On another side of the battlefield, Gai Shuhe was sprinting at full speed, parting the air before him and leaving a trail of violent detonations in his wake.
From beginning to end, he had harbored no intention whatsoever of stepping up to trade blows with the Great Shun martial artists. When the advantage was overwhelming, he had no objection to fighting a battle with the wind at his back; when the advantage faded, leaving early was the only sensible choice.
His Gai clan already possessed everything anyone could ever desire. Winning even the greatest military merit was pointless, nor did he lack cultivation resources, so why throw his life away on the front lines?
Thus, the moment he realized Su Kuo was failing, he had retreated more decisively than anyone else on the field.
Yet behind him, Zharnik and his companion maintained their standard forms, trailing steadily like a shadow he could not shake off. He had tried multiple times to give them the slip, but the two clung to his scent as if locked onto him for good.
Though Zharnik and the woman appeared savage, both were the premier tracking and hunting warriors of their respective tribes; otherwise, they would never have been the ones to track down the Son of Agala in the first place.
Throughout their pursuit of Gai Shuhe, both displayed extraordinary patience. Even when he ducked into an esoteric ritual and briefly lost them, they caught up again before long, as though sniffing out his trail through the air.
Trouble loomed in Gai Shuhe's mind. He had already cleared the perimeter of the military array; past this point, there were no more esoteric rituals to impede his pursuers. Fortunately, he only needed to stall until nightfall. The nights of the convergence zone were exceedingly hostile to those from the other side, and by then he would be able to shake them off.
Not far ahead, a piercing whistle sounded, and a fine steed galloped into view. Gai Shuhe swung smoothly onto its back, gave the reins a sharp yank, and surged forward at a full gallop. This horse was not an aberration, but an animal bred and nurtured with his own mutated tissue. Reinforced by his fire of spirituality, it could sprint at speeds rivaling his own, drastically reducing the toll on his physical stamina.
Earlier, he had intentionally dashed at top speed to force the pair behind him to burn their energy in pursuit. Now, with the aid of the mount, he could conserve strength and recover, greatly increasing his chances of escape.
Zharnik and his companion remained completely silent. Gai Shuhe mounting a horse provoked not the slightest ripple of emotion from either of them; they were clearly conserving every scrap of usable stamina. They simply retrieved high-energy nutrients provided by Chen Chuan, swallowed them down to replenish their strength, and pressed on.
This was their first battle since awakening from their slumber. They would never turn back until their quarry was seized.
Ten minutes later, the battlefield had been left far behind. They arrived at the edge of the Holly Plains, where an outpost formerly used by the main army came into view.
A century was garrisoned inside, along with several convergence zone creatures specifically bred for message-carrying. As Gai Shuhe rushed past, he flung a jade token inside so the soldiers could transmit a telegraph to the rear and summon reinforcements to meet him.
Zharnik and the white-haired woman had shown little reaction until now, but seeing his move, Zharnik suddenly drew a deep breath. His entire frame swelled by a full size. He grabbed the outstretched hand of the white-haired woman, hoisted her onto his shoulder, flexed his muscles, and with a tremendous surge of power, hurled her forward.
At the same moment, the white-haired woman kicked off in coordination. The force was so immense that a momentary brilliance flared where the two made contact. She rocketed through the air like an artillery shell, soaring past Gai Shuhe in an instant and crashing into a building directly ahead of him, sending a billowing cloud of dust and smoke into the sky.
With a loud crash, the white-haired woman shoved aside heaps of rubble, let out a wild roar, and lunged straight toward Gai Shuhe, her aura of radiant flame sending showers of gravel spraying out like driving rain.
Gai Shuhe could no longer evade. His mind raced as he calculated his odds, realizing this was not a fight he could win. The raw might and capabilities these two displayed proved they were far from ordinary, and there was no telling if others were pursuing from behind.
There was only one way—
He vaulted down from his steed, using the horse's body to block their line of sight, and darted toward one side of the military post, intending to use the reinforced buildings and soldiers to obstruct his pursuers.
As he plunged in, the stationed soldiers had no time to react. They heard only dull, deafening thuds that left their heads spinning and vision blurring. The convergence zone birds perched overhead took fright at once, scattering in all directions.
The white-haired woman smashed the warhorse to pieces in a single collision. Her eyes remained locked onto Gai Shuhe's back, brutally battering aside and shattering every barrier in her path. He had not run far when, with a thunderous roar, a boulder blazing with blood-red streamers burst through a reinforced wall and hurtled toward him. He raised an arm to ward it off, but seeing him pause, the white-haired woman leaped forward and clamped both arms around one of his legs.
Sensing the hold, Gai Shuhe twisted his waist midair and delivered a flying kick straight toward her skull.
