After confirming there was no immediate threat, Li Yan's figure accelerated once more.
Following closely behind him was the ever-silent Wuye . Seeing Li Yan's speed suddenly increase, a tide of Spirit Power surged from his body, and he accelerated simultaneously, managing to keep up.
Even when charging as a team, the way cultivators attacked was vastly different from mortal armies. In a mortal army, soldiers were often only five or six feet apart, or even closer.
Cultivators were fast and had a large attack range, so even when advancing in formation, they would consciously maintain a distance of at least fifty zhang from others in all directions as they neared the enemy, to avoid interfering with each other.
Even with just a hundred or so people, when they spread out horizontally in an instant, the momentum was immense.
Cultivators who were skilled in joint attacks would maintain their most comfortable attack distance. A distance of two hundred li.
Both the north and south sides were charging forward. In just five breaths of time, Li Yan was the first to clash with the enemy cultivators, like the tip of an arrow surrounded by the enemy on three sides.
But before these cultivators had time to surround Li Yan, the cultivators behind him arrived like a shower of meteors, and the battle instantly reached its peak. The sound of explosions, which had just subsided, once again rang out ceaselessly.
Shouts, curses, screams, and the clang of magical treasures echoed across the land in an instant.
Clusters of multicolored light—red, green, purple, blue—shot through the air, crashing into their targets the next moment with dull thuds or sharp whistles.
Faced with this head-on clash from Li Yan and his group, the twenty-odd Demonic Soldiers controlling the South Sea cultivators from five li behind were somewhat taken aback.
"Are these Windy Cool Mountain cultivators trying to commit suicide?"
Although they were all Foundation Establishment cultivators, the head-on collision of more than three hundred cultivators from both sides was still earth-shaking, filling the sky with radiant light.
The one who engaged Li Yan was a young South Sea cultivator. The moment he saw Li Yan's group, his eyes immediately turned into two pitch-black holes, and he instantly fell into a frenzy.
Seeing Li Yan charge at him, this cultivator's figure shot up into the sky. Li Yan, however, continued his forward charge, bent his elbow, and thrust forward, his elbow strike hitting nothing but air.
The cultivator in the sky spread his arms like a great roc. A sharp golden light flashed between his hands, and with a flex of his arms, he suddenly flipped upside down. His hands had transformed into the sharp claws of a bronze-colored demonic beast.
On his scale-covered hands, his fingers were like iron hooks, and blue light danced between them. He brought his hands together in front of his chest, and with a "zizizi..." sound, ten thin blue threads shot out from his claws, crisscrossing as they slashed fiercely at the back of Li Yan's head.
Below, Li Yan had just leaned forward and struck empty air with his elbow. In the bloodthirsty gaze of the cultivator high above, the ten blue threads intertwined, forming a crossed iron net that instantly cut at the back of Li Yan's head.
The cultivator in the air had lost his mind, but this state only stimulated his bloodthirsty nature. A flash of excitement appeared in his eyes.
But before he could rejoice, high above his suspended body, a figure appeared like a ghost.
It was Li Yan. His face was expressionless as his body suddenly sank, once again striking down with his elbow. Only this time, it was from top to bottom, using the momentum of his falling body.
With a loud "PENG!", the excitement in the cultivator's eyes had yet to fade when his entire head exploded into a cloud of blood mist.
Li Yan's speed was astonishingly fast. The tip of his elbow slammed heavily onto the crown of his opponent's head. Only then did the afterimage of Li Yan below slowly disappear.
After killing his opponent, Li Yan's figure flickered and appeared in front of another South Sea cultivator. He didn't even bother with the Storage Pouch of the cultivator he had just killed.
He had been at Windy Cool Mountain for some time now and knew that the magical treasures and Spirit Stones in the Storage Pouches of these South Sea cultivators were pitifully few, having long been plundered by the Demonic Cultivators .
Even if they had good natal magical treasures, if a Demonic Cultivator took a liking to it, they would take it, at the cost of damaging the owner's cultivation.
The cultivator just now should have been just a Body Cultivator , the kind who cultivated by borrowing the power of demonic beasts, a branch of body cultivation that involved consuming refined Demonic Cores to cultivate a physical body similar to that of a certain tyrannical demonic beast.
This Body Cultivator should have been practicing a cultivation method of some sort of raptor-type demonic beast. They usually didn't use magical treasures, with the exception of those they particularly favored.
Li Yan's kill this time was unbelievably fast, giving the Demonic Cultivators in the rear no chance to react, let alone make the cultivator self-destruct when things looked bad.
Although the Demonic Cultivators in the rear had long received orders to attack recklessly and to fully activate the restrictions on the South Sea cultivators, they couldn't just make them self-destruct right from the start.
Moreover, a cultivator couldn't just instantly self-destruct by channeling their Spirit Power ; it still required one or two breaths.
The Demon Clan army had been fighting the Windy Cool Mountain cultivators for some time now, and the Windy Cool Mountain cultivators were already extremely vigilant about this. As long as they weren't firmly entangled by the enemy, or weren't heavily injured themselves, they could still escape the blast radius.
The moment Li Yan clashed with his opponent, the cultivators behind him also found their own opponents.
Wuye followed closely behind Li Yan. A woman in her thirties was about to surround Li Yan when he intercepted her. The woman's originally delicate face was now contorted, her eyes no longer clear.
Although she had gone mad, her combat instincts were not lost in the slightest. The instant she sensed her presence being locked onto by Wuye , she quickly brought a transverse flute to her lips. An invisible sound wave attacked Wuye . Wuye had chosen this woman precisely because he saw that she had reached the Great Perfection of the Pseudo-Core Realm and was a great threat to his side.
