But as the Demon Race grew ever more powerful and its foundations gradually stabilized, factions sprang up within it, hilltops upon hilltops, and cracks quietly began to spread.
Though the two brothers gave it their all, they gradually found themselves unequal to the task, able only to watch helplessly as the undercurrents of internal strife intensified without cease, barely maintaining that veneer of peace, thin as a cicada's wing, while beneath it, hidden currents had long been surging, ready to collapse at the slightest touch.
At this moment, a chilling thought even rose in Eastern Emperor Taiyi's heart:
Even if the Witch Race had not relentlessly driven them into a corner back then, even without that decisive battle where both sides were grievously wounded, could the Demon Race's current loose and fragile structure of rule truly have endured through the ages?
The myriad beings of the Demon Race were different by nature, their thoughts unfathomable.
If no external threat loomed over them, if life and death did not hang by a thread, who would willingly bow their heads, obey orders, and gather under one roof?
The law of the jungle was laid bare in nature.
Some races were born mortal enemies; either you devoured me, or I swallowed you.
Such enmity rooted in their very origins was nearly impossible to reconcile.
The two brothers could still suppress the situation for a time through their prestige and status, but they could never keep an entire mountain of jackals and a wilderness of tigers and leopards beneath their feet for a lifetime.
The Demon Race's later fragmentation proved that prediction exactly right.
That rout had never merely been the result of military defeat.
It was the final eruption of long-accumulated internal decay.
The Xuanyuan Human Emperor opposite him naturally had no idea