In this stretch of Hongze, the Dragon Palace was no different from a local emperor.

Ke Shiliang, as the South Palace's Fifth Prince, might fall short of those several elder brothers who matched the Dao-merging realm; but in a real fight it would not lose to most Dao-sons, and its standing was lofty besides.

Every move it made carried great weight with the immortal sects.

That it had led demon soldiers and generals to ring in the Cloud-Empyrean Pavilion was already the talk of all seven sects.

This was not like the business at Xuanyue City before. This time the Dragon Palace had not troubled even with the appearance of decency.

Outer-gate elders and disciples alike, no few of them had walked out of their sects with righteous fury in them.

They were the greatest power of the human kind in Nanhong; they had their own pride, and how were they to bear a humiliation like this?

A pity that the beings who could actually decide the matter had said nothing at all.

However angry the many immortal sect disciples were, they could only force it back down — and take the anger out somewhere else in passing.

On the Nanyang Sect, for instance.

A great immortal sect, faced with a thing like this, and to this hour not a decree out of it. Did they truly mean to hand their face over and let Ke Shiliang set it on the ground and tread on it?

“The Nanyang Sect does nothing — are we to sit and watch as well?!”

“Before you beat a dog you look at its master! Before the Cloud-Empyrean Pavilion went back to Nanyang it was a dependency of our sect!”

“Brothers, will you come with me?”

A steward drew his sword in anger and stepped onto the sect's treasure ship.

In the very instant the other cultivators were stirring to follow, a numinous pressure came down over them from the horizon and pinned them where they stood.

“A mere steward. Dare to lead hearts astray again, and try to raise a clash between the sect…