Sage Monarch

Yang Qi was truly benefitting from his crisis. Thanks to the pursuit of this Great Sage, he was actually acquiring spatial tempest fays.

The finger-sized fays were purely elemental. Normally speaking, they would only come forth when a specific individual met certain requirements, including amassing the element of space to a very high degree. Even some people who had personal domains could never connect with space to that level. But Yang Qi could.

More and more spatial tempest fays attached to his Angel Wings, until they looked like a pure sea of the things. The fays chattered amongst themselves as they poured into Yang Qi’s blood and soul. With every moment that passed, he felt more and more like he could pierce through space.

He used to be a massive piece of driftwood, but with the help of the spatial tempest fays, he now felt like he was an iceberg sinking down into the water.

Suddenly, he was struck with enlightenment. ‘I can’t use massive force to pierce through space, then why not sink into it? Become a part of it?’

It was as if a new world had opened up to him.

Spatial power bubbled inside of him, and it felt as though both his soul and his fleshly body could completely transform at any moment. Before the chase with the Great Sage began, he hadn’t had any inclination that he could break through to the Space-Void Transformation, but right now, he felt completely enlightened.

Of course, now was not the place and time for a breakthrough. Breakthroughs didn’t happen instantly, and if he gave the Great Sage enough time to finish constructing a space-time wormhole, then the situation would get very bad, very quickly.

Even if he did reach the Space-Void Transformation, that still wouldn’t put him in a place to be able to defeat a Great Sage in a fight.

Instead, he continued to fly back and forth randomly, in order to make it harder for the Great Sage to establish the coordinates he needed.

“Divine Dragon Fills the Sky.”

He streaked through space with his Angel Wings, looking like a divine dragon, and making it very difficult to determine where exactly he would be next.

As time passed, Yang Qi’s efforts began to produce results, and the Great Sage grew weaker and weaker, until he was having trouble keeping up.

“Evil creature! I can’t believe you can produce spatial tempest fays. Too bad for you that you aren’t in the third Legendary transformation! Maybe if you broke through, you would have a chance. But I won’t give it to you. You’re dead!” The hand of this Great Sage seemed incapable of giving up, or perhaps its rage had caused it to lose its faculties.

All of a sudden, the Great Sage’s voice rang out. 

“Puṇḍarīka!

“Maitreya!

“Vihārapāla!

“Ādittapariyāya!

“Mañjuśrī!

“The five of you lend me your true energy. We have to pierce through space to kill this brat!” [1]

Unexpectedly, the Great Sage was calling out to five other Great Sages from the Western Continent to ask for help.

Almost immediately, Yang Qi could sense five expressions of will converging on the hand of the Great Sage.

‘Not good! If five Great Sages make a move together, I’ll never make it out of here alive.’ How could he ever have guessed that the Great Sages of the Western Continent would be so shameless as to team up to try to kill him?

“‘This evil creature must not be allowed to escape!” the Great Sage went on to say. “I can sense that he has some spectacular, high-level energy art. Perhaps it's even a heavenly-class energy art from primeval times, something that could help us break through to the Demi-Immortal level. Sages and immortals are vastly different. Breaking through with our measly saintly-class energy arts will be too difficult.”

In response to his words, the five expressions of will began to go all out to build up the power to pierce through space.

‘There’s no time!’ Yang Qi thought, well aware that he was only moments away from death. There was no way he could rely on the God Legion Seal. After all, it had remained silent when he went to repair the damage to heaven, and he had no way of knowing if it would respond to the attacks of these Great Sages. He couldn’t just stake his life on something that sometimes worked and sometimes didn’t.

The hand of the Great Sage began to radiate higher and higher levels of power, to the point where it was starting to affect the time and space around it.

Six enormous sage domains were beginning to take form.

Already, Yang Qi’s momentum was being affected.

As the moments ticked by, six streams of psychic power entered his mind, allowing him to see six mighty individuals, like six gods who could crush heaven and earth beneath their feet. And right now, they were trying to kill him.

