The great battle raged on like a wildfire. On the chaotic and tormented battlefield, warriors from both races fell dead with every passing moment. Zuoqiu Yanghua and the others' predicament was plain for all the other eighth-order experts to see, and it set their hearts racing with anxiety. But every eighth-order was locked in combat with their own opponent, with no way to break free and offer support.
After only a brief exchange, the desperate, frenzied momentum of Zuoqiu Yanghua and the others began to flag.
In their urgency to finish off the injured Jiangchi as quickly as possible, these eighth-order warriors had pushed themselves to unleash a variety of devastating secret arts. Those arts were all of the same nature as Yang Kai's Soul-Destroying Thorn — techniques that harmed the enemy while also harming the self. Having failed to kill Jiangchi, the accumulated toll on their bodies had already pushed them to the edge of collapse.
Even so, several of the eighth-order warriors fought on with everything they had.
Sensing this, Jiangchi and Huyu grew calm rather than urgent. They retreated and held their ground, biding their time, simply waiting for Zuoqiu Yanghua and the others to exhaust themselves completely before delivering the killing blow. In that way, their own position would be far more secure. Having warred against the Human Race for so many years, the lessons and experience of the past made them unwilling to underestimate any human powerhouse.
More often than not, those humans who appeared to have been pushed beyond their limits were the ones capable of unleashing astonishing power in the final moments of their lives. Without sufficient caution, it was entirely possible to capsize in the ditch.
This was no isolated occurrence.
So even the gravely wounded Jiangchi held his patience in check, suppressing the blazing killing intent and refusing to let boundless fury erode his reason.
On this brutal battlefield, in a position that no one had noticed, a shadowy figure was rapidly approaching the zone where Zuoqiu Yanghua and the others were fighting.
Employing Thunder Shadow's innate divine ability, Yang Kai — now a ninth-order cultivator — infiltrated the battlefield. Forget these pseudo King Lords; even a true King Lord would struggle to detect his presence.
This innate divine ability was extraordinarily useful. It had been by relying on this very technique inside the Heaven and Earth Furnace that Yang Kai had snatched the Supreme Opening Heaven Pill from the Chaos Spirit King's hands.
Useful as it was, it had one drawback: while in this stealth state, it was extremely inconvenient to invoke the Dao of Space. The moment any other power was channeled, the concealment would unravel on its own.
That didn't matter much. Yang Kai's strength was formidable now, and his speed while traversing the battlefield was anything but slow.
The detonation of the Ink-Expelling Warship had been tremendous. As the warship burst apart, waves of Purifying Light surged outward like a blazing sun, illuminating more than half the battlefield. Yang Kai's attention was naturally drawn there at once, and a single glance told him the full picture of the situation.
Aware that Zuoqiu Yanghua and the others were in dire straits, he dared not delay. He headed over to support them immediately.
Dodging the countless streams of chaotic energy and the clashing armies of both races along the way, Yang Kai covered the distance in a mere dozen or so breaths, arriving at the battlefield where Zuoqiu Yanghua and the others were locked in their fight.
At that moment, the aura of the several eighth-order warriors had already withered to its lowest ebb. Huyu spotted the opening and threw a punch at the group — a blow powerful enough to annihilate an entire world. The impact shook Zuoqiu Yanghua and the others violently, and their offensive momentum sagged in an instant.
Making matters worse, as injuries accumulated and their auras fluctuated, the qi connection that had previously bound them together in an unbreakable formation was showing signs of fraying.
Every one of the eighth-order warriors felt their hearts sink. The reason they could join forces and hold their own against two pseudo King Lords was not solely because Jiangchi and Huyu were somewhat hampered by their injuries. Their greatest advantage was the formation itself — it was the Six Harmonies Array that allowed their power to fuse as one.
But if the formation shattered, they would have no leverage left to threaten the pseudo King Lords.
Jiangchi, who had already been ambushed and severely wounded by Zuoqiu Yanghua and the others, had been sitting on a belly full of fury. Seeing the situation now, he knew this opportunity would not come again. He abandoned his defensive posture entirely, and as Huyu's attack landed, he unleashed a devastating secret art that descended upon Zuoqiu Yanghua and the rest like a shroud.
At their level of strength, the ability to read and control the flow of battle had been honed to perfection.
Under the oppressive blanket of dense Ink Force, Zuoqiu Yanghua and the others' situation grew more dire by the second. The formation they had been struggling to maintain seemed on the verge of collapsing that very moment.
"They can't hold on!" Huyu shouted. "Kill them!"
With that cry, he charged directly at Zuoqiu Yanghua and the others.
Yet in that very instant, a strange sensation flooded through him. A sharp alarm blared in his heart, and deep within his soul he heard the roaring sound of rushing water — as though a mighty river were surging violently…
What was this? Confusion flashed through Huyu's mind, and then, in the next heartbeat, he actually saw a river.
That roaring torrent materialized out of thin air and crashed down upon him. Huyu's instinct was to dodge, but the surrounding void had solidified around him. Confronted by this phantom river that had appeared so inexplicably, he found himself utterly unable to evade.
The great river swept past, and Huyu vanished without a trace.
The sudden turn of events startled Jiangchi, who whipped his head around. All he could see was a vast river stretching across the void, its waves churning and curling. Within the river, he could faintly make out Huyu's figure struggling and fighting back, but as a towering wave crashed down, that figure disappeared as well.
Jiangchi's scalp went numb. Every pore across his body felt as though it might burst open — because he had seen the figure standing before the great river.
One look, and he recognized the newcomer's identity.
Yang Kai!
The human slaughter-star whose name shook both the Human Race and the Ink Clan, and who had inflicted catastrophic losses upon the Ink Clan for thousands of years!
Jiangchi had never met Yang Kai in person. He was one of the many Innate Domain Lords who had fled from the direction of the Primordial Heaven Forbidden Zone back in the day. After successfully reaching the Non-Return Pass, he had slumbered within an Ink Nest to recover from his wounds. Only centuries ago, when the great war between the Human Race and the Ink Clan erupted in full, the numerous Innate Domain Lords had been ordered by Mo Yu to perform the Return-to-Fusion Technique, mass-producing pseudo King Lords to counter the human ninth-order warriors. Jiangchi had been fortunate enough to survive, successfully ascending to the status of a pseudo King Lord.