After the few of them landed, Li Yan and Bai Rou exchanged greetings with some familiar faces, and Gong Yuantai resumed his conversation with others.
Bu Luo, on the other hand, walked over to Li Yan with an excited look on his face.
"I heard the Nascent Soul ancestors and the others retreated on their own initiative. It seems they must have had a great harvest."
"Isn't that obvious? Otherwise, Ancestor Gongsun and the others would have gone to provide support long ago," Wu Ye said bluntly from the side. He was a cold person, and his words were just as blunt, with no buffer.
But when Bu Luo heard it, he just chuckled, which Li Yan found rather strange.
But on second thought, it made sense. They had all been through life and death together, so Bu Luo and Wu Ye must have gotten to know each other well in private.
It was said that even Qiao Baiye, before leaving for the rear, had cursed at Bu Luo, telling him not to die too soon so that he could settle the score for being ambushed with several magical treasures at once after he recovered.
In the great battle at Mutual Destruction Ridge, if Bu Luo hadn't given him a few bottles of top-grade medicinal pills, it was uncertain whether Qiao Baiye, already injured, could have lasted until the end of his next fight.
The medicinal pills Bu Luo had given were far more effective than the ones he had on him.
Listening to Qiao Baiye's teeth-gritting curses as he left, Bu Luo, with a disdainful look, suddenly kicked the still heavily injured Qiao Baiye into the teleportation formation.
"Still want to settle the score with me? You're blind as a bat!"
As everyone stared dumbfounded, the Pseudo-Core cultivator escorting the wounded to the rear was about to get angry when Qiao Baiye's voice, mixed with coughing and wild laughter, came from the teleportation formation.
"What a fucking mad dog!"
Only then did everyone realize that Bu Luo's kick had been skillfully executed.
Li Yan, who had been away on a mission, knew nothing of these events.
While the cultivators at the rear were conversing in low voices or through voice transmissions, Gongsun Changxing, who had been standing at the front with a blank expression, suddenly showed a flicker of movement.
Then, his clear voice resounded between heaven and earth.
"Deactivate the entrance formation restriction!"
Following his soft command, the entire world suddenly fell silent, with only the gentle "whoosh" of the wind blowing through the air.
Then, the seven-colored membrane of light that had trapped them for several days suddenly vanished before their eyes.
What appeared before the cultivators were collapsed mountain peaks, patches of scorched, barren earth, and a few wild beasts occasionally darting their necks in and out of the charred ground.
On the devastated land, many places were still littered with blood-stained, now-blackened scraps of cloth and fragments of armor.
Five days had passed, yet the ground was still covered with severed limbs, broken arms, and viscera belonging to human cultivators, demonic beasts, and demonic cultivators alike.
The beasts that now came to devour the corpses were those that had luckily survived the great battle.
For the past few days, they could only hide somewhere, trembling, not daring to venture out to hunt. The battle a few days ago, with its unimaginably powerful pressures and crisscrossing, fierce attacks, had terrified them out of their wits.
Their companions and packs had been swallowed by vast expanses of light, never to be seen again. In their unenlightened minds, it was undoubtedly the apocalypse.
It wasn't until the last two days that some of the starving beasts, with fear in their eyes, ventured out to forage. At the slightest sign of trouble, they would scatter like birds and beasts.
These beasts were tearing at the already rotting corpses when the barren mountain before them suddenly changed, and thousands of pairs of eyes appeared, staring straight at them.
The beasts were startled by the scene unfolding before them, and they all kicked off the ground, raising a cloud of yellow dust as they fled into the distance or hastily took to the air.
It was now high summer. As the cultivators stared in shock at the hellish scene outside, the wind carried waves of a foul stench—the smell of rotting corpses.
They didn't even need to release their divine senses. As far as the eye could see, near the Front Mountain Entrance, there were small white maggots wriggling in and out of some of the rotting corpses, bringing with them trails of thick white or green fluid.
The next moment, a series of dry heaves and retching sounds reached Gongsun Changxing's ears at the front. He couldn't help but frown.
Only a small portion of the cultivators here had retreated from the defensive line at the front. Most had just been transferred from the rear. Among them were those who had killed countless people and were quite brave.
But many more were disciples of sects and families who had never witnessed such a scene of carnage.
Some of the female cultivators' faces instantly turned deathly pale with horror. A wave of nausea churned in their stomachs, and after a few dry heaves, they finally lost control and began to vomit profusely.
A Golden Core cultivator standing behind Gongsun Changxing couldn't help but turn his head to look back, letting out a cold snort.
"What is this disgrace? Hold it in! Otherwise, I'll have you go walk among those corpses to do your vomiting!"
His voice, to all the cultivators at the rear, was like a clap of thunder in their minds. All vomiting ceased instantly.
That Golden Core cultivator glanced at the scene ahead and sighed inwardly. Among those human corpses were the remains of quite a few Golden Core cultivators from Windy Cool Mountain.
They were short on manpower, and the entire battlefield was too vast, stretching for more than ten thousand li. The twelve Golden Core cultivators were responsible for patrolling Windy Cool Mountain and operating the grand formation, so naturally, no one could go out to clean up.
They would certainly not send Foundation Establishment cultivators outside the protective formation of Windy Cool Mountain. If they encountered an enemy Golden Core cultivator, they would all be slaughtered in an instant.
However, the main reason was that there was nothing of value on these dead bodies.
