A Zhao family elder found himself surrounded by forty of them and spent more spiritual energy breaking free than he'd expected to use in the entire engagement.
By the time he emerged from the press of bodies, his reserves had dropped noticeably, and three of his subordinates were lying on the ground in pieces like broken dolls.
That was the genius of it.
The Chimera beasts and mutated humans weren't strong enough to kill Soul Formation cultivators directly. But that did not stop them from killing the weaker cultivators.
As for the soul formation realm cultivators…. They needed to exhaust them.
Wear down their spiritual reserves and physical stamina until the real threats—the generals—could move in and finish what the numbers had started.
Every cultivator on the hidden family side understood this within the first minutes of engagement.
