When Tian Xiuzhu and his men came charging in, Meng Que had no intention of meeting them head-on. Instinctively, he dodged to the side.
But Tian Xiuzhu had no intention of clashing with him either. Leading his Five Elements formation, he swept past Meng Que's flank and plunged into the void, making straight for Yang Kai.
Meng Que was momentarily stunned before comprehension hit him like a slap. He whipped his head around and roared: "Dream on! Stay right where you are!"
Though he didn't know the exact details of Tian Xiuzhu's plan, he could tell these five Eighth-Rank cultivators were heading to reinforce Yang Kai. How could he possibly allow that?
Nearly ten pseudo-King Lords were present on the battlefield. None of the others had let their assignments slip—so if an enemy broke through on his watch, that would be unconscionable.
He'd already been looked down upon enough. If these five caused problems for Mo Naye's side, the King Lord would never let him off the hook.
So Meng Que was dead set on keeping Tian Xiuzhu and the others here. He forcibly rallied his strength and gave chase, Black Ink power surging as he launched attack after attack from behind.
The incoming strikes from a pseudo-King Lord were nothing to scoff at. Tian Xiuzhu and the others had no choice but to fight back even as they pressed forward, the two forces entangled as they hurtled toward the battlefield where the Eight Trigrams formation and Mo Naye were locked in combat.
Tian Xiuzhu's brow furrowed before long. This wasn't sustainable. They needed to either shake off Meng Que quickly or rush reinforcements to the Eight Trigrams formation. Otherwise, they'd only draw a powerful enemy close to Yang Kai's group, and the situation would grow far worse.
He could already see that at the Eight Trigrams formation, two human Eighth-Rank cultivators were on the verge of collapse…
Ouyang Lie, who was battling Xiao You and the other Ink Clan powerhouses, had noticed the situation as well. He wanted to go to their aid, but Xiao You and the Domain Lords had him completely pinned down, leaving him no room to budge.
As for Yang Xue, there was no hoping for her help either. Strictly speaking, her strength fell short of the Chaos Spirit King's. The fact that she could hold her own and keep it occupied at all was already everything she had.
In that critical moment, Tian Xiuzhu bellowed: "Two of you—go!"
Within the formation, four people understood immediately.
Lin Wu answered at once: "I'll go!"
Without hesitation, he broke from the formation and streaked toward Yang Kai at top speed. A heartbeat later, another figure launched away—Zhan Tianhe.
Forming a combined formation with Yang Kai to stand against an Ink Clan King Lord carried enormous risk. One misstep, and they would be obliterated without a trace. If Lin Wu, an Eighth-Rank who had only recently advanced in the Furnace World, had the nerve to step up, then Zhan Tianhe, his senior brother, certainly wouldn't be outdone.
With two members gone, the Five Elements formation shrank into a Three Talents formation. On top of the exhaustion from all the prior fighting, Tian Xiuzhu and the remaining members were far from peak condition. Against a pseudo-King Lord, they were hopelessly outmatched.
The situation became critical in an instant.
Fortunately, killing them wasn't easy for Meng Que either. He was gravely wounded himself, his strength diminished. Had he been at full power, he could likely have cut down Tian Xiuzhu's group in short order.
Two breaths later, Lin Wu and Zhan Tianhe had reached the vicinity of the Eight Trigrams formation and Mo Naye's battlefield. Lin Wu called out: "Brother Yang, we've come to reinforce you!"
Yang Kai responded with relief: "You couldn't have come at a better time!"
He'd been fretting over how to keep the Eight Trigrams formation going, and now two replacements had arrived.
In this Eight Trigrams formation, he served as the formation core. The others were Fang Tianci in human form, Thunder Shadow in beast form, Yang Xiao, and Blood Crow—that made five. The remaining three weren't people he knew particularly well. One was a veteran Eighth-Rank, while the other two were likely from the newer generation.
The ones struggling were precisely those two newcomers. Their foundations weren't as solid as the veteran's, their bodies lacked the resilience of Yang Xiao and Thunder Shadow, and they didn't possess the deep reserves of Fang Tianci or Blood Crow. During the formation battle with Yang Kai, they'd been subjected to enormous pressure, and now their physical bodies were on the verge of collapse, their Minor Universes trembling, their auras in chaos.
At this rate, they wouldn't last much longer. The moment they could hold on no more, the Eight Trigrams formation would crumble on its own.
It was precisely this that Mo Naye had spotted. That was why he'd shifted from defense to offense, willing to take injuries himself if it meant demolishing Yang Kai's formation as quickly as possible. He concentrated special attention on the positions occupied by those two junior Eighth-Rank cultivators.
Once Yang Kai and the others lost the Eight Trigrams formation as their shield, they wouldn't stand a chance against him. He could kill whomever he pleased!
But his strategy had been thrown into disarray by the unexpected move from Tian Xiuzhu's group. Seeing two relatively fresh Eighth-Rank reinforcements arriving, Mo Naye grew anxious too. His attacks grew even more ferocious—he even tried to bypass Yang Kai's group entirely to strike at Lin Wu and Zhan Tianhe.
How could Yang Kai allow that? Leading the others, their auras intertwined, he engaged Mo Naye in a blistering fight while simultaneously sending a voice transmission to the two crumbling newcomers, telling them to find an opening and swap places with Lin Wu and Zhan Tianhe.
The two understood. Both nodded, their faces tinged with shame and reluctance.
At such a critical juncture, they—the ones assigned to the formation—had run into trouble, potentially triggering a total collapse of the battlefield. That weighed heavily on them indeed.