Volume 1, Chapter 150 – Mopping Up

Sensing the vague intent echoing in his mind, Black Tiger felt a strange wrenching pain in his heart.

“Changqing…”

“Go…”

The body of the ancient tree suddenly collapsed and disintegrated. A vast spatial force swept out, shifting a stretch of the void and sending the woman within its trunk to some unknown place between heaven and earth.

Of the two shapeshifted demon kings, one had died and one had fled. Most of the demon clouds in the sky had already dispersed, leaving only the final patch still struggling to hold together.

“Haaah!”

Lei Wuji held in his hand a great seal engraved with thunder patterns. Each strike he made brought down a sea of lightning from the sky, incomparably heavy, carrying the force of ten thousand jun.

The vicious-faced burly man had been paying faint attention to the warship’s side of the battle all along. Seeing the two demon kings fall, he did not dare stay entangled with Lei Wuji any longer. He forcibly withstood several divine thunderbolts, then dragged his heavily wounded body away, using a secret art to cross space and escape.

Lei Wuji recalled the great seal, secretly feeling regretful. Against an existence at the Myriad Phenomena Realm, unless the difference in strength was enormous, it was truly far too difficult to kill the other side.

…

After two hours of fierce battle, Shi Lan was still full of vigor, her stamina abundant, her combat strength at its peak. The people behind her, however, were already finding it hard to hold on.

Of the nearly thousand people in the beast tide, more than three hundred had already fallen, nearly a hundred of them from the Demon-Suppressing Army. The losses could only be called disastrous.

Bai Weiyang’s orders had never once ceased. One coordinate after another was constantly being marked out, leaving Shi Lan no time to be distracted by miscellaneous thoughts.

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The battlefield stretched out for nearly a hundred li. All that entered the ear were shouts of killing, mixed with countless beastly roars.

In the blink of an eye, another small half hour passed. When the casualties among Shi Lan’s subordinates approached four hundred, new orders came once more from the Demon-Suppressing Command Token.

“Form the Demon-Slaughtering Formation. Begin the harvest.”

Before Shi Lan could think about how to arrange the Demon-Slaughtering Formation, a somewhat familiar tugging force came from overhead. The ten banners following behind her suddenly spread out.

Unlike in Twin Moon City, this time Shi Lan held the initiative. Whether or not to connect to the Demon-Slaughtering Formation depended on her alone.

Moreover, besides herself, those martial artists within the army formation were also under her control. The feeling was rather strange.

After a brief hesitation, Shi Lan released her restriction on the Demon-Slaughtering Formation. The true qi in her body surged out like a breached dam.

Her body was suddenly stimulated. Shi Lan instinctively unfolded the Black Domain. Before she could close it, streams of blood qi poured into her body.

The Jade Tempering Art, which had been advancing quite slowly, seemed to be provoked. Its circulation sped up crazily, rapidly pushing toward the seventh stage.

As stream after stream of blood qi entered, a lustrous radiance flowed over Shi Lan’s skin, crystal-clear like jade.

The rate at which her true qi was draining gradually slowed. Behind her, the strength of the Innate Realm and Body Tempering Realm martial artists surged by a whole level.

When her true qi fell to a critical point, Shi Lan’s true qi began to rise again, and her aura climbed as well. It was the same for everyone behind her.

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Very soon, Shi Lan’s true qi returned to its initial state, then continued to rise without stopping.

This time, Shi Lan finally understood where the power unleashed by the Demon-Slaughtering Formation came from. It was the strength hidden in the blood flowing within their bodies.

Tempering the body in the Body Tempering Realm, tempering qi in the Innate Realm. Although the methods differed, they were all strengthening one’s own power, and the foundation contained within the blood was gradually accumulating.

The Demon-Slaughtering Formation relied on the Demon-Suppressing Army banners to dig out this power.

This was essentially overdrafting themselves, and the side effects were naturally huge.

The Demon-Slaughtering Formation then converted and spread out those side effects. It had the Innate Realm help bear part of the burden for the Body Tempering Realm, had the Earth Fiend Realm help bear part for the Innate Realm, and in the end most of the pressure would converge upon the general.

