Bombarding Cultivators with Cluster Artillery

In the tranquil palace.

Jiang Ding dismissed his maidens, gazing intently at the starry sea in his Sea of Consciousness that symbolized the maidens of the Northern Plains.

His Divine Sense slightly stirred as the scenes from the past sixteen years began to flashback.

At the beginning, there were fifty-one thousand two hundred individual Divine Soul imprints, each with its subtleties.

As time passed, the number of Divine Soul imprints slowly increased. Over the course of four years, it grew from fifty-one thousand two hundred to fifty-three thousand.

In the fifth year,

a section of the starry sea suddenly dimmed.

Losing six thousand, signifying the death of over six thousand maidens, the number fell to forty-seven thousand.

Jiang Ding browsed through the information.

In the battle at Yu Family Mountain, the Six Dao Saint Yin Dao led fifteen thousand soldiers in an ambush, massacring six thousand Kan Yu maidens en route to Mountain Yuluo.

Having learned from past lessons, Yin Dao set up an illusion formation in the main camp to shield it from the outside, picked all direct lineage members to form an elite troop, and sealed off all internal and external communications with a secret treasure, marching secretly tens of thousands of miles to reach the ambush site.

At that time, commanding this troop was Immortal Yuluo of the Kan Yu maidens, a Golden Pill Peak female cultivator of considerable repute in the Northern Plains.

Facing the encirclement led personally by the Six Dao Saint Yin Dao, she held out for ten days, breaking through multiple times with heavy casualties.

Eventually, she became disheartened.

In her despair, she secretly contacted the Liudao Sect, wanting to surrender.

At the critical moment, a green-dressed maiden from the Kan Yu maidens detected something amiss and ordered an execution before she could surrender.

Subsequently, the Kan Yu maidens continued to hold for three more days. With more than half of their number dead or injured, they had no strength left to fight, and the nearest reinforcements were ten days’ away.

In the end, she ordered the entire army to break through and was overtaken by the great army of the Liudao Sect. They perished, with only few managing to escape.

The Kan Yu Division suffered heavy losses and had to draw from other troops to rebuild.

Thereafter, the maiden group in the court learned from this experience and ordered all divisions to consolidate, to avoid being defeated in detail.

At the same time, due to the complete annihilation of the Kan Yu Division, an argument erupted between the Tushan maiden group and the Blood King Army, which dominated the Blood King Court - swords were drawn, and a crisis of trust emerged.

The reasons were twofold.

Firstly, although the Six Dao Saint Yin Dao marched secretly, his army was after all fifteen thousand strong. Even with an illusion to hide his camp, could there really be no flaws at all? Did none of the numerous Golden Pill informants developed by the Blood King Army through the Co-Nascent Soul Pact among Dao Friends notice anything?

Regardless of the facts,

the Tushan maiden court found this unreasonable.

Secondly, the Kan Yu Division maidens were besieged for a full thirteen days, yet many of the nearest Blood King Army divisions within ten thousand miles were so slow to support, much slower than usual?

If the first point was mere speculation, the second was irrefutably certain.

Upon comprehensive assessment, the Tushan maiden court believed this was a deliberate purge by factions within the Blood King Army, showing shortsightedness and an inability to cooperate even before achieving interim victories.

The response of the Blood King Army was, firstly, groundless accusations, and secondly, the commanders of the five nearby divisions that failed to support in time had been beheaded and sent to the Tushan maiden court as an apology.

Beneath the heads of five Golden Pill Cultivators, the losses of the Tushan maidens were far greater, and the matter was thus set aside.

The Tushan maiden court said nothing more and bore it patiently.

But clearly, distrust had taken root, and they would no longer include the Blood King Army in their tactical plans during military campaigns, becoming more conservative.

Both sides believed they were being patient.

The Blood King Army believed that with their army of over three million cultivators each capable of forming an Army Formation, once fully deployed, even Nascent Soul Monks would have to retreat threefold, seeking war machines indirectly and not daring to engage directly.

The Tushan maiden group believed that although they numbered only fifty thousand, each was an elite fighter not to be underestimated.

Both sides were dissatisfied with the other, suspecting ulterior motives, yet for the sake of the greater situation, they did not act out.

”A rift has formed...”

Jiang Ding’s gaze was calm as he felt no surprise at this development.

Two entirely different command systems, different interest groups, conflict was inevitable, only it arose surprisingly swiftly, before even the phase objectives could be met.

Then, time passed.

