Yu Mi and Bao Gu returned to the little mountain village.
After the assassins finished cleaning up the demon cultivators inside the Heaven-Shrouding Grand Formation, they too came back to the small village.
Bao Gu immediately had people do a headcount. While they were counting, more people kept returning in dribs and drabs. By the time the headcount was done, the last three missing assassins rushed back as well. She didn’t waste a single word, opened her oversized storage bag, and swept them all back into the Xuantian Mountains.
While the enemy’s formation outside had yet to fully activate and seal off the village completely, she hurriedly flung out the teleportation platform and fled at once. She was terrified of missing that one chance to escape. She didn’t even have time to retrieve the defensive formation flags her Holy Aunt had lent her, much less take the time to set up another killing formation as a parting gift. She could only think about it and then force herself to let it go.
As long as she wasn’t trapped, would she really lack chances to deal with them later? But if she got sealed in here, then everything would be over.
She stepped off the teleportation platform and emerged from the void tens of miles away.
“Go.”
Yu Mi spoke once, then flung out the teleportation platform again.
They chained several high-speed short-range jumps in a row and rushed out over a hundred miles.
All of a sudden, Bao Gu’s heart gave a violent jolt. She sensed that every last formation and restriction she’d set up in that mountain village had been destroyed. She turned back and saw a dazzling light spreading across the distant horizon. That light was like lightning in the dead of night, but very different from true lightning.
Real lightning took on all kinds of shapes as it split down from the sky. The distant glow, however, was surging outward from a mountain, as if an entire peak were wrapped in lightning. The continuous, deafening rumble sounded like some mighty power had gathered hundreds of thunderclaps together in one place. Even from over a hundred miles away, she could still smell that aura of destruction.
A wave of lingering fear washed over Bao Gu, leaving her limbs weak.
If Yu Mi hadn’t noticed those other Hidden Dragon Abyss troops rushing toward the Heaven-Shrouding Formation from outside, if Bao Gu had been trapped in the little mountain village and then pounded like that by warships and military formations, even with the Xuantian Sword protecting her, she’d likely have been blasted to dust.
She had never imagined that her momentary carelessness—ignoring the odd behavior of that weasel in the ruined temple and the strange migration of the animals nearby—had almost brought annihilation down on herself and everyone with her. She’d been too confident in the oversized storage bag that let her rapidly relocate an army, too confident in the mobility advantage the enemy lacked. She thought that even if something went wrong, she could always flee in time.
Now that she looked back on it, that little bit of carelessness had been more than enough to get her killed.
Yu Mi felt the tremor in Bao Gu’s hand where she held it and said,
“Don’t be afraid. We’re already out of the encirclement, aren’t we?”
She went on,
“Bao Gu, I saw just now there were huge numbers of troops surrounding us. Hidden Dragon Abyss must have pulled large forces from the nearby water fortresses. While they’re marching out with most of their army and their water fortresses are empty, we can go take a look.”
Bao Gu steadied her mind, thought for a moment, and said,
“They’re on warships. Those warships are sure to have teleportation domain gates. If…”
She cut herself off mid-sentence, then said,
“Even if they can rush back through the domain gates, those gates are limited in size. As long as we block the exit of the teleportation gateway, however many rush back we can kill that many.”
Yu Mi laughed.
“Why bother making it so complicated? That oversized storage bag of yours can even hold that banyan tree great demon, can’t it?”
Bao Gu’s eyes lit up.
“That’s right!”
Then her brows furrowed.
“But we don’t know which water fortress they drew their troops from, or which sector’s defenses are weak.”
Yu Mi shot her a look.
“You gone stupid?”
Bao Gu blinked, then turned it over in her mind and understood what Yu Mi meant.
She herself didn’t know—but the Soul Chasing Pavilion Master did. The Pavilion Master might not have said who that ten-thousand-strong army was meant to chop down, but she had definitely sent people to keep a close watch on the movements of all the key strongholds of Hidden Dragon Abyss.
Bao Gu immediately took out a sound-transmission jade slip and contacted the Soul Chasing Pavilion Master.
