Conflict

In fact, before his reincarnation, when Lan Yi first entered Artificial Divine Realm 1909 for its trial, he had already shared a fateful connection with Philia.

To him, it was all ancient history.

To avenge the poisoned Huo Yuanjia, Lan Yi had carried out a frenzied campaign of assassinations against the Dongyang people in that era, when surveillance and communications were both extremely underdeveloped—especially targeting the chamber of commerce and military officials behind the scenes.

Although the assassinations succeeded, the backlash came in the form of a citywide manhunt.

After several brushes with death.

Lan Yi was rescued by Philia...'s daughter, Scathach, a young lady who adored masked heroes, and hidden away in the home of the president of India. What happened afterward was rather 18-plus: manservant and young lady, manservant and madam, intense encounters in the bathroom, day and night blurring together—three thousand words omitted.

Philia's sharpness and competence were especially remarkable. Having her own opinions and the ability to act on them were virtues that very few women of this era possessed.

Looking back now.

Lan Yi found it rather amusing.

Who hadn't done some absurdly romantic and risqué things in their youth?

"Immortal Master, if you need her, I can go receive Madam Philia now."

Zhao Sikong stood to one side like a shadow. If he kept silent, it was difficult to notice his presence. As Lan Yi's shadow, he was adept at reading expressions and judging the situation.

With Zhao Sikong's mental power.

He could receive someone without anyone noticing.

"No need. To kill me, her husband will drive her here in another hour."

Lan Yi paused, then sighed helplessly.

"Coming with them will be more than a dozen unrealistic assassination plans. Even if I stood there and let them carry them out, they might not succeed. Perhaps I should have that president make sure I intend to indulge in pleasure with his wife in the office, then see whether the naval cannons can blast me to pieces in one shot."

That rabble was truly absurd.

They didn't even need Philia to leak the information, nor Liu Baiyuan and the others to monitor them. Once they had finished drawing up the plans, that very night the rabble had directly or indirectly reported the assassination plot to the Martial Practitioners' Collective.

Clearly, there were few truly stupid people. It looked as though everyone was being foolish together, but in truth, only a small number were genuinely foolish. The rest were doing everything they could to sell those fools for the best possible price.

For the clear-headed foreigners who had witnessed Lan Yi's terror.

What was a mere cuckolding?

Even if it were the vengeance of a murdered father, they would grin and swallow it for now.

"Why must you put yourself in danger, Immortal Master? As long as those ironclads come near, Geng Liangchen and I will capture them for you."

Zhao Sikong did not want Lan Yi to take risks.

He did not know just how powerful Lan Yi was, but taking risks was unacceptable. The Immortal Master now shouldered the great responsibility of making Xinghan glorious and mighty once more. For that goal, anyone could die—except the Immortal Master.

Besides, mere ironclads.

To Spirit Cultivation Practitioners who could run across the sea on their own legs and whose mental power ignored iron armor, as long as the enemy did not flee, the Martial Practitioners' boarding them and taking them down was a certainty.

Moreover, they were not without ironclads of their own.

The Qing Imperial Court's Yangtze Fleet, which Ghost Heavenly General Geng Liangchen had cordially persuaded to surrender, possessed ironclads. Those ironclads would certainly perform terribly if they went toe-to-toe with the foreign fleet in an artillery duel, but if they merely carried Spirit Cultivation Practitioners close enough to the enemy, it would be ridiculously easy.

At that very moment.

The ironclads that had come over to their side had already set sail.

They had already departed with Martial Heavenly General Huo Yuanjia and Ghost Heavenly General Geng Liangchen, the two Spirit Cultivation Practitioners, searching for traces of the foreign fleet heading south.

Those fools who did not know whether they were alive or dead.

They were not yet worth Lan Yi rushing to deal with personally.

Lan Yi had not planned to act in the first place. He had yet to vent the anger from being harshly berated by the Imperial Court, while the various forces in the south, which had already settled into a posture of self-preservation, also needed to be purged. Thus, his original plan had been to remain here today, completely wipe out the members of the ridiculous Punishment Fleet, and then head north.

But Philia's secret letter had changed Lan Yi's mind.

Philia was right.

Given his current status, having a Western woman interview him and build momentum would be far more effective among the Qing Imperial Court's people, who generally suffered from a fear of foreigners, than his own thunderous words followed by a drizzle of punishment.

After all, Lan Yi was a Xinghan native.

He could not truly carry out an uncontrollable massacre. If he did, the River Civilization of this world would be lost to him. As the River Civilization's foremost psionic cultivator, Lan Yi might destroy the world, and he killed according to bloodlines, but he still had enough decency to preserve the civilization.

If half the empire resolutely refused to remain Xinghan people and completely defected to the foreigners in the face of the Martial Practitioners' Collective's harsh and brutal methods, then the time needed for the northern expedition would become far too long.

Using Philia's identity, along with those of the other foreign reporters, to build momentum for himself.

This became the optimal solution.

The Great Powers were not united either. If the campaign succeeded, then even if the wild boar in dragon robes wanted to sell Lan Yi out, the Great Powers, after weighing the strength and gains and losses, might not be willing to buy. Instead, they would tacitly acknowledge the Far East beyond their reach as the sphere of influence of this rising Divine Emperor.

"Go prepare to deal with the farce that's coming." Lan Yi gestured for Zhao Sikong to leave.

"By the Immortal Master's Order." Zhao Sikong bowed respectfully and slowly vanished into the shadow at the corner of the wall.

A moment later.

As Lan Yi appeared to sit motionless in a daze, blue-white lotus flowers slowly emerged in his eyes, while his black hair instantly lengthened into white hair that stirred without wind. Yet within only a few seconds, all those abnormalities returned to normal. Lan Yi's complexion, however, turned deathly pale, and in his extreme depletion, he nearly spat out a mouthful of blood.

Only with the psionic energy nourishing him from within the psionic furnace did the sensation of his head being split open by agony improve slightly.

"As expected, there really is no way to take shortcuts with the Dharma form."

"Even if I forcibly condense a mental landscape using the experiences and insights of the past, I still can't deceive the body's instincts when it has never properly cultivated martial arts."

"As expected, Daoist arts and martial arts are fundamentally at odds."

Daoist arts followed reason, while martial arts did not.

During the Qi Cultivation stage, Lan Yi could use tricks and cheating methods, consuming psionic energy to make his body reach Qi Cultivation Grand Completion by the most perfect route.

But once he began Spirit Cultivation.

He could no longer achieve it through rapid cultivation.

The Self-form and Human-form were still manageable; they could continue to be explained through Daoist knowledge. But once the Dharma form began interfering with reality, trying to explain it with Daoist knowledge would have only one consequence: the Dharma form would lose its spirituality, transform into an external demon, and turn back to devour its master.

For Lan Yi, who was still at the Refining Destiny Clusters stage, that backlash meant losing control of his thoughts. He would no longer be able to stop himself from harming his own body because of his torn-apart mind.

Lan Yi realized.

As a reincarnator, the first threshold he had to face in Dual Cultivation of Dao and Martial Arts was resolving the conflict between the principles of martial arts and Daoist arts. This threshold should not be enough to kill a reincarnator, because there were quite a few ways to resolve it.

This was interesting.

"That also means that after Artificial Divine Realm 1909, my old friends' highest realms will be Refining Destiny Clusters in Daoist arts and the Human-form in martial arts, right?"