Xiang Shan smiled faintly. "I have some ideas I'd like to discuss with you, Junior Sister."
Liu Zhiping felt a quiet weariness settle over her. By all accounts she was a sharp mind in her own right, yet after years of following Xiang Shan in commanding the East and West Army, she had come to realize she simply could not keep up with his way of thinking.
When it came to marching and fighting, she could see one move ahead. Xiang Shan was already three or four steps further.
She had long heard of Xiang Shan's reputation at Biluo Pass, but only after truly working alongside him did she grasp the terrifying gift the man possessed for warfare. It was an innate talent that others could never hope to replicate.
A combined force of two thousand Formation Grandmasters and Artifact Refiners—all of them Fifth-Order Open Heavens or above—working together: just how devastating could the establishment of a fortified position be? No one had known before. Now the soldiers of the East and West Army understood it vividly.
Once the pocket world had been relocated into position, the Formation Grandmasters and Artifact Refiners collaborated to spend two full days surveying every feature of the terrain. Then a dozen or so lead figures gathered together and hammered out a deployment plan.
Over the next three days, the framework of a grand formation had been erected across the vast world.
Three days had already passed, and the Ink Clan still showed no signs of movement. That essentially confirmed they would not be attacking, because if they had any intention of doing so, they would never have waited three full days. They would have struck the moment the human army was still settling in.
The Formation Grandmasters and Artifact Refiners, who had been rushing about in a frenzy before, now moved with far greater composure.
With the grand framework in place, all that remained was to fill it with various individual formations, adjusting the coordination and interlocking resonance between each one.
This was the crystallized wisdom of every Formation Grandmaster in the entire East and West Army, a lifetime's worth of expertise combined. And with the assistance of the Artifact Refiners, whatever formation devices the Grandmasters needed could be forged quickly and without wasting a single moment.
Vast quantities of materials were consumed, and no one begrudged a thing.
War was fought with resources and manpower—that was all there was to it.
Back then, to draw the Ink Clan's attention, Xiang Shan had not hesitated to have the Artifact Refiners forge tens of thousands of puppets and deploy them to Dayan Pass. Now, for the sake of establishing this fortified position, what did a few consumed resources matter?
As long as they could seize the Dayan battlefield, the vast void beyond would be brimming with resources for the humans to harvest as much as they pleased. Shortages would be a thing of the past. Everything spent now was merely an investment in future returns.
Five more days slipped by.
Over ten thousand formations now blanketed the entire pocket world. Under the reinforcement of all these arrays, what had once been an ordinary, unremarkable pocket world—of the sort scattered throughout the void—now exuded an aura of cold, lethal danger.
And this was the result of only a few days' work. One could well imagine that given more time, the Formation Grandmasters would make the formation network even more refined, even more impregnable.
The Ink Clan remained where they were, making no move.
This was entirely within Xiang Shan's expectations, so no one batted an eye.
Deep in the distant void, fierce and violent surges of energy still erupted from time to time. Even across the immense distance, everyone could detect the dangerous undercurrents carried in those tremors.
It was the aftershocks of the battle between the Old Ancestor and the King Lord.
The two supreme beings had been fighting for more than half a month now, and there was still no end in sight. No one knew when this clash would finally conclude.
Until, at a certain moment, the relentless shockwaves that had been reverberating without pause suddenly fell silent. Not a single ripple came through afterward.
In that instant, every human and every member of the Ink Clan alike turned involuntarily toward the direction from which the disturbances had been emanating. Nearly everyone's heart leapt into their throat.
The battle between the two supreme beings was over!
Who had won? Who had lost?
Who had lived? Who had died?
The outcome of this battle might well determine the fate of both armies going forward.
Under the gaze of countless eyes, a dazzling streak of light shot toward them from the depths of the distant void. When it first appeared, it was still at the very limit of vision, but in the blink of an eye it crossed hundreds of millions of miles, and in another blink it was closer still.
The humans surged with jubilation. The Ink Clan was seized with dread.
There was no mistaking it—that brilliant radiance was unmistakably the escape light of the Human Old Ancestor. The King Lord of the Ink Clan could never produce a spectacle like that.
Sure enough, as the light drew near, the overwhelming aura of the Open Heavens realm washed over them, an aura powerful enough to invert heaven and earth. It was the Human Old Ancestor without question.
The Ink Clan braced themselves as though facing a dire enemy.
They did not know what state their King Lord was in, but the Human Old Ancestor had returned while their King Lord was nowhere to be seen. Things clearly had not gone well for the latter.
If the Human Old Ancestor chose to strike at them now, without the King Lord to hold the line, they would have no way of withstanding the blow.
In an instant, panic swept through the Royal City and beyond.
Yet what left every Ink Clan member both startled and overjoyed was that the Human Old Ancestor showed absolutely no intention of going on the offensive against them. Instead, the figure flew straight toward the human army, plunging into the pocket world and vanishing from sight in an instant.
At the sight of this, the Ink Clan Domain Lords' eyes lit up.
The Human Old Ancestor was injured—and badly so. Otherwise he would never have ignored them entirely.
If that was the case, then the situation might not be as dire as they had feared. The Human Old Ancestor had been wounded to the point of being unable to fight again. And what about their own King Lord?