The Mo Nest space might contain nothing at all, or it might conceal the spiritual consciousness of more than twenty Domain Lords in ambush. If the Human Race wanted to enter and investigate, they would have to act simultaneously.
Otherwise, if only one or two went in, they would likely be unable to withstand whatever dangers they encountered.
How the ancestors had synchronized their timing, Yang Kai had no idea, but at their level of cultivation, such a trivial matter was naturally no obstacle.
Yang Kai and Xiang Shan waited in silence off to the side.
Roughly half a shichen passed before Patriarch Xiaoxiao suddenly opened her eyes.
The appointed time had arrived!
In the next instant, the gateway of a Small Universe swung open, and the majestic power of heaven and earth spilled outward, allowing the Mo Nest to devour it.
Using the power of her own heaven and earth as a bridge, Patriarch Xiaoxiao connected her consciousness to the Mo Nest and plunged into the Mo Nest space in the blink of an eye.
Simultaneously, in twenty-one other battle zones, within twenty-one other Domain Lord Mo Nests, twenty-one Ninth-Order Human Race powerhouses performed the same maneuver.
In that instant, twenty-two figures materialized within the Mo Nest space.
The moment Patriarch Xiaoxiao's spiritual consciousness entered the Mo Nest space, both Yang Kai and Xiang Shan's expressions changed drastically.
There was no other reason—the two of them had simultaneously lost all sensing of Patriarch Xiaoxiao's spiritual consciousness, as though the patriarch's consciousness had been completely annihilated in that single instant.
Xiang Shan immediately gave a cold snort: "The Mo Clan was indeed prepared!"
Yang Kai grasped the situation at once: "The Mo Nest space has been sealed?"
The last time his own soul had been trapped inside a Mo Nest space, his condition had been exactly like this—his physical body was still alive, yet his spiritual consciousness could not be perceived from the outside. It had given Ouyang Lie, who was stationed nearby, such a fright that he'd thought something terrible had happened to Yang Kai.
But that had been his own experience, and he hadn't been clear on what was happening in the outside world.
Now, witnessing Patriarch Xiaoxiao's fate, he immediately understood what he had gone through back then.
Xiang Shan nodded with a grave expression: "Indeed."
Yang Kai's own expression was none too cheerful.
The patriarch had barely entered before the Mo Nest space was sealed. To claim the Mo Clan had not been prepared was simply impossible.
Over twenty surviving Domain Lord Mo Nests—the Mo Clan could certainly detect that, and they would have realized the Human Race might attempt to use those Domain Lord Mo Nests for some kind of operation.
Since the Mo Clan had been prepared all along, the ancestors' infiltration of the Mo Nest space was likely anything but a good thing.
But they couldn't simply not go in. The fog shrouding the Mo Clan as a whole was far too thick, and if the Human Race wanted to uncover the Mo Clan's true nature, they had no choice but to take this risk.
Had the ancestors not considered this before entering? Of course they had—otherwise Patriarch Xiaoxiao would never have sought Yang Kai to borrow the Warm Spirit Lotus.
But even knowing the danger, they had to go inside.
Only by going in could they tear away the mysterious veil concealing the Mo Clan.
Yang Kai's brow was tightly furrowed. In this situation, there was simply nothing anyone else could do to help—it all depended on the ancestors' own strength.
Meanwhile, within the Mo Nest space.
Powerful soul spirits materialized one after another—twenty-two in total.
These were, naturally, the Human Race's Ninth-Order Supreme Masters, and their figures had almost all appeared at the same time.
But before the Ninth-Order masters could even take stock of their surroundings, waves of fiercely savage spiritual fluctuations surged up from every direction.
What followed was a torrential, cataclysmic soul shock that crashed toward the ancestors like an avalanche and a tsunami.
There were no fancy soul techniques—just a pure, undiluted soul shockwave. Much like what Yang Kai had previously used against Che Kong, this was the simplest, most direct, most brutal form of soul attack.
In an instant, the area where the ancestors' spiritual consciousness resided was engulfed by a storm of bombardment.
Dull grunts rang out as several ancestors' auras abruptly weakened.
A disastrous start!
They had barely set foot here before multiple ancestors' spiritual consciousnesses sustained injuries!
However, the ancestors quickly brought out protective Artifacts to shield their souls.
Soul-type Artifacts were rare to begin with, and protective soul Artifacts were rarer still—but these were all ancestors who had lived long enough to have accumulated at least a few such treasures.
In the blink of an eye, protective Artifacts of various forms blazed with dazzling radiance, enveloping each ancestor's soul spirit within. The soul shockwaves crashing in from every direction hammered against those barriers of light, sending ripples shuddering through them.
"There are so many!"
Only now did the ancestors finally have a moment to survey their surroundings. At a single glance, one of them cried out in alarm.
There were far too many!
The Domain Lord soul spirits gathered in this place numbered a full fifty—more than twice the Human Race's contingent.
The intelligence had been wrong.
Or rather, not so much wrong as incomplete—what Yang Kai had seen at the time had not been the entirety of the Mo Clan's forces!