Chapter 393

Xiao Mang, holding the righteous faction’s command by right of his rank five cultivation, has organized many assaults that come back in heavy defeat, suffering a huge loss. He calls for another wave, but few step forward this time: the lesson of the last one sits fresh, and even the promise of an immortal treasure cannot outweigh a Gu Master’s single life. Privately he scolds the hesitant as cowards, aware that he is also racing the clock for Wang Ba Dan’s, King Bao’s, inheritance. ^{ch. 393}

He wants an enslavement path Gu Master to throw ahead of his own men as cannon fodder, and asks after Wu clan’s Wu Shen Tong, only to learn the man has gone missing and even his own clan is searching for him. Looking to the demonic side, Xiao Mang realizes their enslavement masters Wu Gui and Zhang San San are also absent, and guesses that whoever is directing the dogs in the fog is one of the three. ^{ch. 393}

Around him, a Wan clan Gu Master wishes aloud for Wan Li Xiong Feng, whose clan’s divine wind could blow the fog away, and Tie clan’s four old-timers snort that their old clan leader would fear no dogs. When the righteous healer Tao Zi presses him about their lack of progress against demonic mockery, an irritated Xiao Mang decides he must act personally and orders everyone back tens of steps. ^{ch. 393}

Xiao Mang shuts his eyes, drives his purple crystal primeval essence to a tsunami inside his aperture, and pours it into three Gu at once, extreme light Gu, my will Gu and bright spear Gu, to cast the killer move My Glorious Spear. Light gathers around his body like a descending holy spirit before he levels a finger at the fog, and all of it fires at once into a spear of light one point eight metres long and point six metres thick, spending sixty percent of the purple crystal essence in his aperture in a single attack. The spear punches through the fog and detonates on the dog-covered mound; the light is bright enough to make everyone flinch and shut their eyes, Mo Wu Tian included, while the shockwave that follows knocks many off their feet. ^{ch. 393}

In the hall, the blast throws Fang Yuan and Feng Tian Yu off their refinement hard enough to make both vomit blood, and Bai Ning Bing’s face goes pale, her ears ringing from the shock. She recognizes it as a rank five killer move and is relieved it did not land on her directly, since her own defensive Gu would not have held for even a second. Once the light clears, she sees the mound turned into a crater and thousands of dogs vaporized where it landed. A few more hits like it, she realizes, would ruin the whole formation, but Fang Yuan had told her beforehand what to do if she were ever hit this hard, and she rushes reserves into the crater to rebuild the line. ^{ch. 393}

With the fog gone, the gathered Gu Masters finally see what they are facing: over ninety thousand dogs packed densely across the mound, lightning symbol, chrysanthemum akita, hedgedog, steel armor and Yin dogs each numbering over five thousand, with dog kings seated visibly among them. Inside that outer ring sit the five great mountain dogs, heavy tai, green hua, smoke song, light heng and star heng, each with its own dog king, and several hundred hairy men guard the hall entrance as the last line. The formation is tight without being rigid, and every onlooker’s gaze keeps drifting to the ancient bronze hall itself, greed rising at the sight of it. ^{ch. 393}

Mo Wu Tian crosses to Xiao Mang and proposes they attack from two sides in fifteen minutes, each faction racing the other to the hall; Xiao Mang agrees with a single nod. Each leader then tells his own people the opposite story, that he tricked or provoked the other side into taking the first losses, and both crowds cheer their own commander as wise. ^{ch. 393}

When the attack begins, Bai Ning Bing tracks the battlefield through the land spirit’s shared sight from her hiding place, struggling more with every passing minute as tens of thousands of dogs pour in. Yi Chong, scaled and finned like a shark, cuts through unopposed. Yi Huo burns a path in the hope of earning the Shang surname if he succeeds, and Kong Ri Tian laughs and dissolves into a rain of petals. Li Xian uses a rank five Gu to conceal himself and slips forward unnoticed, while Tao Zi rallies the wounded around her healing. Yan Jun advances at a walking pace, unshaken, turning into a hollow shadow that a charging dog king passes straight through. Watching it all, Bai Ning Bing begins to fluster. ^{ch. 393}