When Pavilion Master Qu Yirou heard Bao Gu asking which Hidden Dragon Abyss water fortress was currently empty, she froze for a moment and asked,
“What, you’re planning to make a move? Hidden Dragon Abyss hasn’t dispatched any large armies from any fortress or city. What happened?”
Bao Gu briefly explained how she had been surrounded.
Qu Yirou said,
“Then it’s highly likely that those troops came directly from Hidden Dragon Abyss itself. If you want to strike, your only target is Hidden Dragon Abyss proper—go straight for the lair. But without having thinned out the forces on the perimeter, and with their headquarters so heavily fortified, there’s no way we can break through in one blow with the forces we have. Once the outer armies fall back to reinforce, you’ll be attacked from front and back.”
Bao Gu made a small sound of assent.
“I understand. Thank you, Pavilion Master.”
She cut the connection, still feeling unwilling to just let it go like this. She turned to Yu Mi and asked,
“Senior Sister, do you have any ideas?”
She was realizing more and more that when it came to real warfare, she was an amateur.
Yu Mi could see the unwillingness in Bao Gu’s eyes, and she too felt that this Hidden Dragon Abyss army currently on the move was a golden opportunity.
She pondered briefly, then said,
“Bao Gu, moving this many troops through a teleportation domain gate… that must cost a fortune, right?”
Bao Gu snorted.
“Of course it does.”
Yu Mi said,
“They were afraid you’d run, so they were willing to burn that money to send troops through a gate. Now that they’re not rushing back in a panic, there’s no way they’ll waste more resources on teleportation. The most likely thing is they’ll load the army onto warships and fly back.
“So why don’t we ambush them halfway?”
A cold gleam flashed in Bao Gu’s eyes.
“All right. Senior Sister, I’ll do as you say.”
Jumping out of an enemy encirclement, looping around behind them for a surprise attack, or ambushing them mid-march while they were unprepared—these were all things Yu Mi was thoroughly familiar with.
After a quick discussion, she and Bao Gu settled on a battle plan.
※ ※ ※
Hidden Dragon Abyss blasted the mountain village where Bao Gu had been hiding into flat ground.
They did not find the Xuantian Sword.
They did not find Bao Gu’s corpse.
They didn’t even encounter the slightest resistance from her.
Given Bao Gu’s combat strength and all the treasures she had on hand, even if she had been driven into a desperate corner under heavy bombardment, she should have put up a fierce last stand.
But in reality, there had been nothing.
Not only had there been no resistance from Bao Gu, even the ten thousand demon troops who had gone into the Heaven-Shrouding Grand Formation had vanished without a trace. Before they began the bombardment, they had tried to contact that ten-thousand-strong demon force inside the formation.
They had received no reply at all.
The Heavenly Demon Dragon Cavalry were so furious they kept cursing those three tribes of demon cultivators for their stupidity.
They had found Bao Gu’s trail, and instead of informing them immediately to bring in a large army for a direct bombardment, they had actually tried to set up a formation themselves and then send an army in to deal with Bao Gu inside it.
Compete with Bao Gu in formations?
Forget ten thousand—if they’d sent a hundred thousand men into a formation, Bao Gu could have swallowed them in one gulp.
No wonder the Heavenly Demon Dragon Cavalry looked down on the One Hundred and Eight Tribes. Just look at them—what a bunch of idiots.
How many true elites did the One Hundred and Eight Tribes have? They only relied on sheer numbers. But what use was having a lot of people? Their cultivation levels were low, their combat power was lacking, and they didn’t have the brains to match. They only ever did stupid things.
The “men” of the Heavenly Demon Dragon Cavalry felt that lumping them together with the One Hundred and Eight Tribes as the three great pillars of Hidden Dragon Abyss was downright humiliating.
After the little mountain peak was blasted apart, the elders of the three tribes who had taken part in besieging the village immediately rushed over to the Heavenly Demon Dragon Cavalry to raise a huge ruckus.
You Heavenly Demon Dragon Cavalry want to steal our credit? Fine, we won’t say anything.