The white-haired woman paid it no heed, locking her grip onto his leg as a grappling force surged through his body. Boom! As the kick struck her head, spiritual light exploded. Her eyes even rolled back for a fraction of a second as though consciousness had fled, yet her arms remained locked around his leg, giving him no avenue of escape.
Another detonation erupted at Gai Shuhe's flank. Zharnik crashed in wrapped in blood-colored radiance, driving a fist directly into his ribs. As the spiritual light shattered at the impact point, tissue and bone collapsed inward, twisting his entire body out of shape.
Her consciousness returning, the white-haired woman seized Gai Shuhe's other leg, wrenched his body upward, and slammed him violently into the ground. A crater blew open on the spot, the impact shaking the entire outpost. Zharnik charged forward, clasped his fists together, engaged his waist and spine, and hammered down with savage fury toward Gai Shuhe's head!
Yet after delivering two consecutive strikes, he let out a frustrated roar. He abruptly discovered that the body beneath him was fading away into nothingness. This man was actually a martial artist of the Visage of the Divine! The body they had smashed was merely a vessel anchored by a fraction of his spiritual force, while the bulk of his spirit had already slipped away.
The two realized that the convergence zone birds that had scattered earlier were likely vessels carrying parts of his attached spirit. His technique had been so subtle that neither of them had noticed it at first.
Reading the surroundings, they quickly rushed out of the outpost. Though they had been delayed for a moment, the birds could not necessarily outpace them. With their peerless tracking skills, they could still hunt him down if they gave chase now.
Yet before they had gone far, the masked Mr. Zhuan walked toward them, carrying a bird in his hand.
The masked gentleman spoke, "He didn't get away. We caught this one, but it holds only about seventy percent of his power. It seems we couldn't eliminate him cleanly after all."
A Visage of the Divine was troublesome in precisely this way: unless there was a specific place they were compelled to defend or inhabit, thoroughly wiping them out in one go was extraordinarily difficult.
Even so, they had successfully eliminated all the top-tier combat assets the Former Imperial House had deployed here.
Meanwhile, at the fissure on the Holly Plains, large numbers of soldiers from Yangzhi and Center City poured out from the rift opening, commencing mop-up operations.
There was no need to hunt down the tens of thousands of fleeing enemy soldiers. With their top-tier masters eradicated, the remaining rank-and-file lacked the capacity to threaten any key positions. Furthermore, this defeat had dealt a devastating blow to the morale of the Former Imperial House; letting these men flee back would serve as counter-propaganda, working to Great Shun's distinct advantage.
Chen Chuan stood before the fissure, the Xuejun Saber planted in the ground before him, observing the personnel bustling around him.
Once matters here were resolved, he would find a way to destroy the esoteric ritual inside the temple, thereby allowing the fissure to be thoroughly assimilated by Fumu. The Former Imperial House would no longer be able to breach Jibei Dao through this route, removing a massive threat to the Yangzhi region.
Taking advantage of the lull, he reviewed the recent battle in his mind, assessing what he had done right, where he had fallen short, and what still needed refinement.
What satisfied him most was that despite possessing virtually inexhaustible power, he had refrained from maintaining peak intensity at every moment, releasing it only when needed and pulling it back when unnecessary.
This stemmed from a deeper understanding of and aspiration for the application of power—an embodiment of the principle that "in deficiency seek fullness, and in abundance hold reserve."
In the end, he had held back somewhat in this fight. After all, he still had to remain vigilant against Zhao Zhenye, so he had refrained from using either the Grand Radiant Light Forms or the Grand Firmament Forms, nor had he deployed the relics in his possession.
He had originally prepared himself for a pincer attack by Zhao Zhenye and Su Kuo together. In that scenario, the battle would not have been as straightforward as this one; even if not a desperate struggle, it would certainly have turned into a high-intensity war of attrition.
Facing two martial artists of the Longevity View was entirely different from facing one. When one engaged him, the other would have time to catch his breath and recover, keeping themselves at peak condition almost indefinitely.
Under such circumstances, unless he could critically wound one of them in an instant, the battle would inevitably be dragged out without end. The difficulty of such an engagement was far beyond what he had just experienced.
Yet not encountering it this time did not mean he would never face it in the future. Inflicting a swift, crippling blow on an opponent of that caliber was difficult, but not entirely impossible. Possessing a spirit visage opened up countless possibilities. He resolved to organize his skills and knowledge upon his return and devise several viable tactics.
As he was pondering this, he noticed Lan Shengu emerge from the fissure. Lan Shengu glanced in his direction, appearing as though he wanted to speak yet hesitating.
Seeing this, Chen Chuan asked, "Mr. Lan, is something the matter?"
Seeing Chen Chuan address him, Lan Shengu hesitated briefly before saying, "This place... I mean the temple behind the fissure. There is something wrong with it."
Chapter 1035