Even after backing away several hundred paces, Kalvin’s mercenaries were roughly pushed back by a sizeable cloud of dirt and dust that flooded out of the clearing with a natural roar and spilled into the surrounding forest with a terrifying whoosh. Of the trees that had managed to remain upright following Belren’s attack on the barrier, the last resilient leaves were ripped from broken branches as several sturdy trunks toppled over amidst a chorus of sinewy snapping sounds.
This is…
Kalvin knew in his heart that he couldn’t bring about the same results with just a simple punch. He’d been told that the young man was stronger than his cultivation level should have allowed, but to possess strength nearing the eighth level of Genesis? That was an entire stage above his actual attainments, a discrepancy that was unheard of in history no matter where one looked.
It wasn’t just Kalvin that had adopted a look of disbelief. Belren, the elders of both sects—everyone in the area wore similar expressions, some glancing at the other two Integration-staged cultivators in the enemy group that were relying on flying swords to float. If Nolan was an entire stage stronger than his true level, then did these two possess strength akin to the fourth level of Genesis?
Although this is surprising, it changes nothing.
Focusing his attention on the young man, Kalvin wondered why he had felt the need to destroy such a valuable treasure. While it might not have been of the same grade as the Desolate Spirit Tower, the one that he’d just smashed apart had still been worth billions of spirit stones.
He received his answer a moment later.
“Towers like these are nothing to us,” came Nolan’s booming voice. “Meanwhile, the survival of your sect depends on it.” Drawing out a complex arrayment diagram, he abruptly summoned a ring of glowing white light that immediately began to pull in vast amounts of Origin Energy from the surroundings. “I can make a thousand of them if I want to.”
Were Kalvin’s eyes deceiving him? The spiritual arrayments necessary to create treasures like the Desolate Spirit Tower had been lost for millennia. In all of the continent, not a single person was known to be able to use such techniques, which lent immense value to the scant amount of objects that had been imbued with said type of arrayment. Aside from the Falling Rain Sect’s precious tower, only eight other powers in the known world were in possession of such artifacts.
“We can’t allow this boy to die.”
Hearing Julian’s resolute voice, he immediately saw his line of reasoning. At the very least, they should keep the one named Nolan alive long enough to scan his soul for the specifics of the technique that he’d just used, even if it required the expenditure of even more of Kalvin’s prized possessions.
Grasping his sound transference talisman, he sent Julian a prompt reply. “He has a similar constitution to someone in the Genesis stage. Even if he loses all of his limbs, he should be able to stay alive for a significant amount of time.”
The short, weak-looking young man raised one of his pencil-thin eyebrows. “Are you going to use your Thousand Killing Formation after all?”
“More than just that. Julian, you command the mercenaries to ready a unified attack arrayment. Notify me the moment they’re ready."
“Give me a few minutes.”
While all of the mercenaries were arrayment practitioners—which was quite rare below the Genesis stage, a testament to the total cost of their wages—the arrayment in question was very difficult to activate and required a specific span of time where they could focus on its construction without external interference.
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Several seconds after he’d issued orders to his trusted subordinate, the body of hired hands began to move in unison as they carefully outlined the necessary diagram from atop their flying swords. All of the scattered cultivators had since recovered from the shockwave that had followed Nolan’s strike, the group now arranged in three blocks of one thousand people that all stood behind iridescent schematics in preparation for an all-out strike.
Seeing the sudden movement on Kalvin’s side, Belren secretly contacted him via direct mental projection.
Forgive the intrusion, but if you lot are making a move, can I take it that you’ve actually got a way to break this barrier?
Kalvin didn’t look over at the man, but kept his gaze on the group ahead.
But of course. There’s no situation I can’t reverse.
They have a lot of treasures on them. Just to make things clear, we’ll be taking eighty percent of their belongings once all's said and done.
Let’s leave such thoughts for after we’ve dealt with the situation, shall we? It’ll be up to you to take them down, so make sure to act swiftly.
Focus on taking down that barrier.
Kalvin doubted that their targets hadn’t thought of a contingency plan for the possibility that their trusted wall of protection might fail them in the evidently anticipated conflict. Whatever their backup tactics were, he was sure that Tems would mindlessly converge on the objects of his revenge as soon as the barrier was dispelled, at which point the man would serve as a living outline of their precautions for the CMA and Nightshadow Sect’s forces when he inevitably fell into whatever trap they had lain.
Nolan abruptly dispelled his miraculous energy-gathering arrayment and made to say something else, but it was at this exact moment that Kalvin chose to act. Throwing his treasured talisman at the face of the invisible barrier, a web of electric bolts spread across a wide stretch of the space before him as the slip of paper disintegrated with a brief flash of golden light. Several walls of energy were suddenly made slightly visible, as if seven giant panes of glass had just appeared out of thin air in the space between Kalvin and the green-robed youths. One after the other, these sheets of energy shattered and then dissipated as if they were solid objects that were being eaten away by acid.
Belren and his people reacted without hesitation, activating the offensive martial skill that they had showcased earlier and then flying forward one by one in order of the more capable sect members to the least. Half of the force remained on standby as per unvoiced orders that Belren had clearly given them via mental transmission, the rest converging on the ten ahead of them at the fastest pace that they could fly.
Everyone in the enemy group appeared surprised, including the young leader whose expression quickly hardened into an unreadable mask of neutrality. Worry and fright were visible on the faces of some of his companions, all of whom made to avoid the oncoming rush with startled, frantic movements.
Nolan lagged behind the others, his body suddenly engulfed in a vibrant green light before thousands of long, verdant spikes appeared in the air behind him. Each was the length of an adult’s leg and about a hand’s span in diameter, the tips as sharp as the point of any blade. Punching out with a tremendous amount of strength, a scene similar to the one that had preceded the wooden tower’s demise played out before all of those present, though this time the harsh, whiplashing winds were accompanied by a hail of incredibly dense energy projectiles that made contact with their targets the instant that they were launched.
Most of the attackers were forced to dispel their martial skills in order to avoid or defend against the sudden volley, a handful failing to protect their lives as entire sections of their bodies were powerfully punctured before they could properly react. Such was the force of the attack that over a dozen of the Nightshadow Sect’s elite disciples could only gasp in shock as limbs were ripped from their bodies while some of their comrades exploded into bloody masses of falling flesh clumps.
As his disciples defended and died, Belren and several of his fellow elders ignored their plight and instead appeared in the enemy’s midst, at least one person to each of the opposing people. It was during this moment that several things happened at once.
Firstly, the black-haired girl stunned everybody by drawing out and activating an arrayment diagram in just a few seconds, something that simply shouldn’t have been possible. It wasn’t the hundreds of finger movements that was the implausible aspect; at the fourth level of Genesis, it was only natural for her to be able to make such movements. The shocking thing was the fact that she could imbue these actions with the appropriate ratios of spiritual energy while also being conscious of each step of the diagram’s construction. Each line and curve of the diagram, whether a specific symbol, character or shape, had to be infused with its own unique injection of energy, meaning that the creation of a complex arrayment was incredibly difficult and took even the most accomplished masters at least forty to fifty seconds to draw out and activate.