The Heaven and Earth Clasp
Nobody wants to be the first to speak out; everyone is waiting for someone to step forward and take the lead.
Now that someone has taken the lead, if they miss this opportunity and the Immortal Cultivation Realm becomes more vigilant and cautious, will they have another chance?
Will there be a more suitable opportunity to turn things around?
Everyone knows the answer in their heart.
So everyone mobilized and worked together to wipe out all of Myriad Connections's informants in their respective territories. The speed of their actions made it hard to believe that they hadn't been planning this for a long time.
Even those who were hesitant, afraid, or worried and were reluctant to participate were dragged and forced to join by their neighbors.
Alright, now everyone's in trouble. If any escapees manage to get away with it and someone from the Immortal Cultivation Realm comes looking for trouble, no one can escape being the one who stabs them in the back.
Myriad Connections in the Mortal Realm, built up over many years, was wiped out almost instantly.
Among them, the Heavenly Heart Sect was the most active in cooperating.
Upon receiving the notification, Venerable Zhiyu immediately ordered the elders of his sect to lead a group to capture their sect's spies and instructed them to assist other sects and royal families in the surrounding area in making every effort to apprehend their spies.
The group from the Heavenly Heart Sect Sect's Tuiyi Kingdom was among the fastest to complete their mission and send people to the Pusi Kingdom.
There are reasons why the Heavenly Heart Sect is so proactive.
Many years ago, Venerable Zhiyu felt that he was about to break through to the Great Perfection and began to plan. He instructed the entire sect to fawn over their spies and treat them well in every way, providing them with as many Cultivation Resources as possible even when resources were scarce.
The informants had never received such treatment before. Although they considered themselves superior to cultivators in the Mortal Realm because they were cultivators of the immortal Immortal Cultivation Realm, they were actually just working at the bottom of Myriad Connections. They had no status or power whatsoever; they were just working for others.
Therefore, the Heavenly Heart Sect's sugar-coated bullets were quite effective. These spies were so flattered that they were living happily every day, and thus became less diligent in reporting news to the Heavenly Heart Sect.
Of course, the fact that they were able to remain undetected by their superiors for many years was also largely due to the negligence of their superiors.
The main reason is that the Mortal Realm is really too poor. They have been here for so many years and feel that it is so difficult for cultivators from the Immortal Cultivation Realm to break through to the Foundation Establishment or Golden Core stages, let alone the Nascent Soul or even the Spirit Transformation stages. These cultivators in the Mortal Realm have nothing and live a miserable life. Even if they are exceptionally talented, they can only cultivate to the Nascent Soul and that is their limit.
Spirit Transformation? Isn't that just wishful thinking?
Furthermore, even a Nascent Soul Cultivator makes quite a commotion every time they break through a minor realm. If Venerable Zhiyu of the Heavenly Heart Sect truly breaks through, they will definitely notice the commotion and wouldn't miss it. Therefore, these spies of the Heavenly Heart Sect Heavenly Heart Sect, enjoying the flattery and obsequiousness of the disciples and elders. They don't care at all about the various investigations of the Heavenly Heart Sect, and many things are often just glossed over by the elders and disciples.
Unbeknownst to them, the Heavenly Heart Sect possessed an ancestral Law Treasure that could isolate celestial phenomena within a certain range; its name was the Heaven and Earth Clasp.
It was this Heaven and Earth Clasp that helped Venerable Zhiyu of the Heavenly Heart Sect conceal the extraordinary phenomena of his advancement to the Nascent Soul Great Perfection of the Nascent Soul stage, thus preventing Myriad Connections from discovering it early on.
This Heaven and Earth Clasp has always been passed down through generations of the Heavenly Heart Sect leaders, and only those who have reached the Nascent Soul Nascent Soul Realm of cultivation can wield it.
Despite the existence of the Heaven and Earth Clasp, it is regrettable that the Heavenly Heart Sect has never produced Nascent Soul Great Perfection stage and has the potential to advance to the Spirit Transformation stage.
In fact, it's not just the Heavenly Heart Sect; given the scarcity of resources Spiritual Qi in the Mortal Realm, very few people can truly combine talent and luck to cultivate to the Nascent Soul Late Stage.
Venerable Zhiyu can be considered the first person in the last few hundred years who has the potential to Spirit Transformation.
This is also one of the reasons why Myriad Connections's informants in the Mortal Realm have become lax.
After all, although a few hundred years is nothing to high-level cultivators, the cultivators who actually work at the grassroots level are at most Golden Core cultivators, and most of them are Foundation Establishment cultivators. A few hundred years is enough for them to be replaced many times.
Over the years, Venerable Zhiyu has always concealed the fluctuations of his Spiritual Power, and others have only assumed that he is still in the Nascent Soul Late Stage realm.
Until recently, he finally began preparing for a closed-door breakthrough.
For some unknown reason, those spies suddenly became very diligent in their work recently, and even discovered the various preparations the sect was making for his seclusion. As a result, Venerable Zhiyu had no choice but to order all of these spies to be arrested and imprisoned in a very secluded cave within the sect.
The reason he chose to imprison them instead of killing them was that he was worried that these people might have left behind something like soul lamps in the Immortal Cultivation Realm. If they were imprisoned, even if other spies in the Mortal Realm discovered them, they would still have plenty of time to relay messages.
However, if they were to kill them directly, anyone with a Soul Lamp on the other side would immediately notice something was wrong, so they couldn't just sit idly by.
A breakthrough is imminent; nothing can disturb him.
This time, either he will successfully break through to the Spirit Transformation, or he will fail and fight them to the death before the Heavenly Heart Sect is completely suppressed and destroyed by the Immortal Cultivation Realm.
It's all or nothing.
This was a Venerable Zhiyu and the Heavenly Heart Sect.
Of course, outsiders were unaware of these matters and only marveled at the Heavenly Heart Sect's proactive actions, praising them as befitting a major sect.
Venerable Zhiyu personally led a team to send the spies captured in the Tuiyi Kingdom to the Pusi Kingdom, and then returned to his sect to go into seclusion.
In this way, all the spies that Myriad Connections had planted in the Mortal Realm, from the top leaders to the lowest-ranking soldiers, were caught and transported from all directions of the Mortal Realm to Xiushui City in the Pusi Kingdom.
There were a total of 14,800 people, including one Nascent Soul Cultivator, 1,000 Golden Core cultivators, 10,000 Foundation Establishment cultivators, and the remaining 3,000-plus were Qi Refining Late Stage cultivators.
The sheer number is staggering; you wouldn't believe it until you count it all.
For a long time now, Myriad Connections has actually been sending so many people into the Mortal Realm.
Although their numbers in each country's sect are not large, the Mortal Realm is vast, and overall they appear to be numerous.
Seeing such a large number of people, the other nations and sects that had brought people couldn't help but worry for Xiushui City.
After all, these are cultivators, not ordinary people, and many of them are at the Golden Core Stage. If they were to join forces and cause trouble, it would be very difficult to control them.
The Lingxian Sect, however, had absolutely no worries.
They were even quite happy.
With so many people, so many Golden Core Foundation Establishment, imagine how many good plots of land they could create!
With so many able-bodied men, wouldn't the vast, seemingly endless forest behind North Mountain be quickly transformed into arable land?
Just thinking about it is exciting; I can't wait to gather these cultivators and go explore the wilderness.