Moreover, the battle merits spent on this trip were cut in half, because before Yang Kai's departure, the ancestor of Wanmo Tian had asked him to help locate the portals of the various Heaven Blessing Lands and Heaven Caves situated beyond the pass.
That ancestor of Wanmo Tian had clearly heard about Biluo Pass's annihilation of the Ink Clan army — the battle that slew dozens of Domain Lords in a single engagement — and was preparing to replicate the feat.
However, how effective it would ultimately prove depended entirely on how vigilant the Ink Clan remained.
Yang Kai naturally refused no such request. Though it cost him over a year, as long as it helped in the fight against the enemy, it was worth it.
By and large, Yang Kai's cultivation was far more relaxed than everyone else's. He spent no more time than anyone else, yet reaped more bountiful results than all — that was his greatest advantage.
The reason he was most frequently interrupted from his cultivation was his obligation to assist Master Mafan in forging the Anti-Demonic Divine Spear and conducting experiments targeting Ink Clan Domain Lords.
Hong Hu, who had been captured alive by Ding Yao and the others, was currently imprisoned in the underground chamber of the forward camp. The chamber was filled with all manner of formations and restrictions — even a Domain Lord like Hong Hu had no hope of breaking out.
Experiments targeting Domain Lords were no longer conducted as frequently as before, but they still took place roughly once every three to five years.
There was little Yang Kai needed to do — he simply channeled Purification Light into the Anti-Demonic Divine Spear that Master Mafan had forged, launched the spear, and left the rest to others.
Master Mafan and the other Eighth-Order cultivators would evaluate the results on their own.
The research into the Anti-Demonic Divine Spear had consumed enormous amounts of Master Mafan's energy and a vast quantity of time, and progress was slow. Over these two hundred years, the general form of the Anti-Demonic Divine Spear had not changed dramatically, but Yang Kai could sense that each iteration Master Mafan forged was subtly different from the last.
The results of the experiments were sometimes good, sometimes poor.
The reason they only tested once every three to five years was not due to anything on the Human Race's side, but because of Domain Lord Hong Hu.
Each time the experiment was conducted, the Anti-Demonic Divine Spear would pierce his body and instantly release Purification Light, inflicting damage upon him. Even as a Domain Lord, he required three to five years of recovery each time.
Only when he had fully recovered could the next experiment proceed.
This was a test of extraordinary patience, but fortunately, neither Master Mafan nor any of the other Eighth-Order cultivators lacked it.
As for Domain Lord Hong Hu, who had been captured alive, he had endured two hundred years of this torment and imprisonment!
Compared to Domain Lord Wujiang, who had perished on the spot in that battle, Hong Hu had once considered himself fortunate. The Human Race Eighth-Order cultivators had not intended to kill him — from the very beginning they had planned to take him alive. Otherwise, the one who died that day would not have been Wujiang, but him, Hong Hu.
He believed that the Human Race Eighth-Order cultivators had no specific target in mind, and had simply chosen one of the two of them at random.
For any race, survival was a primal instinct buried in the subconscious — only the living could hold hope. Yet after two hundred years of imprisonment and torment, Hong Hu had finally discovered that sometimes living was worse than death.
A fate worse than death was the perfect description of his current state.
As a Domain Lord, he possessed formidable strength, and his willpower was naturally second to none. Yet every time that Human Race Eighth-Order cultivator drove a long spear into his body and that blinding radiance erupted, Hong Hu felt that death would be a mercy.
He did not know what secret art produced that light. He only knew that within it lay a power that supremely countered Ink Force — under its influence, the Ink Force within his own body rapidly dissolved.
It was nothing less than the bane of Ink Force, the natural enemy of the entire Ink Clan.
That the Human Race had mastered such a secret art filled Hong Hu with abject terror.
In truth, upon first witnessing that dazzling, pure white light, Hong Hu had recalled something.
It had happened over three hundred years ago, during the Ink Clan's second-to-last assault on the Human Race's Biluo Pass. For one brief instant, a similar radiance had erupted at some location on the battlefield.
At the time, Hong Hu had been too far from that section of the front to see clearly. He had caught only a fleeting glimpse — the pure light appeared and vanished in the blink of an eye — but immediately after, the aura of a Domain Lord's death had rippled outward.
That Domain Lord had fallen at Zhong Liang's hands, and Hong Hu had instinctively assumed it was some secret art Zhong Liang had activated. Though he had not seen it clearly, that white light had given Hong Hu an overwhelming sense of danger.
After that incident, Hong Hu had carefully scoured the battlefield for any trace of that secret art's activation but found nothing. In subsequent conversations with other Domain Lords, every one who had noticed the white light shared his same sense of dread.
The Domain Lords had quietly taken note and even attempted to uncover the mystery behind that white light, but they came up empty-handed.
Moreover, after that single appearance, the white light never showed itself again, and the Ink Clan gradually let the matter fade from memory.
Not until Hong Hu was captured and witnessed the birth of that white light with his own eyes did he finally understand — the secret art had been in the Human Race's possession all along. It had simply never been deployed on the battlefield again after that first time.