After I stopped trying, a rich woman trained me into a demon emperor.

The dark purple light from the altar refracted from the mine wall and was dismantled layer by layer by Lin Qingxue's remaining magical eyes.

Zhou Ran brought her back to the side hall from the fourth level of the Nine Nether Abyss. Lin Qingxue didn't rest and immediately asked Ming Cang to bring over a blank mineral wall panel, projecting all the data engraved on the Golden Gu shell onto it.

The amount of data is astonishing.

Lin Qingxue's legal knowledge was reduced to only one source, but her skill in dismantling rules and frequency still far surpassed everyone else present.

She knelt in front of the wall panel, her pale fingers tracing the data lines inch by inch, her lips moving, occasionally uttering a few terms that only she could understand.

Chen Ya squatted down next to her, supporting her elbow with one hand to prevent her from falling, and with the other hand copied down her dictation line by line onto the jade slip sent by the underworld.

Xiao Hongli stood on the other side of the wall panel, holding the pen she had brought from Blue Star, and drew a rough coordinate system on a flat mineral slab.

When Chen Ya sends over a piece of data, she marks a location point in real time.

Three women from Earth set up an intelligence analysis production line in a side hall filled with deathly aura and mineral dust, a system that none of Zhou Ran's generals could replicate.

Zhou Ran didn't interfere, but leaned against the door frame and watched.

After an incense stick had burned, Lin Qingxue stopped what she was doing.

She leaned against the wall to stand up, turned to face Zhou Ran, and her face was even paler than before.

"The core of the altar's formation is a cross-dimensional coordinate synchronization protocol."

Before his death, the Emperor's son's alternate body sent out a package containing the precise coordinates of all the convergence points of the earth's veins in the Six Heavens.

Zhou Ran tightened his grip on the knife handle by an inch.

There are two recipients.

Lin Qingxue's tone was very flat.

"The Heavenly Demon Realm and the Asura Realm."

The hall was silent for two breaths.

Xiao Hongli's pen stopped on the mineral slab, the tip pressing out a black dot.

Chen Ya's arms, which were holding the jade slip, trembled slightly, and her lips were pressed tightly together; she did not utter a sound.

"Anything else?"

Zhou Ran asked.

"The coordinate synchronization protocol comes with a time anchor."

Lin Qingxue raised her hand and pointed to a set of densely arranged symbols on the wall panel.

"Ten days."

Ten days after the altar is activated, the interdimensional passage between the Heavenly Demon Realm and the Asura Realm will be completely stable.

At that time—

Her gaze fell into Zhou Ran's eyes.

"The three armies simultaneously entered the sixth heaven."

Zhou Ran didn't ask pointless questions like "how many troops do you have?"

The wall panel clearly indicated that the vanguard of the Heavenly Demon Realm numbered 600,000, the elite forces of the Asura Realm numbered 400,000, plus the Imperial Court's directly controlled troops carried by the Emperor's Son.

Three directions, three world-destroying forces, three knives held to one's neck at the same time.

"Boss, how do we break this deadlock?"

It was Xiao Hongli who spoke.

She used the tone of someone holding a board meeting in Jiangcheng—cold, direct, and devoid of any emotional fluctuation.

But on the back of her hand that held the pen, the veins were bulging.

"Let's settle the accounts first."

Zhou Ran walked to the wall panel, took Xiao Hongli's pen, and drew a simple, even sloppy, trident on the blank space of the mineral slab.

"If we are attacked from three directions, we will deploy all our troops, combat power, and resource reserves."

Mingcang waited outside the hall. Upon hearing the order, he sent in the latest data on the battle losses and troop deployment of the four-domain allied forces as quickly as possible.

Xiao Hongli took the data and her fingers flew across the surface, constructing a rough but logically rigorous sand table model on the ore slab.

Chen Ya was responsible for comparing the intelligence ledger and marking the supply lines and material reserves of each troop node on the corresponding location on the sand table.

She glanced at the military register sent by the underworld, her brows furrowing deeper and deeper.