A year later, the Tushan maiden group assembled, nearly fifty thousand strong, stationed at the heart of the Blood King Army’s main force, marching steadily.

The Blood King Army had suffered major losses. The Six Dao Saint Yin Dao had led his elite troops to attack the dispersed units, and despite receiving occasional early warnings, the cumbersome troops simply could not evade and were wiped out time and again.

Blood Cloud sought help.

The Tushan maiden group watched coldly, turning a blind eye.

Wherever Blood Cloud was, they would be, never willing to risk a charge, to pursue the elite forces of the Six Dao Saint alone and put themselves in danger.

Beset by helplessness, Blood Cloud could only lead a small number of troops along with the Tushan maiden group to intercept, ultimately forcing the Six Dao Saint Yin Dao, who had crushed tens of thousands, to retreat, no longer daring to hazard his small forces.

What followed was a march, march, and the occasional battle. Cultivators, with their storage bags, were rarely troubled by logistic issues.

On the tenth year, the Tushan maiden group and the Blood King Army, having recovered their numbers to fifty thousand, arrived at the Liudao Sect’s main camp.

There, the Liudao Sect took advantage of three Third-Order Superior Quality Spiritual Veins to set up a formidable Fourth-Order Six Dao Reincarnation Life-Ending Great Formation, hailed as impregnable, capable of standing against a hundredfold enemy.

After several days of deliberation in the central tent of the Blood King Army and the Tushan maiden group, the decision was made to attack regardless of casualties, to annihilate the opponent as quickly as possible and gain an edge in the King’s Court war, taking a firm step toward the Nascent Soul path.

Void of any tactics, evasion, a bloody and direct slaughter thus commenced.

In the meantime, through Jiang Ding’s perspective, one could occasionally see a small patch of dimmed stars, scores of maidens falling in battle, sometimes even hundreds at a time.

Clearly, as they assaulted the Fourth-Order formation, the ongoing losses were heavy and the fight wasn’t easy.

The Blood King Army suffered even greater casualties, by a hundredfold, corpses scattered everywhere.

All the blood and Vital Souls were absorbed by the Six Dao Reincarnation Life-Ending Formation, which only enhanced its might.

Blood Cloud and the Tushan maiden central tent, indifferent to this, continued their relentless assault regardless of casualties.

When casualties mounted, they were replaced by new troops.

Those cultivators who stood out were immediately rewarded and promoted generously, to win over their loyalty.

Those who showed fear and did not advance were executed on the spot as a warning to others.

Through this process, the army was continuously tempered.

The Blood King Army’s mixed forces, having gone through such bloody battles, had greatly reduced in numbers, but their strength had paradoxically increased.

The Blood Cloud Banner, a legacy of the ancient Blood River Sect of the Great Demonic Path, after devouring the fresh blood and Vital Souls of both enemy and ally, was imposing, on the verge of breaking through the limits of a Golden Pill Treasure to become a Nascent Treasure.

If not for Blood Cloud’s uneasiness, his reluctance to allow the Blood Cloud Banner to undergo tribulation, it might have already happened.

Even so, with the battlefield’s massive quantities of fresh blood and Vital Souls, this didn’t go to waste, as they were able to refine dozens of superior quality Blood Cloud Sub Flags, continuously enhancing the killing aura of the Blood King’s personal Army Formation, nearly doubling its strength.

The Tushan maidens were even more formidable.

They practiced a sword cultivation method of the Taoist Soldiers, which was most suited for growth environments where life continuously withered away and blood continuously spilled, but not to the extent of immediate death—in war.

This kind of slaughter was simply paradise for sword cultivators.

In ancient legends, human race sword cultivators were born on endless racial battlefields, continuously fighting, continuously breaking through, becoming a pivotal force and one of the vital foundations of the human race’s dominion.

Without war, sword cultivators could not grow.

The slaughter lasted a full six years.

The number of Tushan maidens dropped from fifty thousand to forty-five thousand, then to forty thousand, and from forty thousand to thirty thousand, and then to twenty thousand—more than half were lost.

War is cruel and dreadful, with deserters appearing many times, all cut down by the maidens in azure dresses, which barely maintained order.

The gains, however, were plentiful.

Over a hundred broke through to Golden Pill!

The death of thirty thousand twinling root sword dao cultivators gave rise to one hundred and fourteen Golden Pills, while countless Foundation Building cultivators also made breakthroughs, so many they couldn’t be counted.

Although their numbers had dwindled,

their strength had increased manifold!