Returning to the battle between Silvia and the phantom rat she was currently in a predicament due to the scale of her abilities. The Stellar path was an inherently large area of effect due to the inherent power of a star so she could not use her full strength.
Normally immortals pursue an technique called Convergence on two fronts. One of those is for the spiritual aspect of cultivators paths and the other is the physical aspect of cultivators power.
At the moment Silvia was struggling with the physical aspect of Convergence since it essential for immortals to not accidentally kill a mortal. The physical aspect Convergence was the ability to converge all the power of an attack into one point. For immortals this meant that instead of using an attack that would level an entire city they could converge the entire power of the attack into a small area or point such as the size of a person. Meaning their attack power would be greater for the same cost and they would not have to worry about accidentally killing mortals and facing the punishment from the natural laws of the universe.
The problem was that Silvia was basically a new immortal and had not pushed her abilities to that point along with the fact the destructive range of her path was inherently great. This meant that she could not use most of her abilities without risk of killing all the people below her nor did she have the ability to just drag the rat away. This made it so that if she wanted to kill it it would have to require some risks.
On the other side the phantom rat was having a great time it had complete control over the battle. At first did not have great expectations of being able to actually kill Silvia due to her being of the stellar path. It was worried that if it pushed her too far and she hit a breaking point and disregarded all consequence she would bring out the full power of the Stellar Path which could easily destroy everything for miles. Because of this it had mostly just poking at her trying to get her to waster energy and make mistakes but as the as the battle progressed its confidence and arrogance surged. Silvia was not as powerful as it had anticipated and it was beginning to believe it could kill her.
"Are you a new immortal? That would explain your lacking abilities." The rat began insulting her not knowing it was actually true.
Silvia tried to place a barrier between them and the mortals below but as soon as the rat saw that it instantly destroyed it.
"Now why would I let you do that?"
"You are really weak are actually an immortal?"
"Did you dual cultivate you way to immortality?"
The rat was relentlessly taunting her as it attacked her with an unending amount of illusions.
"Do you really think you can win a mere rat of an ordinary path?" Silvia finally responded to the taunts and when she did the rat thought finally.
"Looks like you're getting tired be careful you might start seeing things you don't want too." The rat spoke. Anger was something that weakened the mind allowing him to finally get into hers.
It took time but the rat finally managed to pierce through Silva's defense to get to her mind with its illusions.
"No, not this." Silvia said going to activate her atomic-stars as an illusion of the greatest regret in her life appeared.
Silva watched as a beautiful woman with blue hair, orange eyes, and orange robes ran while holding a child with black hair tight to her chest. The woman was being chased by people whose robes all had a symbol of a serpent eating its own tail on the back of their robes.
Seeing this Silvia shouted trying to get their attention but it was to no avail nothing she could do would effect the illusion no matter how hard she tried. She could only keep watching as they were hunted down and killed over and over again.
"Kekeke, Easy, easy, easy, I thought you had a stronger mind would you were killing those illusions without a care but looks like I was wrong. Maybe you were just too confident but I guess I could see why since you are cultivating a divine path but you should have still called for reinforcements against someone like me. Well I guess I'm just a rat after all kekeke." It said full of glee and laughter.
As it approached her it was full of confidence seeing the tears running down her face. If she broke out he would naturally know so it felt no need to be wary as it approached with its main body.
"Kekeke I never imagined this out would go so well. Time to eat." The rat said as it was about to bite her head off.
Unfortunately for it just before he could Silva's atomic-stars all fired at her body hitting both of them in the process. The rat easily blocked but Silvia was hit and immediately reawakened.
"Manifest my Inner World! Stellar Dust!" As she shouted those words Silvia's inner world was brought out of her body into the world and enveloped both her and the rat by forming a spatial distortion where her inner world was.
It was also at this moment for a brief second all disciples and beasts looked up into the sky feeling the power of the inner world as it manifested.
This had been a plan from the beginning for her chasing it off would have been easy but killing it for an overwhelming show of force was hard. While their was some risk of this plan as an illusion path immortal the rat had no good ways of instantly killing without using its main body so she had set a small trap to activate once it got close.
Inside the inner world an incomparably bright void illuminated by the countless pieces of dust that it contained. Here each piece of dust was a true star unlike the atomic-stars she had used to fight before. These were all as powerful as a real star but at her level they were of the weakest type. An inner world was the greatest power ascending to immortality brought although when two were used at the same time they would end up competing.
"Inner World! Phantom Rain!" The rat shouted as soon as it was brought into her world but it was slightly slow in bringing it out as all the dust sized suns rapidly expanded enveloping the rat.
It succeeded in summoning its own inner world but he had gotten severely injured from Silvia's so he could only use it to escape from her inner world. Even if it had not gotten injured an inner world was a reflection of one's path and hers was naturally stronger being a divine path. This is why it had maintained a distance until it trapped her in an illusion if it battle of inner worlds broke out it would not be of help to him. Now that she had summoned hers it began fleeing as fast as it could but it was heavily injured with little energy left to even hide let alone run.
It knew it was about to get caught unable to flee fast enough so it took a risk, "Make a choice me or your people." It said firing an attack at the people below.
It was a good last ditch effort but unfortunately their was one thing it did not take into account and that Silvia was not the only immortal around. As it tried to flee Silva chased after it and easily caught it while the other immortal protected the disciples.
Silva may have been a True immortal of a Divine path but she was still a new weaker immortal that lacked experience so naturally the sect had sent a senior elder to reinforce on the chance she needed it.
"I'll give you a choice become a servant or die. You have three seconds to decide."
"Wait, wait can't we talk this out." It pleaded.
"2."
"I never planed on killing anyone I was just here to have some fun until I could go home."
"1."
"I'll do it don't kill me." It said in the end.
"Good you will be useful." She said trapping it in a barrier she made.
"Well done Silva you even captured it." Elaine said flying up to her.
"It could have been better I still needed help in the end."
"You are being too harsh on yourself that was your first real battle as an immortal and you did excellent taking advantage of its confidence."
"Still it would have gotten away if you were not here."
"Lets focus on the disciples they are still fighting." Elaine said changing the subject.
While they were speaking the rat was just staying quiet trying to nurse its wounds with what little energy it had left.
***
Down below the battle was entering its final hour. At this point in time about 70% of the beasts were dead while the number of dead or injured disciples shot up to 40% without Vera's group helping.
Watching them down below Silvia wanted to say something to encourage them after defeating the beast's immortal but ultimately she chose not to. Interference was to be kept to a minimum especially in a battle and whether that was the right thing or not for immortals to do was impossible to say but it worked for their sect. They had become one of the Great Sects and had many powerful immortals rise from these situations although at the cost of many.
Even now as she looked down at them she could see many disciples had taken charge as leaders and were directing the other disciples pushing back the beasts and with a little more they would soon chase the beasts away.