However, over time, the three universes would balance themselves out, causing their energies to become more uniform. At that time, the issue would become more glaring. Though, by then, Dyon felt that he would be prepared to deal with it.
The reason why the army had teleported to Chaos Universe was because the edge of the Five Clan Beast Alliance's territory was located here as well, pincering Dyon's home Celestial Universe.
To the Celestial Universes north-west there was Chaos Universe. To its south-east, there was Soul Universe and to its ease to north-east, there was Uidah Territory.
Connecting to Chaos Universe from the North was the Five Clan Beast Territory. Much further west, located toward the back regions of these cluster of universes were the Devil Quadrants where Lilith originated from.
When the army appeared to the edge of Chaos Universe, Lilith, Meiying and her fellow devil cultivators were already here.
Why would Dyon risk fusing Chaos Universe with his territory at all? It was precisely because of Lilith and the Devil Vein. What better place could there have been to plant it if not Chaos Universe?
"Move out." Dyon said serenely.
As though his words were the shot heard around the world, the army split into five portions. Their task? To conquer their gates as quickly as possible.
...
After entering the celestial floors, advantages of a key wielder took another leap forward, and though there were still some limitations, there weren't nearly as many as before.
The one limitation that would likely never change was the changing of the gate threshold. A key wielder could immediately lower or raise a gate's cultivation threshold, however not at the expense of the lives of those within it. Meaning, if a gate's threshold is suddenly lowered below the cultivation of an expert in the gate, that expert will only be teleported out and not killed.
In addition to this, rapidly lowering than raising the threshold was likewise impossible. Though the Epistemic Tower wanted to give the key wielder advantages, it didn't want to make it impossible for anyone to oppose the key wielder. As a result, the gate threshold could only be changed a single time per campaign.
However, even with these disadvantages, there were many more advantages.
First, teleportation. As a key wielder of the celestial floor, it was possible to teleport to any gate from any other gate. In the past, as a key wielder of the saint floors, Dyon could only teleport from the Epistemic Tower gate, but not back. Now, his flexibility had skyrocketed.
Secondly, and the advantage Dyon was taking advantage of now, the Gate could be opened from the outside even while it was closed down for maintenance!
Dyon's army swept through the five gates that connected Chaos Universe to the Five Clan Beast Alliance, with their enemies being none the wiser.
While a gate was closed down, the dangers within them were ten times greater, but under Dyon's guidance, and considering the lack of enemies, this meant little to nothing.
In likely the easiest battle Dyon would face in this campaign, his five armies easily cleared the gates, taking control of a grand total of 40 Tower Keys with absolute ease.
Dyon was entirely focused on a single thing: speed.
This coming universe was under the jurisdiction of the Earth Skinned Salamander Clan, a group of lower heaven beasts. However, this wasn't the core of their territory. Rather, this place was where lesser beasts were located.
The Five Clan Beast Alliance, by necessity, was arranged with the five powerful core clans toward the far north, and the lesser clans toward the south. This was because they often had to defend against the Ragnors who were to their north. In addition, none of the five clans wanted any of their four rivals to sneakily take benefits from the Chaos Universe they saw as their territory.
Though they were in an Alliance, that was only to resist being taken over by the Pakal, Ragnor and Uidah God Clans, it didn't mean they had a sense of comradery amongst each other. As a result, although this was technically Earth Skinned Salamander territory, it was overseen by all five Clans.
Simply put, though this area was seemingly the most vulnerable, it had the most surveillance. Without the Shadows Faction, Dyon might have underestimated this area. But thanks to his understanding of the importance of information he didn't fall into this trap.
This was why Dyon chose this time to attack. They would be the most lax while the Gates were closed.
Dyon's goal was simple. He had to conquer this universe in its entirety and conquer the gates spreading outward from it all before the beast Clans could react.
Dyon didn't need to worry about his back. He had too many people in powerful positions within the Uidah. In addition, the Beast Clans would likely assume that this attack from was from the Uidah.
The Mortal Alliance army swept forward like tidal wave. There was no hesitancy in their steps. They knew exactly where to go.
This universe had millions of habitable planets, but only 32 of them were occupied. Of those 32, 23 had sparse populations of barely ten million, only the remaining 9 could be considered true hubs of civilizations.
Surprisingly, there was a good mix of humans and beasts. If Dyon had entered believing he could simply rely on Monet's beast whisperer ability to take control of them all, he would have been disappointed. But once more, he prepared well ahead of time.
In these battles, Dyon didn't act himself, at least not immediately, nor did any of the dao experts under his charge do so either. It wasn't because he was callous to the deaths of his warriors, but rather because he couldn't do everything by himself. If he didn't have competent men under him, his hopes of conquering the Mortal Plane would be foolish at best. He needed to temper those under him, to forge an army unflappable in the face of everything.
Deaths were inevitable. Dyon's army consisted of almost 30 million, but in this universe alone, there were over 10 billion individuals. Although the citizens under Dyon's charge also numbered in the billions, those qualified to fight were still too few. Even now, the vast majority of Dyon's army were Saints, leaving just a few dozen thousand celestials at most.
Simply put, no matter how perfect his schemes, some of his men would die.
But… Under this sort of surprise attack, it was obvious who would suffer more casualties.
Dyon used his element of surprise perfectly, splitting his tactics into two facets. The first were well timed, well schemed attacks. And the second were covert operations.
The first focused on the few human tribes, swiftly taking them down one after another. But, the second required Dyon's effort.
He quietly snuck into the core beast territories. With Monet's help, he directly enslaved their leaders and elders one after another. The abilities of Heaven's Children were truly too domineering.
However… As Dyon knew from the very beginning, the surveillance of this universe was exceptionally high. Even during its maintenance period, there were six beast experts who followed the human path that Monet's ability had no effect on.
Unfortunately for them, they were no match for Dyon.
