Warships were one of humanity's greatest assets in their struggle against the Ink Clan. Whether it had been in the Ink Battlefield of old or the various Great Domain battlefields of the present, humanity had always faced every war as the outnumbered side.
The reasons they had managed to hold firm were twofold: first, their overall strength was superior to the Ink Clan's, and second, they relied on external aids such as warships.
Every warship was a massive Artifact that integrated offense, defense, and concealment into a single platform, boasting a wide array of capabilities. Without warships, humanity would likely have ceased to exist long ago. Setting aside all else, when one's strength was insufficient or one had sustained injuries, it was nearly impossible to resist the erosion of Ink power — yet a warship could provide that vital layer of protection.
Over the years, the resources humanity had spent on warship fabrication and maintenance were beyond reckoning — nearly surpassing even the supplies needed to fuel their warriors' cultivation.
In every great battle, squads of human warriors had their warships destroyed. Once a warship was breached, its crew had to face the Ink Clan's assault and the encroachment of Ink power head-on. In such moments, survivors who formed battle formations could dramatically increase their survival rates.
Three people could form a formation — the Three Talents Formation. Add one more and it became the Four Symbols Formation; five became the Five Elements Formation, all the way up to the Nine Palaces Formation with nine members.
Under normal circumstances, the greater the number of participants, the greater the formation's power.
Yang Kai himself had once led the many Seventh-Order Open Heavens of Dawn Sky in a Nine Palaces Formation to charge enemy lines and slay the foe, achieving remarkable results on the Ink Battlefield.
But formations could not be assembled on a whim. They required constant rehearsal, and the participants had to be thoroughly familiar with and trust one another, because once a formation was activated, all members became a single entity — sharing in each loss and each triumph alike. Without sufficient trust in one another, it was exceedingly difficult to bring out a formation's full power.
In the great domain battlefields of the past, Eighth-Order Open Heavens were far fewer in number than Domain Lords. The reason they had been able to stubbornly resist wave after wave of Ink Clan assaults was due in no small part to formations.
The Ink Clan, on the other hand, could barely form formations at all. They were incapable of trusting one another the way human cultivators could, so rather than waste time and effort coordinating in formation, they found it far more effective to fight individually and fully leverage their own strength.
Yang Kai had never encountered a situation like this before, yet here he was, bearing witness to it by chance today.
And it was four innate Domain Lords forming a formation at that. It seemed the Ink Clan had steeled their resolve to deal with him. The immense external pressure had driven these four Domain Lords to set aside their personal grudges and join forces against a common enemy.
The four formation-linked Domain Lords shared connected auras, their bodies shifting and repositioning in concert. Though Yang Kai could see at a glance that their formation was not particularly tight, he had no desire to engage them in prolonged combat.
He flicked his spear forward, thrusting dozens of strikes in rapid succession along the path the four Domain Lords were advancing, briefly slowing their approach. His body plummeted downward, then veered off to the side.
The four Domain Lords immediately adjusted course and gave chase.
The Ink Clan's Royal Lord hastily changed direction as well, attempting to cut Yang Kai off by taking a shorter route. But their speeds were comparable, and Yang Kai's mastery of space was far superior — intercepting him was easier said than done.
After circling the Ancestral Ground several times over, the Ink Clan powerhouses arrived at a disheartening realization: although they had managed to trap Yang Kai here while he was cultivating, as long as he refused to engage them in direct combat, they truly had no good way of dealing with him. Meanwhile, Yang Kai was using this running battle to probe the Ink Clan's strength.
Di Wu was incensed.
Just then, a voice entered Di Wu's ear — the Seventh-Order Ink Servant who had laid the grand formation was transmitting to him. After listening, Di Wu's expression brightened with delight, and he gave a subtle, imperceptible nod.
While Yang Kai darted about the Ancestral Ground, the killing array within the outer formation never ceased its assault, ceaselessly hurling thunderbolts down upon him. Unfortunately, the formation deployed here was designed primarily to lock down heaven and earth. Though a killing array was embedded within it, its power was not particularly formidable, and Yang Kai could easily evade its strikes.
Moreover, given his current cultivation, unless a true grandmaster of the Dao of Formations had constructed the array specifically to counter him, a formation laid by a handful of Seventh-Order Ink Servants would naturally hold no great sophistication.
During the chase, a thick mist suddenly arose across the Ancestral Ground. At first it was not especially dense, but as time passed, it grew thicker and thicker, until at last one could not see one's own hand before their face. Even divine sense, when extended, was suppressed to within a radius of a few dozen zhang around the body.
The formation had shifted once more. The killing array having failed to achieve its purpose, it had switched to a Trapping Formation.
Yang Kai's speed slowed involuntarily. He cocked his ear and listened — the wind all around carried the shrill of alarms and the faint wailing of ghosts and howling of wolves, which he recognized as the formation's interference upon his senses. He couldn't help but chuckle.
The world at large, and even the Ink Clan, knew that he was proficient in the Daos of Time and Space. But no one had ever known that he had also dabbled in the Dao of Formations.
To be fair, his attainments in formation craft were not especially deep. They had stemmed primarily from his gains within the Great Ocean Phenomenon, where countless Grand Daos flowed as great rivers. Yang Kai had absorbed and refined an untold number of those Dao rivers, causing the essence of myriad Daos to settle within his Small Universe, their Dao patterns flowing freely, giving rise to the flourishing prosperity of all schools of cultivation within it.
On that basis alone, Yang Kai might not have been able to see through this Trapping Formation. But his trump card was not limited to that alone.
He half-closed his eyes, and upon opening them, a faint golden light flickered within his left eye, revealing a cross-shaped golden pupil.
The World-Annihilating Demonic Eye — this ocular technique inherited from Myriad Demons Heaven possessed the power to pierce through all illusion. Rumor held that if cultivated to its absolute pinnacle, it could even observe the past and glimpse the future.
Observing the past and glimpsing the future — Yang Kai harbored no such expectations. Although he had devoted some effort to cultivating this technique, his attainment could not reach even a hundredth of what the Old Ancestor of Myriad Demons Heaven had achieved. If that ancestor had never managed such a feat, how could he?
However, the World-Annihilating Demonic Eye's ability to see through illusion was a perfect complement for breaking formations.