At this very moment, Yang Kai and two Void Guard soldiers were laying down spatial formations along the route toward the No Return Barrier. They had already covered nearly half the distance, leaving three Qiankun Halls in their wake along the way.
At this pace, in another half month the human army's reach would touch the outer perimeter of the No Return Barrier. And only at this point did the defenders there finally notice something amiss.
One couldn't blame the Ink Race for being slow on the uptake. In truth, Monaye had been cautious enough. Back when he and Yang Kai had probed each other and confirmed that a secret passage connected the Three Thousand Worlds to the Ink Battlefield, Monaye knew the humans would inevitably use that passage to assault the No Return Barrier—because only by doing so could the humans commit their full strength to a decisive blow.
If they attacked through a domain gate instead, the humans' disadvantage would have been enormous. The Ink Race only needed to fortify positions tightly outside the gate and could inflict devastating casualties on the humans with ease.
No one would resort to such a foolish method.
But what Monaye couldn't determine was the exact location of the secret passage's exit. So ever since Yang Kai had departed the No Return Barrier years ago, he had dispatched large numbers of Ink Race members, deploying them in small squads throughout the Ink Battlefield—searching for the passage's exit on one hand while watching for any human movements on the other.
The latter was the main objective. As for finding the passage's exit, Monaye hadn't harbored high hopes. He was simply doing his due diligence.
For this purpose, the Ink Race had deliberately cultivated nearly ten thousand Lord-level Ink Nests and had those deep-penetration squads take them along.
Yang Kai had swiftly eliminated dozens of Ink Race squads near the secret passage. His strikes were so rapid that those Ink Race members never even had time to react. Although he hadn't alerted the enemy, when half a month passed without any feedback from these squads, the Ink Race members garrisoned at a nearby Lord-level Ink Nest began to sense something was wrong.
Following the instructions Monaye had given before their departure, they used the Ink Nest to send word to the No Return Barrier.
Upon receiving the intelligence, Monaye immediately grasped the problem.
Ink Race squads deep in the Ink Battlefield couldn't simply vanish without reason. The Ink Battlefield itself held no dangers—one or two squads meeting with accidents could be understood, but dozens of squads going silent simultaneously spoke for itself.
Given that he already knew the humans would attack from the direction of the Ink Battlefield, Monaye wouldn't indulge in any unrealistic fantasies about this intelligence. He immediately reached his conclusion: the humans were coming!
Moreover, the direction was already confirmed—it was exactly where those dozens of missing squads had been stationed!
Using the No Return Barrier as the starting point and the missing squads' locations as the endpoint, he traced a route. Monaye immediately ordered the Ink Race informants along the way to investigate carefully and report any anomalies at once.
The humans had arrived faster than he'd anticipated, which was a terrible development. The only thing Monaye could take comfort in was that this route was immensely long—if the human army attacked with full force, they couldn't possibly reach the No Return Barrier in a short time. At the very least, the Ink Race still had the time and space to respond.
After a brief moment of contemplation, he headed toward Mo Yu to report the situation and discuss countermeasures, while simultaneously ordering the Pseudo King Lords under his command to continue luring the two Colossal Spirits in the Empty Domain.
Back then, when the two Ink-colored Colossal Spirits had retreated into the No Return Barrier, Yang Kai had sealed the domain gate in passing. But the Ink Race had long since reopened it.
And for over a decade, the Ink Race's operations targeting A Da and A Er had never ceased.
Monaye knew these two Colossal Spirits were a tremendous asset to the humans. If he could eliminate them before the human army arrived, then no matter how many Ninth-rank experts the humans produced, they would be no match for the Ink Race.
Although the Ink Race's King Lords were fewer in number than the humans' Ninth-rank experts, and their Domain Lords fewer than the humans' Eighth-rank experts, they had an abundance of Pseudo King Lords. Without the two Colossal Spirits to bolster them, how could the humans withstand the onslaught of so many Pseudo King Lords and two Ink-colored Colossal Spirits?
According to intelligence Monaye had obtained from Ink Acolytes, while the Colossal Spirit race possessed extraordinarily powerful strength, their intelligence was rather limited. If handled properly, it might well be possible to eliminate these two enormous beings in advance.
To deal with these two giants, naturally they needed to lure them to the No Return Barrier. The barrier was the Ink Race's main stronghold, teeming with powerful warriors, and the two Ink-colored Colossal Spirits were already there. As long as the Colossal Spirits came, they would never leave again.
Provocation was one method, but when faced with the Ink Race's various provocations, A Da and A Er strictly remembered Yang Kai's parting instructions: guard the domain gate, and smash any Ink Race members who dared show their faces.
Several Pseudo King Lords had been injured as a result, to the point where eventually no Pseudo King Lord dared casually enter the Empty Domain. Colossal Spirits were the sort of beings whose palm strikes could destroy heaven and earth—even Pseudo King Lords couldn't withstand them.
It wasn't just provocation—there was also temptation.
Ink Acolytes who had once been humans provided Monaye with considerable valuable intelligence, one piece of which was that Colossal Spirits fed on dead universes.
Given that all the universes in the Three Thousand Worlds had already been corrupted by the Ink, the two Colossal Spirits had likely gone hungry for many years. So Monaye ordered men to drag several dead universes back from deep within the Ink Battlefield, using them through the domain gate to lure A Da and A Er.
The plan had almost succeeded. When the bald-headed Colossal Spirit saw those dead universes through the domain gate, drool cascaded down its chest like a waterfall, and it nearly charged straight into the No Return Barrier.
If not for the Colossal Spirit with the tuft of hair on its head desperately holding back its companion and ruining the scheme, the Ink Race could have dealt with at least one of them by now!
When Monaye had witnessed that scene years ago, he'd been so furious his nose had practically gone crooked.