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Translator: Truth
Editor: Dhael Ligerkeys
Lan Ziyi’s range option was a single flying weapon—a shortsword about one-third of a meter long to be exact—but it was incredibly swift and powerful. It pierced through the Spirit Beasts’ foreheads like a hot knife through butter and killed them instantly.
Right now, everyone was targeting the avian Spirit Beasts because they were the only creatures who could pose a real threat against them. They could afford to ignore the land-bound Spirit Beasts for now.
Three hundred meters were but the blink of an eye for cultivators. When Xia Qianqian rushed past the group, they also turned around and scattered in every direction. Each person was pursued by a massive group of Spirit Beasts, and every Spirit Beast’s eyes looked unnaturally crimson.
Suddenly, there was a loud boom and a rumble. The Spirit Beasts had finally triggered one of Lu Ye’s Explosive Wards. A massive fireball injured or killed every Spirit Beast within its vicinity.
It wasn’t just one explosion either. The Explosive Wards kept being triggered one after another as the Spirit Beasts trampled over them, not to mention that Lu Ye was waving a ward flag and triggering the remote-controlled Explosive Wards as well. At the same time, nine flying weapons slaughtered every flying Spirit Beast chasing after him.
The Spirit Beasts were numerous, but their power level was a mixed bag at best. In fact, only a small number of them were Champion-level Spirit Beasts, while the rest were normal Spirit Beasts—the Spirit Beast equivalent of a Spirit Creek Realm cultivator.
Not only that, a normal Champion-class Spirit Beast would find itself hardpressed to handle anyone in their group. Only the truly strong ones could pose a certain level of threat against them.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t long before the sounds of explosions faded into nothing. Despite the incredible amount of Explosive Wards Lu Ye had laid down beforehand, they had still run out in less than an incense stick.
Not only that, the horde before their eyes still looked positively unmanageable.
By now, the group had become completely separated from one another. Kitty Shen and Xia Qianqian were nowhere to be seen. Lan Ziyi was being surrounded and attacked by a bunch of avian Spirit Beasts, though judging from her swift movements and occasional sword flashes she was in no danger of dying just yet.
Lu Ye himself wasn’t doing too well. Among the massive group of Spirit Beasts were two incredibly powerful Champion-class Spirit Beasts that were on par with a Fifth or Sixth-Order Cloud River Realm cultivator. Their pincer attack wasn’t easy to handle to say the least.
The one silverlining in their situation was that the maddened Spirit Beasts were a lot stupider than they should’ve been. They were also extremely bloodthirsty and impulsive. Whatever power they gained was offset by the decline in intelligence. Otherwise, he might’ve decided to make a run for it already.
Lu Ye tried a couple of times to eliminate one of the two Champion-class Spirit Beasts that were keeping him on his toes, but unfortunately he did not succeed. He could only fly circles around his pursuers while cutting down the weaker Spirit Beasts.
Suddenly, a burst of light caught his attention. He saw the Spirit Beasts surrounding Lan Ziyi abruptly exploding into a shower of blood and gore and falling to the ground. The tall, slender woman was twirling on her toes and slaughtering everything with her two longswords. At that moment, she looked as brilliant as a blood flower.
Lu Ye had fought Lan Ziyi once to defend his spot in the Scroll of Supremacy, and at the time he already thought that her fighting style was incredibly suited for one-versus-many battles. That assumption was finally proven today.
Lan Ziyi’s breathing was visibly heavier after executing the technique though. It was clear it wasn’t something that she could repeat endlessly.
After that, she charged toward Lu Ye not to ambush him, but to fight alongside him. Lu Ye immediately felt a load being lifted off his shoulders when her longswords annihilated most of the Spirit Beasts harassing him.
Lu Ye and Lan Ziyi were the type of cultivators you only ever wanted as allies, not enemies. In this case, both of them were glad to have someone they could fully entrust their backs to—relatively speaking, of course.
The duo flew past one another again and again. Although this was the first time they fought alongside one another, their cooperation was practically flawless. Even better, they moved as if they could guess each other’s thoughts and next moves despite not having exchanged a single word.
The storm of saber and swords mowed down the Spirit Beasts in unstoppable fashion. Even the two Champion-class Spirit Beasts that gave Lu Ye trouble earlier were no match for them. Lu Ye and Lan Ziyi had already slain one of them, and it was only a matter of time before the other one was dead as well.
Suddenly, they felt a burst of Spiritual Power from their flanks. When Lu Ye looked back, he saw Kitty Shen flying toward them with a dozen or so Spirit Beasts on her tail. She yelled as soon as she got close to them, “Ye Six, we got reinforcements!”
Just now, she was attacked and hounded by so many Spirit Beasts that she had no choice but to escape in the direction of Bilandia. About halfway there, she suddenly saw a massive group of cultivators rushing toward her and killing all the Spirit Beasts chasing her. It was only then she turned around and flew back to the valley.
Her rescuers were obviously cultivators from Jiu Zhou. They were all busy collecting battle points when Kitty Shen had flown up to them with a horde of Spirit Beasts. Sensing an opportunity, they followed her back to the valley and were overjoyed to see that their intuition was right. They immediately spread out and started mowing down the Spirit Beasts.
Just like Lu Ye’s group had done earlier, they prioritized killing the avian Spirit Beasts. Once the enemy’s aerial units were all dead, it was only a matter of time before they cleaned up the rest. Worst case scenario, they could withdraw and live to fight another day.
