The majority of the demon army had been trapped within the grand formation, so the forces remaining outside were naturally far fewer than those of the allied races. Though the demons immediately organized a counterattack without the slightest sign of weakening, after only half a day of fighting, the massive demon formations assembled by the various demon clans were shattered under the relentless barrage of countless magical treasures and spells. The surviving demons, at last unable to hold their ground, began to retreat.
The allied armies pressed their advantage without hesitation, pursuing the fleeing demons without mercy. The tide of battle had, in the space of a few days, completely reversed.
……
At virtually the same moment the demon army began its rout, in an underground chamber far from the battlefield, Yuan Cha was in the midst of driving her dharma manifestation — a spectral demon wolf — in battle against Patriarch Ao Xiao when a ball of white light at her waist blazed with blinding brilliance.
A stream of black runes shot forth from it in rapid succession, arriving before her eyes and transforming into several lines of short, floating messages.
Yuan Cha swept a cursory glance over the black runes, and her expression changed drastically in an instant. She let out an enraged, piercing cry, her body blurred, and she transformed into a streak of dark radiance that shot into the air, piercing through the ceiling of the chamber and vanishing without a trace.
Moments later, the dark streak burst out from the marshland, flashing thousands of feet into the sky. After circling briefly, it turned toward the Wood Clan's territory, ready to tear through the air and depart.
But at that very instant, a faint, unhurried male voice drifted down from even higher above: "Fellow Daoist Yuan Cha, where are you rushing off to in such haste?"
Before the words had even faded, a peal of thunder erupted in the sky, and a bolt of silver lightning over a hundred zhang long cleaved downward.
"Ao Xiao, you old ghost — you dare block me?!"
Though Yuan Cha was desperate to leave, she had no choice but to rein in her escape light and reveal her true form in midair, raising one hand upward. A pitch-black sword beam over a hundred zhang long lashed out to meet the silver arc. With a thunderous boom that shook heaven and earth, the two attacks collided and annihilated each other simultaneously.
"Our duel has yet to reach a conclusion — naturally, I must insist that you stay a while longer, Fellow Daoist."
The air above shimmered, and a sphere of lightning materialized silently. Within it, a figure flickered in and out of visibility — a man of strikingly refined features, wearing a faint smile. It was none other than Patriarch Ao Xiao himself.
"Hmph — so you had this planned all along, intending to pin all three of us down here. But don't celebrate too early. Whether you can actually pull that off remains to be seen!" Yuan Cha's face was twisted with fury. She let out an angry shout, formed a hand seal, and shook her shoulders. In an instant, more than a dozen identical phantoms materialized around her, each rocketing off in a different direction.
"Leaving? Not so easy. 'Seal'!" Patriarch Ao Xiao's expression darkened as he watched this unfold. With a thunderous shout, he pointed one finger toward the sky.
The air within a ten-li radius shuddered. Myriad streams of heaven and earth spiritual energy parted with a roaring rush, and from their midst, a milky-white jade bowl of colossal proportions materialized, pressing downward like an inverted dome. Within the bowl, multicolored radiance flickered as countless runes the size of fists tumbled and churned, and from it erupted a tremendous force that made the very air grow solid.
The space beneath it hummed with a deep drone. The void blurred, and the ground across a hundred li heaved and cracked, sinking several zhang in an instant. The dozen-odd phantoms of Yuan Cha, caught within the same crushing field, saw their escape lights dim abruptly. Their speed dropped by more than tenfold.
Only then did Patriarch Ao Xiao let out a hearty laugh. He placed one palm atop his head and cracked open his crown. A dozen faint streaks of white light shot out, each hurtling toward one of Yuan Cha's phantoms. On the way, each streak of white light rolled and transformed into a massive snow-white wolf with two heads. Without a moment's hesitation, the spectral wolves pounced upon the phantoms.
The phantom figures blazed with demonic qi in rage, summoning all manner of demonic treasures to defend themselves. The battle between Patriarch Ao Xiao and Saint Ancestor Yuan Cha had erupted once more — though this time, its ferocity was on an entirely different level compared to before.
However, their cultivation and strength were closely matched. A decisive victory between them would clearly not be achieved within any short span of time.
Moreover, it was not only Yuan Cha's side that was entangled. The other two Saint Ancestors of the demon race, upon receiving word of the army's defeat, found themselves locked in desperate combat against Mo Jianli and the Nightcache clan's Mahayana cultivator. Both were stunned with rage and utterly unable to free themselves.
In response, the high-ranking demons and the dozen-odd Saint Ancestor avatars that had been trapped within the Wood Clan's grand formation alongside the demon army seized the brief lull in the formation's offensive to break away and act independently.
For them, if they did not seize this chance to dismantle the grand formation, then once it regained its energy and resumed its assault, the surviving demons would likely be reduced by more than half in one sweep.
After all, as their numbers dwindled, the formation's targeting would become ever more precise, and its attacks would grow fiercer with each successive wave. Once the rest of the demons had been annihilated, even these high-ranking cultivators could not guarantee that they could withstand the formation's full, concentrated assault aimed squarely at them.
Thus, knowing full well that breaking the formation would be extraordinarily difficult, they had no choice but to steel themselves and venture deeper into its interior, searching for a way to bring it down.
……
A group of over a dozen demons of Void Refining stage, led by an Integration-stage demon lord bearing a bull-headed visage, drifted slowly above an endless canopy of treetops. Each one scanned their surroundings warily, their faces etched with caution.