While Hei Ang was watching with anticipation, Zhang’s soldiers gathered behind the oil pits with torches in hand prepared to make a stand against the horde of beasts outside. As the rumbling and roars continued on, Zhang and Ai were standing hand in hand atop the wooden fort walls with a mixture of emotion in their eyes. On one part they filled anticipation for the chance of fighting the horde of Cactus Dragons while another part of them worried about how many of their soldiers may be killed.
The main reason as to why Zhang had not tried to leave the fort yet was because he worried about the safety of his soldiers while another part of him also firmly believed that if it were just him and Ai then slaying a few Cactus Dragons and escaping wouldn’t be impossible.
“Hey brother what’s that one doing?” Ai ask as she pointed at the Queen Cactus Dragon while her legs dangled over the fortress walls.
“Don’t know.” Zhang replied as squinted his eyes and focused the Queen Cactus Dragon while sitting beside Ai.
The Queen Cactus Dragon had strangely dropped onto its knees and bowed its head on to the ground while giving off a low humming sound.
“Wh-why is it prostrating?” Hei Ang said in a shaken tone as he watched the Queen Cactus Dragon kneel and the all of its horde bowing.
“Something is wrong, go ready our men.” He said to his adjacent who was also watching what was happening with a dumbfounded expression on his face. Soon the many thousands of soldiers dressed in black cloaks sped through the forest and formed ranks where general Hei Ang was.
While the Dark Legion was forming ranks, the Queen Cactus Dragon bit off a beautiful glowing red flower that was growing on her shoulder and placed it onto the ground before prostrating once more.
“I think it’s giving us a peace offering.” Zhang said as he nudged Ai who was captivatingly looking at the red star shaped flower.
“Why would it do that.” Ai said with a perplexed look on her face.
“Maybe it’s scared of you, like most animals are.” Zhang laughed.
“Maybe it is, only one way to find out though. I’ll be right back!” Ai said as she slid down the fortress walls and landed on her feet before Zhang could stop her.
“Stay on guard I’ll be back in a bit.” Zhang said to his soldiers while shaking his head before jumping off the ledge of the wall himself.
“I guess as crazy as it seems it’s better than just sitting there and waiting to see what happens.” Zhang thought as he caught up to Ai with a pair of long swords gripped in his hands.
As the Cactus Dragons saw Ai close in on them they began to emit low volume growls and screeches before moving back showing that they were reluctant to be near her for some reason. Soon all of the Cactus Dragons had retreated moved back a few feet, furthering their distance away from Ai, while their queen remained prostrating on the ground.
“Where are you all going!?” Ai yelled.
Once Ai arrived at where the red star-shaped flower was the Queen Cactus Dragon was watching her with its huge red colored eyes. After a low howl, the Queen Cactus Dragon performed a single bow and turned around and walked into the forest, leaving a trail of fallen trees in her wake. Once their queen departed the horde of Cactus Dragon’s soon followed her after they too bit off a star-shaped flower, creating a pile of green colored flowers atop the red one that the queen had left.
“I guess the fear that animals have for Ai has been taken to an entirely new level.” Zhang laughed as he watched Ai pick up the red colored star shaped flower.
Although a number of factors could have attributed to the current situation, such as Zhang’s black dragon flames that reside in his body or Ai’s Queen of Night whip, that could have caused the Cactus Dragons to act the way they did. Since the black flames belonged to a true dragon and the Cactus Dragons were imitations they, of course, would be scared of it. There was also the Queen of the Night which is called the flower of kings and since Ai's body was covered in its scent, other plant demonic beasts would surely be afraid of her.
But Zhang naturally would claim it was due to her deposition with animals as the reason as to why the Cactus Dragon Horde was moving away, this was because he could use it to tease her later.
“Ge-ge-general, ho-how did they get those things to prostrate!? Those Cactus Dragons even gave them the Star Lilies that take a thousand years of growth to reach maturity. Those flowers are said to instantly heal wounds and even act to prolong youth. I heard they even help cure excessive blood vomiting which is a plague to many cultivators.” General Hei Ang’s second in command said while stuttering.
“Tsk… Have our forces move in and encircle them! I was a fool to wait for those stupid beasts to complete our task for us.” Hei Ang said with furrowed brows and a frown on his face. Shortly after he spoke two streams of blood trickled out from the sides of his mouth.
Once the orders were passed down through the ranks the soldiers of the Dark Legion marched through the woods while raising their flags into the sky.
“Ai collect those and let’s get back into the fort, it seems we have some more new friends.” Zhang said as he few thousands of flags fluttering in the sky and many more thousands of men slowly emerge from the woods.
Even the path that was created by the Cactus Dragons had been filled in by soldiers with black cloaks draping over their bodies.
“I wonder how many people they brought there are so many flags.” Ai said as her gaze shifted from one place to the next while she and Zhang sped toward the fort.
While Ai was curiously looking around, a broad smile appeared on Zhang’s face as he found an opportunity to test out the extent of his power after stepping into the eighth level of cultivation. There had been techniques that had been shown to him by Yuying and Xin Tao that he could not use until he had reached the eighth level, that he was itching to try out.
“Change of plans you head back and keep an eye out on those in the fort, I’ll go stretch my legs a bit and test out their strength so we can plan accordingly.” Zhang said to Ai with a grin as his cap began to emit a dark aura while his shadowed extended and a large scaly snake shot out and lifted Zhang into the air.
With a mighty roar, the Abyssal Viper shot toward the soldiers of the Dark Legion with Zhang riding on top of its scale head.
“Hogging all of the fun again…” Ai said while pouting a bit, however since she was asked to keep the soldiers in the fort safe until Zhang had a bit of fun, she did not stop moving and continued heading toward the fort.
