The moment he heard that voice, Wan Zhengxin's head started to ache. "That pig is here!"
Yang Kai's mouth twitched too. The Wild Boar Squad's style was as reckless and unbridled as ever. If you're coming, just move quietly—why make such a scene? Were they afraid the Mo Tribe wouldn't notice?
There was no point saying anything. The Wild Boar Squad was simply built this way. No matter what they did, they charged in headlong. Their motto was that pressing forward fearlessly, tackling every obstacle head-on—that was the true romance of men. Under their captain Zhu Yuming's lead, every member of the squad embodied this philosophy to the fullest.
From another direction, curses immediately erupted. "You pig! Can't you show some restraint? Why did you have to alert them? Aaaargh... I'm about to lose my mind."
A cold snort came from yet another side. "If that pig could actually show restraint, he wouldn't be a pig!"
Amid the laughter, insults, and ridicule, the Mo Tribe forces hidden and lurking in the surroundings watched in alarm as three human palace-type artifacts charged in from three different directions. Every one of those tower ships wove together the terrifying power of artifacts and secret techniques, crashing down upon them without mercy.
The Mo Tribe were momentarily stunned. They had no idea when the humans had surrounded them. All their attention had been focused on the floating island where a human was advancing in cultivation, as well as the two human squads guarding it. The sudden appearance of three additional squads threw their formation into chaos.
Although some Territory Lords managed to coordinate a fierce counterattack, these three squads of humans that had appeared out of nowhere were clearly different from the norm. Not only were they numerous, but the proportion of Seventh-Grade Open Heaven cultivators among them was terrifyingly high. Moreover, the power each warship could unleash far exceeded what a typical human squad-level vessel could achieve.
These were human elite squads!
Having fought the humans for so many years, the Mo Tribe was well aware of the human elite squads. They knew such squads were few in number across the entirety of the human race—perhaps only four or five in total—but each one possessed the combat strength to single-handedly face a Territory Lord's subordinate army.
The Mo Tribe had once assessed that to take down one such squad, it would require either a Domain Lord to act personally, or the gathering of at least twenty to thirty Territory Lords.
That was for a single squad. Right now, five entire squads had converged here. The Mo Tribe's numbers were certainly greater, but they lacked the raw combat power to contend with five human elite squads.
The three squads, each led by their captains, wove and struck through the void, repositioning and cutting down enemies. Among them, the Wild Boar Squad charged the fiercest and hit the hardest.
In the span of just a few moments, the Mo Tribe was thrown into complete disarray, suffering countless dead and wounded.
The outcome was decided.
Wan Zhengxin let out a sigh. "Junior Brother Yang, your foresight was extraordinary. The Old Turtle Squad and the Water Snake Squad really were hiding nearby. It's a pity that all that careful planning got blown apart by that pig."
Yang Kai chuckled. "I wouldn't put it that way. Those two squads were probably waiting for the Mo Tribe to gather more numbers before striking. Senior Brother Zhu and the others may be a bit rash, but they didn't actually ruin anything."
Wan Zhengxin nodded, somewhat wistfully. "The Wild Boar Squad—that bunch of troublemakers. When will they ever change their style?"
Faced with this one-sided battle, neither Yang Kai nor Wan Zhengxin had any intention of stepping in. Right now, the most important thing was to protect Xiang Shan—not the time to compete for battle credit.
Moreover, this was only the beginning. The further time progressed, the more severe the situation here would likely become. Whether it was Yang Kai or Wan Zhengxin, both had led squads for years and understood the importance of conserving energy before the main battle.
Just as the three human elite squads made their appearance, deep in the distant void, within a grand hall on an enormous floating island, the Mo Tribe's Domain Lords had gathered.
In the last great battle between the two races, the Mo Tribe had suffered devastating losses. Among the Domain Lord-level powerhouses alone, dozens had directly fallen—a blow that shook them to the core and sent the King into a rage.
Following that, the human grand army had actually marched out from behind their fortifications on a full-scale expedition. Under the weight of collapsing morale, the Mo Tribe's territory had been lost bit by bit, with the human expeditionary force pushing deep into their heartland, only halted when it reached a point three Domain Lords' territories away from the King's City.
This had never happened before. Since the two races had begun their struggle on this Battlefield of Mo, countless years had passed, and the Mo Tribe had never suffered such a severe defeat. It had always been the Mo Tribe who took the initiative to attack, assaulting the human strongholds, while the humans could only defend passively. On the rare occasions they struck back, it was only in minor skirmishes. But this time was entirely different from anything that had come before.
What stung the Mo Tribe even more was that the humans had constructed an advance outpost camp right at the forefront of the territories they had captured. From the look of it, they intended to settle in permanently.
How could the Mo Tribe tolerate this?
If they let the humans succeed, the face of the entire Mo Tribe in the Biluo Theater would be completely destroyed. They would never be able to hold their heads high before their kin in other theaters.
Over these decades, the Mo Tribe had launched counterattacks, but with little effect. The mass death of Domain Lord-level powerhouses had made it difficult for them to effectively constrain the humans' Eighth-Grade cultivators at the upper echelons. While their grassroots numbers far exceeded the humans, the Mo Tribe's rank and file were vastly uneven in strength—too many weaklings and stragglers. With that kind of fighting force, a small group would simply be marching to its death if it encountered a human squad. But the moment they gathered in large numbers, they would immediately draw a devastating strike from the human advance outpost camp.
The Mo Tribe found itself trapped in an impossible position—inaction was unacceptable, yet every course of action led to disaster.
The inaction of their higher-ups left the rank-and-file Mo Tribe wracked with anguish. They began gathering into groups on their own initiative and fought back against the humans. Over these decades, human squads had been hunting the Mo Tribe—but had the Mo Tribe not been hunting humans in return? This pattern of scattered, sporadic combat had become an unspoken status quo accepted by both sides' leadership. No one knew how long this situation would last, or what unknown variables the future might bring.
The human advance outpost camp had concentrated a great number of Eighth-Grade cultivators, forcing the Mo Tribe's Domain Lords to gather together as well—lest the human grand army mobilize in full and pick them off one by one.