With the plan to unify the Demon Realm finalized, Ding Yun did not choose to wage war immediately. Instead, she joined forces with the Myriad Laws Demon Lord and, with lightning speed, controlled the Demon Emperors left behind by the other nine Demon Lords to guard the Demon Realm.
Messages were to be sealed as much as possible, or false information was to be disseminated.
The Demon Lords currently in the Immortal Realm were to be stabilized.
Only then did she officially begin her full-scale expansion. Easier tasks were handled by the Demon Lords and Demon Emperors who had volunteered and were striving for more contribution points, while tougher targets were dealt with by Ding Yun and the Myriad Laws Demon Lord.
As for whether this could be considered condescending, or bullying the weak.
Special circumstances called for special treatment!
At times, being too concerned with face and rules could lead to self-destruction. After all, not everyone cared about face or played by the rules. Everything now had to revolve around unifying the Demon Realm, with everything else taking a backseat.
Following this, there was naturally a smooth and unstoppable push forward.
The other Demon Lords were all in the Immortal Realm. Even their Demon Emperors, Demon Lords, and even Golden Demons had been mostly taken with them. The Demon Realm at this time only had remnants like Human Demons and Earth Demons, who couldn't even be called cannon fodder, mere low-level minions.
As for why they were so confident.
It was mainly because they felt that Ding Yun, a newly promoted Demon Lord, no matter how audacious, would at most expand her territory and manpower slightly. How could she dare to destroy their base and dream of unifying the Demon Realm's territory?
When Ding Yun first proposed this idea, even her subordinates thought she was crazy. Therefore, it was natural for the other nine Demon Lords who were out on expeditions to have this thought.
And Ding Yun was precisely using the fact that others considered it impossible.
She seized the opportunity to carry out this earth-shattering deed.
As Ding Yun's progress continued, every so often she would select the top contender on the contribution list and promote them to Demon Lord by special exception. The intervals between these promotions provided her with time to recover her origin energy and expand her imprinted territories.
The newly occupied territories were to be thoroughly brought under her control.
In just over a year, Ding Yun had successfully brought the entire Demon Realm under her control. She now had thirty-one new Demon Lords under her command. It was a pity that, apart from the Myriad Laws Demon Lord who had reached the mid-stage of the Demon Lord realm, all the others could only be considered as barely entering the Demon Lord realm. This was unavoidable, as their original cultivation bases were too low, and both the conceptual river god and the river god techniques had relatively limited effects on improving one's Dao cultivation.
Therefore, reaching this point was already the limit.
Next, Ding Yun would primarily focus on three matters.
The first was consolidating her power. This expansion had been somewhat too hasty, but the opportunity was too rare to pass up. The consequence of hasty expansion was that the newly occupied territories were not firmly ruled. It would take some time to fully digest them.
The second was to help the thirty-one newly born Demon Lords stabilize their realms, improve their combat power, and incidentally teach them some combined attack methods and cooperative array formations, so they wouldn't be defeated by two or three acting together against a single veteran Demon Lord. That would be a total disaster.
As for the third matter, it was naturally to understand the situation in the Immortal Realm and to interfere appropriately. If possible, it would be best to keep some Demon Lords alive in the Immortal Realm, which would lessen her pressure.
At the very least, they had to temporarily detain the nine Demon Lords in the Immortal Realm, to stall them, thereby buying herself some time to develop and grow stronger.
The first two matters were easy and did not require much effort from Ding Yun herself, as long as sufficient resources were provided. Only for the third matter did Ding Yun have to personally act, dispatching five clones to cause trouble.
... What was the situation in the Immortal Realm at this time?
Besides chaos, no other word could describe it.
The Divine Beast clan, unable to resolve the bloodline conflict caused by the virus, was forced to isolate all uninfected mixed-blood Divine Beasts in a small world, and to seal those whose bloodlines had already conflicted but had not yet died, using time divine arts.
They were preparing to find a solution later.
This directly led to a sharp decline in the combat power of the entire Divine Beast clan. Only some pure-blooded Divine Beasts and ordinary demon beasts that had ascended from the lower realms and were not specifically targeted could barely fight. However, they represented primarily the lower and peak forces of the Divine Beast and Demon Beast races. The crucial pillar force, the powerful mixed-blood Divine Beasts, was essentially crippled.
However, they were currently cooperating with the native Immortals, jointly targeting the ascenders and the demons.
The native Immortals were relatively better off.
This was because the Five Declines of Heaven and Man primarily targeted old and low-cultivation Immortals. Although the deaths of these Immortals reduced the strength of the native Immortal clan by about thirty percent, true geniuses and those who were willing to cultivate diligently were mostly fine. After understanding the relevant rules, it even indirectly spurred previously less diligent Immortals, due to their limited lifespan from then on, to cultivate diligently and desperately improve their cultivation.
It was only the deaths of the descendants of Immortal Venerables and Immortal Emperors that were irreversible, driving them somewhat mad. Even though the demons from the Demon Realm had invaded, they did not extend an olive branch to the ascenders to temporarily cease hostilities and unite against a common enemy.
Instead, they continued to desperately seek revenge on potential targets.
As for the ascenders, their situation was even more absurd. While the other two major factions could at least unite against a common enemy, the ascenders were in internal turmoil. Some began to blame those who had caused trouble, feeling that their overly unconventional actions had led to their current predicament of being attacked from both sides, unable to unite against the demons.
Another group believed that this was the only way to act.
To cease hostilities, show weakness, and seek peace was to admit defeat and lose face.
In addition, there were even those who wanted to find the culprits and hand them over to the Divine Beast clan and the native Immortal clan, in exchange for peace and unity against a common enemy. Others wanted to cooperate with the demons to completely eliminate the native Immortals and the Divine Beast clan.
Due to the multitude of conflicting voices within the ascender faction, their cooperation, although not completely disintegrated, was far less coordinated than before, giving a sense of mutual non-interference.
Their only saving grace was the strength of Ding Yun's peers.
Even without much cooperation, each acting independently, they still managed to successfully resist the combined forces of the Divine Beast clan and the native Immortals, even gaining a slight advantage. Some even seized this opportunity to successfully engrave their own imprints.
Compared to the internal collapse of the Immortal Realm.
The most harmonious were the invading Demon Lords.
They truly worked together, united against a common enemy, and rapidly conquered a large swathe of territory. Moreover, due to the non-cooperation and internal strife of the three major factions in the Immortal Realm.
They even had a somewhat overwhelming momentum.
By the time Ding Yun's clones arrived in the Immortal Realm to gather information, nearly a third of the Immortal Realm had already been conquered by the nine Demon Lords and successfully incorporated into their dominion.