Although it was a war between two races, the inherent selfishness of cultivators still existed. If there were good cultivation resources discarded outside, they would surely find all sorts of reasons to go out.
Otherwise, unless it was their own close relative who had died, they couldn't be bothered.
In a battle between cultivators, the moment an opponent died, their storage pouch would be taken away immediately. The only things left behind were fragments of magical treasures, which were of no interest to Golden Core cultivators.
They would not let Foundation Establishment cultivators risk their lives for such things.
The Golden Core cultivator who had shouted the reprimand swept his divine sense over the rear. He was quite satisfied with cultivators like Li Yan who had experienced great battles, as well as some of the ruthless killers among the newly transferred cultivators.
Although Li Yan and the others were equally shocked by the scene outside the formation, their gazes held more shock at the sheer brutality of the battle. Then, they cast their divine senses towards the distant horizon.
As Li Yan's divine sense reached out into the distance, the first thing he felt was an aura that could topple mountains and overturn seas. The moment his divine sense detected it, he immediately retracted it.
The other cultivators who had also released their divine senses all did the same, not daring to probe any further.
Two breaths after Gongsun Changxing's words had fallen, a massive dark shadow appeared in everyone's field of vision. It seemed to blot out the sun, blocking more than half of the sunlight coming from the south.
For a moment, the cultivators had the illusion that night was falling, or that a mighty heavenly might was pressing down from the sky.
Li Yan focused his eyes and looked carefully. Only then did he make out that it was a demonic beast of enormous size. It was over three hundred zhang wide and a thousand zhang long, its entire body covered in thick, dark yellow fur that seemed to have been coated in oil.
Under the blazing sun, the dark yellow fur at the edge of the beast's body shimmered with a golden light, as if it were plated with gold.
The massive shadow it cast below was immense, covering ten thousand zhang of the land. As it flew rapidly, the shadow moved quickly, continuously covering the lands and rivers below like a constantly undulating giant carpet.
On its densely furred head, a pair of golden eyes were hidden, glinting with a baleful aura as it coldly looked down upon the myriad mortal souls below.
As its large mouth closed, two pairs of thick, bone-white fangs, each as thick as several people embracing, crisscrossed at the corners of its lips, like four pillars holding up the sky.
Li Yan recognized this demonic beast. It was ranked ninety-eight in the world, the "Northern Abyss Mountain God Tiger," the guardian divine beast of the Jingtu Sect.
It was said that there were only two in existence, a mother and her child. He hadn't expected that this peerless ferocious beast would also make an appearance in this great battle.
'Is this the old one or the young one? Strange, aren't there supposed to be only two in the world? Then where did the young "Northern Abyss Mountain God Tiger" come from?'
After recognizing the beast's origin, a thought completely unrelated to the current situation suddenly popped into Li Yan's head.
On top of this tiger's head, more than twenty cultivators stood in a "V" formation. Behind these twenty-plus people, on the tiger's back, was a dense mass of cultivators.
At the very front of the "V" formation on the tiger's head, a monk in a gray cloth robe stood with one hand held vertically before his chest, his eyes lowered. The monk was of average height and appeared to be in his thirties.
His face was the color of golden bronze, and he had a pair of unforgettable long eyebrows. The eyebrows were jet-black and hung down to his jaw in a crescent shape.
Li Yan knew at a glance that the twenty-plus people on the tiger's head were all Nascent Soul stage cultivators, the powerhouses standing at the very pinnacle of this continent.
"The one in the lead is Great Master Liaoyuan of the Jingtu Sect. He is a true Vajra Arhat."
Among Li Yan's group, Tantai Dongyue's low voice sounded. She had trained in the Jingtu Sect for many years, so she was very familiar with their situation.
"He is Great Master Liaoyuan?"
"So this is a Late-stage Great Cultivator…"
Following Tantai Dongyue's explanation, Li Yan and the others all drew in a cold breath.
The number of Late-stage Nascent Soul Great Cultivators in the world could be counted on one's fingers. Therefore, any cultivator at the Foundation Establishment stage or above would know their names.
Legend had it that this Great Master Liaoyuan was not only profound in Buddhist dharma, capable of ferrying souls and transcending spirits, but his Buddhist cultivation arts were also unfathomably deep.
It was said that when he was in the Initial-stage Nascent Soul realm, he attempted to ascend to the Immortal Spirit Realm with just his physical body, but there was a problem with the ascension node he found.
The other two Mid-stage Nascent Soul cultivators who were with Liaoyuan were swept into a chaotic flow space. It wasn't until four hundred years later that Great Master Liaoyuan returned to the Jingtu Sect, alone.
Although he was as withered as a dead tree, his cultivation had reached the Late-stage Nascent Soul realm in just four hundred years. The other two Mid-stage Nascent Soul cultivators who were swept into the chaotic flow space with him were never heard from again.
He eventually met with the descendants of those two Nascent Soul cultivators, then chose to enter seclusion. After another two hundred years, the name Liaoyuan was gradually mentioned less and less.
Because no one had seen him again, many speculated that he had already ascended to the Immortal Spirit Realm. After all, if he dared to brave an ascension node with just his physical body without any magical treasures at the Initial-stage Nascent Soul realm, what more could he do at the late stage?
Unexpectedly, he had appeared again in the mortal realm today. Although two hundred years had passed, in the absence of any new Nascent Soul cultivators advancing to the Great Cultivator stage, his name still commanded awe.