Ling Tian's idea was not just to have Feng Ying take the Phoenix Soul Fruit on a tour of the God Realm before returning to the Fengyun Realm. He also wanted Feng Ying to spread the word: anyone who defeated everyone in Fengyun Pavilion in a challenge could claim the Phoenix Soul Fruit. If anyone tried to get it by other means, they would rather destroy it—or use it themselves, perhaps to refine Quenching Liquid.
Just as Chi Xue and the others had guessed, the Phoenix Soul Fruit had condensed another fruit, and it was nearing maturity. Feng Ying would take it on a tour of the God Realm, especially in front of the Outer Realm Demon Race cultivators. It would be a powerful lure for them. Before long, every Outer Realm Cultivator would know about it, and they would naturally go after Feng Ying. By then, Feng Ying should have returned to the Fengyun Realm. That would draw all the Outer Realm Cultivators' attention to Fengyun Pavilion, leaving fewer to deal with Ling Tian and the others.
If some still wanted to capture Ling Tian and the others to exchange them for the Phoenix Soul Fruit, Feng Ying and the others could simply use the ripe fruit. Although it was not fully mature and could not let a cultivator be reborn through nirvana, it would still be of tremendous benefit to them.
Of course, the most important point was that it would take tens of thousands, perhaps nearly a million years, for the Phoenix Soul Fruit to mature. In other words, if this fruit was gone, the Outer Realm Demon Race would have to wait hundreds of thousands of years for another. Never mind whether they could live that long; even if they could, they would not want to