Blood Tide True Venerable's soul scattered to the winds.
Jiang Ding carefully and thoroughly cleansed her spirit, swept away the lingering traces of karmic laws and order, then concealed himself and returned to Blood Lake Bone Mountain.
From beginning to end, everything in the Devil Dao Sect went on as usual.
Disciples and elders attended to their duties. Those who cultivated cultivated; those who labored labored, just as they had for the past hundred thousand years.
Occasionally, a favored Spirit Transformation cultivator sought an audience with a Void Refining True Venerable. Sometimes they received no response, sometimes a scolding, and sometimes an audience and a little guidance.
Everything was exactly as it had been.
Not a single disciple or elder of Blood Lake Bone Mountain knew that their sect's Void Refining ancestors had vanished without a trace. The sect was hollow inside, with nothing left but an illusory shell.
Now, only one sect remained.
"Nine Firmaments Divine Thunder True Sovereign, you stole my money..."
"Back in the Northern Plains Minor World, your Thunder Division Dao Soldiers attacked me. And over the past hundred thousand years or so, you've enslaved who knows how many cultivators who ascended from the lower realms, including cultivators from the Northern Plains. They were all my subordinates. These are new grudges piled atop old ones; it's hardly as if I'm attacking you for no reason..."
Jiang Ding muttered to himself.
He moved through Blood Lake Bone Mountain like a ghost. The elders and disciples coming and going did not see him. At times, someone even walked straight through his body without making contact, as though he were a being on another plane of space.
After several dozen steps, he reached the forbidden grounds behind Blood Lake Bone Mountain.
One of Blood Lake Bone Mountain's ultimate reserves