As far as the eye could see, islands large and small were scattered like stars across a chessboard. Many already had occupants, and dwellings had been erected upon them.
Most were crude wooden buildings or stone huts formed by shaping earth with incantations.
There were, of course, exceptionally exquisite pavilions, towers, and winding streams for floating cups that had clearly been arranged with meticulous care, but these were rare. After all, the cultivators had been summoned here to fight, not to enjoy themselves.
At the very center of all the islands stood the most conspicuous one—the new Stargazing Island, formed by Snake Granny seizing and kneading dozens of islands together.
The cave abodes of Snake Granny and the other senior Core Formation masters were situated on Stargazing Island and its neighboring islets.
Radiating out from Stargazing Island, the Foundation Establishment cultivators of the righteous and demonic paths were distinctly separated; the righteous cultivators mostly gathered on the west side while the demonic sects took the east, mirroring the geography of the Lesser Cold Domain.
As more and more Lesser Cold Domain cultivators were summoned here, the rift between righteous and demonic grew wider. Even on the eve of war, the two factions still could not put aside their prejudices.
This was also the point that puzzled Qin Sang the most.
Neither the Lesser Cold Domain nor the Heaven-Traversing Alliance seemed to possess the resolve to muster their forces and fight to the death.
Three years ago, when the two sides first confronted each other in these waters, manpower had been short and the spiritual formations unstable, leading to several truly intense, massive battles.
Both sides had mobilized their cultivators, clashing outside the sea of mist in multiple grand battles involving thousands of cultivators. At the most critical juncture, Qin Sang and his peers had been forced to flee into the sea of mist, and the True Water Thousand Illusions Formation—far less stable than it was now—had nearly been breached.
Naturally, there were also times when the Lesser Cold Domain held the upper hand, pursuing the enemy relentlessly all the way to the waters of Taiqing Lake and nearly leveling it to the ground.
Qin Sang considered that period to be the most dangerous. Fortunately, backed by his sect and banding together with his fellow disciples, he had weathered it without any real mishap.
Overall, the two sides could be considered evenly matched.
Especially once their respective formations were fully established, each side secured a firm footing behind their own grand array. With neither able to overcome the other, the situation fell into a stalemate.
One had to realize that the Lesser Cold Domain was fighting on two fronts: anomalies frequently manifested in the Ancient Immortal Battlefield, and cloud beasts were running amok, so the Lesser Cold Domain had to reserve sufficient strength to defend the Seven Heroes Passes.
The forces dispatched to the Yuncang Great Marsh did not represent the full might of the Lesser Cold Domain, yet they remained evenly matched with the Heaven-Traversing Alliance.
Viewed from this angle, had they not been pinned down by the spirit tide in the Ancient Immortal Battlefield, the Lesser Cold Domain's overall strength would have surpassed the Heaven-Traversing Alliance by a notch. Yet before the signs of the spirit tide appeared, the Lesser Cold Domain had never actively invaded the Heaven-Traversing Alliance.
Even now, after Stargazing Island had relocated to the Luandao Waters, it had not advanced a single step further. Qin Sang could not sense any aggressive momentum from the Lesser Cold Domain whatsoever.
Under this stalemate, fighting never ceased, but neither side committed all its forces anymore; grand spectacles featuring thousands of cultivators clashing rarely occurred.
A strange tacit understanding seemed to have developed between the Lesser Cold Domain and the Heaven-Traversing Alliance: they merely dispatched squads of Foundation Establishment cultivators to roam this vast expanse of water and hunt one another.
All they received was a vague order—patrol outside, and if unusual spatial fluctuations were detected anywhere, report immediately for a generous reward.
Yet the order never specified what kind of fluctuations.
The Core Formation cultivators of both sides could not stay out of it either. Every eight to ten days, they would come out to battle once. Fortunately, their clashes were essentially between peers, rarely bullying the weak.
