Cultivating with Top Enlightenment Chapter 820 - 346: Blood Slaughter Array

Time drifted by in silence, and after an indeterminate duration, even the Saint Ancestor began to grow restless.

He snapped his fingers, and instantly, a phantom shimmered into existence behind him, bowing respectfully like a loyal disciple.

"Teacher."

The Saint Ancestor stroked his goatee, his brow furrowed. "Has Ning Qi surfaced yet?"

The phantom shook its head slowly. "Reporting to Teacher, our scouts have been stationed outside the Boundary Wall for quite some time, but we have witnessed no sign of him."

"Have you failed to use your innate abilities to scan the other realms?"

The phantom seemed to experience a sudden epiphany upon hearing this question.

"Please forgive me, Teacher; this disciple was negligent and momentarily forgot this method."

With those words, he shut his eyes, his aura shifting to become vast, neutral, and harmoniously balanced.

The entirety of the Vast Realm seemed to tremor, a potent force erupting from his focused consciousness and sweeping across the battlefield.

Deep within the conflict zone, a sympathetic resonance flared, immediately relaying signals back to him.

Moments later, the phantom opened his eyes. His voice was laced with a palpable sense of trepidation, akin to a student fearing a master's reprimand.

"Teacher, the fault lies with me for not detecting this earlier. Ning Qi has already led his army across the domains, but his destination was the Northern Battle Realm!"

The perspective of the Vast Realm stood in stark contrast to that of the Mountain and Sea Realm.

The Saint Ancestor halted his hand mid-stroke on his beard. He pivoted, demanding, "Are you implying that boy bypassed a major domain and marched straight into the Northern Battle Realm?"

"That is correct!"

The Saint Ancestor’s expression shifted, becoming difficult to read.

He was a man who favored careful calculation, never dismissing an opponent regardless of their perceived cultivation level.

He lived by the mantra that a lion exerts its full strength even when hunting a mere rabbit, a principle he followed with obsessive precision.

And yet, despite his elaborate traps, Ning Qi had managed to slip through his fingers!

It felt as though he were a master huntsman who had set a flawless snare on the trail of his prey, only to find the beast had brazenly chosen an entirely different path.

The Saint Ancestor felt a sting of frustration; he realized that while he had placed great importance on monitoring Ning Qi, he had clearly underestimated the young man's capacity for contingency planning.

By all logic, Ning Qi should have been tethered by orders from the Mountain Ancestor, the Sea Ancestor, and the Will of the Mountain and Sea Realm.

Through the intelligence gathered by the Vast Realm Will regarding the conditions within the battle realms, the Saint Ancestor had long deduced the psychological profiles of those powerful figures from the Mountain and Sea Realm.

They were vain creatures, obsessed with flaunting their successes. After Ning Qi had claimed two small domains in the Northwestern Battle Realm, surely they would never permit him to overlook the third? It was simply inconceivable!

The Saint Ancestor let out a sharp, sudden chuckle. "This is interesting!"

Only one possibility remained.

Ning Qi must have influenced the others, manipulating them into allowing a minor figure like him to cross a major domain freely.

"Very well, Ning Qi. Let us see if your luck holds when we next intersect!"

...

At the center of the Upper Southern Domain, a massive clash was unfolding.

Six separate domain armies had converged here, locked in a brutal stalemate.

The combatants from both realms were evenly matched, drawing from the middle-level Spirit Domain forces.

Leading the Mountain and Sea Realm’s three-domain contingent was a formidable cultivator known as Jiang Yuyue.

Some whispered his title: The Demon King.

He served under the Sea Ancestor and held the title of Domain Master of the Fish Dragon Domain.

True to his name, Jiang Yuyue was a massive demon who had leaped over the Dragon Gate to evolve from a humble carp into a majestic crimson dragon.

While the Sea Ancestor governed the aquatic territories and commanded many of the Human Race, nearly half his forces were comprised of the Demon Race.

Most were born from the four seas or terrestrial demons who could not survive on the mainland of the Mountain and Sea Realm.

