Chapter 682: Commence Battle (Part 2)

Chapter 682: Chapter 459: Commence Battle (Part 2)

Fang Qingyuan followed his unit to the center of the camp, where over a thousand Cultivators had already gathered. They wore uniform attire, standing silently in place. From the surrounding barracks, many more units like Fang Qingyuan’s emerged, flowing like streams into a lake as they found their designated positions and silently merged into the military formation.

A short while later, a grand array of six thousand men had taken shape. In its center stood a massive banner, embroidered with a five-clawed, golden-scaled Mirage Dragon!

The colossal banner was nearly a thousand feet tall and was pulled by thirty giant elephants. When unfurled, it seemed to blot out the sky and moon.

In a military formation of six thousand, the spontaneous exchange of Spiritual Qi among the Cultivators alone was enough to cause the surrounding space to tremble. ‘If they were to all unleash their strongest Magical Power on a single command, how intense would that scene be?’

Fang Qingyuan was positioned at the edge of the formation. He noticed a pattern: the higher a Cultivator’s cultivation base and status, the closer they were to the core of the formation and, thus, the nearest to the banner.

Perceiving the scene before him, Fang Qingyuan secretly compared it to his own army. But he quickly grew disheartened. ‘There’s just no comparison.’ Although both were Nascent Soul Level powers, the difference in their foundations was simply too vast.

The Qingyuan Alliance could currently muster a two-thousand-man army, which was already quite impressive. After all, Fang Qingyuan couldn’t possibly drag every single Cultivator in the Qingyuan Alliance to the battlefield to form an army. If he did, the various sects and families within the Qingyuan Alliance would be the first to revolt.

Conscripting one out of every three was the absolute limit. Even when Wei Tong attacked Shandu Mountain back then, that was as far as he could go. Anything more was an unsustainable practice, like draining the pond to catch the fish. No power could endure it.

Even among the disciples of the Qingyuan Sect itself, not all could be sent to the battlefield to fill the ranks of the army. There were always skill-based Cultivators like Spirit Plant Cultivators, Alchemists, and Talisman Makers who would not personally go to war.

At the very most, the Qingyuan Sect could currently field a force of five hundred Cultivators, and even that would be considered pushing their military to its limits. And yet, the Illusion Sword Alliance could muster a six-thousand-man army. By that calculation, the Illusion Sword Alliance probably had a reserve of over ten thousand more Cultivators.

And this was the situation after both sides had been fighting for ten years. From this, one could see that at the very beginning, the Illusion Sword Alliance could have likely deployed a grand array of ten thousand men.

After marveling that the Illusion Sword Alliance, a power ranked among the bottom seven or eight, could still muster such a force, a resolve hardened in Fang Qingyuan’s heart. ‘In the war of expansion thirty years from now, the Qingyuan Alliance’s army must, at the very least, consist of five thousand Cultivators.’

There was no mobilization rally, no rousing speech. With just a single command, the massive army began to march forward, their steps falling in perfect unison.

In large-scale conflicts between Cultivators, everything reverted to the most stable methods of combat. Though they could all fly, they still advanced on foot.

Using transport vessels like flying shuttles would leave them vulnerable to being wiped out in one fell swoop and prevent them from deploying large-scale arrays.

Likewise, flying in formation made it impossible to maintain the synchronized pace required to support a grand array, making them easy targets for area-of-effect attacks.

Thus, unless one possessed extremely powerful flying beasts or high-end assets like a Floating City, large-scale battles ultimately fell back on the reliable method of keeping one’s feet on the ground: slow coordination, gradual advancement, array against array, and treasure against treasure.

As for a lone swordsman shattering all techniques—while certainly epic in style, even a Nascent Soul Cultivator would have to be wary when facing the combined power of this six-thousand-man army.

If you weren’t a Nascent Soul Cultivator, even one at the peak of the Golden Core Realm would have to be careful not to be killed in a single blow.

Of course, if you were a Divinity Transformation Cultivator, an army of a hundred thousand wouldn’t pose a threat. But in that situation, there would be no need for a confrontation at all. At your command, the enemy would simply surrender. This is because only a Divinity Transformation Cultivator can face another. Without a Divinity Transformation Cultivator of your own, you simply pledge allegiance to whichever one arrives.

The Illusion Sword Alliance’s six-thousand-man army advanced steadily toward the Thick Earth Alliance’s lines. But as massive as this army was, it was not the main force today.

To the Illusion Sword Alliance’s left, the White Mountain Sword Sect’s eight-thousand-man army was also on the move. Judging by their position, they were even further forward than the Illusion Sword Alliance.

The cause of this war was a conflict between the White Mountain Sword Sect and the Sharp Gold Alliance. Therefore, those two were the ones with a true life-and-death grudge. The Illusion Sword Alliance and the Thick Earth Alliance, on the other hand, were only forced onto the field by the constraints of their pact. If you were to ask if they had any mortal enmity between them, the answer would be no.

The White Mountain Sword Sect’s army was larger, but a closer look revealed that the cultivation realms of its rank-and-file Cultivators were significantly lower than the Illusion Sword Alliance’s. The weakest of the Illusion Sword Alliance’s six thousand Cultivators were at the Middle to Late-stage of Qi Cultivation, whereas the White Mountain Sword Sect had even sent out Cultivators at the Early-stage of Qi Cultivation.

“Release the Silver Armor Music Puppets!”

Following a command from someone in the White Mountain Sword Sect, a group of Cultivators at the front of their army waved their hands, scattering sheets of silvery-white Talismans. Before the Talismans even hit the ground, they transformed into music puppets about ten feet tall that appeared to be forged entirely from silver, holding a gong in their left hand and a drum in their right.

Each of these music puppets was equivalent to a Mid-stage Foundation Establishment Body Cultivator. Their bodies were incredibly tough, able to both take and deal damage. Although they could only be maintained for an hour and were quite expensive, they were perfectly suited for a moment like this.