultivators, only one could advance to foundation establishment. And out of another hundred foundation establishment cultivators, only one would have the chance to condense a golden core.
Thus, anyone who successfully formed a golden core was already an outstanding expert, one in ten thousand.
As for those who could condense a yuan ying, even among the tens of thousands of disciples in a major sect, it often took centuries of successive selection, along with extremely rare opportunities, before one or two appeared.
If they were loose cultivators, perhaps several hundred thousand of them would go through many cycles of new faces replacing old ones before a tiny handful had the chance to emerge.
Then what about a transformation spirit sovereign?
What kind of natural selection and elimination would it take?
Even for sects like the Supreme Void Palace, Heavenly Fiend Sect, and Heavenly Thunder Palace, with disciple bases numbering in the hundreds of thousands, only a few would appear every five thousand years.
In each generation, it would already be remarkable if one sovereign could maintain dominance over the four directions.
And Liu Yu, Primordial Master, and Blood Sea Demon Lord were all trying to break through to divine transformation. Because of the upheaval caused by the Qingyun Society, how many people had died without a sound?
Behind the loss of thirty-three Immortal Cities were countless cultivators who had died, and thousands upon thousands of times more mortals who could not even cry out.
To call it "one general's success is built upon a mountain of bones" was already too gentle.
Not only that, but in order to buy time for his own assault on divine transformation, Yuan Yang Sect disciples had to be sent to the front lines in wave after wave.
The first batch of nearly ten thousand disciples, including one hundred foundation establishment cultivators and ten Golden Core Elders, was only the beginning.
"Drunk on the battlefield, who among the ancients ever returned?"
"Out of these people, how many will ultimately be able to return safely to the sect?"
Night covered the earth. Liu Yu stood with his hands behind his back, looking northward in silence, and could not help but form this question.
Thinking of this, his heart grew somewhat heavy.
But no matter how heavy his heart became, there was no softness in it, no thought of rushing to the front lines and going all out himself.
There was no doubt that as a cultivator raised from childhood in the Yuan Yang Courtyard, Liu Yu did love the sect.
But compared to that, he loved himself more.
He loved himself, loved the sect, and loved the Tian Nan cultivation world!
Wasn't the reason he periodically took out some spiritual herbs and spiritual objects from the Immortal Abode world to refine foundation establishment pills and Golden Core Pills and cultivate sect cultivators simply so they could play a greater role and better assist him?
Now it was time for them to repay that favor, to buy him time to break through to divine transformation. That was simply putting fine steel to use at the edge of the blade—how could he possibly soften his heart because of it?
It was just like carefully refining a magical treasure: normally nurturing it with spiritual energy without slacking off, wasn't that all to make it unleash greater might in a duel of magic?
Could he really worry that the magical treasure might be damaged, and then hesitate during a duel, afraid to fully activate it, only to neglect the root and chase the tip, ending up dead with his dao ruined?