Ye Liuyun pondered for a moment. Since Dian Qing had laid all his cards on the table, he saw no issues with the arrangement and felt confident he wouldn’t be shortchanged.

Frankly, this kind of open communication suited Ye Liuyun just fine. Whatever the future held, at least for now, their collaboration was off to a smooth and pleasant start.

"Deal! Straight to the point—I like it!" Dian Qing laughed heartily, visibly pleased by Ye Liuyun’s swift decision-making.

With that settled, they dove straight into business. True to his word, Dian Qing honored Ye Liuyun’s quoted prices without haggling.

First up were the dozen colossal warships from the foreign races—sold in one swift transaction.

Next came the puppet beasts and armor. Ye Liuyun had to temporarily deplete his stockpiles and reserves to fulfill the order, planning to have Tong Xin and the other craftsmen replenish the inventory later.

As for the Swift Sparrows, the Tianhong Dynasty placed an immediate order for twenty thousand.

Ye Liuyun hesitated. The sheer volume would require extensive material procurement and production time. After some thought, he proposed an alternative.

"That’s too large a quantity. Sourcing materials and crafting them would take ages. How about I sell you the designs instead? Your people can manufacture them yourselves."

Dian Qing promptly consulted the royal court and the academy before responding.

"Let’s split the difference. Sell us five thousand Swift Sparrows first—we’ll pay your asking price and even throw in the raw materials for production. Then, you can sell us the designs, and we’ll handle the rest of the manufacturing. What do you say?"

Seeing their terms were reasonable and sensing their urgency, Ye Liuyun nodded.

"Fair enough. I can spare five thousand. And since I don’t want to leave you at a disadvantage, I’ll lower the price for the designs."

*The foreign races’ equipment configurations are bizarre,* Ye Liuyun mused privately. *The Western Theater doesn’t even use Swift Sparrows—they’ve never seen them before.* He had long suspected their production capacity was entirely diverted to the northern front.

"Done!" 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

Dian Qing gave an approving nod, satisfied that Ye Liuyun wasn’t trying to exploit the situation.

So Ye Liuyun directly contacted Xiao Mu’an, asking him to lend five thousand Swift Sparrows first and send them over via the teleportation array.

After selling off these five thousand Swift Sparrows, Ye Liuyun handed the design schematics to Dian Qing and received the corresponding resources in return.

He then sent back the proceeds from the sale along with the smithing materials through the teleportation array, allowing Xiao Mu’an to make a tidy profit.

With no ongoing wars in the Sacred Land, they had ample time to replenish the five thousand Swift Sparrows, and the extra resources were a welcome bonus.

Xiao Mu’an also took the opportunity to ask Ye Liuyun whether he had found any potential allies for an alliance.

Ye Liuyun briefly summarized the situation, simply stating that it would take time to build trust and coordination.

This news eased Xiao Mu’an’s mind considerably. With someone else helping to divert the alien forces, the pressure on his side would lessen. He assured Ye Liuyun that the Sacred Land would fully support the alliance and urged him to call for help whenever needed.

After waiting all these years, Ye Liuyun had finally made the Sacred Land Dynasty recognize the importance of alliances—though it had taken relentless internal strife and several brutal wars against the aliens for them to learn this lesson.

Deep down, Ye Liuyun worried that the Tianhong World might repeat the same mistakes as the Sacred Land Dynasty. But there was little he could do—it was ultimately up to the Tianhong Dynasty to decide their own fate.

He had also discussed the current state of the Tianhong World with Dian Qing. They, too, had been pushed back to their homeland by the alien invaders. However, the alien-infected warriors were mostly lower-tier cultivators, while their elite forces remained intact.

Under Dian Qing’s leadership, they launched a surprise attack, eliminating the alien commanders before slowly dismantling the enemy forces piece by piece.

Though they ultimately emerged victorious, their losses were staggering—their current combat strength was less than a third of what it once had been. The cultivators stationed at this Sheng Yuan Academy outpost represented nearly their entire remaining force.

A few warriors still remained in the royal court and the academy, but they were no longer the backbone of their military. That was why they were in such a hurry to wipe out the alien strongholds in the west—to buy time to rebuild their strength.

The moment the Swift Sparrows were delivered, they immediately began training their soldiers. Soon, two thousand of the vessels were deployed to the outpost, ready to join the cultivators in eliminating the alien bases.

Scouting parties were dispatched without delay, tasked with gathering intelligence on the alien outposts’ locations and strength.

Ye Liuyun and Dian Qing immediately set out with their teams, heading straight for the identified alien strongholds. Among them, three turned out to be territories controlled by the demonic races, so Ye Liuyun took the initiative to handle those himself—his goal was to expand the spatial world power of his doppelganger.

When it came time to strike, it was the doppelganger who led Wu Qingcheng and the others into battle. Each stronghold still housed a considerable number of alien soldiers—at least fifty to sixty thousand—so Ye Liuyun unleashed his demonic vine, the Demon-Sealing Stele, Lei Ming, the Dragon Maiden, Liang Xue, the Nine-Headed Demon Dragon, the Vermilion Bird, and Mu Lai, among other non-human allies, without deploying a single human soldier.

The rule was simple: whoever seized the resources got to keep them. This not only motivated everyone but also solved the problem of cultivation resources for those non-human fighters.

The group fought fiercely, each eager to claim more resources, competing to see who could kill faster and in greater numbers.

Meanwhile, the doppelganger honed its mastery over temporal power in battle, while Ye Liuyun focused on refining the quality of his advance energy. Dian Qing’s level of True Yuan had once again ignited Ye Liuyun’s determination to surpass him.

Not that Ye Liuyun couldn’t defeat Dian Qing—he had full confidence in the power of his spatial world. But having identified his own shortcomings, he was eager to improve them immediately.

After his doppelganger absorbed the essence of one demonic world, Ye Liuyun switched places with it and rejoined the battle. Beyond strengthening his command over cosmic energy, he also sharpened his blade intent.

From previous battles against the alien races, he had realized his blade intent still wasn’t strong enough. Though it appeared devastating, it fell far short of his expectations.

In his view, a single slash against a third-tier Celestial Realm alien should reduce it to nothing but a mist of blood. Yet currently, his strikes merely sent flesh and blood flying—proof that he still had a long way to go.

The second demonic world they conquered was given to Lei Ming. Since the doppelganger hadn’t fully refined the first one yet and couldn’t handle another so soon, it was the perfect opportunity for Lei Ming to enhance her own spatial world power.

Only after securing the third alien stronghold did Ye Liuyun allocate resources to his doppelganger again. To allow it time to fully refine the first demonic world, they even stayed put for a few extra days.

Initially, their progress had matched Dian Qing’s pace, with both sides subtly competing. Now that they had paused, Ye Liuyun expected to fall behind.

Surprisingly, Dian Qing’s forces had also halted. According to Dian Qing, they had suffered some losses among their martial cultivators and Feiyan warships, making it a good time to regroup.

From Sang Han, Ye Liuyun learned that Dian Qing had pushed his troops to keep up with their rapid conquests. As a result, after taking three strongholds, they had lost over three hundred martial cultivators and nearly a thousand Feiyan vessels.

Yet by any measure, their joint operation was a resounding success—they had seized six alien strongholds in one decisive sweep.