The person Han Li had in mind was none other than Qi Yunxiao, with whom he had made an appointment years ago.
Qi Yunxiao's formation master friend was presumably well-versed in other formations as well, given his mastery of the "Inverted Five Elements Formation." And this ancient teleportation array was, after all, a type of formation. If that was the case, his friend might just be able to repair it!
The more Han Li thought about it, the more tempted he became. He calculated the time — it wasn't far off from the day they had agreed to meet again. But with tasks constantly coming down from the sect, there was no way he could go looking for the other party right away. It seemed he would have to find another way later.
After mulling it over, Han Li grew somewhat dispirited again and lost interest in flipping through the formation manuals. He left the Pavilion of Heavenly Knowledge and returned to his cave dwelling.
Back inside his dwelling, Han Li noticed that the spider eggs seemed to have grown a size larger. It appeared that the Spirit Eye Spring really was effective at accelerating their hatching.
Seeing this, Han Li immediately drew a simple Spirit Control Formation — a basic method cultivators used to control demonic beast eggs. He then dripped several drops of his essence blood into the formation and placed the spider eggs inside. Once the formation took effect and the two white eggs had absorbed all the essence blood, he placed them back into the spirit spring.
Just as Han Li finished this task, he received a flying talisman transmission telling him to assemble quickly at the Council Hall.
A chill ran through his heart. He knew the mission had finally arrived.
……
On the main battlefield of the seven sects and six factions — somewhere among the scattered rocks of the Gold Drum Plains on the border of the Yue Kingdom and the Chariot Kingdom — Han Li directed two Black Dragon Seizers transformed into streaks of dark light along with several golden blades, enclosing and relentlessly attacking an early Foundation Establishment disciple of the Ghost Spirit Sect.
Although black qi rolled off the other party in terrifying waves and several faintly wailing skull heads could be heard, Han Li quickly found an opening in the storm of magical instrument attacks and in one decisive move sliced the opponent into several pieces.
Han Li expertly snatched the storage pouch off the corpse and vanished into the vast wasteland.
He had already secured his gains for this trip, and the sky was growing dark. By convention, this was when the Foundation Establishment and Core Formation cultivators from both the Demonic path and the seven sects would come out to fight.
If he got caught up in that, it would be a pointless death!
Han Li recalled the Core Formation cultivator battle he had once witnessed, and fear surged through him once again.
Several whole li of terrain had been turned upside down by the fight between the cultivators from Blade Transform Dock and the Spirit Control Sect, nearly sweeping him in even though he was hiding seven or eight li away.
Since then, whenever the sky grew even slightly dark, he would head back early — even if he had found nothing.
A year ago, he had been ordered to escort a batch of spirit stones here with several others. Then he had been kept behind, becoming a high-level cannon fodder for the seven sects. He had participated in several large-scale battles involving over a thousand combatants, and episodes like the one just now — venturing deep into the Gold Drum Plains to fight scattered enemies — happened frequently.
Strange as it was, after the Demonic factions and the seven sects fought their second major engagement to yet another draw, the two sides faced each other across the Gold Drum Plains and gradually settled into a peculiar pattern: one large battle per month, with small skirmishes happening every single day.
What was called a "large battle" meant each side dispatched forces of over a thousand to fight each other. The "small battles" involved each side sending out cultivators — in groups of three to five, or alone — into the center of the Gold Drum Plains to hunt down enemy cultivators.
The large battles went without saying: though both sides fought vigorously, the casualties were remarkably few. Unless someone truly risked their life, once both sides activated their protective shields, neither could easily harm the other.
As for the small battles, since there was a vast gulf in power between Core Formation and Foundation Establishment cultivators, after some mutual probing both sides tacitly agreed to leave the hours from dawn to dusk for Foundation Establishment cultivators to slaughter each other. At night, the Core Formation experts from both sides would emerge for their own battles.
In a one-on-one fight between Core Formation cultivators, defeating one's opponent was feasible, and even inflicting serious injuries was possible. But truly taking a Core Formation cultivator's life was another matter entirely. After all, when a Core Formation cultivator fled with everything they had, their speed was truly astonishing!
As a result, after a year of fighting, both sides had lost hundreds of Foundation Establishment cultivators while not a single Core Formation cultivator had fallen. This left the leaders of both factions writhing in pain while simultaneously feeling rather frustrated.
As for the Qi Condensation cultivators, their weak magical power meant they could only serve as a reserve force, and they had actually been preserved almost entirely intact.
Still, a year of major battlefield engagements and ceaseless guerrilla raids had left both the six factions and seven sects battered and exhausted. While desperately trying to weaken each other, both sides were also stockpiling their strength. They all knew that the decisive battle was fast approaching.
Han Li piloted his Divine Wind Boat and arrived at his own side's encampment an hour later.
Wooden and stone houses of varying sizes flickered in and out of sight within the protective formation, arranged haphazardly with no discernible pattern. These were temporary structures the cultivators who had come here had casually built using either wood- or earth-arts. Naturally, the encampment was divided by sect.