After laying the remains of Elder Zhao Yihuan to rest, Master Mafan personally went before the Spirit Stele and inscribed his name upon it with his spiritual sense.
Yang Kai accompanied him the whole way.
He had been the one to bring the remains back. He needed to see things through to the end.
Gazing at the densely packed names covering the Spirit Stele, Yang Kai's heart grew heavy.
He hadn't been on the Mo Battlefield for long—only a few short centuries. Yet even in that brief span, he had witnessed countless partings between life and death.
During the assault on the Mo Clan's royal city, Qi Taichu had died right before his very eyes!
Despite wielding the Laws of Space, despite being unmatched among his peers in strength, in the chaos of that battlefield, he hadn't been able to save Qi Taichu's life.
This was his greatest regret on the Mo Battlefield.
He never wanted to experience anything like it again.
That was why he needed to grow stronger.
May no new names be added to the Spirit Stele, and may every soldier on the expedition return safely. Yang Kai made the wish silently.
Suddenly, a deep hum emanated from somewhere within Dayan Pass, and the entire fortress began to shake violently. Yang Kai nearly lost his footing.
From every direction, figures shot into the air to investigate.
An invisible shockwave rapidly expanded outward from some central point.
Yang Kai's expression turned grave as he turned to look at Master Mafan.
Master Mafan spoke in a deep voice, "The core has been activated."
Only then did Yang Kai realize what had happened. Just a moment ago, he'd assumed some powerful Mo Clan expert was attacking the pass—thinking that the Mo Clan would actually seek death at a time like this.
It turned out the core he had brought back had been activated.
And with its activation, Dayan Pass was utterly transformed.
If before it had been a lifeless thing, then now it gave Yang Kai the impression of having come alive—as though it had become a fearsome behemoth.
And this behemoth was ravenous with hunger, and the deaths of Mo Clan members were its finest sustenance.
The trembling came swiftly and departed just as quickly. In the span of a few breaths, Dayan Pass returned to calm once more.
It was like a slumbering dragon that had suddenly poked its head from its lair, surveyed its surroundings, and retreated once again.
Everyone could feel that Dayan Pass had changed.
"The expedition is coming soon. Prepare yourselves," Master Mafan instructed, then flashed toward the source of the tremor. He was deeply curious about the core as well, and naturally wanted to observe it—should the core ever be damaged in the future, it would require a Grandmaster Artifact Refiner like himself to repair it.
Watching his departing figure, Yang Kai's heart surged with excitement.
The expedition was finally upon them!
Whether the Human Race could accomplish everything in one decisive battle would depend entirely on the outcome of this expedition. If they truly could purge the Mo Battlefield of all Mo Clan forces, then the Three Thousand Worlds would be free of this threat forever, and generation after generation of elite warriors would no longer need to leave their homes for the battlefield.
Yang Kai's figure flickered, and with a ripple of the Laws of Space, he vanished from the spot.
The concept of an expedition was not something that had emerged in recent times. The Human Race had entertained the idea long, long ago. Unfortunately, for various reasons, the notion had remained a castle in the air, impossible to put into practice.
The most fundamental obstacle was the corruption of Mo Power.
Holding the passes and repelling Mo Clan assaults—over countless ages, the Human Race had amassed extensive experience in this. But going on the offensive introduced far too many variables, and no one could guarantee that an expedition would proceed smoothly. If things didn't go as expected, the entire front line of the Mo Battlefield could collapse. When that happened, even No-Return Pass, guarded by Dragons and Phoenixes, would be unable to withstand a full-scale Mo Clan invasion, and the Three Thousand Worlds would be in grave peril.
It was only after Yang Kai appeared on the Mo Battlefield that the expedition was gradually put on the agenda.
He seemed to have been born for humanity's counteroffensive.
The Mo Power that had plagued countless generations of Human Race leaders was easily solved after his arrival. Whether it was the Purifying Light or the later-developed Mo Dispelling Pills, both had become effective methods for combating Mo Power corruption. With this two-pronged approach, not a single Human Race soldier had been corrupted in the past several hundred years.
Furthermore, many Mo Disciples that appeared on the battlefield had been captured alive and subsequently cured.
With the problem of Mo Power resolved, what the Human Race needed to consider was resources.
War was fought with resources. Cultivators needed resources for healing, for cultivation—even the deployment of formations and the refinement of Artifacts required resources.
The Mo Battlefield was extraordinarily rich in resources. Within those countless dead worlds lay vast troves of materials.
But in the past, the Human Race had found it nearly impossible to mine them. They could only extract some resources within the range that a pass's power could project, typically after each major victory—and after a few decades at most, they had to retreat back to the pass, because the Mo Clan's next major offensive would arrive before long.
A large portion of the resources the Human Race needed came from supply lines reaching back to the Three Thousand Worlds.
As a result, within the Mo Battlefield, every pass had operated on a shoestring budget. Every last resource was hard-won, and every Open Heaven Pill was precious beyond measure.
Those who had never set foot on the Mo Battlefield would find it hard to imagine that a place where Upper-grade Open Heaven cultivators appeared one after another could lead such arduous lives.
Now, that problem had been solved too.
The proliferation of the Void Yin-Yang Mirror had made resource extraction at every pass remarkably convenient and efficient. This miraculous Artifact seemed as though it had been refined specifically for the Mo Battlefield.
During the battle to reclaim Dayan Pass, Xiang Shan had ordered the accompanying Artifact Refiners to mass-produce tens of thousands of puppets in one stroke, solely to draw the attention of the Mo Clan forces stationed at Dayan Pass. The resources consumed had been staggering.
Such a thing would have been unthinkable in the past.