Under Ding Yun's efforts, the infected individuals in the demon realm were rapidly healing and recovering. Most of those who were cured ultimately chose to register and become citizens under Ding Yun, as they generally felt her domain was safer and more humane than others.
They felt secure as her subjects.
Besides this primary gain, Ding Yun also achieved other successes. As more demons were healed, she could clearly sense a degree of favor from the demon realm, meaning divine providence favored her.
Not only did her compatibility with the laws improve, but her speed in comprehending them also quickened.
Most importantly, leveraging this divine favor and the absolute trust of her demon subjects, she successfully imprinted her mark upon her domain.
She brought one ten-thousandth of the demon realm under her control.
Of course, this was not the most surprising aspect for Ding Yun. What truly delighted her was the realization that, through some unseen connection, the mark she had imprinted would expand as her dominion grew. This meant she no longer had to worry about how to further engrave her mark.
She simply needed to expand her territory.
This undoubtedly saved a great deal of trouble.
However, as she did not wish to fully break ties with the other demon lords and engage in all-out war yet, she did not immediately encroach upon their territories. Instead, she expanded into areas not currently claimed by other demon lords, regions considered resource-scarce by them.
She had abundant resources, and if she lacked them, she could create them using the conceptual-level river god or her own river god arts. Therefore, resource scarcity did not significantly impact her.
It merely required a bit more effort to compensate.
The other demon lords were quite pleased with Ding Yun's actions, considering her to be sensible. Furthermore, compared to the other demon lords, Ding Yun's existing territory was indeed too small for her status. Even to avoid disgracing them, they couldn't easily hinder her. Thus, Ding Yun's expansion, at least for now, proceeded relatively smoothly.
She encountered no obstruction or sabotage.
Wherever she went, the people welcomed her with open arms.
At this juncture, the other demon lords had intended to seize the opportunity, before the celestial realm found a complete cure for the virus, to launch a major offensive against them. However, before they could even mobilize their forces, new news arrived from the celestial realm. Firstly, the celestial realm had also found a method to control the virus and was actively treating it.
Secondly, five new celestial lords had emerged in the celestial realm.
The first piece of news was acceptable; the demon lords could at least understand and accept it. After all, if their demon realm could develop a solution for the virus, it wasn't strange for the celestial realm to do the same.
What they found truly difficult to accept was the emergence of five new celestial lords. Their demon realm already had one less demon lord than the celestial realm, and it was only recently, with Ding Yun's breakthrough to demon lord status, that they had become equal.
Yet, how long had they been happy about this? Less than two years. Judging by the current numbers, in a future celestial-demon war, each demon lord would have to face one and a half celestial lords. How could they possibly fight, with no hope of victory?
Let alone victory, even fighting on equal footing would be difficult.
Unless they were willing to sacrifice themselves and take several celestial lords with them in a suicidal charge. But that was also impossible, as at their level, no one desired death.
Ultimately, the remaining demon lords had no choice but to abandon the idea of initiating a celestial-demon war. They also dispatched spies into the celestial realm to ascertain the truth of this news and to understand why the celestial realm had produced so many celestial lords simultaneously. It was simply too illogical.
Consider that in the past, a celestial lord or demon lord would emerge, on average, every million years, or even several million years. The emergence of the Seven Emotions Demon Lord in their demon realm was consistent with this pattern. But for the celestial realm to produce five celestial lords at once?
This was unprecedented.
Even in ancient times, there had never been such an exaggeration.
Ding Yun, upon receiving this news, was far calmer than the other demon lords. This was because she was well aware that there were far more ambitious individuals causing trouble in the celestial realm than in the demon realm, and many of them possessed shortcuts and advantageous golden fingers. After accumulating sufficient resources, a breakthrough to celestial lord was perfectly logical.
In fact, to put it bluntly, this might only be the beginning. In the future, there might be a wave of celestial lord breakthroughs and even a more terrifying surge of celestial emperor breakthroughs.
Her peers who had arrived alongside her might require some fortuitous circumstances and a strong foundation to become celestial lords, but becoming celestial emperors would have no threshold, only requiring time. Therefore, the continuous surge in the number of celestial emperors and celestial lords in the celestial realm was a predictable outcome.
The situation in the demon realm was different. The number of individuals coming to the demon realm was small, the environment was relatively harsh, and even the laws were slightly more incomplete than in the celestial realm. If not for the conceptual-level river god golden finger, Ding Yun would have found it difficult to successfully break through and become a demon lord in the demon realm.
It was conceivable how difficult life would be for others who did not bring golden fingers, or whose golden fingers were not very effective.
However, Ding Yun could not control what her peers intended to do, so she could only continue to ignore the situation in the celestial realm and focus all her efforts on cultivating her subordinates at all costs.
She aimed to cultivate as many demon emperors as possible first.
Then, she would use resources to pile them up, pushing them to the peak of the demon emperor realm in the shortest possible time. This way, Ding Yun could use her river god arts, combined with the conceptual-level river god golden finger, and expend some of her own luck and essence, to break through the existing limitations of the conceptual-level river god and grant her subordinates who had reached the peak of the demon emperor realm.
Individually, they would be exceptionally promoted to demon lords.
Although doing so would likely prevent them from breaking through further in the future, in reality, they had no hope of becoming demon lords anyway. Therefore, the flaw of being unable to break through further could not be considered a problem.
Of course, it was still too early to discuss this. Ding Yun currently only had one subordinate at the peak demon emperor realm, the Myriad Laws Demon Emperor. Most others had just broken through to the demon emperor realm, and the Blood River Demon Emperor was only in the mid to late stages of the demon emperor realm. Ding Yun's plan was to first accumulate more subordinates at the peak demon emperor realm and then promote them all at once, so as to immediately possess the power to deter other demon lords.
This way, promoting only one or two demon lords would not create deterrence and would also make them targets of other demon lords.
Therefore, Ding Yun continued to proceed with her original plan. At most, she would utilize the conceptual-level river god in advance to accumulate top-tier spiritual herbs that could repair her essence and foundation, preparing for the injuries she would sustain in the future from forcibly creating demon lords.