Night had already fallen. Beneath the overcast clouds, the light was dim and the vast marshes bore the grim, twisted silhouettes of grass and trees like a ghost prison.
The Nether Demon Eye strictly controlled his breathing, body temperature, vital aura, and any other physical signs that might expose him. He completely ignored all external changes as well, shrinking like a turtle inside a thick shell and hiding deep within the thick mire.
He had returned to the depths of the marsh because he could rely on certain arrangements made earlier to blockade the Purple-Haired Daoist. Yet it was undeniable that a greater part of it was a gamble—a gamble on the psychological blind spot of that Heavenly Monarch Yuanxu.
As for a head-on battle... forget it!
A man's reputation, a tree's shadow.
When the aftermath of the cross-realm battle between the two great supreme beings, the Shangqing Later Sage and the Rakshasa Ghost King, shook the entire world, Yu Ci—as a crucial node in that battle—achieved the fine reputation of "Heavenly Monarch Yuanxu" with his peerless void divine ability. His status and oppressive might already far surpassed all figures at the Longevity True Man level. Just as his lofty title of "Heavenly Monarch" implied, he stood directly on par with the sect leaders of all major sects.
Even if one calculated it based on seniority, cultivation, and other factors to rank him a notch lower than those major sect leaders, having that Shangqing Later Sage whose divine ability reached everywhere was enough to flatten all disparities.
Perhaps those bigwigs of the cultivation world were using various perspectives and methods to probe the true strength, weaknesses, and realities of these two pillars of Shangqing resistance, but the Nether Demon Eye was clearly not among them.
He was merely a lackey