The Sibi Sect Master was a mysterious powerhouse from a thousand years ago. The origins of the Sibi Sect he founded were shrouded in mystery, and it was closely tied to the Ancient Lotus Sect—suspected to be an unorthodox offshoot of that sect. As for the man himself, he had been a high monk who betrayed the Buddhist faith, cultivating in tandem the various techniques of the Lotus Sect, Buddhism, and heterodox evil sects.
This grandmaster of the evil path was no trifling figure. Recently, Great You had also received word that the three Ghost-Person Bodhisattvas had been pulling strings in secret, using the demon star's stellar marrow to guide forth a future body of the Sibi Sect Master from the past.
Afterward, that future body descended into this world. Exploiting a flaw in the Heavenly Dao itself—a BUG—it had silently smuggled itself into this point in time.
The imperial court had its own intelligence network, and with Manifestation-level experts making calculations, it knew quite a few of the inside details. For instance, when Ying Ji had been hunted down before, Ji Changli of the Hemp-Robe Dao Palace had fallen into a trap. Struck by the Sibi Sect Master's Void Heavenly Will Complete Concealment Great Dharma, he had been knocked into the void beyond all voids, exiled forever...
Because of Feng Chuanyu, the Divine Marquis among his disciples, Ji Changli maintained a relationship with the court that was neither too close nor too distant. They were not especially hostile to one another, and the two sides even shared an unspoken understanding regarding Ying Ji's existence.
You Sheng's living puppet was a calamity of monstrous proportions. Both sides had joined forces to hunt it down, but Ji Changli had been too eager to personally clean house. His rash decision to act