The only reason those four had attacked so decisively was because Yang Kai had once fought four opponents simultaneously and annihilated them all.
By all rights, Yang Kai could have unleashed his full strength and eliminated every last one of them.
Instead, he had done no such thing. He had captured Junior Brother Ding and simply left.
One of them brightened. "Could it be that he's running low on strength!"
The other nodded at this. "It's possible!"
This trial had been going on for nearly half a month now. Over that stretch of time, Yang Kai had been fighting alone the entire while. No matter how strong he was, no matter how vast his Small World's reserves, prolonged combat was bound to erode his strength.
Perhaps he no longer had what it took to face four at once!
"We need to get this word out!" The first speaker's expression was fevered with excitement. Throughout this entire trial, they had been steeped in despair. Langya's Open Heaven cultivators might have the numbers, but Yang Kai was a master of the Space Laws—he could fight, he could flee, and he would periodically launch sudden ambushes, seizing someone and vanishing before they could react. They had been utterly unable to defend against him.
But now, at last, a glimmer of hope had pierced through that hopeless stalemate.
Yang Kai was not made of iron. He could not sustain that terrifying level of combat power indefinitely!
And all of this had been bought with the resources and blood of the senior and junior brothers who had already been eliminated. Their sacrifices would not go to waste. Victory would belong to Langya!
Before long, the news had reached every surviving Langya cultivator. A wave of fervor surged through them all.
In truth, their speculation was not unfounded. An ordinary Sixth-Order Open Heaven cultivator, after enduring such prolonged high-intensity combat—even against opponents weaker than himself—would surely have suffered enormous attrition and might eventually collapse from exhaustion.
During that time, one could refine Open Heaven Pills to recover strength, but how much could that really restore? And would Langya's cultivators even give him the chance to recover?
Yang Kai was different. He had come to personally appreciate the benefits of nurturing living beings within his own Small World.
The creatures that had migrated in from the Pear Blossom Heaven now numbered in the tens of millions, constantly providing him with vast amounts of Heavenly Power and bolstering his Small World's reserves.
Then there was the army of Small Stone Clan. The Small Stone Clan reproduced at a staggering rate, and in equal numbers, the benefits they provided to Yang Kai were ten times those of ordinary living beings.
Add to that the fact that time within his Small World flowed twice as fast as the outside world, and even after half a month of non-stop fighting without a single moment of rest, Yang Kai showed not the slightest sign of fatigue. He remained as vigorous as ever. His consumption, compared to the growth of his Small World's reserves, was utterly negligible.
At this level of intensity, Yang Kai could fight until the end of time!
The reason he hadn't taken on all four of Deng Chi's squad at once and wiped them out—that was mainly because of the Corrupted Ones.
If even one of Langya's Open Heaven cultivators among them was a Corrupted One, the chaos of a group confrontation would make it impossible to get anything out of them.
Only by being alone with someone, as he had been with Gu Ling'er before, would there be a chance to uncover clues or even pin down their identity as a Corrupted One.
And so, in the span of less than the time it took an incense stick to burn, Deng Chi—who was sitting on the ground recovering from his injuries—could only watch helplessly as Yang Kai came and went again and again, snatching away one junior brother after another.
Those junior brothers were nearly driven to madness. Without Li Yuanwang's orders, they could have fled to other Spirit Prefectures. But for reasons unknown, the Sect Master had issued a command requiring everyone to hold their positions. No matter how hard they ran, they could only flee within their own Spirit Prefecture.
They couldn't even call for reinforcements from other squads, as they had before.
Because the other squads also could not disobey orders and leave their own assigned Spirit Prefectures to come to their aid.
The Sect Master was essentially handing Yang Kai the opportunity to pick them off one by one! No one understood why. They could only speculate that the Sect Master was frustrated with their incompetence—a whole squad unable to do anything about Yang Kai, and asking other squads for help would be too humiliating.
With a single command from Li Yuanwang, the situation was unfolding entirely in Yang Kai's favor.
Only Yang Kai understood what Li Yuanwang was planning, and he was doing his best to cooperate.
The flames of war burned across Langya's Spirit Prefectures one after another. Wherever Yang Kai appeared, the Open Heaven squads stationed there were destroyed in turn. Every cultivator he captured came away battered and bruised, but not a single one of them surrendered.
After Deng Chi's squad had gotten the word out, the resistance actually became fiercer. Every cultivator who was eliminated had fought Yang Kai until they were completely spent, with no strength left to continue.
Of course, as a result, they ended up being beaten even worse than those eliminated earlier.
But they accepted it gladly. Their own elimination was not meaningless—as long as they could drain Yang Kai's strength, they would buy more chances for the remaining brothers and sisters.
They held on to hope. Surely someone would eventually step up, defeat Yang Kai, and claim the victory that belonged to Langya.
But as time wore on, that hope slowly twisted back into despair.
The eliminated Open Heaven cultivators could no longer communicate with their brothers and sisters still participating in the trial or share any information with them, but they could still talk among themselves.
At this moment, the numerous eliminated cultivators were frantically chatting through their identity tokens.
"We've received confirmed news—Senior Sister Zhou's squad was targeted by that surnamed Yang half an hour ago!"
"What's the situation?"
"So far, four have been eliminated! Only Senior Sister Zhou and Junior Brother Jia remain in the squad!"