Over the next several decades, events unfolded just as Liu Yuan had predicted.
One battered team after another returned to the secret base in the Blackstone Star Belt.
Ancestor Xue Ku's team was the first to return.
The former lord of the Blood Fiend Dao Realm had fared even worse than Fan Kong. When he returned, only a dozen or so trusted followers remained at his side. Every one of them was wounded and exhausted.
When he saw Liu Yuan, relief at having survived appeared on his gaunt old face for the first time.
He recounted in detail how they had been hunted, how he had used the terrain to ambush their pursuers, and how they had finally escaped only after both sides suffered grievous losses.
Liu Yuan merely nodded. He acknowledged Ancestor Xue Ku's ruthlessness and resolve.
To strike back against his pursuers in such desperate straits took an extraordinary temperament and no small measure of skill.
After Ancestor Xue Ku, several other lords of Dao realms trickled back with the battered remnants of their forces.
Their experiences were much the same.
Once their Teleportation Tokens failed, they were caught in the Heavenly Net and Earthly Web laid by the Divine Luo Domain and relentlessly hunted.
Some, like Fan Kong, relied on caution and luck to avoid a direct clash, struggling all the way until they escaped.
Others, like Ancestor Xue Ku, fought bloody battles against their pursuers and barely broke through at a terrible cost.
Without exception, every team that returned had suffered heavy losses.
Hundreds of Hunyuan Infinite Realm experts had fallen.
Among them, You Xuan, lord of the You Xuan Dao Realm, and Yuan Chen, lord of the Heavenly Abyss Dao Realm—two lords at the Hunyuan Infinite Peak—had vanished without a trace. Their True Spirits had