After gaining a general understanding of the situation in the Earthly Mystic Realm’s subordinate worlds and the Azure Demon Realm’s Demon Domain.
Ye Qingxuan decided to head to the Demon Domain first, to see for himself what kind of place it really was.
He made his way to the central area of Star Battle City.
At this moment, the central square of Star Battle City was packed with people lining up to enter the various fixed spatial gateways that had already been set up.
All around the square, quite a few cultivators were shouting, recruiting new members to fill out their teams.
Most solo wanderers tended to head for the lower realms that hadn’t fallen yet, to hunt down the invading Green Demon Clan.
In those unconquered lower realms, although the number of Green Demon Clan members was smaller, these demons would be suppressed by the world itself, greatly reducing their power.
Hunting these suppressed Green Demons was undoubtedly much safer.
The organized teams, on the other hand, generally headed for the Demon Domain or the nine realms that had already fallen, to hunt the Green Demon Clan and seize the sources of demon veins.
After all, in the Demon Domain and those fallen nine realms, the tables were turned—the environment would suppress them instead, making the danger level extremely high.
If you went in alone, it would be all too easy to get trapped and surrounded, and killed.
Most of the teams forming up in Star Battle City right now were centered around cultivators at the Nascent Soul stage.
Whenever a team lost a member, they’d immediately recruit replacements from the outside to restore their combat strength.
As for those below the Nascent Soul stage, the vast majority headed to the lower realms that hadn’t fallen yet, to try their luck and see if they could pick up any traces of the Green Demon Clan.
Of course, there were also some fearless fools who thought of themselves as children of destiny—cultivation still below Nascent Soul, yet insisting on forcing their way into the Demon Domain or the fallen nine realms regardless.
Most of these people, after descending into those realms, were never seen again.
Consider it a way for the Earth Mystery Realm to filter out another batch of the foolish, eliminating them from the game ahead of time, I suppose.
Ye Qingxuan wore a silver mask, sizing up the teams that were recruiting as he slowly moved forward in line.
Maybe, once he pushed his cultivation higher, he could have his clone form a team of its own for fun?
That thought flashed through his mind and was gone. Soon enough, Ye Qingxuan arrived before the gateway leading to Demon Domain Number Three.
At present, the Earth Mystery Realm had opened up a total of twenty-three passages to the Demon Domain, numbered one through twenty-three.
The passages that the Xuantian Sect had opened in Star Battle City led to Demon Domain Number Three and Demon Domain Number Nine, respectively.
When Ye Qingxuan reached the spatial gateway for Demon Domain Number Three, the cultivator guarding the gate handed him ten Purification Spirit Trees and a formation disk.
The ten Purification Spirit Trees were the “fee” for using the spatial passage for free—he just needed to plant them somewhere in the Demon Domain.
As for the formation disk, that was a spatial array plate that could open a temporary passage back to the Earth Mystery Realm.
After tucking away the items handed over by the cultivator stationed at the gateway, Ye Qingxuan took one step forward and walked into the gate leading to Demon Domain Number Three.
Somewhere within one of the Demon Domain worlds under the Green Demon Realm—
A flash of white light streaked past, and Ye Qingxuan’s clone appeared along with that flicker of light on a remote patch of flat ground in Demon Domain Number Three.
The spatial passages that the Earth Mystery Realm had opened to the twenty-six Demon Domain worlds, at great cost, had been directly hidden within the void of the Demon Domain itself.
This way, the Earth Mystery Realm didn’t need to send personnel into the Demon Domain to guard the passages.
And the cultivators venturing into the Demon Domain were much safer, too—they no longer had to worry about the passage being destroyed and losing their chance to return.
The only issue was that this method consumed an enormous amount of rare resources. If the Green Demon Realm hadn’t been pushing them so hard, the higher-ups of the Earth Mystery Realm wouldn’t have been willing to use such a tactic so easily.
Upon setting foot in the Demon Domain, Ye Qingxuan frowned instinctively.
The moment he arrived, he felt a wave of suppressive force bearing down on him, reducing his full combat power to around eighty percent at best.
