After I stopped trying, a rich woman trained me into a demon emperor.

Xiao Hongli paused for two seconds.

What are the acquisition terms?

"The condition is to hand over the three of them."

Zhou Ran tilted his chin at the three empresses behind him.

Xiao Hongli paused for two more seconds.

Then she walked over to the gold scroll, bent down, and poked the scroll rod with the cap of her pen.

"A man who hid in a coffin and pretended to be dead for 100,000 years, had three women bear the burden for him for 100,000 years, and then jumped out and said they were his."

Xiao Hongli straightened up, her tone exactly the same as when she rejected a bad proposal in the conference room.

Does he deserve it?

Upon hearing these words, Huan Yin's dark red pupils flickered slightly.

Bloodlust slammed his spear into the ground with a dull thud, and said nothing.

But the way she looked at Xiao Hongli changed.

It's no longer the kind of scrutiny that used to ask "Who do you think you are?", but a genuine, shared sense of identity.

Zhou Ran bent down and pulled the golden scroll out of the stone slab.

He didn't open it to look at it; he just held it in his hand.

The Demon Emperor's essence seeped into the surface of the scroll from the palm of his hand.

The golden light faded inch by inch under the erosion of his essence, eventually turning into a piece of dark golden scrap iron.

"go back.

Three days is enough time to get a lot done.

……

It was already past midnight when they returned to the Devouring Demon Palace.

Zhou Ran summoned all the core personnel in the main hall.

Three empresses, three women from Blue Star, plus Qin San, Gu Ji, and Ming Cang.

The military manual was laid out on the stone platform, and the logistics system diagram that Xiao Hongli had planned three days ago was still pasted on the ore wall panel.

Zhou Ran recounted the whole story of Ye Futian from beginning to end.

There was no embellishment, nor any avoidance of details.

This includes the seeds within the three empresses, the declaration of war, and his judgment.

The hall remained quiet for a long time.

Qin San was the first to speak.

"Your Majesty, I have followed you in battle for so long. If you order me to go east, I will not go west."

"But if I may be so bold as to ask a question..."

What exactly is Ye Futian's realm?

"At least at the peak of the Great Emperor realm."

Huan Yin took over the conversation, her voice already seventy percent languid, though a lingering chill still clung to it.

"He had already taken a half-step into the legendary realm 100,000 years ago."

"Ten thousand years have passed; it's impossible that he did nothing in his coffin."

"In the worst-case scenario, he has truly broken through to the Heavenly Dao Realm."

Realm of heaven.

It is one major realm higher than the Emperor Realm, and two major realms higher than the Refining Void Realm.

Everyone in the hall held their breath.

"Can you win?"

Bone asked in a muffled voice, the screws in his spine slightly hot from the tension.

Zhou Ran did not answer the question.

He looked at Lin Qingxue.

Since entering the main hall, Lin Qingxue had been quietly reviewing the old files that had been moved from the underworld warehouse.

Those archives record the changes in rules, the evolution of the earth's veins, and the cultivation information of successive Demon Emperors in the Demon Realm over tens of thousands of years.

Her Dharma Eyes were reduced to a single source of essence, but during the process of stripping the seeds from the three women's bodies, she was stimulated by a large amount of Ye Futian's source energy, causing her perception accuracy to increase rather than decrease.

"explain."

Zhou Ran knew what she had found.

Lin Qingxue closed the file and looked up.

His pale face was expressionless, but the faint silver star deep in his eyes flickered two beats faster.

"Ye Futian's cultivation has indeed broken through to the legendary realm."

The temperature inside the hall dropped a few degrees.

"But his legend has flaws."

Everyone's attention was focused on one thing.

Lin Qingxue stood up, walked to the wall panel, and used the mineral pen that Mingcang had given her to draw a simple cultivation structure diagram in the blank space.

"The legendary realm requires three conditions..."

"A complete primordial spirit, abundant reserves of origin, and at least one independent rule of its own."

He has both of the first two.

Thirdly, he took a shortcut.

She drew three circles at the core of the structural diagram.

"His 'rule of independence' wasn't something he figured out on his own; he borrowed it from three people."

"The rules of resonance of illusory sounds, the rules of ancestral blood inheritance of bloodlust, and the rules of life and death in the coffin burial of the Nine Netherworlds."

"He bound the three rules to three women using the curse seal of the old master, and through remote absorption via seeds, pieced them together into an incomplete 'pseudo-legendary rule.'"

Her mineral pen drew an X on each of the three circles.

"Zhou Ran just now peeled off all three seeds."

"This means that the pseudo-legendary rules that Ye Futian spent 30,000 years constructing have lost three roots."

"The framework of his legend remains, but its essence is now empty."

Lin Qingxue turned her head to look at Zhou Ran.

"To give an example... if three load-bearing columns are removed from a building, the building may not collapse, but try stomping on it a couple of times."

"Actual combat strength: Peak Emperor level, but foundation is unstable."

Bloodlust surged, and the tip of the gun clicked as it was ejected from its sheath.

"Then what are we waiting for? Three days? I'll go to the burial ground right now and twist that old bastard's head off..."

"sit down."

Zhou Ran's voice wasn't loud, but the suppression of his early-stage Void Refinement cultivation caused his bloodthirsty body to involuntarily pause for a moment.

"If impulsiveness could solve problems, you should have discovered he wasn't dead 30,000 years ago."

Bloodlust gritted his teeth and sat back down, the gun barrel poking a dent in the ground.

Zhou Ran turned to Xiao Hongli.

"President Xiao, in three days, is it possible to optimize military supplies and logistical reserves again?"

"It's already being done."

Xiao Hongli opened the remarks column on the ore slab.

"Thirty percent of the Imperial Prince's warship remains undismantled. If all the black gold material inside is extracted, it can increase the firepower density of the heavy artillery array by another twenty percent."

"There's just enough time."

"Sister Chen."

Chen Ya peeked out from behind the military register, her eyes still red, but her voice had completely calmed down.

"I've already completed the cross-checking of the intelligence you requested."

"I have found seventeen traces of Ye Futian's secret schemes in the Demon Realm over the past thirty thousand years."

"Three of these locations are at leyline nodes near the burial ground; he most likely set traps there beforehand."

"Mark it."

"It's already been bid on."

Chen Ya pulled out three jade slips from the military register and placed them on the stone platform with a clattering sound.

Lin Qingxue walked over, picked up the jade slip, and scanned the coordinate data on it with her remaining magical eyes, a slight smile curving her lips.

"I can lock onto the spatial frequencies of these three leyline nodes in advance."

"Before he falls into the trap, I'll cut the fuse for you."

Zhou Ran looked around.

Three empresses, three women from Earth.

Six women with completely different personalities work together in this main hall filled with the smoke of war and demonic energy, each with their own tasks and responsibilities.

The decisive battle was broken down into specific, actionable steps.

He picked up the golden scroll fragment, which he had crushed into scrap metal, from the stone platform and casually tossed it to Mingcang.

"Reply to my message."

"What did the Emperor say?"

Mingcang caught it in a fluster.

Zhou Ran's voice was very flat, as if he were talking about something extremely ordinary.

"Tell him he doesn't need to wait three days."

"I'll go to Burial Ground to find him before sunset tomorrow."

He paused for a moment.

"And could you ask him something for me...?"

"What was he thinking as he listened to Jiuyou carving my name in the coffin?"

Jiuyou's figure trembled slightly in the shadows.

She did not speak.

But the deathly aura that permeated the entire hall suddenly turned scalding hot.