It had to be said, Jiang Chen's deductions were fairly reliable.
Ziche Min's brow twitched. "Then, if we rush to one of those two locations at maximum speed, we might be able to get there before Guangdu Old Man?"
"Getting there before him shouldn't be a problem." Jiang Chen nodded. "Look at the map. The Ten Great Sacred Grounds are spread far apart from one another. In this short time, he couldn't possibly have visited all the other nine. Even if he is enormously powerful and helps take down each sacred ground he visits, he can have conquered at most two or three by now."
"Two to three is already the limit. After all, it hasn't been very long."
"I hear that Guangdu Old Man stationed two Divine Path cultivators at each sacred ground. That means he dispatched a full twenty Divine Path cultivators to attack the Ten Great Sacred Grounds. Now, the Eternal Sacred Ground's Divine Path cultivators have been killed or captured. The other nine sacred grounds should still have eighteen Divine Path cultivators. If the main forces at the Ten Great Sacred Grounds are making good progress, then the Divine Path cultivators at the Nine Abyss Sacred Ground and the Nirvana Sacred Ground should have no trouble keeping them pinned down, right? Ten Divine Path ancestors against two Divine Path cultivators—hardly a problem. The only way any would slip through the net is if someone deliberately dragged their feet."
Running the numbers like that, the Divine Path cultivators Guangdu Old Man could theoretically rally were down to just over a dozen at most.
Some Divine Path cultivators who had retreated from the outskirts of Pingsha Island might choose to regroup with him, and some who hadn't yet sworn allegiance to him might be persuaded. But those were low-probability events.
Even counting every possible soul, the Divine Path cultivators under Guangdu Old Man's banner would not exceed twenty.
Jiang Chen sighed. "That Guangdu Old Man—clever as he is, his cleverness has been his undoing. He gathered a band of desperadoes, nothing more than a rabble. And he still wants to talk about strategy? About grand tactics? He should have just taken that rabble and swept through the Ten Great Sacred Grounds directly. Breaking them down one by one leaves gaps everywhere. Instead, he's given us room to breathe."
Jiang Chen made a fair point. If Guangdu Old Man had chosen a head-on approach from the start, how many Divine Path cultivators did the Ten Great Sacred Grounds really have? In theory, the forces Guangdu Old Man brought were overwhelmingly superior.
The pity was that a perfectly good hand had been played disastrously. Of course, this couldn't really be blamed on Guangdu Old Man. His hand had gone wrong not because of poor play, but because he had run into the freakish anomaly that was Jiang Chen. If not for Jiang Chen, Guangdu Old Man would have ended things at Pingsha Island. There would never have been all this subsequent trouble.
Divine Venerable Jaye watched Jiang Chen with a smile, observing this young man who could strategize and orchestrate so effectively that a group of old veterans listened to his analysis with full attention. He asked with genuine interest, "Jiang Chen, in your view, what do you intend to do?"
Jiang Chen smiled faintly. He could hear the probing note in the question.
"There are many strategies. To play it safe, we would head to those two sacred grounds and join forces with the main contingent of the Ten Great Sacred Grounds as quickly as possible. If we're willing to take risks, we could seek out Guangdu Old Man's forces and catch them off guard—eliminating a few Divine Path cultivators would obviously be the best outcome. Even if we can't kill them, it would still serve as a warning."
"Of course, both of those plans are either too reckless or too aggressive. I don't intend to choose either one." Jiang Chen's smile remained as calm and unhurpled as ever.
Not choose either?
Everyone exchanged surprised glances. They had all assumed that the safe strategy best fit the current situation. Joining forces with the main contingent of the Ten Great Sacred Grounds would stabilize everything—the situation would become clear.
But obviously, Jiang Chen saw things differently.