On top of that, the demonic energy saturating the air made him deeply uncomfortable, so he had no choice but to form a spiritual barrier around himself to keep the demonic energy at bay.
Even so, as soon as that barrier came into contact with the demonic energy in the air, a violent reaction would kick in, steadily wearing the shield down.
That said, since a cultivator’s spiritual energy had been refined and condensed, its energy purity was somewhat higher than raw demonic energy.
This clone of Ye Qingxuan was at the Purple Mansion stage. At that level, one unit of his spiritual energy could wear away about four strands of first-tier demonic energy, consuming only about one unit of his own in the process.
Still, even with that advantage, he had to avoid drifting demonic energy as much as possible, to keep from burning through too much of his internal reserves.
After all, in the Demon Domain, there was no spiritual energy to replenish him—he’d have to rely on pills or spirit stones to make up for any losses.
Luckily, the demonic energy here was fairly thin; otherwise, Ye Qingxuan would have found it hard to make any headway at all.
His situation in the Demon Domain was essentially the same as the Green Demon Clan’s position in the lesser thousand worlds affiliated with the Earth Mystery Realm.
And that was actually one of the reasons the Green Demon Clan hadn’t made more significant gains in their invasion of those smaller worlds.
Only when a cultivator reached the Nascent Soul stage, and their spiritual energy had been refined to a whole new level, could they truly ignore the demonic energy produced by a small-thousand-world-level Demon Domain.
Still, even a Nascent Soul cultivator couldn’t completely shrug off the suppressive force of the Demon Domain itself.
If they could, then those at the Mahayana stage wouldn’t have been unable to forcibly descend into small-thousand-world-level realms or Demon Domains either.
A small-thousand-world might seem limited in its upper ceiling, but it was still a complete world—far more than any cultivator below the Immortal realm could contend with.
The same logic applied to the Green Demon Clan’s side, too.
Demon energy might seem fiercely corrosive and destructive, but at the end of the day, it was just another power on the same level as spiritual energy.
Otherwise, the Earth Mystery Realm and the Green Demon Realm wouldn’t be locked in a stalemate.
Ye Qingxuan raised his head slightly and took in the Demon Domain’s environment around him.
Compared to the Earth Mystery Realm, the sky here was unusually dim, giving off a deep, oppressive feeling.
Even the plants growing in the Demon Domain leaned toward a dark, blackish hue, looking incredibly eerie.
After scanning his surroundings, Ye Qingxuan found a secluded patch of woodland and planted the ten first-tier Purification Spirit Trees there.
It was almost miraculous, really—these spirit trees, which seemed so fragile back in the Earth Mystery Realm, could thrive in the Demon Domain’s environment without issue, even absorbing demonic energy and transforming it into spiritual energy continuously.
Ye Qingxuan couldn’t help but marvel at it.
Perhaps, in the myriad worlds teeming with the wonders of creation, even the smallest blade of grass or the humblest tree could hold infinite possibilities.
Just like in the Green Demon Realm—they had similar demonic plants of their own, didn’t they?
Maybe, even though worlds themselves lacked consciousness, their innate drive to grow and advance could still give birth to special creations that helped them develop more effectively.
For now, Ye Qingxuan’s Earth Immortal inheritance had only given him access to the parts below the Immortal realm.
He still had too many questions about worlds on the level of the Earth Mystery Realm and the Green Demon Realm.
The Earth Immortal knowledge below the Immortal stage simply wasn’t enough for him to grasp all the information about the world level.
He shook his head slightly and set aside these rather “over his head” questions for now.
Choosing a direction, Ye Qingxuan began carefully exploring Demon Domain Number Three.
Since he’d come all the way to the Demon Domain, he was hoping to find a few demon veins and extract their sources to take back with him.
He didn’t want this trip to be a total waste, did he?
Too bad the current rank of the Qingxuan Cave Heaven Paradise was still too low—the gateways it could form didn’t yet have the ability to cross between realms.
Otherwise, this clone of his would have a much easier time getting things done.
