Zhao Siliang, the Nine Heavens Domain branch's sect master... A figure of his standing was already equivalent to a regional governor within the Nine Cauldrons Sect. His standing exceeded that of ordinary elders and was on par with hall masters holding key positions in the main branch. They were, without question, the true core higher-ups of the Nine Cauldrons Sect.

For a moment, the eyes of several vice captains and the other personnel inside the captain’s chamber turned toward the captain, Jormun. And Jormun, sensing the psychic thought conveying the warning, pondered briefly before letting out a cold laugh. "Hmph. I don’t believe they have the guts!"

After considering certain extreme possibilities, he added calmly, "Besides, I don't believe the power of a mere Nine Heavens Domain can pose any real threat to our Sky Patrol Warship."

With that, he stood up. His powerful psychic thought spread out, enveloping the entire warship. "Pass down my orders. Raise the output of all defensive arrays, perception arrays, auxiliary arrays, interception arrays, and displacement arrays to maximum. Then proceed at full speed. I want us to reach Longxiang City within three minutes. At the same time, activate the offensive arrays at full power. Have the sword cultivators and spell cultivators prepare themselves. Once we arrive at Longxiang City, break through the city-protecting array within one minute!"

"Yes, Captain!" The array masters and department heads acknowledged the order in unison.

Immediately afterward, the entire warship burst into frantic activity as everyone executed the captain’s commands.

"Captain... That Zhao Siliang..."

"No need to pay him any attention." Jormun chuckled lightly. "They cannot afford the consequences of attacking an Infinite Star Palace Sky Patrol Warship, a third-generation warship!"

***

Within a command center inside the side branch's main hall, one outfitted with numerous arrays for receiving and converting psychic thoughts...

Through the refined surveillance skills of the Heavenly Palace's cultivators, Zhao Siliang watched as the Sky Patrol Warship remained unmoved by his warning and instead pushed the output of all its arrays to their limits. Uncontainable fury surged in his eyes.

The Infinite Star Palace was acting extremely arrogantly, completely disregarding the Nine Cauldrons Sect! They were treating the Nine Cauldron Sect's territory as if no one governed it.

"Sect Master, Hall Master Zhao He is asking whether we should issue the order to attack." One by one, sect disciples who followed the path of psyche refinement turned their gazes toward Zhao Siliang.

The other deputy sect masters and hall masters had already returned to their posts to respond to the crisis.

"Infinite Star Palace!" Zhao Siliang barked in anger as he stared at the warship displayed in the virtual projection.

"Sect Master, do we attack or not?"

"Sect Master, in one more minute, that Sky Patrol Warship will enter a densely populated residential zone. At that point, regardless of whether we act, the resulting energy fluctuations will destroy all residential areas on the ground that lack any array protection..."

"We must seize every second. According to estimates, it will take us ten to fifteen minutes to breach the Sky Patrol Warship’s defensive arrays. But... they will reach Longxiang City in three minutes. Three minutes later, according to estimates, they will shatter Longxiang City’s defensive arrays, exposing the entire city to the Sky Patrol Warship’s firepower!"

Streams of information flooded rapidly toward Zhao Siliang. Everyone was waiting for this sect master to decide. He hesitated for a moment, but once he thought of the contributions the Purple Firmament Institute had made to the Nine Heavens Domain, thought of the weight carried by the chief of the Purple Firmament Institute, and recalled the words spoken by the sect master... all doubts vanished from his heart, leaving only resolve behind!

"Attack!" He slammed his palm down on the table.

"Pass my order down! Attack!" He straightened up, his eyes seeming to burn with fire. "Bring that Sky Patrol Warship down!"

At the instant the order was given, the thoughts of the many disciples in the command center seemed to stall for half a second. The next moment, everyone sprang into motion. Wave after wave of psychic thought radiated outward from their bodies. The order of Sect Master Zhao Siliang spread instantly to every cultivator within the city.

"Attack!"

"By order of the sect master, array-breaker sword cultivators, commence the assault!"

"Command confirmed. Spell cultivators within the Yin-Yang Fire Array, release your spells. Target: Infinite Star Palace's Sky Patrol Warship. Coordinates have been transmitted..."

"Primordial psyche seniors within the Primordial Psyche Transformation Array, please prepare yourselves. The array wave is about to activate. Coordinate with the array’s power and unleash a psychic assault to shatter the information-restricted zone!"

***

As the order was delivered within Longxiang City, the target of the Sky Patrol Warship, thirty-six Foundation Building spell cultivators acted at the same time, releasing a divine ability spell that, in ancient times, only Nascent Soul cultivators had been able to wield—Annihilation Purple Light![1]

Purple radiance flooded the heavens. Under the amplification of the Yin-Yang Fire Array, it produced an unprecedented reaction. As yin and yang energies mutually annihilated, they released terrifying might never before seen. The light it carried surpassed even the Great Solar Fire. Like a divine sword tearing the firmament, it swept through the void and, guided by the primordial psyche cultivators' psychic thought, blasted straight toward the Sky Patrol Warship hundreds of kilometers away.

At the same time, from another direction, forty-nine great sword cultivators jointly unleashed their life-bound flying swords. As those swords merged with arrays, they seemed to fuse into a single entity, forming a towering greatsword stretching over a thousand meters.

