He had immediately ordered his subordinates to keep the matter under wraps. Once he learned that Hodan had teleported to the Radiant Divine Realm, he quickly searched the area around the teleportation array and finally intercepted Hodan just moments ago. As for Hodan's dereliction of duty, the Chief Sovereign of Black Sand had simply ignored it. No Chief Sovereign would assign a Paragon to guard a Material Plane.
Just as Hodan had expected, the Chief Sovereign of Black Sand radiated an imposing pressure. But Hodan could also tell that his aura wasn't particularly strong. He concluded that the figure before him was a clone formed from the Chief Sovereign of Black Sand's energy.
"Impressive." The Chief Sovereign of Black Sand looked at Hodan, the corners of his mouth lifting slightly. "Hodan, I rarely admire anyone. But... I admire you. Although I'm a Chief Sovereign, I haven't reached Paragon in the Laws. You, on the other hand, have. Remarkable!"
The corners of Hodan's mouth lifted, too. This was something he took pride in, and there was no need to be modest.
Hodan knew that becoming a Chief Sovereign had nothing to do with becoming a Paragon. There were only a handful of people in the original story who were both Chief Sovereigns and Paragons. There were only around thirty Paragons in the entire Coiling Dragon World, while each element had seven Chief Sovereigns, for a total of seventy-seven.
Although some Chief Sovereigns had two Sovereign Clones, and there were also the Four Divine Beasts' Sovereign Sparks—of which only the Wind Sovereign Spark had been refined by Beirut—the actual number of Chief Sovereigns was still over sixty. That was more than twice the number of Paragons. There really were more Chief Sovereigns than Paragons, which showed just how difficult it was to