THE GOD EATER

As she turned to look at them one by one, she said, ”None of you are showing enough emotions to indicate joy at the turn of events. In fact, you all seem to treat this like a bad thing.”

Hearing her words, Tepid Scholar sighed ruefully as he said in reply, ”It is not a bad thing. But it is not a completely good thing either.”

”On the bright side, the Blessed Heaven World is stronger, and we are stronger for it. With more domains and a bigger size, we now have more power to mobilize from the world.”

”But on the bad side, we have now lost a lot of control of the Blessed Heaven World because of the appearance of nine new pathways. Not only has the power that each of us mobilizes been diluted, but the control of the Blessed Heaven World is no longer under the control of the five sects.”

Speaking up in agreement, Heavenly Eye said, ”There will be a new force in the world now. The previous one was the Dragon Court. I wonder what the new one would be.”

”Either way, this is not a good thing for us. With the appearance of a new force, the inhabitants of the Blessed Heaven World won’t have to rely on us to awaken and cultivate. So now we have to compete with the new force for labor, manpower, and disciples.”

Tepid Scholar nodded his head and said, ”It is a competition we will lose too because the leader of this new force is the will of the world, and they will have nine pathways at their disposal while all of us have a combined total of nine pathways.”

”So not only is it impossible for each of us to defeat this new organization on our own, but it is also impossible for us to defeat it working together. We will be lucky if we can achieve a stalemate with it.”

Then he asked Green Fire, saying, ”How can we be happy about this situation?”

Before Green Fire could reply, Martial Will said in displeasure, ”It is like the time we had to band together against the Four Directions Sect in the Central Domain, but worse.”

In an attempt to cheer him up, Sword Maestro said, ”The good news is that the Four Directions Sect will be on our side this time around, and it will be so weak that any assistance from it will be minimal.”

After hearing this, Martial Will chuckled and said, ”It is good news.”

Then he said in amazement to Sword Maestro, ”I’m impressed. You seem to be on a roll with your jokes.”

Sword Maestro smiled and said, with false humility, ”It is not me. I just have a good source material to work with. Nothing beats material as good as the downfall of a man who used to be great.”

As soon as Martial Will and Heavenly Eye heard this, they began to laugh. Only Tepid Scholar and the three newcomers were not laughing.

The other three Dao Lords were not laughing because they were confused by what Sword Will said. They didn’t understand the inside joke and could only watch on.

As for Tepid Scholar, he couldn’t be amused at the moment because he had too much to think about. His mind was working over the impact of the changes to the Blessed Heaven World and how it would affect the amount of power he could use in the Sea of Worlds.

He was also calculating how much power he could use now. It was a job he believed he had to do now instead of laughing.

In his mind, he thought about how he could mobilize 3/14 of the total size of the Blessed Heaven World. This was 3/14 of 60,200 million square kilometers.

So he had been able to mobilize 12,900 million square kilometers, or 12.9 billion square kilometers of the Blessed Heaven World. That amount had briefly surged to 3/9 of 60,200 million square kilometers, which is 20,066 million square kilometers, earlier when Black Chains lost five pathways, anchored the Curse Pathway, and when Martial Will lost his Transformation Pathway.

But now that nine more pathways have arrived with the size of the Blessed Heaven World increasing by at most 10 billion square kilometers, he can at most mobilize 3/18 of 70,000 million square kilometers, which is 11,666 million square kilometers. So he is weaker than before Black Chains was defeated and nearly killed.

The other Dao Lords, like Martial, who only had one pathway in the Blessed Heaven World, have it worse. Martial Will can only use 3,888 million square kilometers, while Heavenly Eye and Sword Maestro can mobilize 7,777 million square kilometers.

Because of this reduction in the amount of power they can mobilize from the Blessed Heaven World, the five of them have lost between 9.6% and 54.8% of their power. And it is all because Black Chains became incapable of sealing the will of the Blessed Heaven World.

When this thought appeared in his mind, Tepid shook his head in wonder and said, ”I can’t believe I will ever have a reason to support Black Chains.”

He felt that he had lost too much power, but Green Fire couldn’t empathize with him. Instead of speaking to console him, she snorted and said, ”I think you’re just complaining for nothing. You lot have been pampered too much by Black Chains for too long. You’ve forgotten how the normal situation should be.”

Carefree Immortal chuckled and said, ”Right. It is not as if you’re suffering unjustly here. Every super world has a world will, and we’ve been contending with it for so long.”

”At least, you have a way to make your world grow. We’re not so lucky.”

The final Dao Lord also joined in, saying, ”This change has made your world stronger and increased its chances of ascending. And you’re still the strongest force in the Sea of Worlds. So what are you complaining about?”

Since they made so many reasonable points, Tepid Scholar decided to listen to them. He said,