Locke did not need to spend much time searching.
Within a small garden in White Feather Forest, he quickly discovered the White Feather Sovereign.
At the Sovereign's side, several beautiful women stood around him with radiant smiles, surrounding him at the very center.
Locke slowly closed in.
When he was only a hundred meters away from the White Feather Sovereign, four drops of crimson blood appeared beside him.
These were the essence blood drops of the Four Divine Beast Sovereigns.
With a single thought, the phantasmal figures of the Azure Dragon, White Tiger, Vermilion Bird, and Black Tortoise emerged around Locke.
Buzz!
Under the overwhelming power of this move, the Mirror Flower, Water Moon illusion Locke had cast upon himself was forcibly shattered, causing his figure to appear directly before the White Feather Sovereign.
The moment he sensed Locke's aura the White Feather Sovereign was startled.
Someone had actually approached to this distance without being discovered by him?
Could it be another Sovereign seeking to hunt him?
However, before the White Feather Sovereign could react—
he suddenly felt an immense force restricting him, rendering him completely unable to move.
In that instant—
time stood still, and space froze!
This was merely the prelude to the fused innate divine ability of the Four Divine Beast Sovereigns.
The four divine beast phantoms fused before Locke.
In the end, they transformed into a streak of white light that instantly shot into the White Feather Sovereign's mind.
Pop… pop…
Two faint sounds echoed within Locke's mind.
The first was the sound of the White Feather Sovereign's soul-defense Sovereign artifact shattering beneath the overwhelming force of the fused innate divine ability.
The second—
was the sound of the White Feather Sovereign's soul being completely annihilated.
Locke did not hesitate in the slightest.
The moment the White Feather Sovereign died, he spoke words that carried the authority of heaven itself.
"Die."
Powerful willpower and perfected Fate Edicts spread together with his voice.
The five beautiful women beside the White Feather Sovereign instantly followed in his footsteps, their souls extinguished on the spot.
"Whew…"
Locke let out a soft breath and dispersed the Floating Shadow Technique in his hand.
Walking over to the corpses, he removed the Sovereign spark from the White Feather Sovereign's head.
Then, with a sweep of his sleeve, the bodies of all six figures turned into drifting ash.
With another thought, the forms of the White Feather Sovereign and the five beauties reappeared within the small garden.
"Mirror Flower, Water Moon."
Looking at the scene he had reconstructed, Locke nodded in satisfaction.
The soldiers of the Sovereign Legion outside would never dare disturb the White Feather Sovereign while he was indulging himself.
At the very least, this illusion could be maintained for three thousand years.
As for what happened three thousand years later, when the White Feather Legion eventually discovered their Sovereign had vanished—
what did that have to do with him?
It had to be said that the greatest advantage of soul attacks was their concealment.
Had he used any other technique, the battle would undoubtedly have caused an enormous disturbance.
After laying down a ring of mist in the small garden to confuse people's sense of direction, Locke directly left White Feather Forest.
"Huh? He died just like that? That was way too easy, wasn't it?"
Inside the Water Palace on Mount Nether, Liliya stared at the projected image before Locke and couldn't help but complain.
"How else did you expect it to go?"
Hearing her words, Locke replied somewhat helplessly.
"Liliya, you have to understand—I was hunting a Sovereign."
"If I didn't have absolute confidence in ending it in a single strike, then what was the point of hunting a Sovereign?"
"I'd be the one getting hunted instead."
"If the fused innate divine ability hadn't possessed enough power to kill a Lesser Sovereign, I would never have taken such a risk."
"That's true."
Liliya nodded.
After so many years, her understanding of Locke ran extremely deep.
Putting everything else aside, if the success rate of something was below eighty percent, Locke simply would not do it.
Just like this time.
Even though the recording made it look as if Locke had killed the White Feather Sovereign in a single move, he had still left a Water divine clone behind in the Netherworld.
For this habit of his, Liliya wholeheartedly approved.
The last thing she wanted was for Locke to perish one day while doing something dangerous.