But when you were bombarding the mountain village, our three tribes still had ten thousand elite troops inside who hadn’t made it out. You went ahead and opened fire anyway—what the hell was that?
What’s that? You’re saying they were probably already dead before you started the bombardment, because they didn’t respond to your call?
You used divine sense to shout to them?
Are you blind or are you blind?
Those ten thousand elites were inside the Heaven-Shrouding Grand Formation—how were they supposed to hear your shouting or receive your divine sense transmissions?
You did it on purpose! You slaughtered our One Hundred and Eight Tribes’ elites just to hog the credit!
The Heavenly Demon Dragon Cavalry raged at the One Hundred and Eight Tribes for their stupidity. The One Hundred and Eight Tribes raged at the Heavenly Demon Dragon Cavalry for stealing achievements and killing their “people”.
The two sides were already quarreling on the way back to camp.
Inside the command flagship, the elders of the One Hundred and Eight Tribes and the seventy-two Heavenly Demon Dragon Cavalry were shouting at each other at the top of their lungs. Their eyes were red, and they looked about ready to roll up their sleeves and start killing.
While the command flagship was in an uproar, outside, tens of thousands of troops were marching in steady formation, escorted by a hundred warships.
When it came to the movements of the Cleaver Gang’s forces, Hidden Dragon Abyss might not have had a detailed map, but they had a solid grasp of the major troop movements. After confirming again and again, they were certain the Cleaver Gang hadn’t dispatched a large army into the You River region.
As for the Soul Chasing Pavilion, that was an assassin organization. Its terror lay in its ghost-like assassination methods. A head-on confrontation between two armies was not the Soul Chasing Pavilion’s strength at all. Sending Soul Chasing Pavilion killers to fight Hidden Dragon Abyss’s army in a frontal battle was the same as sending them to die.
Just as the quarrel in the command flagship escalated to the point of people starting to throw hands, sudden chaos erupted outside.
“Enemy attack—!”
Amid the roars, deafening explosions rolled across the sky. Thunder howled, descending straight from the heavens.
The demon race had a natural fear of lightning’s might.
Under this rain of thunderbolts, countless demon cultivators lost their nerve.
The Heavenly Demon Dragon Cavalry and the elders of the One Hundred and Eight Tribes had no time to argue. They all rushed out of the warship.
What greeted them was a sky at dawn that had gone pitch-black, the world thrown into muddy chaos. Formation flags glowing with terrifying power floated between the void and the barrier of the great world, flickering in and out of sight—then detonating.
As each formation laid by the flags exploded, the Hidden Dragon Abyss troops trapped within those formations died on the spot…
One Heavenly Demon Dragon Cavalryman’s eyes went blood-red. He ground his teeth and cursed,
“Damn it, she really dared to come. Lord Dragon really did predict it!”
He let out a roar.
“Brothers, grab your weapons! Take down the Cleaver Gang Lord! Kill—!”
His voice shook the nine heavens, drowning out even the roar of the thunder overhead.
Spurred by that shout, the Hidden Dragon Abyss troops finally snapped out of their daze. The survivors roared back,
“Kill—!”
They rapidly reformed their battle formations.
And then—
Kill who?
The air at dawn was thick with the stench of blood and the acrid scent of flesh scorched by lightning.
The elite soldiers of Hidden Dragon Abyss’s Heavenly Demon Dragon Cavalry stood in strict formations, eyes bulging with rage, desperate to charge forward and tear the enemy to pieces.
But there wasn’t even a shadow of the enemy to be seen.
Only the drifting smoke left behind by the detonated killing formations hung between heaven and earth, silently testifying to the carnage of a moment ago.
Tens of thousands of men marching in a column that stretched for miles had run headlong into hundreds of lethal killing formations.
In an instant, the casualties were horrendous. A full third of the entire force had been shredded by the formations. When the remaining two-thirds quickly regrouped to launch a counterattack, they discovered—
There was no one to hit.
“Damn it! Where’s the vanguard? What kind of scouting is this? They walked straight into a trap and set off all those formations without even noticing?”