The portion of pressure on the general’s body would then be dissolved and redistributed again, shared out by everyone in the formation, ultimately stopping right at the limit each person could endure.

The subtlety of it opened Shi Lan’s eyes.

The Demon-Slaughtering Formation sounded complicated, but in reality it only took a few breaths of time to unfold. An enormous pressure settled on Shi Lan, yet her strength rose by more than a few levels.

The demon clouds in the sky scattered and sunlight poured down. Without demon kings to command them, the low-level demonic beasts were terrified by the blood qi of all the high-level beasts surrounding them and bolted in all directions.

Their way of thinking was very simple. Beasts countless times stronger than they were were all bleeding and wounded, even dying. This place was definitely extremely dangerous. Running away to avoid harm was pure instinct.

Demonic beasts at the Earth Fiend Realm and above possessed very high intelligence. Seeing that even the demon kings had fled, they naturally would not stay to fight to the death. They barely gathered a group of low-level beasts to temporarily tie down the Demon-Suppressing Army, then immediately began to flee.

The battlefield was quickly cleared. Not a single demonic beast still able to move could be seen, only a few that were clinging to life, collapsed among the heaps of corpses.

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The setting sun was like blood. Its afterglow made the entire battlefield even more glaring to the eye.

More than fifteen thousand people had disembarked from the warship. After this one battle, over six thousand were lost, and not a single one had a complete corpse.

As the Demon-Slaughtering Formation dispersed, the Body Tempering Realm martial artists, especially those below the ninth stage of the Body Tempering Realm, all vomited great mouthfuls of blood.

This was different from injuries. This was loss on the level of the body itself. That blood was the exhaustion of the foundation stored within their blood, expelled by the body as waste blood.

The ninth-stage Body Tempering Realm martial artists had more refined vital blood and a slightly deeper foundation, and could slowly recover, so naturally they did not cough up as much blood.

From the moment the Demon-Slaughtering Formation was activated, Shi Lan’s Black Domain had never closed. Her blood qi foundation had only increased instead of decreasing, yet she was not very happy.

Because much of the blood qi she had just absorbed belonged to human martial artists. That left a knot in her heart.

Shi Lan felt she ought to have some sort of physical reaction such as nausea, retching, or some other discomfort, yet unfortunately she had none of that.

After absorbing so much blood qi, all she felt now was a warm comfort spreading through her whole body.

Aside from a bit of discomfort in her heart, there was not a single negative reaction in her body. That made her feel even more ill at ease.

In this one battle, more than six thousand martial artists died, and there were naturally even more demonic beasts. Corpses carpeted a stretch of a hundred li, white bones lay exposed, and blood ran past shattered shields.

Many people forced their exhausted bodies to move as they searched through the heaps of corpses piled like mountains for their fellow sect members or comrades in arms, even if what remained were only severed limbs or tattered robes and broken armor.

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From time to time a stifled sob sounded across the battlefield, making the crimson afterglow and the reek of blood feel even heavier.

Bai Weiyang soon ordered the retreat.

A few people still rummaged through the piles of bones for the remains of the dead, turning a deaf ear to the order to withdraw and refusing to leave until several companions dragged them away by force.

Shi Lan cast a glance at the bloody sunset on the horizon, then led the remnant soldiers with her as they slowly stepped into the golden light that carried them back onto the warship.

She felt utterly awful at that moment. Shi Lan lowered her eyelids, her gaze wandering aimlessly.

When her eyes swept across the command platform, she could not help pausing for a moment.

Bai Weiyang’s jade-like face looked extremely pale, and his spirit seemed a bit listless as well.

This battle had not been easy for him either.

Once the people who had gone out to fight returned to the warship, Bai Weiyang immediately assigned a fresh detachment to begin cleaning the battlefield, retrieving Demon-Suppressing Command Tokens, and searching for the fallen to give them proper burials.

To call it a proper burial was only to gather up heaps of indistinguishable severed limbs and broken arms, along with shredded robes and shattered armor, and bury them together, then erect a shared memorial stele according to the roster of those who had gone out to battle.

As for the names on that roster, probably not even half of them would actually be in that grave.