Chapter 63: Peak-stage Nascent Soul?!
Mie Lin didn’t answer right away. Only a flicker of coldness appeared in her eyes.
To outsiders, this might have seemed like a mere shift in status or face. But those familiar with the inner workings of the Evil Alliance understood just how vast the gap between the founding sects and the first-rate sects truly was.
The three founding sects didn’t just hold prestige—they possessed real power.
Each year, the alliance’s core resources—whether spirit stones, rare materials, or relics harvested from forbidden zones—were first distributed to the three founding sects. Only after their share was settled would the remainder be divided among the five first-rate sects.
They had priority in selecting disciples during the Alliance-wide Evil Trials, which drew thousands of rogue cultivators hoping to join a major sect. They also held veto power over major decisions, such as the approval of sect wars, research into forbidden techniques, and cross-realm operations.
More importantly, the Evil Dragon City itself—constructed atop the corpse of a fallen divine beast—was divided into three main territories. The central region, which lay over the beast’s core bones and the richest spiritual marrow veins, belonged solely to the founding sects. It held the densest death qi, cultivating there could shave decades off a breakthrough.
Though the city had grown into a vast fortress of the Evil Dao—home to tens of thousands of cultivators, black markets, and pavilions where spirit contracts were traded like grain—it remained, at its heart, the creation of the Three Founding Sects.
For five millennia, control over the city’s formation array, the tax flow from its black markets, and the enforcement authority of its elite guards—the Black Dragon Enforcers—had been equally shared by Shadowclaw Sect, Bone Forging Sect, and Crimson Lotus Cult.
At the center of it all was the Triumvirate Seal, an ancient formation etched into the very foundation of the city. It regulated everything: suppression of violent qi, surveillance of teleportation arrays, even the neutralization of divine sense above certain thresholds. This seal could only function with the cooperation of all three founding sects.
If Shadowclaw were demoted to first-rate status, they would lose their share of the seal—along with jurisdiction over their inner city territory, influence over city affairs, and protection of sacred grounds.
Worse still, their ancestral tombs—buried beneath the city’s east peak—would fall under foreign control.