However, in the very moment in which death seemed inevitable, a massive force bore down on the area, parting the space-time tempests. It was like an endless black river that had passed by countless continents, greyspaces and wormholes. It was like an interstellar tempest that had showered rage throughout countless star systems.

Yang Qi knew exactly what this black river was. It contained power that surpassed Great Sages and Demi-Immortals. This thing contained the power of hell.

It was a hell monsoon!

Yang Qi instantly realized that he had a perfect opportunity on his hands. 

‘Heaven’s helping me! Heaven’s helping me!!’ Holding absolutely nothing back, he headed toward that black river.

However, the hand of the Great Sage didn’t seem to notice, and before it had even reached its peak state of power, it smashed toward Yang Qi.

Six massive bursts of energy propelled the hand as it shot through the void and into the monsoon.

By this point, Yang Qi himself was well inside the hell monsoon.

BOOOOM!

Instantly, devil energy erupted, and a host of fiend-devils surged forth to attack the hand.

There were plenty of powerful experts among this host of fiend-devils, which traveled with the hell monsoon to other planes, hoping to find kingdoms of flesh and blood creatures to invade.

There were even some Half Sage fiend-devils. And thus, the force blasting into this hand of a Great Sage was no small matter.

The Crown Prince was a Half Sage, a state in which heaven motes would already begin to form in the body, and he could already start to form a sage domain.

Beyond the mere levels involved, there were simply too many fiend-devils in the hell monsoon to count.

Almost immediately, the hand of the Great Sage was stained black by the monsoon; the Great Sages powering it were not like Yang Qi, and could experience nothing but death in a place like this.

“Dammit! Who would have thought a hell monsoon would show up!”

The hand destroyed countless fiend-devils as the enormous black river raged through the area.

Unfortunately, hell monsoons were enormous, and could encompass multiple planes. They contained the power of darkness and gloom, against which Great Sages counted as almost nothing. As for Yang Qi, he immediately hid himself. And thus, the hand of the Great Sage was slowly eaten away, and soon vanished.

**

Deep in the Western Continent, in an enormous imperial palace, six furious Great Sages were engaged in a discussion.

“Not even the six of us working together could catch a Legendary level energy warrior? He's an ant! If word got out about this we would lose all face!”

“That evil creature is too shrewd and scheming. We were careless to not have attacked in full force from the beginning. Once that hell monsoon came, it was impossible to keep track of him. Apparently, that brat is the same one who repaired the damage to heaven in the Rich-Lush Continent.”

“Should we go to the Rich-Lush Continent to kill him?”

“We can’t. If we did, the Great Sages there would notice us. According to the long-standing treaty, Great Sages aren’t supposed to go to the other continents. Besides, we probably couldn’t beat their five Great Sages in a fight.”

“How about we send some Half Sages to try to assassinate him!? Spare no cost! Maybe even try to capture his friends and family.”

“That's a good idea. Unfortunately, now that he's lost himself in space-time, it’s not likely that he’ll find a way back.”

“It would be great if the chancellor of the Demi-Immortal Institute left to track him down. That man is too strong for us to deal with.”

“Prepare to send out the orders….”

** 

‘I finally shook them!’

A certain Astral-Star bronzeblaze fiend-devil in the hell monsoon actually emanated a bit of Yang Qi’s aura.

After entering the monsoon, Yang Qi had immediately gone into hiding. He had used his Devil-God Seal and Hell Portal to summon a bronzeblaze fiend-devil, and then shrunk the Grand Emperor's Pagoda down small enough to enter the thing's body and rest. The hell monsoon was filled with an enormous army of fiend-devils, zombies, devil-ghosts, skeletons, hellish beasts, devillings, hobgoblins and the like. However, bronzeblaze fiend-devils had the purest hellish blood, and were considered nobility and leaders.

In fact, Yang Qi had learned from the thing that it was leading an army via the hell monsoon to another plane.

This particular bronzeblaze fiend-devil was the subordinate of a Half Sage asura.

1. As you may have already noticed, there is quite a bit of Buddhist inspiration in this novel. For flavor purposes, I’m usually going to use the Sanskrit versions instead of direct translations into English. And unless the meaning of the names is important to the story, I’m not going to include references to explain them.