Thunder roared as the greatsword followed closely behind the sky-rending Annihilation Purple Light, slicing through a 500-kilometer stretch of sky as it slammed toward the Sky Patrol Warship.

And just as these two waves of attacks were about to arrive, one primordial psyche cultivator after another unleashed psychic thought like raging storms, charging into the information-restricted zone propped up by the Sky Patrol Warship.

However, whether it was sword light or spells, and even with the amplification arrays operating at full capacity, the Sky Patrol Warship’s perception and reconnaissance systems detected everything first. All information was quickly relayed to the captain’s chamber.

"Captain, the Nine Heavens Domain is about to launch an attack."

Upon receiving the report, Jormun looked momentarily stunned, then surprised, and immediately afterward, furious.

"How dare they?! They actually dare to attack our Sky Patrol Warship!" he growled, a savage glint surfacing in his eyes. "So be it. Don’t blame me then. Pass my order down. Our warship is under attack. All departments are to enter battle mode. Intercept with full force... and prepare to counterattack!"

As the command was issued, the primordial psyche cultivators of the Infinite Star Palace aboard the warship calmly took charge of their respective arrays. Through layer upon layer of array embedding, they fused their psychic thought into a single force.

Soon, an equally violent psychic thought storm surged outward in a fan-shaped sweep, colliding head-on with the psychic thought assault launched by the Nine Cauldrons Sect’s primordial psyche cultivators. Though psychic thought was formless, the collision still formed visible ripples within the void.

It was as if matter at the microscopic level had been disturbed. Within a radius of more than a hundred kilometers, tens of thousands of faint electric arcs continuously erupted, turning the region into a sea of weak electrical discharge.

Yet before that electric sea could settle, the thousand-meter greatsword formed by the forty-nine great sword cultivators crashed down. Countless streams of light and spells flashed across the Sky Patrol Warship, quickly causing the massive greatsword to shudder violently.

Immediately afterward, dozens of sword lights, empowered by the warship’s arrays, shot forth from the vessel. Under the guidance of primordial psyche cultivators, they crossed over a hundred kilometers with precision and extreme speed, slamming into the array nodes at dozens of times the speed of sound and instantly shattering the thousand-meter greatsword.

The sword formation collapsed in an instant. Although the hundred-meter-wide Annihilation Purple Light tore through the void soon after, the Sky Patrol Warship answered with similar beams of light, steadily consuming the purple light's energy.

By the time the Annihilation Purple Light finally struck the Sky Patrol Warship, its power had been reduced to less than a tenth. Even though the explosion released visible shockwaves that shredded the surrounding clouds, it failed to break even a single array on the Sky Patrol Warship.

The result caused a brief, stifling pause across the battlefield. The Nine Cauldrons Sect’s attacks had either been intercepted in advance or shattered until almost nothing remained. As for the Sky Patrol Warship, not a single array had been breached. And its defensive arrays were layered one atop another, forming at least thirty layers!

"How can it be this strong..."

"These are third-generation flying swords. They’re using at least third-generation treasured-artifact-level flying swords. Our sword cultivators responsible for breaching defenses can’t even get close to the warship!"

"Even after concentrating their damage with Annihilation Purple Light, the spell cultivators still couldn’t do a thing to its arrays..."

"How is this even winnable?!"

Although the Nine Cauldrons Sect’s cultivators had long known the gap between themselves and the Infinite Star Palace was vast, they had never imagined it was this enormous. The outcome of the very first clash plunged many into despair. Aboard the Sky Patrol Warship, Jormun was clearly pleased with the result.

"A pile of scrap metal, and they think they can contend with our most advanced flying swords, our strongest arrays, and our finest cultivators?" The captain sneered, then continued, "Send a message to the other side. Inform them that we entered the Nine Cauldrons Sect's territory because a shameless thief stole advanced technology from the Infinite Star Palace. We have no intention of destroying the Nine Heavens Domain. Once we take that thief away, we will leave. But if the Nine Heavens Domain branch continues to act stubbornly and attacks our warship futilely, we will launch a full counterattack."

The aide froze for a moment. Are we really issuing a proclamation?

Jormun did not explain. The warning had already been delivered. Moreover, the Nine Cauldrons Sect had struck first. The fact that they had only intercepted attacks instead of retaliating immediately was already a show of restraint.

If the Nine Cauldrons Sect dared to continue attacking, then they would wipe out this side branch. And if they truly handed the person over, then they should not blame the Infinite Star Palace for sending people to take over the cities’ arrays for inspections, to see whether any other "thieves" were hiding.

***

The order quickly reached the side branch. When Zhao Siliang saw that their first wave of attacks had failed to break even a single layer of the Sky Patrol Warship’s arrays, he was left deeply shocked.

It was not just him. Even Yaoguang, standing at the center of Longxiang City under the protection of multiple layers of arrays, felt an indescribable sense of oppression when he witnessed the scene, using the improved Purple Firmament Type 12 flying swords. used by cultivators to extend his senses.

At that moment, he finally understood just how vast the gap was between the Nine Cauldrons Sect and the Infinite Star Palace, the undisputed number one sect of the present age.

1. Nascent Soul is the realm after the Golden Core Realm. ☜