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...The hall was deathly silent; no one dared answer.
Bibi Dong rose slowly, and a crushing pressure instantly blanketed the entire palace.
"It isn't that they're worthless," she answered herself, voice like ice striking ice. "It's that someone—doesn't want to fight."
"Inside our own ranks, some believe the new order has snatched their cheese and trimmed their privileges. They dare not resist openly, so they would borrow the blades of the Two Great Empires to force this Empress to compromise!"
Her gaze, as sharp as a sword, stabbed at the commanders of the Spirit Master Legions: "The frontline collapse was not because we're outmatched, but because… they fight in name only! With this tactic they protest against the Empire and pressure this Empress!"
"They tell this Empress that unless the Spirit Master class is granted greater privilege and profit, they will no longer support the Spirit Empire!"
Bibi Dong's words exploded like thunder in the silent palace.
The generals with bowed heads trembled almost imperceptibly.
Matters had indeed reached the most troublesome—yet most inevitable—scenario they had foreseen.
Internal parasites, the vested interests of the old order, could no longer endure. Seizing the moment of foreign invasion, they began to gamble with the Empire's very survival, orchestrating a sordid game.
They assumed that as long as the front kept losing and the Empire faced ruin, she and Xuan Ming would have to yield, rescind the edicts, and restore the Spirit Masters' exalted status.
"Hmph…" Bibi Dong let out a laugh, half-mocking, half-murderous.
She descended the imperial steps and approached the vast continental sand-table, gazing at the countless red arrows representing the Two Empires' assault and the steadily retreating blue defense line of the Spirit Empire.
"You think this will force me to submit?" She tapped a marker of a newly fallen stronghold; the marker crumbled to dust.
"Good."
Her voice regained absolute calm and majesty.
"Since the abscess has burst… let it be lanced—completely!"
"Transmit my order: all routed legions are to withdraw to the second defense line and regroup. Investigate every deserter and shirker; once verified, regardless of rank, execute by military law—strip their spirit rings and cripple their cultivation!"
"Simultaneously, proclaim to the entire army—and the whole nation!" Her voice, carrying unquestionable will, resounded through the hall: "The Empire's new policies will never change because of any threat! Whoever attempts blackmail by this means is guilty of treason—equal in crime to the Two Great Empires!"
She would not compromise, nor be coerced.
This war would not only destroy external foes but also seize the chance to uproot every festering, wavering tumor within.
...Spirit City, deep within the spirit tool Research Institute.
In a laboratory packed with intricate spirit tool circuits and metal components, Xuan Ming stood before a several-meter-tall mech whose sleek frame shimmered with a bluish luster.
His fingertips flowed with a wisp of white divine force, acting as the nimblest of tools to adjust the energy circuit of the mech's core array.
The lab door slid open without a sound; Bibi Dong appeared, the latest battle reports in hand. Watching the absorbed Xuan Ming, she did not disturb him immediately.
Without turning, Xuan Ming continued working:
"They were routed badly?"
Bibi Dong stepped to his side and laid the reports on a metal table: "Within expectations. The internal parasites are borrowing force to make us yield."
"Mm." Xuan Ming answered, unsurprised and too lazy to comment. After tuning the last energy node he slowly turned to her:
"When can they converge? Not all—just form several main strike clusters."
Bibi Dong considered briefly, weighing frontline intel and the mindset of the shirkers, then judged: "At their current advance speed—and the degree to which our insiders are letting them through—about a month. North and South fronts should each develop several major war zones with over three hundred thousand troops."
"One month." Xuan Ming repeated without inflection. "Then we move in one month."
He asked neither the specifics nor who the enemy was.
To him, whether it be the armies of the Two Empires or the two-faced Spirit Masters inside the Spirit Empire, once they stood in opposition there was no difference.
Watching him turn back to the cold mech as if he had just settled a trifling matter, Bibi Dong's violet-golden eyes flickered with complexity, but in the end she said nothing and quietly left.
She could vaguely guess Xuan Ming's method—far from battlefield slaughter, it would be a more direct, thorough, and cruel… reckoning.
One month later.
Events unfolded almost exactly as Bibi Dong had predicted.
Under the dual pressure of internal obstruction and external onslaught, the Spirit Empire's forces "steadily retreated," its defense line shrinking.
Although Bibi Dong's iron-blooded orders had executed a batch of deserters and temporarily checked the rout, overall morale remained low, barely holding the line without large-scale flight.
The Heaven Dou and Star Luo allied troops, on the other hand, were jubilant, constantly feeding fresh forces into every theater, their numbers swelling.
They saw the dawn of victory and believed the Spirit Empire's doom was imminent.
Even the top brass of the Two Empires and the secret collaborators inside the Spirit Empire began congratulating one another and planning how to carve up the spoils of victory.
Several Elders of the Elder Palace could sit still no longer and repeatedly begged to lead troops to stabilize the war zone; they could not tolerate imperial territory being "easily" lost—yet Bibi Dong firmly rejected each petition.
Even Qian Renxue personally requested to lead the Angel Legion to the front and use the God of Angels' power to reverse the war, but Bibi Dong dismissed her with a single line: "Xuan Ming will handle it. No need."
Her attitude provoked greater discontent and suspicion; some wondered if Her Majesty relied too heavily on Xuan Ming—or even allowed the situation to worsen.
Until this day.
The latest frontline report arrived: after a month of "irresistible momentum," the Two Empires' allied troops on north and south fronts had finally formed five huge, concentrated strike clusters each!
Every cluster amassed more than five hundred thousand elite troops, including large numbers of Spirit Masters and spirit tool legions, their blades pointed straight at the Spirit Empire's heartland!
And on this very day, the long-silent Xuan Ming finally moved.
He still stood in the Research Institute in Spirit City, never leaving the lab. Yet his boundless Divine Thought, blanketing the entire continent, instantly locked onto those ten blazing beacons of battle across north and south!
On every battlefield, war-cries shook the heavens while the light of Spirit Abilities and the roar of spirit tool cannons interwove, the reek of blood and slaughter permeating the air.
The Two Empires' troops were jubilant, whereas the Spirit Empire's resistance in many zones remained "feeble."
The next moment—
An invisible ripple, faster than light, crossed endless space and descended upon those ten clamorous battlefields simultaneously!
No omen, no flash, no sound.
Yet every living being on those fields—whether Heaven Dou Knights mid-charge, Star Luo Spirit-Masters casting Spirit Abilities, or Spirit Empire soldiers "steadily resisting"—all felt their Souls torn from their bodies in that instant, plunging into an absolute, eternal white Domain where only self-awareness remained!
Divine Skill: Eternal Paradise!
This was no attack, but a mental Domain so vast it defied imagination, forcefully drawing the consciousness of more than five million soldiers across ten battlefields into a spirit World under Xuan Ming's complete control!
Within this white Eternal Paradise there was neither up nor down, neither time nor space—only endless void and a cold, detached will originating from the very Origin of the World, echoing like divine oracle in every trapped Soul:
"Submit… or perish?"
"Choose one."
No threat, no persuasion—only the two simplest, most direct choices.
Like a deity pronouncing final judgment upon ants.
The entire World seemed to sink into deathly silence.