Lin Qingxue quietly supplemented the spatial frequency information captured by the Dharma Eye, marking the possible invasion paths of the enemy on the outer edge of the sand table with thin lines.

Zhou Ran stood in front of the sand table, watching the data on it gradually become more complete, and the lines on his face gradually darkened.

The combined forces of the four regions numbered no more than 300,000 at full strength.

After the battle with the Emperor's son, the actual number of soldiers capable of fighting was less than 200,000, and 40% of the high-level combat power above the Integration Stage was wiped out.

The Soul Abyss Stone reserves can last for another half month, but the formations at the front lines are being depleted far faster than supplies can be replenished.

What about the other side?

The Heavenly Demon Emperor, the Asura Emperor, and the Emperor's Son in their true form.

Three beings at least at the Great Emperor level, followed by an army of over a million.

The data on the sand table lay there coldly.

Xiao Hongli drew a thick line on the bottom of the sand table with a pen, marking "Attack" and "Defense" at the two ends of the line, and wrote two words in the middle.

zero.

"The chance of winning by going head-to-head is zero."

She put down her pen, her tone devoid of despair, only one of restraint as she stated the facts.

"No matter which direction it comes from, we can't catch it."

Chen Ya closed the military register.

"The supplies won't last more than ten days. At the current rate of consumption, they'll be gone in seven days."

Lin Qingxue leaned against the wall and closed her eyes.

The remaining light flickered slightly beneath his eyelids.

There is one variable.

Everyone looked at her.

Lin Qingxue opened her eyes and her gaze fell on Zhou Ran, landing precisely on his dantian.

"you."

Zhou Ran didn't move.

"All the deductions on the sand table are based on one premise—your cultivation level is at the late stage of the Nascent Soul stage."

Lin Qingxue's voice was soft, but every word hit the mark.

"If you can reach the Void Refinement Realm within ten days, the seventh rune of the Primordial Black Blade may light up."

By then, your individual combat strength will be enough to at least hold back the commander of one large army.

Her finger pointed to the thick line marked "zero" on the sand table.

"The reason why the three-pronged attack is unsolvable is that we do not have any node that can form an effective strategic restraint."

But if you can reach the Void Refinement stage,

Even if you're only at the early stage of the Void Refinement realm, you're still the point of restraint.

The remaining two paths, with Illusionary Sound, Bloodlust, and Nine Netherworld each guarding one side, might still offer a glimmer of hope for survival.

Zhou Ran looked down at her hands.

The barrier between the late Nascent Soul stage and the Void Refinement stage has blocked countless geniuses.

Under normal circumstances, it would be impossible to overcome this without decades of reflection and a profound awakening through life and death.

He only has ten days.

The door to the side hall was pushed open.

Bloodlust led the way, his Ancestral Blood Spear planted firmly on the ground. With each step, the spear's tail left a trail of sparks on the stone slab.

Huan Yin followed closely behind, her dark red pupils sweeping over the data on the wall and the sand table on the ground, her eyebrows slightly raised.

Jiuyou was the last to enter.

She didn't go through the door; instead, she materialized from the shadows in the corner of the hall, enveloped in an aura of death.

The auras of three peak Tribulation Transcending experts simultaneously poured into the side hall, causing the data patterns on the ore wall panels to tremble.

Their gazes all fell on the glaring "zero" on the sand table, and they looked up at Zhou Ran.

He spoke with a bloodthirsty glint in his eye, his voice chilling to the bone.

"We just received news from Zangyuan about the siege of the Three Realms, and it's exactly what you calculated."

Huan Yin took half a step forward, her dark red pupils shrinking into thin lines.

"Ten days to go from Nascent Soul to Void Refinement."

The deathly aura of the Nine Netherworlds spread beneath her feet, freezing the ground into a layer of black frost.

"Want to break through to a higher level?"

The voices of the three women rang out almost simultaneously, overlapping each other, so loudly that the steam from the spiritual spring inside the hall condensed.

"We'll fill the gap with our lives."