Zhang Ruoxi no longer needed the Human Race to come to her rescue, but both the void corridor leading to the Chaos Death Domain and the breach in the Primordial Grand Restriction had to be held at all costs. They were the two critical points upon which the Human Race's army could turn the tide of battle!
Fortunately, these two passages were located relatively close to each other, so defending them wouldn't require splitting their forces too thin.
At the very moment Mi Jinglun issued his orders, the Ink Race's side also had powerful figures who recognized the danger. The void corridor leading who-knew-where was disgorging Small Stone Race armies in an endless stream, and in just a short while, their numbers had already surpassed ten million.
If this corridor wasn't seized quickly, it wouldn't be long before the Small Stone Race army's numbers rivaled those of the Ink Race. When that happened, the Ink Race would be facing more than just one human army.
As the Human Race's forces charged toward the void corridor, numerous Ink Race powerhouses led their own contingents rushing in the same direction.
That corridor leading to the Chaos Death Domain had instantly become the focal point of the war, the place where billions of eyes were fixed.
Though the Human Race army had moved sooner than the Ink Race, the greater distance meant they were still en route when the Ink Race army had already encircled the void from every direction. However, it was precisely the appearance of the Small Stone Race that had drawn an enormous share of the Ink Race's energy and attention, which paradoxically made the Human Race's situation far safer.
A battle even fiercer than the previous clashes between the Human and Ink Races erupted.
Every soldier in the Human Race army was an elite, but their numbers were ultimately limited. In the earlier stages of the war, the human forces had largely operated on hit-and-run tactics, rarely engaging in large-scale direct confrontation with the Ink Race army.
The Small Stone Race was in a different position. They were defending the void corridor with no path of retreat, no way to flee. When the Ink Race army surged in from all directions, a cataclysmic battle exploded between the two sides almost instantly.
Warriors from both armies crashed together like two colliding torrents, and amid the spray they kicked up, countless corpses tumbled in the current.
The Small Stone Race suffered continuous casualties, but their reinforcements flowed in without cease. In terms of raw numbers, they were far inferior to the Ink Race, yet in terms of military formation and battlefield momentum, they outclassed the Ink Race by an overwhelming margin.
It was as though an invisible hand were manipulating every aspect of the Small Stone Race, taking beings who possessed little intelligence and acted purely on instinct, and molding them into a single cohesive whole—advancing and retreating with disciplined precision, their ranks impeccably ordered.
The lack of powerful commanders within the Small Stone Race army soon manifested as a critical weakness.
This was, in a sense, Yang Kai's unintentional fault. The last time he had ventured into the Chaos Death Domain, he had taken large numbers of Eighth-Grade and Seventh-Grade Small Stone Race warriors with him, which meant the current Small Stone Race army lacked a sufficient number of strong leaders.
The few Eighth-Grade Small Stone warriors who remained were no match for the Ink Race's Pseudo King Lords. So even though the Small Stone Race kept feeding reinforcements into their battle line wave after wave, after only a brief period of engagement, the Ink Race army exploited openings and tore several gaps in their defenses.
Fortunately, the Human Race army arrived in the nick of time. Under Mi Jinglun's coordination and command, the human forces immediately split into several detachments and rushed to plug the different breaches. With the Ninth-Grade Open Heaven masters lending their strength, they barely managed to stabilize the situation.
But the outlook remained grim.
The Ink Race army's assault grew ever more ferocious. Unless the Small Stone Race army could concentrate enough numbers on their side, the risk of a breakthrough remained very real.
Inside the void corridor, the Small Stone Race was reinforcing at maximum speed, but it was barely enough to keep pace with their rate of attrition.
The defensive line kept contracting, and the operating space available to the Small Stone Race and Human Race coalition shrank steadily.
On the Ink Race side, it seemed as though they sensed hope, and their attacks grew only more savage.
Previously, Zhang Ruoxi's sudden appearance and her merciless slaughter had been enough to intimidate those restless King Lords. For a long while, not a single King Lord dared step out from the Grand Restriction, fearing they would meet a grim end. But now, several King Lord-level powerhouses caught sight of the situation through the breach in the Grand Restriction and charged out recklessly, engaging the human Ninth-Grade masters to pile pressure on the coalition.
The defensive line was on the verge of collapse.
If the line broke, not only would the Small Stone Race be unable to hold the void corridor, but even the Human Race army that had come to help would be surrounded by the Ink Race. At that point, aside from the Ninth-Grade masters who possessed the ability to flee, no one else would have any hope of breaking out of the encirclement.
A-Da was fighting with bloodshot eyes against a cluster of King Lords. He had always been simple and straightforward. Having previously been besieged and beaten half to death by the Ink Race King Lords working together, he now cared about nothing except slaughtering every last one of the enemies who had hurt him.
A-Er, who possessed somewhat keener awareness, had noticed the dire situation facing the Human Race army. He wanted to lend aid, but it was beyond his power. Like A-Da, he was besieged by King Lords, and without shaking them off, he simply couldn't free his hands.
The only ones who could have been relied upon—Zhang Ruoxi and her Eight Great Personal Guards—were still in pursuit of the scattered, fleeing King Lords.
Of the dozens of King Lords, only a little over a dozen remained alive. Those survivors were the most agile and the most fortunate, but under her relentless pursuit, they too would eventually meet their end.
She didn't seem to have any intention of coming to their aid.
Just as the coalition's battlefield reached its breaking point and the defensive line was about to shatter, Zhang Ruoxi—who had been chasing down the King Lords—suddenly halted mid-air. Without so much as a glance behind her, she gently clenched her fist in the direction of the void corridor.
The moment her fist closed, heaven and earth hummed with resonance, and the void itself trembled.
Scattered across the battlefield, embedded within the ranks of the Ink Race army, fragments of stone that had been lying dormant suddenly blazed to life, flowing with radiance in yellow and blue!