On the command flagship, one person was fuming, another’s face was dark and sinister, and yet another looked lost in thought.
Whether demon or human, everyone had the same thought in their hearts:
Running into an opponent like the Cleaver Emblem Lord was fucking disgusting.
If you wanted to fight her, she refused to show her face, skulking around in the shadows.
If you tried to pull your troops back or ignored her, she’d pop out to stab you in the back—and every strike was so vicious it made people’s scalps go numb.
After these last few days, who didn’t know what the Cleaver Emblem Lord was trying to do?
Lure the snake out of its hole, eat away at them piece by piece.
But if you couldn’t catch her, what could you do?
Formation flags were rare treasures, but in the Cleaver Emblem Lord’s hands, they might as well not cost money. She threw them out by the handful. Over a hundred full formation sets, gone just like that!
The resources behind her were just as outrageous.
Far away, Bao Gu’s heart hurt as well.
Those formation flags… She had used up every flag she’d brought with her, and in the end, she’d only managed to wipe out a bit over ten thousand of Hidden Dragon Abyss’s elites.
Her original plan had been to use the formations to first kill a portion of the troops and throw their lines into chaos, then seize the opportunity to strike and catch them completely off guard.
Yu Mi had told her not to rush things, to pull back once the damage was done, and not to risk getting trapped.
The result was that while Hidden Dragon Abyss had suffered a devastating ambush, the formations in the rear hadn’t broken. Even under attack, they could still regroup quickly and effectively.
If things had gone according to her original plan, she would probably already be locked in open battle against the thirty thousand-strong elite force and the Heavenly Demon Dragon Cavalry.
From the looks of their formations and momentum, the thirty thousand or so soldiers she had simply weren’t a match.
The ten thousand Cleaver Gang Asura Hall and War Demon Hall deathsworn she’d brought were still acceptable. The Soul Chasing Pavilion assassins, however, were completely unsuited to this kind of positional warfare; they’d be crushed.
As Hidden Dragon Abyss suffered more ambushes and heavier casualties, they would only grow more vigilant, their defenses more stringent. Every step forward from now on would be harder than the last.
The disparity in troop numbers left her extremely passive.
This battle would drag on. Once it turned into a prolonged war of attrition, with the limited military experience she and Yu Mi had, it would be very difficult to sustain. They had no true general capable of commanding armies in a long campaign.
Bao Gu asked in a low voice,
“Senior Sister, what do we do next?”
Yu Mi replied,
“No idea. We’ll take it one step at a time. After running around all night, let’s find a place to rest first.”
Seeing Bao Gu looking a bit deflated, she couldn’t help but chuckle.
“The other side lost over twenty thousand men last night. You didn’t lose a single soldier. What more do you want?
“Pull yourself together. Don’t dream about becoming a fat pig in one bite. The world doesn’t hand out windfalls that easy.”
Bao Gu muttered gloomily,
“I’ve already gotten used to becoming a fat pig in one bite. Being told to go slow all of a sudden feels really strange.”
Yu Mi thought back.
Bao Gu’s Xuantian Sword, her cultivation, the flood-dragon medicine fields that made her fortune, the foundation of the Cleaver Gang, the Xuantian Mountains from their master’s wife, the way she handled Wangxian Sect… every major step had been like stumbling into a massive windfall and ballooning overnight.
Hearing Bao Gu’s aggrieved tone, Yu Mi couldn’t hold back a laugh.
“Then just think of it as losing weight.”
Bao Gu: “…”
“Let’s go. We can’t stay here.”
Yu Mi said,
“If you don’t want them to lock down your movements, you have to keep moving.”
When she finished speaking, she tossed out the teleportation platform and headed toward the prosperous trading city of Zhao City with Bao Gu in tow.
After this night of chaos, Hidden Dragon Abyss was sure to launch a mad counterattack, combing the region like a fine-toothed comb to drag them out. Staying any longer in the You River region would be unwise; they’d be easy to corner and capture.
Yu Mi’s style had always been to stop once things were going well—strike once, then vanish.
