The battle for the Crimson Ridge Pass had raged for six grueling hours. The sun, which had risen on a world of tense anticipation, now beat down on a landscape of pure, unadulterated carnage. The initial, clean lines of the battlefield had dissolved into a chaotic, swirling melee, a meat grinder that stretched across the pass. The ground was no longer stone, but a treacherous bog of blood, gore, and shattered earth, littered with the corpses of tens of thousands of demonic beasts.
The first great wave, the ocean of Rank 1 and 2 beasts, was nearly spent. But its purpose had been achieved. The allied army of cultivators was exhausted. Disciples, their faces pale and their spiritual energy reserves running dangerously low, fought on with a grim, mechanical determination. Every swing of a sword, every cast of a spirit art, was a victory of sheer willpower over utter exhaustion.
In the midst of this grinding war of attrition, Li Yu was a whirlwind of black iron and silent death. He was not a stationary commander. He moved through the battlefield like a phantom, his «Abyssal Dragon's Shadow» carrying him to any point in the line that was about to break. His friends, Hu Jian and Lin Tao, followed in his wake, a tight, three-man cell of destruction. While the disciples around them were pale and panting, Li Yu's small group was still relatively fresh. His monstrous efficiency with the Star-Iron Rod meant that any beast that got too close was instantly pulverized, creating a moving sanctuary of safety around them.
His secret was the battlefield itself. The bloodier the fight, the stronger he became. The «Myriad Rivers Returning to the Sea Art» was a silent, insatiable vortex. It drew in the chaotic, ownerless spiritual energy and life essence from the fallen aquatic beasts, purifying it and pouring it directly into his foundation. He was not just spending energy; he was recycling it, feasting on the very essence of the war. His cultivation, which had been at the peak of the Sixth Stage, was now slowly, but surely, being polished, compressed, and pushed towards the cusp of the next level. This war was a catastrophe for the sects, but for him, it was a peerless cultivation opportunity.
"Commander Li!" a disciple from the command ship shouted, his voice hoarse. "The Right Flank is collapsing! The Myriad Graves Sect is being overwhelmed! The Sect Master orders your battalion to reinforce the river gorge immediately!"
Li Yu's eyes, which had been scanning the Central Front, immediately shifted, a cold, calculating light within them. The river gorge. A place teeming with aquatic life. His perfect hunting ground.
"You heard the order!" his voice cut through the din of battle, clear and authoritative. "All units, disengage and regroup! We move to the Right Flank! Now!"
He leaped onto his Silver-Winged Flying Swordfish, which had been circling high above the chaos, and shot towards the eastern edge of the pass, his two hundred beast tamers and their companions following in his wake like a well-oiled machine.
They arrived to a scene of desperate, eerie battle. The river gorge was a deep, misty chasm, the water a churning, muddy brown, thick with the blood of both beasts and cultivators. The disciples of the Myriad Graves Sect were not fighting with the fiery, explosive arts of the righteous sects. They were fighting a war of shadows and decay.
Grey, miasmic clouds of corpse poison filled the gorge, a testament to their dao. Their martial spirits were strange, unsettling things—pale, skeletal wraiths, ghostly beasts, and spirits that seemed to be woven from pure shadow. They flowed around the beasts' charge, their attacks subtle, insidious, and utterly lethal.
But they were outnumbered. A new, powerful wave of aquatic and amphibious beasts was surging up the gorge, their forms perfectly adapted to this wet, treacherous terrain. Li Yu saw massive, Rank 4 Stone-Shelled Salamanders, their hides as tough as granite, and schools of vicious, Rank 3 Razor-Fin Piranhas that could strip a cultivator to the bone in seconds.
The scholarly leader of the Myriad Graves Sect stood on a high cliff, his expression grim, his hands a blur of motion as he directed his disciples, but his gaze was fixed on the river itself. A massive, churning wave was approaching, and at its head was a new, terrifying threat: a trio of Rank 5 Ironjaw River-Tyrants. They were monstrous, crocodile-like beasts, each over fifty feet long, their jaws powerful enough to bite a flying vessel in half. They were the battering rams that were about to shatter the demonic sect's fragile defensive line.
"Beast Taming Battalion!" Li Yu roared, his voice a thunderclap that echoed through the gorge. "The river is our domain! Engage the Tyrants!"
He did not wait for his disciples. He, along with Hu Jian and Lin Tao, dove from their flying mounts, plunging into the churning, bloody water. The moment he entered his element, Li Yu felt his own power surge.
