After years of clashes and warfare, both the Human Race and the Ink Clan had grown intimately familiar with each other's overt capabilities—save for certain intelligence known only to a select few among the higher echelons.
For instance, the fact that the Ink Clan could forge Pseudo Lords using Innate Domain Lords and Lord-grade Ink Nests was no secret among the Humans, and Yang Kai himself had been the one to uncover this information.
But even Yang Kai had never fully figured out how the Ink Clan actually used Innate Domain Lords and Lord-grade Ink Nests to create Pseudo Lords. He only knew that the birth of every Pseudo Lord was accompanied by the fall of multiple Innate Domain Lords and the loss of one Lord-grade Ink Nest.
Today, that secret was laid bare right before Wu Kuang's eyes.
In his observation, Innate Domain Lords walked into the Lord-grade Ink Nests one after another. Their auras fluctuated violently before quickly dissipating into nothingness. The Ink Nests towering in the void resembled famished void beasts, devouring every Innate Domain Lord that stepped inside—leaving not even scraps behind.
As the Innate Domain Lords continued pouring in without cease, the Lord-grade Ink Nests visibly accumulated staggering amounts of power.
Then, when a particular Innate Domain Lord entered one, his powerful aura began climbing steadily even as the accumulated energy within the Nest drained away at a startling rate. The Innate Domain Lord's presence surged to terrifying heights in the blink of an eye.
The Ink Nest collapsed and vanished without a trace. The former Innate Domain Lord had become a powerhouse of the Pseudo Lord rank, his imposing aura blazing like the midday sun, utterly unrestrained.
One Pseudo Lord after another was born…
Wu Kuang silently did the math. Creating a single Pseudo Lord required the sacrifice of at least twelve Innate Domain Lords, and at most around sixteen. The number wasn't fixed, but it hovered roughly within that range, and every birth of a Pseudo Lord meant the destruction of one Lord-grade Ink Nest.
In less than half a day, nearly three hundred Pseudo Lords had come into being. Without the slightest pause—as though everything had been planned well in advance—they all surged toward the Primordial Heaven Grand Barrier at once.
Wu Kuang sighed inwardly, knowing that his good days were finally over.
Meanwhile, days earlier—after the Human Race's second assault on Returnless Pass—the upper echelons of the Ink Clan had gathered in the council hall of Returnless Pass.
At the head sat the three Ink Clan Lords. Below them stood rows upon rows of Pseudo Lords. The atmosphere inside the hall was heavy, shrouded in a pall of gloom.
In the span of twenty years, the Humans had attacked Returnless Pass twice, and each time the Ink Clan had suffered devastating losses. The first time could be excused—the Humans had caught them completely off guard with their World's End charge, something no one had anticipated, since such a tactic had never been employed before and was genuinely difficult to defend against.
But during the second great battle, the Ink Clan had already prepared for the World's End charge. They had even pulled back their defensive lines at great cost. And yet it still hadn't been enough to stave off defeat.
The army of billions of Stone Clan soldiers had provided the Humans with tremendous assistance, becoming one of the fundamental pillars upon which they secured victory.
If Yang Kai could release over a hundred million Stone Clan soldiers in a single wave, it meant he had even more in reserve.
The Human army had come with overwhelming momentum, determined to take Returnless Pass at all costs—and now, with the Stone Clan as added strength, they were like a tiger with wings.
After that battle, even the dimmest among the Ink Clan understood that the tide of war had slipped beyond their control. They had come to realize that Returnless Pass would inevitably fall, and the Ink Clan stationed there would ultimately walk into oblivion…
For millennia, the Ink Clan had held the initiative in their struggle against the Human Race, maintaining an absolute advantage. Yet in the span of mere decades, the situation had taken a dramatic nosedive. Such violent reversals of fortune were profoundly difficult to accept.
Of the three Lords, only Mo Na Ye appeared to be in relatively good condition. Both Mo Yu and Di Ya Luo had unstable auras and were coughing intermittently.
In the two great battles, Mo Yu had dueled Xiang Shan twice. The latter, though a newly ascended Ninth-Order master, was naturally inferior to Mo Yu—a veteran Lord—in both strength and depth of cultivation. Yet in every battle he had fought as though staking his life. Even with Mo Yu's slight edge in power, he had been tormented to the point of misery.
The Humans had identified the Ink Clan's critical weakness: the difficulty of healing injuries. As a result, many Human masters had adopted a strategy of trading wounds when clashing with Ink Clan opponents.
The logic behind this strategy was simple—when Humans were injured, they had recovery pills to take and could recuperate through cultivation. But when Ink Clan members were wounded, their only recourse was to enter an Ink Nest and enter slumber…
Facing this near-shameless tactic, the Ink Clan had never found an effective counter. Their only option was to fight more cautiously, refusing to let the Humans have their way.
But as the old saying goes, a thief may steal for a thousand days, but no one can guard against a thief for a thousand days. In the heat of great battle, no matter how careful one was, there came moments when one had no choice but to fight tooth and nail. That was precisely what had happened across both great battles—Xiang Shan had forced Mo Yu into critical condition. Of course, Xiang Shan himself hadn't gotten away unscathed; had he not fled at the last moment, Mo Yu was confident he could have killed him on the spot!
Mo Yu, a veteran Lord, had at least managed to cripple one Human Ninth-Order master—a wound for a wound. But Di Ya Luo's situation was far more wretched. His injuries had been caused entirely by the Purifying Light. Leveraging the concealment of the River of Time and Space, Yang Kai had suddenly deployed two million Stone Clan soldiers and slain several Pseudo Lords in an instant. Had Mo Na Ye not arrived in time to intervene, the Ink Clan would have been left with only two Lords.
Three Lords, two critically wounded—how could one mere word of "miserable" possibly suffice?
The Pseudo Lords below were in even worse shape. A single sweep of Mo Na Ye's gaze revealed that many familiar faces were missing. Compared to the scene from over twenty years ago, when heroes had gathered in abundance, the current number of Pseudo Lords had dwindled by no fewer than fifty.