Qin Sang paid close attention to battles between Core Formation masters. Because he needed to gauge the strength of Core Formation cultivators, he found ways to spectate whenever an opportunity arose.
Though clashes between Core Formation cultivators were not as astonishing as the spectacle of the thunder-devouring falcon and the two Nascent Soul powerhouses, they were still terrifying. The collateral damage spread wide, and one had to be extremely careful when watching, lest they be caught in the crossfire like innocent fish in a pond.
Over the past three years, while ensuring his own safety, Qin Sang had spectated many such duels, gaining a decent understanding of the power of Core Formation cultivators.
Their strength was indeed formidable, with clear disparities between the early, mid, and late stages.
Apart from cultivation base, magic treasures were another crucial benchmark for measuring a Core Formation cultivator's strength.
A mysterious, superior-quality magic treasure could grant an immense advantage in combat, running the opponent ragged or even bridging the gap in cultivation base.
However, magic treasures of mid-grade or higher were exceedingly rare. More than ninety percent of those Qin Sang had witnessed were low-grade magic treasures, comparable to his ebony sword.
Of course, Qin Sang was more or less constrained by his cultivation level, so his insights were not necessarily entirely accurate.
To Qin Sang, the clashes between Core Formation cultivators resembled staged duels more than anything else.
Most concluded with someone severely injured and fleeing. Even in the fiercest battles, at most someone lost their physical body while their origin soul and gold core successfully escaped.
In short, among all the duels Qin Sang had witnessed, not a single Core Formation master had actually perished.
As for the Nascent Soul powerhouses of both factions, they had never once shown their faces since the war began.
It seemed both the Lesser Cold Domain and the Heaven-Traversing Alliance were waiting for a certain moment to arrive.
He didn't know whether it was just an illusion, but Qin Sang couldn't shake the feeling that this war—which seemed fraught with danger and a matter of life and death to them—might be nothing more than a game to high-level cultivators.
"Alas!"
Helpless, Qin Sang shook his head gently. After flying out of the sea of mist, he oriented himself and rode the Nether Silk Cloud across the skies of the scattered islands, landing on an inconspicuous stone islet.
The stone islet was square, flat, and barren, devoid of any vegetation. In truth, it was a single block of reef rock stained bluish-black. Unfortunately, it measured barely more than two zhang across; with a stone hut built atop it, there was practically no room left to stand.
In the Luandao Waters, this islet was considered tiny, yet Qin Sang had stayed here for three years.
The stone hut was his cave abode.
Releasing the cave abode's restrictions and verifying that no one had intruded, Qin Sang stepped inside and sealed the restrictions behind him with practiced ease. He then took several spirit stones from his mustard seed bag and flicked them toward various spots in the abode.
As the spirit stones embedded into the ground with crisp clicks, the faint glow of a spiritual formation lit up within the abode, and the spiritual energy inside gradually thickened.
At the same time, the spirit stones on the ground slowly dimmed—a sign that their spiritual power was being siphoned away.
The Luandao Waters had originally been extremely barren, possessing only a single hidden spirit vein, which Pei Qin had claimed.
By whatever means Stargazing Island had employed, the spiritual energy of the Luandao Waters had improved after the True Water Thousand Illusions Formation enveloped the area, but it remained insufficient for so many cultivators to cultivate.
In this situation, no one dared to establish a cave abode outside the True Water Thousand Illusions Formation.
The location of Qin Sang's cave abode was fairly decent, but for his realm, the spiritual energy was still far too sparse; he had to rely on spirit stones to assist his cultivation.
Cultivating in this manner came at a steep cost, yet Qin Sang had grown accustomed to it.
He even took a kind of untiring pleasure in it.
When going out to fight, all the spoils obtained from hunting enemies belonged to him, which was more than enough to sustain his cultivation.
Qin Sang spared no spirit stones, setting up the best possible Spirit Gathering Array to boost the spiritual energy in his cave abode to the maximum. Cultivating at top speed and reaching the False Core stage as soon as possible was his sole objective!
Chapter 443