Quantity Against Quantity, The Tyrant's Creation

Tao Chen was horrified!

His instincts told him, [Something's gone wrong!]

No Artisan, whether from the Association or In Secluded, would ever lightly initiate a battle without any preparation. Outside of an unexpected encounter, an Artisan would painstakingly make every possible preparation, ensuring that before the battle even began, they would ultimately be the one to sound the trumpet of victory. To that end, he had scoured every record and piece of information on Ji Jue, even assessing him more extravagantly than he had Ye Xian back then, and preparing specific countermeasures.

This included eliminating all mechanical creations in the wasteland, using the Realm of Encirclement to suppress the effectiveness of barehanded refinement and Ye Xian's Spirit Essence Refinement, using the Usurper's Masterwork to weaken the destructive power of phlogiston weapons to the greatest extent while stripping away outside interference, and making numerous precautions against the Ye Clan's Nine Forms... Embarrassing as it was to admit, no matter how foul Tao Chen's mouth was, in his heart, he had genuinely treated Ji Jue—who was more than an entire major rank below him—as an equal opponent and countered him with everything he had!

For this, he had even spared no enormous expense, using a Blessed Creation of the Eternal Gate to set up a perfect temporal vortex along Ji Jue's route, ensuring that the instant it activated, time within would freeze completely and all trouble would be crushed in one fell swoop.

And yet, not a single one of his preparations fucking came in handy...

Every bit of news and intelligence was fucking outdated!

It was all wrong!

Under the dual suppression of the Realm of Encirclement and Tower's Shadow, he should have been able to counter Non-Aggression and completely BAN every refinement directed toward Superior Virtue. Yet this bastard's Fiendification