This opening strike that seized the initiative was the most powerful slash Wu Qing had condensed from a lifetime of cultivation — how could a Pseudo Lord-Rank possibly defend against it when caught completely off guard?
A perfect opening!
But in the very next instant, Wu Qing found himself besieged by a host of Ink Clan powerhouses. Those Ink Clan experts, after a brief moment of shock, converged on him from all sides. Wu Qing showed not a shred of fear. The great blade in his hand whirled as his Dao surged, its majestic power spilling forth without restraint. Blood flowed like rivers.
More Human Race powerhouses followed in Wu Qing's wake, charging straight into the enemy formation. Among them were the two newly promoted Ninth-Order Open Heaven cultivators.
Their figures shifted as twin streaks of brilliant light spiraled around each other, flashing in an instant to the spot where several Pseudo Lord-Ranks had gathered.
The junior sister's expression was solemn as her hand seals shifted in rapid succession. Mysterious power rippled outward, filling the vast expanse of the void. The Pseudo Lord-Ranks immediately felt their souls waver, golden stars bursting before their eyes as though invisible hammers were pummeling their heads.
Seizing the moment, the senior brother charged forward with his sword, his body wreathed in sword light as he wove between those Pseudo Lord-Ranks.
Ink blood sprayed. Heads separated from bodies. A single sword stroke slew one Pseudo Lord-Rank and gravely wounded several others.
The surviving Pseudo Lord-Ranks had barely recovered their senses when the senior brother's sword light already cascaded into a waterfall of blades, enveloping them entirely.
Screams rang through the void in an instant.
This pair of fellow disciples — one cultivating primarily in the Dao of the Soul, the other in the Dao of the Sword — shared an innate understanding of each other's thoughts. On the battlefield, their coordination allowed them to cut down enemies with an efficiency that even surpassed Wu Qing, a veteran Eighth-Order cultivator.
Meanwhile, numerous other Human Race Eighth-Order cultivators had formed their own formations and engaged the Pseudo Lord-Ranks one after another, locked in ceaseless battle.
The great battle erupted in a single heartbeat, reaching white heat in the blink of an eye. Soldiers from both armies clashed and slaughtered, auras extinguishing one after another.
The battle's tide held both favorable and unfavorable aspects for the Human Race.
The favorable aspect was that these Pseudo Lord-Ranks differed greatly from those stationed at Returnless Pass — not in terms of raw power, where the gap between Pseudo Lord-Ranks was never large, but in their formations.
The Pseudo Lord-Ranks at Returnless Pass had all fought the Humans for many years. Leveraging the intelligence provided by Ink Devotees who had defected to their side, they had learned from the Humans and acquired the art of formation combat. Though Pseudo Lord-Ranks could only form simple Triad formations, such Triad formations typically required twenty or thirty Eighth-Order cultivators working together just to hold their own — and those twenty or thirty needed to be arranged in a Quintet or Hexad formation to do so.
That was precisely why the battles to capture Returnless Pass had been so grueling. The Triad formations gave the Pseudo Lord-Ranks an enormous advantage, allowing them to pin down a vast number of Human forces.
The Ink Clan army that had escaped from the Primordial Heavens Great Restriction was a different matter entirely.
They knew nothing of formations.
Every last one of them fought alone. Even when they occasionally coordinated with each other, the benefit was nowhere close to what a proper formation could provide.
After just a brief exchange, the Eighth-Order cultivators keenly identified this problem, and their spirits soared.
A Quintet formation formed by Human Eighth-Order cultivators could just about match a Pseudo Lord-Rank in combat. A Hexad formation could fight them to a standstill. And if it was a Seven Star formation, the advantage would firmly be on the Human side.
The Humans currently fielded no small number of Eighth-Order cultivators. Thanks to years of patient accumulation and the Mortal-Grade Open Heaven Pills brought back from the Myriad Black Workshop, every major army boasted at least two thousand Eighth-Order cultivators, with some exceeding three thousand.
With so many Eighth-Order Open Heaven cultivators working in tandem through their formations, contending with the Ink Clan's Pseudo Lord-Ranks posed no insurmountable problem.
However, in terms of total army size, the Zihong Army was utterly incomparable to this Ink Clan force — the gap was nearly tenfold.
The Zihong Army could hold this Ink Clan army at bay for a time, but there was no way they could sustain it for long.
Fortunately, they didn't need to hold for long. Reinforcements from every direction were converging on the battlefield. They only needed to hold their ground for a short while before the encirclement would be complete, and this Ink Clan relief force would become turtles trapped in a jar.
The disparity in numbers meant the Zihong Army's casualties continued to mount. By comparison, the Ink Clan's losses were even more staggering.
The three Ninth-Order cultivators roamed through the enemy ranks, cutting down life after life. Pseudo Lord-Ranks fell one after another as their vitality was extinguished. Wu Qing's body was already riddled with wounds, and the senior-sister-and-brother pair, having expended enormous energy in such high-intensity combat, were deathly pale.
On the battlefield, the wreckage of shattered Human warships drifted among the debris. Countless severed limbs and fragments of flesh swirled in the shockwaves from the ongoing clashes.
Yet the Zihong Army did not retreat a single step. They held their line steadfastly, pinning this Ink Clan relief force firmly in place.
Human reinforcements from every army were racing to the scene from all directions, Ninth-Order cultivators leading the charge, moments away from reaching the battlefield.
The Ink Clan's momentum had begun to wane. In the original calculations of those Pseudo Lord-Ranks, they had enjoyed a massive numerical advantage over the Zihong Army and had believed there was a good chance of annihilating this Human force entirely.
If they could destroy this Human army, they could tear open a gap in the tight encirclement and go on to crush even more Human forces.
But what they had never anticipated was that the Zihong Army, despite being outnumbered nearly ten to one, could hold the battle to a standstill right here.
Were the Humans really this tenacious?
The Pseudo Lord-Ranks' minds trembled with disbelief. No wonder the predecessors who had walked out of the Primordial Heavens Great Restriction had failed to eradicate this race — instead, after thousands of years of conflict, it was they who had been utterly defeated.