“Use the Heaven’s Chaser Formation!” Hei Ang’s voice echoed into the ears of his subordinates as Zhang neared them with weapons drawn.
“Those damn phony dragons might have left but I’ll be showing off your head atop a spike soon enough.” Hei Ang said in a low tone as he watched his men enter formation and readied themselves to fight against Zhang and the massive Abyssal Viper.
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The soldiers of the Dark Legion had formed a massive yin and yang shaped formation with their swords drawn as they charged toward Zhang. Like water, they evade the body of the massive Abyssal Viper that would have crushed them to mesh and reformed their formation and sent thousands of rays of light shooting out from their swords.
“So this is a living spell formation! To think I would see this here!” Zhang said delightfully as dozens of weapons appeared around him and floated in the air.
Usually, spell formations were only practiced by large sects who generally resided in large kingdoms. Since the Warring States Region was comprised entirely of tens of provinces and war was waged without end, large sects avoided building their foundations within it because the last thing they wanted was to be dragged into senseless wars which would only serve to slow down the growth of their sects.
So since there were no large sects within the Warring States Region, Zhang figured that the spell formation being formed in front of him would not by a high level one, which would make it perfect practice if he happened to find himself caught in a spell formation when traveling outside of the Warring States Region.
“Heaven Chaser Activate!” The cloaked soldiers of the Dark Legion yelled in unison as the rays of light from their swords concentrated into a single point in the air and formed into a giant translucent sword that looked big enough to slice mountains in half.
While jumping off the head of the Abyssal Viper, with a thought Zhang made the massive snake tower into the sky. Upon receiving Zhang’s command, the Abyssal Viper’s jaws unlatched and lashed out at the giant sword that was descending from the skies.
Sadly, the Abyssal Viper was fundamentally not very strong and was disintegrated upon touched the giant translucent sword.
As his Abyssal Viper disintegrated, Zhang landed onto one of the clocked soldiers of the Dark Legion and his twin blades pierced through the unlucky man’s body.
Once their target landed the soldiers of the Dark Legion changed the shape of their formation and created three rings comprising of many hundreds of men who were in constant motion with their swords pointed toward Zhang.
They had basically formed a giant bullseye symbol with Zhang in the center. With a thought Zhang’s weapons that were levitating around him shot in random directions and impaled a dozen or so cloaked men.
“So to break the formation I have to quickly cut my way out before the giant sword descends and before they can react to my movements.” Zhang thought as he charged through the spell formation
While Zhang was trying to figure out how to break through human spell formations, Ai had made it back to the fort and made countless black vines pierce through the earth and encase the fort.
As Ai’s essence reverberated in the air and the black vines released their aura, the horde of Cactus Dragons that were quite a distance away began to roar loudly before speeding up their pace and fleeing.
Although Zhang was killing one cloaked soldier after the other, he could not stop the spell formation because once he killed someone another would fill that person’s place. Of course, he was in no immediate danger but it was only a matter of time before the massive sword piercing through would impact the ground m and who knows what kind of damage that could do.
“Heaven’s Wrath!” Zhang roared as he pointed one of his swords into the sky and sent a large lightning bolt snaking upward.
The Lightning was naturally faster than the translucent sword and ascended into the skies before dealer dispersing in a cloud.
As the cloud began to crackle, streaks of lightning danced through the skies as countless lightning bolts rained down.
It was without a doubt that the lightning bolts lacked the power to destroy the translucent sword but it would cause devastating damage to the Dark Legion’s soldiers below.
“We can have some more fun later” Zhang mumbled as he tried to make his way out of the spell formation while lightning randomly struck the ground around him.
“Maybe it's because they aren't proficient at it or this spell formation is not strong but it's too slow.” Zhang thought. It was obvious the translucent sword that was materialized due to the spell formation was very powerful since it was constructed by the combined might of thousands of people, but no matter how powerful something is if it doesn't hit its target then it's pretty much useless.
“Disperse!” All of the dark legion’s soldiers in the spell formation yelled as the massive translucent sword they conjured broke up into hundreds of thousands of smaller swords and tries to negate the rain of lightning.
“So it can do things like that too, maybe if I can capture their commander and make him teach it to my men.” Zhang thought as an Abyssal Viper appeared out from his shadow and snaked out of the spell formation.
“Reform ranks! Give me a damage report!” Hei Ang ordered his soldiers who had been showered by lightning moments ago.
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While Zhang was experiencing new things, Yuying’s army had surrounded Purple Rock City.
“Your highness all of our men are in place and are awaiting orders.” A soldier reported to Yuying who was sitting atop of throne made entirely of bones.
“Good.” She said as her throne rose into the air as a column of bones appeared underneath it. With a thought, Yuying made countless bones rose into the sky and formed a massive bony fist that shot through the air.
The soldiers within Purple Rock City looked in horror as the giant fist smashed into their city wall, however, contrary to their expectations the bone fist did not do very much damage to the wall at all. The only thing it did was leave thousands of bones embedded into the side of the wall.
“Tree of Death.” Yuying said in a low tone as the bones that were embedded into the wall began to grow like the roots of a tree. As they grew the bones began to connect and intertwine with one another until a large tree trunk was formed within the city walls.
“Everyone off the walls!” The soldiers atop the walls screamed as bony branches pierced through the stone blocks that the wall was made out of. Tens of minutes later an eerie tree of bones replaced a section of the city walls.
“Move in! Kill everyone!” Yuying commanded with a cold expression in her eyes before her throne made of bones arrived before another section of the city wall.
By the time Yuying was done, four trees of bones had spawned out of the city walls and her army had already swarmed into the city.