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Translator: Truth
Editor: Dhael Ligerkeys
It was said that the wooden beam that sticks out rots first, and Lu Ye was that beam right now. From the moment he revealed his terrifying abilities in the Way of Wards to the world, he had more or less secured Thousand Demon Ridge’s eternal ire. By hook or by crook, they were going to eliminate the threat named Lu Yi Ye even if he chose to stop here. The proof was their attempt to assassinate him with poison not long after he had arrived at the Heavenly Derivative Sect’s Outpost.
That was why there would be no peace talks or “enough is enough” bullshit. To begin with, he had entered the Inner Circle with the intent of taking revenge against those who had done him wrong at Goldentip. It would take too long to attack his foes one by one, so Operation Conquer All The Outposts suited him just fine.
Lu Ye wasn’t surprised by this turn of events because he already had a feeling since the day they took off from the Heavenly Derivative Sect. In fact, he was hoping this would happen because he needed to gather a lot of Contribution Points. How much did he need exactly? Suffice to say that it would be an unrealistic target without occupying a ton of Thousand Demon Ridge Outposts.
Zhao Li immediately voiced his full support after obtaining an affirmative answer from Lu Ye. Their Outpost had been occupied over two months ago, so they literally had nothing to lose except their lives, lives they would happily risk for the rewards they were expecting to obtain. They used to think that losing an Outpost was a bad thing through and through, but now they realized that it actually gave them the freedom to do whatever the hell they wanted.
Zhao Li and Song Ying bade Lu Ye goodbye a while later. They no longer needed to hold back now that Lu Ye had given them his answer.
It was noon when their first guest arrived at Deep Sea Mountain’s Outpost. By the time the sun fell, another five had shown up at their doorstep. Naturally, there were many, many more people who were on the way.
Song Ying acted as the go-between between Lu Ye and these people. They spoke in a private room for a very long time before they finally parted ways.
There was a brief period of peace for two days. Then, two ships rose from Deep Sea Mountain’s Outpost and flew toward the horizon. Everyone in Thousand Demon Ridge flew into a rage and panic when they heard this.
In the end, their biggest fear did come true. Not satisfied with conquering just three Outposts, Lu Yi Ye was going to continue his rampage until god-knows-when. As if that wasn’t bad enough, they had no real way of dealing with this. His ability to break down any grand ward was game-changing.
All Thousand Demon Ridge sects whose Outpost was located near Deep Sea Mountain panicked in an instant. They knew they were going to be attacked for sure, but no one knew who was going to be targeted first. As a result, they were unable to mount an effective response against the invasion force.
It wasn’t until more than half a day later that they finally heard that Silent Hill Sect would be the enemy’s first target. They thought this because the two ships were headed in that direction, and the cultivators of Evergreen Sect were mustering their forces in their territory.
Evergreen Sect was the hostile neighbor of Silent Hill Sect, and both of them were pretty close to Deep Sea Mountain. The two sects had clashed against one another countless times in the past, but no one had been able to deal any real damage… until now.
Without exaggeration, the Legate of Silent Hill Sect had nearly fainted when he saw the two ships.
It was at this moment that something strange happened. Instead of attacking, the two ships merely floated around five kilometers away from their Outpost. The Evergreen Sect cultivators who had assembled at a different location were doing nothing as well.
They got their answer just a short while later: the Thousand Demon Ridge Outpost not far away from Silent Hill Sect named Sect of Perdition had been conquered by the enemy. Their cultivators were massacred, and even their Legate had been killed in action.
It was only then that Silent Hill Sect realized that the two ships floating in front of him were just a ruse. The invasion force had really left behind their ships midway to attack another sect. To ensure that Silent Hill Sect would not see through the ruse, the Evergreen Sect had even stationed a force here to keep them in check.
It was bad enough that they were fooled hook, line and sinker, but they were still on the chopping block. The next day, the invasion force finally showed up to say hello.
The Legate of Silent Hill Sect immediately ordered a full retreat after he saw this. Knowing what had happened to his allies, he wasn’t even going to bother engaging the enemy. Unfortunately, it took time to evacuate several hundred people, so he still lost dozens of cultivators after Lu Ye breached the grand ward, and the invasion force swooped down on them like a hawk.
Lu Ye’s invasion force grew to four sects after conquering the Silent Hill Sect Outpost, although the Heavenly Derivative Sect was still made up the bulk of the army because they did not have an Outpost to guard. Unlike the other sects, they could afford to throw every man and woman into the invasion force.
The second biggest force in Lu Ye’s army belonged to Deep Sea Mountain. They were only over two hundred strong because some of them had to stay behind to guard their Outpost.
Finally, Evergreen Sect and the fourth Grand Sky Coalition sect chipped in a hundred cultivators each.
Personally, they would have chipped in more cultivators because it meant that they would get a larger share when occupying an Outpost, especially since it did not look like their conquest was going to stop anytime soon. However, Lu Ye had dissuaded them from this course of action not just because they needed the manpower to guard their Outpost, but also to keep the forces of Thousand Demon Ridge in check.
For instance, although Silent Hill Sect’s Outpost was conquered, they had only lost dozens of cultivators in total. If they did not leave a big enough force behind to keep them in check, they would surely find a way to surprise them.
Lu Ye’s invasion force could crush the force of a single Thousand Demon Ridge sect like a bug, but ten? Twenty?
