"The divine patterns are a trap."
After hesitating for a long while, Emperor Jie of Xia finally spoke slowly.
The moment those words left his mouth, cold sweat poured from Qin Shaofeng.
Divine patterns were a trap?
What kind of joke was that? Were divine patterns not a path of cultivation?
How could they be a trap?
"You may find it hard to understand when Jie puts it that way. Since things have already come to this, let me tell you."
Xue Ji waved her hand, interrupting Emperor Jie of Xia. "The appearance of divine patterns truly was an accident. At first, no one noticed anything wrong. This matter began when Yan witnessed a strange battle."
"One side in that battle was an Eternal Expert, while the other was a Sage. Guess who won."
"Surely... could it have been the Sage?"
Qin Shaofeng caught the issue in Xue Ji's words halfway through his sentence.
No matter how one looked at it, the Eternal Expert should have won, perhaps even slapped that Sage to death in a single blow.
But if that had truly been the case, Xue Ji would not have brought it up.
"Correct."
Xue Ji nodded lightly. "After General Yan told Jie about it, Jie took Zhong, Qi, and Ge to investigate. In the end, they discovered that divine patterns truly were a cultivation system—but one with an extraordinarily severe hierarchy."
"Within that entire system, there seemed to be something known as a Pattern King. Once a Pattern King appeared in battle, it could easily suppress all divine patterns. It could even forcibly command ordinary divine-pattern wielders to fight in abnormal ways, causing the battle to become completely one-sided."
By the time Qin Shaofeng heard this much, cold sweat had already soaked his robes.
No wonder divine patterns