Zhao Sheng saw everyone remain silent, and immediately let out a cold snort: "Hmm?... No one is speaking, could it be that everyone is opposed?"

No sooner had he finished speaking, someone, unable to withstand the immense pressure, rushed forward from the crowd, flattering to the extreme: "I wholeheartedly support! Senior's broad-mindedness and reluctance to create more killings is deeply admirable. My respect for the senior is like the incessant rivers..."

No one expected that the first to speak up would be Zhan Xin, who had been the most unyielding in attitude before.

This person's despicable behavior, which was inconsistent from beginning to end, left all the Great Cultivators dumbfounded and ashamed, dragging down the millennia-old reputation of the War God Palace with immensely far-reaching consequences.

Zhao Sheng, however, quite appreciated this person's sense of the times and intentionally nodded at him in encouragement. His gaze then cooled as he began to look at the others one by one.

With Zhan Xin setting an example, the other Great Cultivators felt the psychological burden lift, and they nodded or began to speak up.

During this process, an interesting phenomenon appeared: those who had advocated for a siege before became increasingly respectful and spoke even more bluntly afterward.

To put it bluntly, all these Nascent Soul Cultivators were a bunch of cowards, none wanting to become the "chicken" that gets killed as a warning to the others.

Thus!

In just one day, more than half of the Nascent Soul Cultivators in the Black Sand Realm became Zhao Sheng's hostages.

From this day on, the legendary story of someone extorting the entire world single-handedly was fulfilled, setting an extremely terrible example for posterity.

In the following tens of thousands of years, the Black Sand Realm saw a string of Divinity Transformation True Monarchs imitating this past feat under the guise of the "Strange Thief," succeeding repeatedly, causing endless bitterness and complaints in the Cultivation World thereafter.

Of course, these are all stories for later.

...

Almost simultaneously, top Major Sects like the War God Palace, Wuque Palace, Divine Sect, and Myriad Vessels Sect in the Black Sand Realm began to receive urgent messages from their respective sect ancestors.

Upon learning that both True Monarchs Earth Mother and Desolate were slain simultaneously, and all attending Great Cultivators had become the prisoners of that individual, the Nascent Souls remaining at their mountain gates were shocked and dumbfounded, scarcely able to believe that the True Monarch could achieve such a heaven-defying feat.

Yet, the facts were laid bare before all those in the know, and the Major Sects had no choice but to bow down, opening their Treasure Vaults to quickly gather the ransom.

After all, Zhao Sheng had set a very fair ransom. It was calculated according to cultivation level: those at Nascent Soul Seventh Layer had to pay one hundred fifty Top-grade Spirit Stones or treasures of equivalent value, prioritizing those containing the Power of Space-Time. In addition, there were a hundred strands of Mystic Crystal Origin Qi,

While the Ninth Realm required an additional fifty strands of Mystic Crystal Origin Qi.

As for the peak Nascent Soul Ninth Layer Great Cultivators, all had the same price: three hundred strands of Mystic Crystal Origin Qi and a Top-grade Sumeru Stone larger than a head.

In this way, considerable costs were extracted from each Major Sect, though it wasn't enough to bankrupt them completely.

With the elimination of Earth Mother and Desolate, the Black Sand Realm no longer had Divinity Transformation True Monarchs, allowing Zhao Sheng to claim dominance over a realm with scarcely any rival!

Therefore, when he proposed the ransom, none of the Nascent Soul Great Cultivators dared to hesitate, agreeing on the spot.

In less than three days, early-stage Nascent Soul Cultivators from various regions of the lower realm hurriedly flew to the Outer Void, arriving at Juque City one by one, and smoothly meeting their respective sect's Great Cultivators.

Zhao Sheng had no intention of making things difficult; as long as the equivalent ransoming treasures were handed over, participants were free to come and go after the matter was settled.

Half a month later, the last Great Cultivator left Juque City with a downcast look.

From this day forward, Zhao Sheng departed quietly with an unimaginable wealth of Spirit Stones.

Upon his departure, the tense and oppressive atmosphere in Juque City instantly dissipated, and the city's residents finally breathed a sigh of relief. However, the legendary deeds of the Weird Thief True Monarch soon spread throughout the city, sung for thousands of years.

Not until Juque City fell into the continent, and the Black Sand Realm became a colonized realm by an Alien Race, did the legendary tales of the Weird Thief True Monarch become buried in the ashes of history, waiting for descendants to one day rediscover the bizarre legend.

...

Secluded cultivation, the passage of time unknown, over ten years swiftly passed.

In the center of Black King City, atop the White Bone Mountain, a new round of the initiation tribute ceremony was proceeding in an orderly fashion.

Accompanied by the sounds of ancient and mysterious incantations, the gorgeous and devilish Divine Light suffused the entire altar, and the thirty-odd survivors were enveloped by the Divine Light, each with twisted expressions of pain as they struggled to maintain their final sliver of conscious awareness.

From time to time, someone under the torrent of consciousness had their rationality completely collapse, eventually becoming a husk.

No one knew that in a certain void to the west of the altar, a figure was concealed, observing the sacrificial ceremony below.

Zhao Sheng, wearing Kui Niu Treasure, stood suspended in mid-air, his eyes focused on the Skull Divine Statue with a hint of astonishment.

At this moment, under the blessing of the Kui Niu Treasure, he finally glimpsed a trace of the "truth" of the Skull Divine Statue through his greatly enhanced Original Spirit.

The Skull Divine Statue was now shrouded by a layer of white light as faint as "clear smoke."

The statue was covered in countless non-corporeal pure white light points, densely packed like the stars in the sky, remarkably similar in distribution to the Mystical Gate True Acupoints around the human body.

With a sweeping gaze, Zhao Sheng quickly identified a total of two thousand eight hundred and seventy-six red points on the Skull Divine Statue.

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