Just like the Heavenly Derivative Sect, they had nothing to lose. All they had was the all-consuming desire for vengeance and the freedom to do whatever they wanted. If one sect could rally a force of five hundred, then ten sects could rally a force of five thousand, and twenty sects could rally a force of ten thousand…
If these people were allowed to join with each other, the invasion force wouldn’t be the only one who had to watch their backs. The entire Grand Sky Coalition would be in danger.
That was why it was necessary to leave behind a sizable force. Only then could they prevent the Thousand Demon Ridge forces from meeting up with one another, and the invasion force would not need to worry about their rear.
Speaking of the invasion force, the four sects combined was almost enough to make up an army of one thousand. Combined with Lu Ye’s ward breaching abilities, there was no Outpost in the Inner Circle they could not conquer.
Furthermore, it wasn’t like the nearby Grand Sky Coalition sects were going to do nothing when they were invading their neighbors. These sects would happily contribute at least three to four hundred cultivators to ensure that the invasion force would roll over their neighbors without fail.
A third Thousand Demon Ridge Outpost was occupied that very night, and a fourth during the next morning. What happened next was most amusing for Grand Sky Coalition, and the total opposite for Thousand Demon Ridge. Wherever the invasion force went, the Thousand Demon Ridge sects would evacuate their Outposts without fail. The second they confirmed that they were going to be the next target, the Thousand Demon Ridge sects would immediately gather up all their valuables and evacuate back to Jiu Zhou in the shortest amount of time possible.
It wasn’t like they enjoyed giving up without a fight, but being humiliated was still better than being dead.
Since then, a Thousand Demon Ridge Outpost or two would fall to the invasion force every day. Moreover, every time they conquered an Outpost, their army size would grow slightly because all nearby Grand Sky Coalition sects would contribute a small amount of cultivators. Even some independent cultivators had decided to join in on the fun.
Lu Ye accepted them all because the more the merrier. Sure, their share of the pie shrank with every new addition, but it wasn’t like their allies contributed nothing to the invasion. Specifically, he only needed to do one thing properly, and that was to keep the local Thousand Demon Ridge sects in check while the invasion force rampaged across the Inner Circle.
Since the beginning, Lu Ye had not allowed anyone to chip in more than a hundred people to the invasion force. Even so, the invasion force continued to grow at an insane rate. Just ten days after the invasion officially began, the invasion force had grown to three thousand cultivators and eight flying ships strong.
The chaos that was currently rippling across the entire Spirit Creek Battlefield was unprecedented. Wherever the invasion force went, Thousand Demon Ridge sects bowed out without putting up even the slightest bit of resistance. There were some stubborn fools who decided that death was preferable to dishonor, but then Lu Ye breached their grand wards in just dozens of breaths. By the time they wanted to escape, it was already far too late.
The sight of thousands of cultivators pouring through a gap in the grand ward was a grand spectacle for the invaders, but a piss poor experience for the defending side.
After a couple of examples like this, not even the stupidest and most stubborn Thousand Demon Ridge sects dared to play the praying mantis to stand in the way of the wheels that was the invasion force anymore. They all evacuated to Jiu Zhou as soon as they learned that their Outpost was next even when the invasion force was still a few hundred kilometers away from them…
Behind the invasion force were thousands and thousands of angry Thousand Demon Ridge cultivators with a bellyful of hatred and nothing to lose, but when they teleported back to their Outpost and tried to organize a resistance, all they got was the non-stop harassment of their neighbors.
This was the problem with not having a grand ward. For starters, the cultivators of the Grand Sky Coalition could come and go as they pleased. If they tried to pursue them, an ambush was sure to await them. If they gathered a large enough force to overwhelm an ambush, then their enemies would simply retreat to their Outpost and let them batter futilely against their grand ward. They were always on the back foot no matter what they did.
It was clear that Lu Ye’s earlier decision was a resounding success. If the Grand Sky Coalition sects hadn’t left behind enough forces to suppress the local sects, an army much bigger than theirs would be hunting them down right now.
As more and more Outposts fell to the invasion force, the nickname “The Vanquisher of Sects” suddenly spread across the Inner Circle like wildfire. It was of course referring to Lu Ye. No one knew how the nickname had begun, but it had probably originated from Thousand Demon Ridge because they were wrecked left and right and needed an excuse to justify their failure, never mind that all Lu Ye was breaching the grand ward of their Outposts, and not a single sect had been annihilated in the process.
Seriously, a sect was still far from being annihilated even if every Spirit Creek Realm cultivator in their Thousand Demon Ridge Outpost was killed.
For some reason, the nickname was unanimously approved by everyone in the Grand Sky Coalition as well. Lu Ye found the nickname tacky and pretentious, but there was nothing he could do about it.
A long time ago, he had been nicknamed Mountain Tiger when he left Green Cloud Mountain and passed through the Mystic Sect. Now, that nickname had somehow evolved to “The Vanquisher of Sects”.
The situation rapidly devolved into an uncontrollable level in just half a month’s time. Countless Grand Sky Coalition sects were praying for Lu Ye and his invasion army to pass through the area so that they could finally give their neighbor the “friendly” spanking they so deserved.
I hope he negotiated a fixed percentage of the spoils.
If he’s getting 20% of every victory then he’s going to be rolling in points.