Judging from the number of Ink Slaves before them, it was clear that in the battle thirty thousand years ago, after the Dayan Old Ancestor fell, the Dayan Pass soldiers had not all perished. Many of them must have been captured by the Ink Clan and converted into Ink Slaves.
Otherwise, there would be no reason for the Dayan theater alone to produce so many high-grade Ink Slaves.
Across the Three Thousand Worlds, why did the Blessed Realms seal away all information concerning the Ink Clan? It was because the power of Ink was simply too great a temptation for some people.
To be sure, once corrupted by the power of Ink, a person's entire being would become devoted to the Ink, their temperament utterly transformed—effectively turning them into an entirely different individual. Yet the boost the power of Ink provided could allow a warrior to disregard all the shackles of the Open Heaven realm. With sufficient resources and luck, their cultivation could keep rising, all the way to the final Ninth Grade.
Throughout all of history, how many Ninth Grades had there been? Even across all the Blessed Realms, they could be counted on one's fingers.
For those warriors who had reached the absolute peak of their cultivation and could advance no further in their lifetime—if they learned of the wondrous power of Ink, could they truly remain unmoved?
The vice sect master of the Langya Blessed Realm, Yuan Du, had cultivated to the Seventh Grade of Open Heaven and was fully aware of the dangers of the power of Ink. Yet he still could not resist its allure, ultimately falling to become an Ink Slave, betraying his ancestors and abandoning his sect, bringing harm to his clan—and forcing the sect master Li Yuanwang to take the painful step of striking him down to cleanse the sect.
If even the vice sect master of the prestigious Langya Blessed Realm could meet such a fate, one could well imagine how many people would covet the power of Ink once its wondrous abilities spread throughout the Three Thousand Worlds.
The human heart was unpredictable.
Over thirty thousand years ago, when the Dayan Old Ancestor perished and the pass was breached, most of the soldiers died on the battlefield—but a considerable number of human warriors had undoubtedly been captured by the Ink Clan's leadership and converted into Ink Slaves.
Thirty thousand years of peace had given these Ink Slaves ample time to cultivate, to peer into higher realms, and to obtain ever greater power.
Over such vast stretches of time, Ink Slaves whose original limit had been the Sixth Grade had grown to reach the Eighth Grade of Open Heaven.
This kind of growth carried extreme danger. A single misstep during advancement meant certain death and the dissolution of one's Dao. Even if they succeeded, their bodies would be left with distinctly inhuman features.
That was why Mi Jinglun was seeing so many seventh- and eighth-grade Ink Slaves on the battlefield.
Though these Ink Slaves still retained a basic humanoid shape, most of them bore strange and unusual features. One eighth-grade Ink Slave, for instance, had a large bulge on his shoulder that, from a distance, made him look as though he had grown a second head.
Another eighth-grade Ink Slave had sprouted two stunted, fleshy wings on his back—one longer than the other, resembling twisted chicken claws.
A seventh-grade Ink Slave had grown an extra arm protruding from his abdomen. This one had been rather imaginative—he'd apparently devised his own fighting style, using his original two arms in coordination with the extra limb, wielding three swords at once, and cutting a fearsome swath across the battlefield.
All these Ink Slaves with their conspicuous features were those who had used the power of Ink to shatter the limits they had once been bound by.
They had never had the chance to cultivate to their current level, but after being transformed by the Ink, they gained the opportunity to reach for a higher plane of the martial Dao.
The power they wielded appeared highly unstable, radiating an overwhelming sense of violent fury.
Yet it was precisely because of these Ink Slaves' intervention that the humans were unable to carry out their decapitation strike as planned.
In the original expectations of Mi Jinglun and Ouyang Lie, with several dozen Eighth Grade warriors facing only a dozen or so Domain Lords—a gap of several times over—the Domain Lords would have had no chance to resist.
With just a handful of people surrounding each one, they could have wiped out all the Domain Lords in short order.
And without the Domain Lords to anchor them, the Ink Clan army of hundreds of thousands would be nothing more than a rabble—the human forces could swallow them up with ease.
But the sudden appearance of so many eighth-grade Ink Slaves had thrown this plan into disarray.
The power these eighth-grade Ink Slaves unleashed was certainly violent enough—but that very violence only confirmed their inability to control their own strength.
In other words, these eighth-grade Ink Slaves still fell short of true Eighth Grade Open Heaven warriors. Their power had been gained through illegitimate means, and in terms of actual strength, they were even somewhat weaker than normal Ink Clan Domain Lords.
One on one, any Eighth Grade Open Heaven warrior could defeat an eighth-grade Ink Slave.
However, killing them was not so simple.
Moreover, whether it was the Domain Lords or the eighth-grade Ink Slaves, they attacked without any restraint, paying no heed to Ink Clan casualties in the vicinity—while the human Eighth Grade warriors were beset by all manner of concerns.
As a result, while the humans held a slight edge in high-end combat power between the two races, that advantage was far from decisive—nowhere near the crushing superiority that had been anticipated.
The battle raged on, and Ink Clan casualties continued to mount.
The humans were also suffering losses in ones and twos, and on the battlefield, there were even the telltale signs of a Seventh Grade Open Heaven falling.
Mi Jinglun furrowed his brow slightly. This was not the situation he had hoped to see. If things continued to drag on in a stalemate, even if the humans ultimately prevailed, their own Yuan Qi would surely be severely depleted.
The only course of action now was to break the deadlock as quickly as possible.
After a brief moment of contemplation, his divine sense surged outward. In the next instant, five figures leaped from the Guard-class warships circling the Ink-Expelling Warship toward the battlefield.
All five were Eighth Grade Open Heaven warriors.
They had originally remained behind aboard the Guard-class warships near the Ink-Expelling Warship, tasked with protecting the vessel and the numerous special personnel aboard it. But now, the time had come for them to enter the fray.
The addition of five Eighth Grade warriors to the battlefield would be enough to shift the balance of high-end combat power. If they could find opportunities to eliminate a few eighth-grade Ink Slaves or Domain Lords, it would set off a chain reaction, allowing the humans' advantage to snowball.
But that would take time.