In the days that followed, when Jiang Yun was tired from alchemy, he would go to mortal towns to experience life. He enjoyed how these mortals lived, as he had never had the chance to enjoy it before.
Jiang Yun’s whole life was about cultivating, fighting, or learning a useful skill. Now that he had time, he no longer needed to do something just because it was useful. Instead, he could take it slowly and enjoy the experiences.
So, Jiang Yun went back to fishing, hoping to at least enjoy the feeling of catching a single fish. Many days passed by, and he still hadn't caught a single fish. Jiang Yun was so unbelievably bad at catching fish that he felt some embarrassment as the other fishermen came to comfort him at his bad luck.
In this way, Jiang Yun kept enjoying his life as the rest of his sect was busy with their cultivation.
As the days went by, the first to come out of seclusion was Tang Mei, who had reached the sixth level of Tribulation Transformation, which is quite considerable growth. She was satisfied with the amount of growth and wanted to come out, as spending months in seclusion was tiring.
Exiting seclusion, she quickly saw that Jiang Yun was about to go out of the sect and came up asking, "Where are you going now? Are there more enemies?"
Jiang Yun, having re-experienced mortal life, had become much softer and no longer showed the same coldness as before. So, when he answered Tang Mei, it was noticeable: "I’m going down to the mortal towns to experience mortal life."
Tang Mei, hearing the sudden change in Jiang Yun’s temperament, felt like her chance had arrived and asked, "Can I go with you?"
Jiang Yun, seeing no problem in her coming along, agreed. The two then descended down the mountain. Tang Mei was surprised by all the changes in the mortal realm, as it no longer looked the same. Everything now felt like a new experience for her.
In her whole life, she had rarely gone to mortal towns and had focused on cultivating in her sect, so coming out to just experience the joys of the world was the first in her life. Tang Mei then followed Jiang Yun around.
Their first stop was a restaurant, as Jiang Yun had been very excited about trying new foods lately. When the dishes arrived, Tang Mei tried one of the dishes, which was skewers with all kinds of vegetables included in it. She then took the first bite and was instantly amazed by the flavor. She had never tasted something so delicious, as it had been a long time since she had eaten food just for eating.
Jiang Yun then ordered many other dishes, seeing Tang Mei’s happy face. The two ate and were soon full; having tried what they could, they were now satisfied.
Jiang Yun then took Tang Mei to experience the entertainment of the town, from street games to street performances and many other fun things. After experiencing all kinds of things, Jiang Yun finally took Tang Mei to the dock to try fishing again. Out of everything he had tried in his life, he had never been so embarrassed at fishing as he had yet to catch a single fish.
Tang Mei was amazed by the view of the water and was enjoying herself. Then, seeing Jiang Yun was starting to fish, she wanted to try it too. She then got her own fishing rod and started to fish as well.
Not long after, there was a pull-on Tang Mei’s rod, and with some minor effort, she pulled up a huge fish the size of half her body. Jiang Yun felt some annoyance, as no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t catch a fish, but then he looked at Tang Mei’s face.
The joy on her face made her much more beautiful than normal, and the way her clothes stuck to her skin, making her figure more pronounced, suddenly made Jiang Yun feel a long-lost feeling. The feeling of love he first felt for Tang Mei—but it was just a fleeting feeling. He had long forgotten how certain emotions felt, as it had been so long, but suddenly feeling such an emotion felt foreign to Jiang Yun.
Suddenly, Jiang Yun felt some kind of energy entering his body and felt as if his Dao energy was becoming purer, though very slowly. Jiang Yun couldn’t understand what was happening, but energy kept entering his body, very slowly improving his strength. Seeing that this situation was stopping, Jiang Yun put it aside, as it didn’t matter to him currently. He was already an invincible existence; getting any stronger no longer mattered.
Tang Mei, who saw Jiang Yun’s fleeting expression when looking at herself, felt like she was finally making progress after so long. So, the two continued to fish, enjoying their time together.
At the end of the day, when they needed to go back to the sect, Jiang Yun was very unhappy, as once again he didn’t catch any fish. On the other hand, Tang Mei had caught dozens of fish; you could call her a fish-catching prodigy.
Tang Mei, feeling a little bad about outshining Jiang Yun, said, "Don’t worry, let’s go back again and fish. Next time, you’ll catch fish too, and I’ll even show you how."
Jiang Yun felt even more embarrassed, as he was the one with experience, how could someone who fished for the first time in her life teach him? With several different negative emotions, Jiang Yun calmed himself down and went with Tang Mei back to the sect.
In the Central Region, a disaster was happening. The demonic sects that were all in hiding were coming out in droves to attack the Central Region. With the sudden absence of several top-power sects, the Central Region had no one capable of repelling so many strong enemies.
The remaining sects in the Central Region that didn’t die from Jiang Yun’s slaughter, due to not being invited to participate in the Eastern Region invasion, were simply not as powerful. The remaining sects only had a total of a few dozen half-immortals, split very thinly among all the medium to small sects. Even the Mahayana realms only numbered in the hundreds.
The demonic cultivators, though, had more than nearly a hundred half-immortals and thousands of Mahayana. These demonic sects seemed to be working together to defeat whatever righteous forces were left.
Death and despair were everywhere, as righteous cultivators had corpses piled high like mountains throughout the Central Region.
In the matter of a few days, the Central Region had fallen to the demonic sects. Most of the high-level cultivators were slaughtered, and the few remaining were imprisoned for future amusement for the demonic cultivators. As for the lower-level cultivators, they were directly turned to slaves, as they had no way to resist.
In this way, the Central Region was turned into a sea of blood; anyone who tried to enter the Central Region now would think it was hell.
The sect leaders of each demonic faction were quite satisfied with the result and split up the Central Region evenly and built their own sects on their newly acquired land, happily enjoying their freedom as they no longer needed to hide.
After finishing building the territory, a month had passed, and the demonic factions gathered to convene a meeting. This time, they were discussing their next course of action, as just the Central Region was simply not enough. They first had to stabilize their land before expanding.
The most powerful force among the demonic factions started the meeting first. The leader of the strong demonic faction said, "Since even the Central Region is now this weak, the other regions should be easy to take over. So, how about we split up the remaining land and take it ourselves?"
The other demonic factions agreed, as in this way there won’t be any territory disputes, as each had to take over their land personally. The current division of land in the Central Region was hard argued until the current situation. Some of the stronger factions were unhappy, as they didn’t get as much as they wanted and had to share with the weaker factions.
In this way, the demonic factions started dividing which places went to whom. The stronger demonic factions each chose the West, South, and North Regions, leaving the Eastern Region due to how barren it was; it was just undesirable land.
The remaining forces divided the smaller bits of land in the West, South, and North Regions that the stronger factions didn’t want, as even those were better than the Eastern Region.
The weakest faction had no choice but to split the Eastern Region and were very unhappy. Though unhappy, they had no choice, as it was better than nothing.
In this way, the division was set, and the demonic sects set off to conquer their own territory that had been divided to them. All of the demonic forces had a single thought: that this invasion would be an easy and definite outcome.