At this time, how could he care that she was once a Desolate Moon Continent cultivator, or that she was a woman? A cultivator under a restriction was no different from a killing puppet.
Wuye gently waved the bamboo staff in his hand, conjuring a screen of staff shadows in front of him. With a crisp "ding," a dark light flashed like a venomous snake on the ball of staff shadows and was directly deflected.
Wuye's speed suddenly increased again, and a circle of staff shadows, like a solid wall, protected his entire body.
"Ding ding ding..." A series of sounds rang out continuously as streaks of dark light were constantly knocked away by the staff shadows. At first, it was just one sound, but by the time Wuye took his second step, the sounds of impact had merged into one, as dense as rain.
The sound from the woman's transverse flute also changed from an initially inaudible whimper to a high-pitched, sharp whistle in a short time.
Wuye's advancing figure also slowed slightly. The dark light before him was like a tide, forcing him to pause for a moment. And at this time, Li Yan had already killed one person and flashed towards another.
A series of whooshing sounds also came from both sides of Wuye as several more figures overtook him and rushed towards the crowd on the other side.
Seeing Li Yan succeed and others rushing past him, Wuye frowned. Holding the staff in one hand, he secretly slapped the Storage Pouch at his waist with the other. A green shadow shot out from the side of the staff shadows like a bolt of lightning.
At this time, he was only about twenty zhang away from the woman. The woman opposite him was holding the transverse flute, her Spirit Power erupting. Suddenly, her figure flickered, and she left her original spot.
With a sharp "shoo" sound, a long, red forked tongue shot through the spot where the woman had been standing, but it hit empty air.
Then, a long, dark-green snake appeared there, staring at the woman a few zhang away with a pair of cold eyes.
And in just that brief moment of buffer, Wuye's figure flashed, and he had already rushed in front of the woman. Although his movement skill was not as good as Li Yan's, it was still top-tier among those of the same rank.
As he moved unpredictably, the bamboo staff in his hand thrust upwards, aiming for the woman's lower abdomen. The woman deflected it downwards with her transverse flute. With a "peng" sound, both of their figures swayed. Their cultivation levels were evenly matched.
The woman's figure floated backward, using the force of the impact. As she floated back, she also slapped her Storage Pouch , and a fist-sized black earthenware pot appeared behind her.
The black earthenware pot looked quite ugly, like a beggar's pot for catching rain to quench thirst, covered with unknown multicolored filth, like a mangy dog that had lost its fur, all patchy and mottled.
By the time the black earthenware pot flew behind the woman's head, its bottom was already facing the sky, its filthy brown mouth facing down. The spots on it squirmed, and a foul stench suddenly sprayed out towards the lower diagonal, aiming at the woman herself.
The moment the foul stench appeared, the space behind the woman fluctuated, and a long, dark-green snake appeared, shaking its head and tail. It was just about to bite down.
In its large mouth, its sharp teeth were only two inches away from the woman's shoulder. But the moment the foul stench came out, the dark-green snake quickly retreated, constantly shaking its head. Its flight had become somewhat unstable.
And neither the woman nor Wuye seemed to have seen this. The woman's reaction was so fast that it was beyond Wuye's expectations.
From the first time he released the "Green Phosphorus Snake" and the attack was dodged, to his sudden close-range attack, and simultaneously commanding the "Green Phosphorus Snake" to hide and launch a sneak attack again—all of it was completed within a single breath.
That seemingly irrational woman had such rich combat experience. She had broken Wuye's three killing moves with just her instincts.
This thwarted Wuye's original intention of quickly finishing off his opponent.
All the cultivators on Li Yan's side knew that in this fight, they had to strike with all their might and aim for a quick victory.
Firstly, they had no defensible terrain. Secondly, their numbers were greatly reduced, making it almost a two-on-one situation, not to mention the many Demonic Cultivators mixed in.
Even in a one-on-one fight, they might not be a match for the Demonic Cultivators . So they wanted to kill some of the enemy cultivators first to try and turn the tide.
In fact, this was already a last resort. If the enemy had given Li Yan and his group another quarter of an hour, they could have at least deployed many small-scale formations in their original positions. Linked together, they could have defended with the advantage of the terrain, which would have been much better than the current situation.
But the Demon Clan was too experienced in warfare. They constantly launched invasions against one plane after another, something the cultivators of the sheltered Desolate Moon Continent could not compare to.
The Demon Clan army had perfected the use of various long-range and close-range battle formations.
If it weren't for the immense power of the "Heaven-Shaking Thunder," whose aftershocks could cause massive casualties to cultivators, Li Yan and his group might not have even had time to fly out of the rubble mountain if the Demonic Cultivators hadn't retreated.
But the plan for a quick victory could only be an imagination. Apart from people like Li Yan and Gong Yuantai who had fought the Demon Clan before and were mentally prepared, cultivators like Wuye , who were fighting Demonic Cultivators for the first time, had underestimated them. At the very least, they had underestimated the combat power of the South Sea cultivators who had lost their minds. So, as soon as the fight started, most of the cultivators were locked in a stalemate.
Under the stimulation of the restrictions, these South Sea cultivators were constantly unleashing their latent potential. At this time, their sensory acuity and Spirit Power circulation had reached their peak, and they were even more sensitive to external stimuli.
However, this state could not last long. Every moment, they were stimulating themselves with their own lifespan. In at most half an incense stick's time, the weaker South Sea cultivators would die of old age without even being attacked by the enemy.
The stronger cultivators wouldn't last more than an incense stick's time. But this was enough time to kill or wear down the Windy Cool Mountain cultivators.
Wuye had unwittingly fallen into a cognitive trap.