"Crimson! Lirael! Volt! Jolt!" he commanded through his spiritual link.
Four portals opened around him in the murky depths. His Flood Dragon, his Naga, and his two new, lightning-fast Spirit Eels appeared, their powerful auras a beacon of order in the chaos.
The three River-Tyrants, sensing these new, powerful challengers, turned their attention from the Myriad Graves Sect and charged, their massive jaws agape.
"Hu Jian, you and Crimson take the left one!" Li Yu commanded. "Lin Tao, you and Lirael take the right! Volt, Jolt, the middle one is yours! Harass it! Do not let it focus!"
The battle for the river began. Hu Jian, his fire-attribute arts sizzling in the water, became a roaring inferno, his flaming saber, combined with Crimson's draconic might, a perfect counter to the tough, earthen hide of the River-Tyrant. Lin Tao and Lirael were a dance of water and shadow, their whips and psychic pulses a web of control that ensnared and disoriented their opponent.
Volt and Jolt were a storm of golden lightning. They were too fast, too agile for the massive beast to track. They moved like twin torpedoes, their lightning-wreathed bodies delivering a thousand small, painful, and deeply annoying shocks, driving the central River-Tyrant into a state of mindless, unfocused rage.
With his companions holding the three greatest threats, Li Yu turned his attention to the true prize. While the main battle raged, he sank into the deepest, darkest part of the river channel, his «Abyssal Dragon's Shadow» making him a ghost in the murky depths. His spiritual sense, now unhindered, swept through the chaos, searching for valuable prey.
He found it almost immediately. It was a unique, Rank 4 variant of the Mind-Weaver Squid, its body a shimmering, pearlescent white, its psychic aura incredibly pure and potent. It was hiding in a deep crevice, using its psychic abilities to subtly command a school of Razor-Fin Piranhas, a hidden general in the beast army. It was a creature with immense potential for his own menagerie.
He moved silently through the depths, his Star-Iron Rod held loosely in his hand. The squid, its attention focused on the battle above, did not sense him until it was too late. He appeared before its crevice, a silent, dark shadow. The squid let out a psychic shriek of terror and tried to release a powerful mental blast.
But Li Yu was faster. A simple, direct Rod Smash, imbued with the full, crushing weight of his physique, slammed into the rock beside the squid's crevice. The rock did not shatter; it imploded, and the concussive force of the blow traveled through the water, stunning the powerful Rank 4 beast and sending it into a daze.
In the murky chaos of the battle, with no one to see, he reached out. A tiny, invisible portal to his sanctuary opened for a fraction of a second. The stunned, weakened squid was silently, completely, and utterly devoured. Another fine addition to his collection.
He looked up at the raging battle. His battalion had arrived, their beasts forming a new, stable defensive line alongside the exhausted Myriad Graves Sect disciples. The leader of the demonic sect looked down from his cliff, his profound, midnight-dark eyes meeting Li Yu's for a fraction of a second across the chaotic battlefield. He gave a single, almost imperceptible nod, a silent acknowledgment from one commander to another.
The battle for the river gorge raged on, a brutal, grinding stalemate. The sheer number of aquatic beasts here was a paradise for Li Yu. His Koi spirit was a raging vortex, devouring the life essence of every fallen enemy, pushing his foundation harder and harder. He could feel the barrier to the next stage beginning to crack.
The sudden, massive influx of new, powerful life essence in his domain was the final drop of water that caused the dam to break.
He felt a profound, soul-shaking CRACK within his dantian. The emerald-green star at the heart of his foundation pulsed with a brilliant, blinding light. A wave of new, more profound power flooded his body. In the midst of the bloodiest battle of his life, he had broken through. He was now at the Seventh Stage of the Foundation Establishment Realm.
It was an extremely fast break through to the next level, the sheer number of this beast tide allowed such a thing to happen. Just as the sun began to set, a new, far more terrifying tremor shook the earth. The second wave had arrived.
From the western wilderness, a new, dark line appeared, a sea of hundreds of thousands of Rank 3 and Rank 4 beasts. This was not a wave of flesh; this was the true army, a legion of powerful, disciplined monsters. And behind them, the psychic pressure of the Beast King intensified, a crushing, malevolent presence.
The arrival of this new, overwhelming force was a hammer blow to the exhausted cultivators.
A new, far deadlier phase of the war was about to begin.