If this world were ever without Locke—
Liliya truly did not know what joy would remain in existence.
But now it was fine.
Locke had successfully obtained a Fate Sovereign spark.
As long as he wished, he could become a Fate Sovereign at any time.
At that point, aside from the Four Rule Sovereigns, no other Sovereign would truly be his match.
Meanwhile, after moving far away from White Feather Forest, Locke casually chose a mountain peak and laid down a veil of mist.
Then he began integrating yet another divine beast gifted bloodline.
Once he absorbed the drop of divine beast essence blood into his body, the Dijiang bloodline within him slowly began to come into contact with it, gradually assimilating it.
This process alone took Locke more than a thousand years.
Once the bloodline had begun to fuse, Locke used the Celestial Realm's planar teleportation array to return to the Netherworld.
Unfortunately, this time, he did not enjoy the same fortuitous encounter as before.
Although the spatial force of the planar array further increased his bloodline's degree of fusion, it did not once again integrate additional spatial power into his body.
"Could it be that if I want to absorb more spatial power into my body, I can only use the planar teleportation array when the fusion is nearing completion?"
After emerging from the teleportation array at the Mountain of the Dead and examining the condition of his body, Locke silently analyzed the situation.
At present, through the divine beast bloodline, he had already come into contact with the Laws of Space.
Through the planar teleportation array, he had also successfully nurtured a strand of spatial power within himself.
Locke speculated that the only spatial power he could currently absorb was likely that found within the teleportation array itself.
As for the violent spatial power of the spatial turbulence—
before becoming a Sovereign, it was impossible for him to absorb it.
According to his understanding of that power, the bare minimum requirement would be for his body to reach the level of a Sovereign artifact before he could even attempt it.
Without a sufficiently powerful body, absorbing such violent spatial force would be nothing short of suicide.
But to cultivate such a powerful body, the creation of the Dijiang bloodline was indispensable.
After circling around the issue, it all ultimately returned to the Dijiang bloodline.
Shaking his head, Locke stopped overthinking it.
With a few flashes, he rapidly headed toward Mount Nether.
In any case, once he had fully integrated the blood essence of every spatial divine beast within the Coiling Dragon Universe, he would be able to attempt absorbing both the spatial power within teleportation arrays and that within the spatial turbulence.
Until then, it was better to continue comprehending more Laws of Space and nurturing the Dijiang bloodline.
Just as Locke had expected—
the intensity of battles across the Divine Planes rose to an entirely new level.
Especially among those who had obtained the status of Sovereign Envoys, many were directly assigned tasks by their Sovereigns to fight and kill the envoys of other Sovereigns.
Within ten thousand years, the number of experts who perished across the Seven Divine Planes and Four Higher Planes exceeded the casualties of the previous million years several times over.
Many of the top experts of great powers died amidst this vast conflict.
Old powers fell.
New powers rose.
The cycle repeated endlessly.
Aside from that, the Sovereigns themselves were also searching for opportunities.
The first to make a move was a Death Intermediate Sovereign of the Netherworld.
He directly emerged from the spatial turbulence near the Water Divine Plane and challenged one of the Water Intermediate Sovereigns.
Unfortunately for him, the two Water Intermediate Sovereigns seemed to have reached some kind of agreement.
When confronted with the challenge, they joined forces and defeated the Death Sovereign, forcing him to flee back to the Netherworld in disgrace.
Seeing that the Death Sovereign was nearly killed without the Death Sovereign intervening to protect him, the other Sovereigns finally understood completely—
the Four Rule Sovereigns truly would not interfere in battles between equals.
After that, more and more Sovereigns began forming alliances.
Ambushes.
Counter-ambushes.
Pursuits.
Escapes.
For a time, the Sovereigns' attention was completely drawn away from the earlier planar wars.
Every single one of them was now thinking only about how to kill incoming Sovereigns—
or how to assassinate others first.
Under such circumstances, the disappearance of the White Feather Sovereign no longer seemed strange at all.
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