Flanking Jiang Yuyue were two other noteworthy commanders.

One was Ren Boping from the Haihuang Domain; a muscular figure with flowing hair, wielding a heavy trident with lethal grace.

The other was a siren demon king named Lang Yingying from the Whirlpool Domain, possessing a beauty that seemed almost innocently divine, though her lower half held the slithering tail of a serpent.

These three heavyweights led their combined army in a ferocious assault against the Vast Realm’s forces.

Lang Yingying lifted a colorful conch Spiritual Treasure and blew a haunting, melodious note.

The sound rippled through the battlefield, drowning the chaos in a soothing cadence.

The Vast Realm soldiers were caught off guard, their senses dulled as they began to drift into a dreamlike lethargy, unable to muster the will to fight.

Seizing the opening, the Mountain and Sea cultivators struck with absolute brutality, reaping a heavy toll.

Ren Boping swung his trident, the weapon expanding to a thousand feet in length and spinning with devastating velocity toward the enemy vanguard; had it not been for their commander’s desperate intervention, their losses would have been catastrophic.

As for Jiang Yuyue, he unveiled his true form.

A gargantuan red-scaled fire dragon manifested in the void, unleashing torrents of flame that felt like the wrath of an erupting underwater volcano.

Spurred on by these leaders, their troops fought with terrifying resolve, refusing to concede an inch!

Conversely, the three commanders of the Vast Realm were equally formidable.

One wore a natural mask that gave him the appearance of a red Shura; his skin was armored in blood-red scales, radiating an oppressive killing intent.

Another possessed dark, bat-like wings and wild, disheveled hair; resembling a legendary thunder deity, he opened his maw to spit torrents of lightning across the void.

The final commander looked like an ordinary human, yet his eyes were a terrifying, milky gray—a gaze capable of chilling the soul and freezing the mind.

The six commanders darted through the fray, their clashes rippling through the void, leaving a landscape of butchery and scattered remnants in their wake.

As both sides descended into blood-fueled madness, refusing to retreat, the ground grew choked with the mangled pile of the fallen.

Unknowingly, the pooling blood began to coalesce into a sinister, ancient formation.

A crimson glow erupted, flooding the area with a macabre light.

A massive, blood-red eye seemed to open upon the earth, its gaze locking onto every soul within the theater of war.

Amidst the blood-drenched rays, ghastly black chains flickered into being, vibrating with a grating, metallic screech that chilled the marrow.

"Clang, clang!"

Suddenly, panic gripped the warriors on both sides, as if they were witnessing the end of all things.

"Who dared to trigger this blood massacre array?" Ren Boping roared.

To his astonishment, the Shura-like commander of the Vast Realm shouted in return, "This is an act of vile heresy! Who is responsible for this?"

Both sides hesitated, their skirmish faltering as they surveyed the sudden, eerie transformation of the battlefield.

They attempted to fight back against the array while retreating toward the edges of the crimson light.

Alas, the corpses were being consumed by the formation, and the stolen energy of the dead forged a massive, impenetrable dome that sealed them inside.

As the trapped soldiers panicked, the architects of the trap finally emerged from the shadows beyond the sphere.

Those inside stared out in astonishment at the fresh, fully rested army that had effortlessly surrounded them.

This force had moved with ghostly silence, setting the trap and sealing the perimeter without ever revealing their presence.

"Who are you people?"

As the Sword Ancestor and Qi Keqing looked toward the trapped armies, a figure dressed in pristine white stepped forward.

The man’s robes remained starkly pure, entirely untouched by the filth of the battlefield.

The Sword Ancestor arched an eyebrow. "Ning, is this not going a bit too far? This feels like a technique of the Demonic Path."

Ning Qi replied in an even tone, "Demon Path, Righteous Path—it matters little so long as we utilize the remnants of their discord. Tell me, do they not look more like evil spirits than we do?"

Qi Keqing and the others observed the trapped men struggling within the sphere and slowly nodded in acknowledgement.