Occasionally, there were still human soldiers stumbling out of the battlefield, some alone and some in small groups of three to five. Without exception, every one of them was drenched in blood, their auras feeble and drained.
Drawn by the auras of Yang Kai and the others, these unsteady soldiers soon gathered together, silently finding a spot to sit cross-legged and recuperate.
After a brief period of breathing exercises, Yang Kai rose to his feet and charged alone into the region shrouded by the Ink Clouds.
His Small World was home to countless living beings, and he also had the World Tree's subsidiary tree within it. As a result, the rate at which he recovered the power of Heaven and Earth was far faster than that of ordinary cultivators. Even without deliberate cultivation, the strength of his Small World was constantly increasing.
The Ink Cloud-shrouded region was the site of the earlier battlefield. Though the armies of both races had already withdrawn, it was unknown whether any surviving humans remained on the field.
Perhaps some human soldiers still had a sliver of life left but had lost the ability to move due to their grievous wounds. Without someone to lend a hand, they would simply die there, trapped.
So Yang Kai decided to go have a look.
The entire battlefield spanned tens of millions of li of void. Yang Kai wove through it, his divine sense flaring as he searched for any trace of life.
He did find some.
But they were all severely wounded members of the Ink Clan, clinging to their final breaths.
Yang Kai was not about to show mercy. He casually invoked the Laws of Space, sending crescent-blade arcs slashing through the air to grant them a swift end.
He searched for roughly an hour.
When Yang Kai finally returned from the battlefield, he brought with him a woman who had Seventh-Order cultivation.
He did not even know her name. When he found her, she had already slipped into unconsciousness. She lay draped across the wreckage of a warship, her body covered in wounds, her robes stained crimson with blood.
Aside from this Seventh-Order woman, he had also come across many human corpses, and even more Ink Clan remains — severed limbs and torn flesh scattered everywhere.
The entire battlefield was like a living hell.
The woman was the only person he had found alive out of all his searching.
All told, Yang Kai had been in the Ink Battlefield for several hundred years. From the Sixth-Order Open Heaven cultivator who had first arrived to the Seventh-Order cultivator he was today, he had traveled through multiple war zones and participated in more battles than he could count. Yet in terms of sheer brutality and hardship, none could compare to this engagement.
The reason was simple: the Dayan Army had traveled a vast distance to reach this place, with no fortifications to shelter behind.
Unlike fighting near the safety of their respective Great Passes, in the Dayan War Zone the human armies were cut off and isolated. Even the wounded had nowhere safe to retreat to for recovery. Every battle had to be won, and won decisively, if the great undertaking of reclaiming Dayan was to continue.
It was foreseeable that battles like today's would be far from rare in the days to come. How many more human soldiers would end up buried in this Dayan War Zone, following in the footsteps of their predecessors to glory?
He brought the woman back to the gathering point. The soldiers still recuperating there cracked open their eyes to glance at him, then offered only a slight nod, exchanging few words.
There were fewer than thirty human cultivators gathered here for rest. It was not that only thirty had been rendered unable to continue fighting after this battle — most of the severely wounded had already departed with the main army in pursuit of the Ink Clan. These thirty or so had simply been too gravely hurt to keep up in time.
Yang Kai placed the woman beside him and settled back into his cross-legged posture, quietly resuming his breathing exercises.
But in the very next moment, his eyes snapped open and he turned to look in the direction of the battlefield. Something peculiar was stirring over there.
He had just spent an hour combing through the battlefield in detail, and aside from finding the one surviving Seventh-Order woman, he had found nothing else of note. Where was this strange commotion coming from?
Just as he was puzzling over it, the disturbance suddenly became far more pronounced. A surge of vitality was reviving — and it was immensely powerful, the speed of its recovery accelerating with startling rapidity.
A formidable aura billowed outward from the battlefield.
Yang Kai's expression changed sharply. He shot to his feet, divine sense erupting as he sent his voice ringing out in every direction: "Activate the Universe Art immediately! Return to the Ink Expulsion Warship!"
The thirty-odd Open Heaven cultivators still resting had also sensed the reviving vitality before Yang Kai spoke, and they were all staring at the battlefield in confusion. Upon hearing his transmission, every face tightened as they grasped the severity of the situation.
No one hesitated. The group scattered quickly, each making hand seals and activating the Universe Art.
Over an hour of recovery was far from enough to heal these heavily wounded warriors, but it was sufficient to fuel this technique, which was not particularly draining.
Array formations blazed to life beneath the feet of the thirty-plus cultivators — signs that the Universe Art had been activated and that their individual imprints were resonating with the Universe Array laid aboard the Ink Expulsion Warship.
All they needed was a few more breaths, and everyone could use the Universe Art to return to the ship.
But then, perhaps drawn by the fluctuations of the activated Universe Art, a powerful divine sense suddenly swept across from the area of the battlefield where vitality was reviving.
Yang Kai's face turned ashen.
His worst fear had been realized.
Though he had earlier sensed the overwhelming vitality, he had been unable to determine the precise cultivation level of whoever it was. Out of caution, he had immediately ordered everyone to flee. Now, with that divine sense crashing toward them, the strength of its owner was laid bare for all to see.
Eighth-Order! The being reviving on the battlefield was an Eighth-Order cultivator.
And Yang Kai was nearly certain that this was no Eighth-Order from the Northern or Southern Armies. Nine times out of ten, it was an Eighth-Order Ink Disciple.