Spells and Spirit Artifacts erupted across the sky like fireworks and killed down dozens of avian Spirit Beasts per second. Now that they were joined by a dozen or so cultivators, the speed at which they were mowing down the horde had increased drastically.
A while later, Lu Ye, Lan Ziyi and Kitty Shen landed on the ground and formed a triangular formation. Although they were attacked from all sides, the Spirit Beasts usually died before they could even get close to the trio.
Amber had also jumped off Lu Ye’s shoulder and manifested its true self. From time to time, it would roar to stun the enemies and bite a wounded Spirit Beast to death.
The white tiger was really happy that they were finally fighting on the ground. Just now, the most he could do was to let out a roar or two to stun the enemies.
Eventually, the entire mountain range was covered in the corpses of Spirit Beasts. So much blood was shed that the entire battlefield reeked of it.
It looked like it was only a matter of time before the Spirit Beasts were all killed, but the maddened creatures continued to attack them with the same ferocity and madness as before. They were as immune to fear as they were to pain.
Time passed as the howls of the Spirit Beasts lessened. Lu Ye’s saber arm was numb, and even Lan Ziyi and Kitty Shen were looking pale.
Eventually, the only ones left standing on the battlefield were blood-soaked cultivators. The chaotic battle had finally come to an end.
Xia Qianqian appeared out of nowhere and shot the group a glance. “Is anyone hurt?”
She looked as dirty and tired as they were. She would’ve joined up with Lu Ye and the others sooner, but she wasn’t able to extricate herself from several powerful Champion-class Spirit Beasts until the battle was almost over.
Lu Ye slowly shook his head as he flicked off the blood on the Inviolable and returned it to its sheath. He then tossed two Vital Spirit Pills into his mouth and chewed slowly.
Lan Ziyi and Kitty Shen hurriedly ate their pills to recover as well.
Without exaggeration, this was one of the hardest battles Lu Ye and the other cultivators had ever fought. There were just too many Spirit Beasts. Even Lu Ye’s group had underestimated just how many Spirit Beasts there were in the valley despite having seen it all from the sky earlier. If they had known this, they would never have agreed to Ah Si’s request.
It all turned out well in the end though. The dozen or so Jiu Zhou cultivators could not have arrived at a better time.
The battle was hard, but the rewards were well worth it. There wasn’t a single person who wasn’t smiling after calculating their battle points.
Lu Ye checked his own identity pass and noted that he now had over three thousand battle points!
One Blue Amulet cost only one thousand and eight hundred battle points, and he had almost earned enough battle points to buy two of them.
The main reason he was able to accumulate this many battle points was thanks to the Explosive Wards he had laid down earlier. They had taken out a considerable amount of Spirit Beasts before the battle was engaged. Fighting alongside Lan Ziyi and Kitty Shen also meant that he could focus far more on killing the enemies and less on defending himself.
He was sure he had earned more battle points than Kitty Shen and Lan Ziyi. Not even Xia Qianqian, a Ninth-Order Cloud River Realm cultivator could have earned more battle points than him.
Suddenly, Lu Ye realized that ward cultivators held a massive advantage in this type of battles. If he had known this would happen and prepared more ward flags beforehand, he could have earned even more battle points.
Battle points weren’t the only reward they got from the battle. The Champion-class Spirit Beasts had Mutant Cores in their bodies. Already, the others were scouring the battlefield for them. Naturally, Lu Ye was doing the same with Amber.
Unfortunately, Champion-class Spirit Beasts did not really look that different from normal Spirit Beasts. In extreme cases, one could spend half a day searching a battlefield of caracasses and still not locate a single Champion-class Spirit Beast.
Amber loved eating Mutant Cores, but Lu Ye forbade it from eating them because these Spirit Beasts had gone insane from some unknown disease. Until they had found out the real reason they went insane, Lu Ye wasn’t going to risk Amber going insane as well.
Two hours later, they were finally done scouring the battlefield for loot. Every cultivator had found some Mutant Cores, and Lu Ye himself had collected over a dozen of them. He stored them all in his storage space. None of the Mutant Cores shared exactly the same size and color, but they all contained a tremendous amount of energy.
A Mutant Core had many uses. A pill cultivator could refine a Mutant Core into pills, a ward cultivator could use it to create wards, and an artificer could use it to refine an artifact. In any case, it was very valuable.
Everyone was beaming and chatting happily with each other. They were just discussing if they should join hands and kill more Spirit Beasts when suddenly, the ground started rumbling unnaturally. Everyone’s expression changed as they spun around to face the source of the commotion. It wasn’t long before they saw a swathe of black clouds flying in their direction. They were all avian Spirit Beasts.
Lu Ye and a couple more cultivators immediately rose to the sky and looked again. Their expressions slowly turned grim as they observed the incoming tide.
The biggest horde of Spirit Beasts they had ever seen was moving toward them. They literally stretched from one end of the horizon to the other. It was impossible to calculate how many there were!
There was no way their little group could handle this many Spirit Beasts. In fact, everyone realized what they were seeing at the same time. The Spirit Beasts had come to conquer the final bastion of humanity, Bilandia!
“Fly!” A cultivator yelled before taking off in the direction of Bilandia. The others followed him without question. The city might be the only place left in the entire world that could give them some sense of security, but chewing inside their hearts was the ominous feeling that even Bilandia might not be able to hold back such a large army.
