Boom! Boom! Boom!
The attacks of the Blood Demon Puppets continuously hammered against the formation barrier, making the entire space shake even more violently.
At the same time, a hundred Martial Saints threw themselves recklessly at the Blood Demon Puppets, but these puppets were completely unafraid of injury, repeatedly trading wounds for the lives of Martial Saints.
As a result, in just half a quarter-hour, dozens more Martial Saints died.
Crack! Crack!
A soft cracking sound came from the formation barrier, making Ian Song tense up. If things continued like this, before they could kill the Blood Demon Puppets, the puppets would break out of the formation.
Thinking of this, Ian Song took out the Skull Crystal Sphere from his storage ring.
With his current spiritual power, he could only control fifty Martial Saints in battle; even with Huang Yan, that made barely a hundred. But now, a hundred Martial Saints were nowhere near enough to suppress the Blood Demon Puppets. Only by creating more Martial Saints could he hope to kill the puppets.
Last time he absorbed soul power from the Skull Crystal Sphere, his spiritual power increased by 300 points. But since his body wasn't strong enough, he stopped. Now, his body's strength has improved a lot, and with the Dark-Gold Body, he can continue absorbing soul power to boost his spiritual strength.
Boom!
He channeled a thread of true qi into the Skull Crystal Sphere, and instantly a surge of soul power slammed into his body. He quickly cut off the inflow, put away the Skull Crystal Sphere, and began running his Meditation Formula.
As the Meditation Formula operated, the soul power was rapidly refined and merged into his spiritual lake, transforming into drops of spiritual liquid, and his spiritual power rose accordingly.
After a little less than a quarter-hour, he had completely refined the soul power into his own spiritual strength, raising his spiritual power to 2,503 points.
Although the increase was less than 100 points, it was enough for him to control two more Martial Saints.
Thus, the number of Martial Saints under his control rose to 102.
At the same time, he took out all his Illusory God-Iron and embedded it into the formation space. With the reinforcement, the previously cracked barrier gradually began to repair itself.
Although only two additional Martial Saints were created, just those two began to tip the balance of victory toward Ian Song's side.
Next, Ian Song took out the Skull Crystal Sphere again.
After a quarter-hour, his spiritual power rose to 2,710 points, and the number of Martial Saints he controlled reached 105.
Under the assault of 105 Martial Saints, the Blood Demon Puppets could no longer attack the barrier. Moreover, with the reinforcement of the Illusory God-Iron, the barrier became even tougher and thicker.
At last, with the combined power of a hundred and five Martial Saints, all ten Blood Demon Puppets were dismembered three times over. The blood-light on their bodies faded to the level of those ten puppets in the East Domain.
Now, Ian Song could finally relax.
After three full hours, the ten Blood Demon Puppets were finally wiped out as well.
With the crisis resolved, Ian was completely exhausted. He recalled Huang Yan into his body, gathered up the top-grade spirit crystals and god-iron used for the formation, and teleported back to Pristine Way Sect.
Controlling over fifty pseudo–Martial Saints in battle had drained his精神力 tremendously.
So when he returned to Pristine Way, Ian slept for a full five hours before waking up.
He headed to the office to handle sect affairs.
Several stacks of documents needing his review were already laid out on the desk.
After reading through them, Ian issued his directives one by one, then activated the Art of Great Teleportation to head for the East Domain battlefield.
The Military Council’s more than two million troops had been trapped in his formation for a whole week without food or water. If he waited any longer, a lot of people might starve to death inside.
"You’re finally here!"
The moment Ian arrived, Raymond Lei rushed over anxiously, grabbing his arm. "Quick, let the Military Council troops out, or they’ll all die in there!"
While Ian was handling the Blood Demon Puppets, Raymond hadn’t been idle. He persuaded Invincible Yan to surrender by revealing that all Nine Provinces under Heaven had rebelled.
After that, he went to talk to the other generals. With the tide turned, they all agreed to capitulate.
However, Ian had only given Raymond permission to enter and exit the grand formation, not to release anyone. So even though Invincible Yan and the generals had surrendered, he couldn’t let them out.
A quarter-hour later.
The formation dispersed. After seven days and nights trapped inside, the Military Council soldiers finally saw daylight again.
Except for those who’d reached Grandmaster level, everyone else was gaunt, with sallow faces and cracked lips from starvation.
Even the Grandmasters weren’t much better off, and Invincible Yan himself, despite his Martial Saint cultivation, was barely hanging on.
Over the next three days, under Raymond Lei and Invincible Yan’s joint leadership, the Military Council’s forces were reorganized and absorbed into the East Domain coalition, swelling its numbers to more than 5.6 million.
Heavenly Melody Sect immediately spread word of the Military Council army’s surrender, causing an uproar across the entire world.
With the East Domain’s dominance secured, it instantly rose to become the strongest of the Nine Domains.
As for the Strategic Operations Camp, those elders only cared about self-preservation now, and had no strength left to challenge the East Domain.
Ian didn’t trust Invincible Yan much, so he chose to enslave him with Puppet Mastery Divine Art.
Otherwise, Invincible Yan would never have willingly helped Raymond Lei take charge of the 2.6 million former Elite Army troops.
Once that was done, Ian sent him off to the Dragon Mountain Battlefield.
Human civil war could be tolerated for a while, but the border battlefields couldn’t be allowed to fall into chaos—otherwise, the Demon and Devil races would exploit the opening. With Invincible Yan as commander, Dragon Mountain would soon be under Ian’s control. The Blood River front’s marshal was a diehard Military Council loyalist, but most generals there were Ian’s old comrades, and Raymond still had huge prestige from his previous tenure.
So Ian decided to take Raymond Lei to the Blood River Battlefield and bring it under his banner as well.
Right now, the other seven Domains had all rebelled, but their internal factions hadn’t unified yet. It would take time for them to finish consolidating power.
Ian planned to take advantage of their infighting to quietly seize control of all seven border battlefields and their armies.
This whole human civil war was basically his fault, and Ian didn’t want his actions to end up letting the Demon and Devil races devour humanity.
Of course, the real culprit was the system. If it hadn’t saddled him with the mission to unify all human sects, he wouldn’t have gone this far.
Out of the seven battlefields, Dragon Mountain and Blood River would be easy to take. There was also Black Crag Battlefield, commanded by Fiona Li—convincing her shouldn’t be hard either.
Five more days passed. Invincible Yan sent word from Dragon Mountain that he’d taken full control. Ruthless as ever, he’d killed or imprisoned all Military Council loyalists, turning Dragon Mountain into a one-man dictatorship.
With Dragon Mountain secured, it was time to head for Blood River. So that very day, Ian took Raymond Lei and set off for the Blood River Battlefield.