Although the Ink Expulsion Ship was quite large, the area where the Universe Formation was deployed wasn't particularly spacious. Normally it could accommodate a few dozen people at most. Now that so many more had returned, it had become remarkably crowded.
This was something none of them had anticipated.
Yang Kai mused inwardly. It seemed that orders had come from above, calling back the squads that had been pursuing or intercepting the Ink Clan outside. Otherwise, there wouldn't be this kind of situation.
It wasn't a big deal, though. Despite the clamor, the warriors still moved outward with remarkable speed.
If they all remained bottlenecked here, anyone else who returned would only make the congestion worse.
Yang Kai moved with the flow of people and soon reached the spatial formation embedded in the area. He stepped onto it alongside several others, channeled his power, and in the next instant appeared on the deck of the Ink Expulsion Ship.
Similarly, no one lingered on the Ink Expulsion Ship. All of them darted outward without delay.
Shortly after, Yang Kai reached an open area. Focusing his senses, he couldn't detect the Dawn's position.
The Dawn also had a Universe Formation, one he had personally set up. As long as the distance wasn't ridiculously far, he should be able to sense it.
But now, unable to detect the Dawn's presence, the only possibility was that it had been collected into someone's Minor Universe.
It seemed that Shen Ao and the others had already returned.
He swiftly darted toward the Dawn Star's estate, and sure enough detected the auras of the Dawn Star members within. However, at this moment all of them were meditating and recuperating, preparing for the upcoming battle.
Yang Kai didn't disturb them. He returned to his own room, took a medicinal pill, sat cross-legged, and began restoring himself.
Within Dayan Pass, tens of thousands of soldiers had gathered, poised and ready.
In the void, the massive Dayan Pass hurtled forward without the slightest attempt at concealment, sailing openly and brazenly toward the Ink Clan's Royal City.
Since they had already been exposed, there was no need for concealment.
The message was clear: the humans were determined to win this war. The unstoppable Dayan Pass represented tens of thousands of unstoppable human warriors, invincible in their path. Anyone who dared stand in their way would be doomed to a wretched death.
Meanwhile, at the Ink Clan's Royal City.
Within the grand palace, the Mo Lord sat upon his throne, his face pale and grim.
His injuries were severe, and even now he had not recovered.
More than two hundred years ago, he had repeatedly fought the Human Race's Old Ancestor to mutual devastation. In each of those battles he had sustained grievous injuries, as had the Old Ancestor. By the end, both supreme powerhouses had seen their strength diminish greatly, no longer the mighty warriors they once were.
But who could have known that the Old Ancestor had been putting on an act? She had long since recovered, merely pretending to be weakened by her injuries, lulling the Mo Lord into a false sense of security.
In their final battle, the Old Ancestor had unleashed her full peak power, beating him so thoroughly that he could barely fight back. If not for the Domain Lord who had led forces from the Royal City to his rescue, the Mo Lord would have been slain in the void right then and there.
The Domain Lord and the Ink Clan army that went to rescue him were completely annihilated. The Mo Lord alone survived.
Even to this day, the Mo Lord could not fathom how the Old Ancestor had recovered from her injuries. Wounds of that severity should not have healed so quickly by any reasonable measure.
And yet the Old Ancestor truly had recovered.
In that battle, he had fled back to the Royal City in a wretched state, drawing upon the power of his own Ink Nest to resist the pursuing Old Ancestor, barely preserving his life.
But the army under his command had suffered catastrophic casualties.
It was from that battle onward that the Dayan Ink Clan had quietly lost the capital to compete with the Human Race.
Fortunately, the humans had also withdrawn. They didn't linger near the Royal City, instead retreating to Dayan Pass and reclaiming the territory that had been lost for thirty thousand years.
It was deeply humiliating, but when the Mo Lord watched the human army retreat, he still breathed a sigh of relief.
At last there would be time to properly heal.
But things did not go as he had hoped. Barely a few days after entering his Ink Nest to recuperate, the Old Ancestor had launched a surprise return attack, startling him into hastily emerging from the Ink Nest, unable to think of anything else.
That was only the beginning.
Over the next two hundred years, the Old Ancestor came by every few days. Sometimes she would release her Ninth-Order pressure from a distance to intimidate the Royal City, and other times she would launch direct attacks outright. Many Ink Clan members perished, but as long as the Mo Lord didn't come out, no one could stand against the Old Ancestor.
Two hundred years… a full two hundred years, and the Mo Lord's injuries had barely improved. Whenever he recalled the figure of that human woman, his eyes would blaze with fury.
He had never encountered such a troublesome opponent.
Left with no other choice, he had ordered the Lords to bring their Ink Nests outside the Royal City and establish a line of Ink Power defenses.
The humans would come again someday—this the Mo Lord knew full well, and so did the Domain Lords. They had to prepare ahead of time.
The Ink Power defense line would restrict the movements of human warriors while the Ink Clan could move freely within it, like fish in water. When the great battle truly erupted again, this defensive line might prove unexpectedly effective.
To this end, the Ink Clan had expended enormous resources, their stockpiles accumulated over many years nearly depleted.
Such expenditure was worthwhile. The Ink Power defense line covered an area extending one month's travel from the Royal City, providing the city with tremendous protection.
Any human who dared breach this defense line was doomed to a grim fate.