Martial Peak
chapter-5210

Although the two Armies clashed fiercely, it was evident that both sides were still exercising caution and restraint. No one pressed forward recklessly as neither the Humans nor the Black Ink Clan had anywhere to fall back to for safety in the vast, unending void.

Pushing too aggressively would not benefit either party, especially if things started deteriorating for them. It could even lead to the destruction of the entire battlefield and a devastatingly high number of casualties.

Thus, if anyone had a distant overview of the battle, they would notice that the fight between the two Armies on the battlefield was fairly straightforward. The Human Race Army of 30,000 and the Black Ink Clan Army of over 400,000 were like two waves oscillating back and forth as both parties continued to engage, retreat, and then engage once more.

Every time the two Armies collided, both parties would attack with all their might. All manner of Secret Techniques burst forth in the thick of the skirmish, only to stop when both parties retreated to regroup.

The leaders of the Human Army did not expect to achieve a decisive victory in short order. They were using these small but frequent skirmishes to exhaust the Black Ink Clan Army’s strength and endurance and slowly gain the upper hand.

However, Mi Jing Lun and Ou Yang Lie never expected that the Black Ink Clan Army’s strategist also had the same thought.

The commanders on both sides were thinking along the same lines. Mi Jing Lun and Ou Yang Lie even felt a glimmer of ‘kinship’ with the Territory Lord who was commanding the opposing Army.

Naturally, it was Zhe Chong who was in charge of commanding the Black Ink Clan Army in this battle.

Among the Territory Lords, Zhe Chong was competent and more importantly, cautious by nature. If it had not been for his prudence, he would not have made the snap decision to escape when he was ambushed by the Human Race Army back at Wind and Cloud Pass. But he did, and therefore, he survived.

Although he was a Territory Lord of the Great Evolution Theatre, over the past 30,000 years, he still gathered considerable combat experience as a result of leading Armies to aid in the battles at Wind and Cloud Pass or Azure Void Pass dozens of times. Though in all fairness, his Army often suffered crushing defeats and few would come back alive.

Still, his wealth of experience going into battle against the Humans was the reason why he could come up with the appropriate strategy for this battle.

He was also the one who came up with the idea of forming the Black Ink Cloud to conceal their movements when they discovered that the North-South Army had come to launch a surprise attack.

If it had been any other Territory Lord at the helm when they saw the Human Race Army’s sudden arrival, they would have most likely rushed headfirst into battle without a second thought.

It had to be said that even though his strategies seemed rather cowardly, Zhe Chong did manage to make things a lot more difficult for the Humans.

Mi Jing Lun and Ou Yang Lie had hoped that they would encounter a reckless Black Ink Clan Army that believed they would win based solely on their overwhelming numbers.

They never thought they would run into an Army led by a shrewd mind.

This was something worthy of marvel, as after so many years of going to battle against the Black Ink Clan, it was their first time coming head to head with a Black Ink Clan commander like that.

The two Armies continued to engage in battle, and each time they clashed, life auras would wither, with the vast majority of the casualties being on the side of the Black Ink Clan.

The Humans would not be in much danger if their Warships were intact, but if their Warships were to be destroyed, then the whole Squad would be in great danger.

After clashing over ten times, things started becoming less orderly and more chaotic.

The Humans were not at fault for that.

Despite only numbering 30,000, the Human Army was disciplined and trained to listen to their superiors without question; thus, they carried out their commanders’ orders to the letter.

It was not the same with the Black Ink Clan.

There were over 400,000 Black Ink Clansmen, and while Zhe Chong was considered the commander, they were actually made up of the individual Armies that belonged to over a dozen different Territory Lords, each with a mind of his own.

Upon seeing that there were so many fatalities within Black Ink Clan after each clash while few if any occurred on the Humans’ side, many of the Territory Lords lost their cool and started pushing more aggressively.

The more reckless they were, the more casualties there were on the Black Ink Clan’s side.

It was humiliating, and that resulted in angering them further, so much so that they joined the battlefield in person.

The Eighth-Order Masters were not about to let the Territory Lords have their way on the battlefield. While the Territory Lords stayed out of the battle, the Eighth-Order Masters also hung back and observed, but now that the Territory Lords were making their move, the Eighth-Order Masters were not going to stand idly by either as they came forward to stop them.

Thus, after two hours of skirmishes, the battle suddenly intensified. The battlefield began to fill with the fluctuations from the fights between the Territory Lords and the Eighth-Order Masters.

Meanwhile, on the Purifying Black Ink Battleship, Ou Yang Lie declared, “I’m joining them. I’ll leave things here to you, Brother Mi.”

Mi Jing Lun simply nodded. Ou Yang Lie took one step and instantly appeared in front of a Territory Lord many thousands of kilometres away. He threw out his fist with great force and the Territory Lord who was caught unaware ended up flying backwards.

That being said, he was still a Territory Lord. Despite being a little dazed after the blow from Ou Yang Lie, he quickly regained his composure and started fighting back.

In the ferocious clash between the two, it was Ou Yang Lie who was unable to unleash his full powers, while the Territory Lords attacked without holding back at all.

It could not be helped as the two were fighting in an area that not only had a lot of Black Ink Clansmen but also a number of Humans. The Territory Lord attacked in a frenzy as he did not care about the deaths of his Clansmen, but Ou Yang Lie could not disregard the lives of the Humans in the same way.

Therefore, even though he gained the upper hand with his initial sneak attack on the Territory Lord, he still could not finish or defeat his opponent in short order.

Ou Yang Lie was not the only one confronted with this situation. Most of the other Eighth-Order Open Heaven Realm Masters were faced with the same predicament. The Territory Lords’ despicable behaviour was forcing a lot of the Eighth-Order Division Commanders to hold themselves back.

The Purifying Black Ink Battleship hovered in the void at approximately 1 million kilometres from the battlefield.

It was not far by any means, and if a Territory Lord wanted to launch a surprise attack, he could get to the Battleship quite rapidly. Though, of course, it was not considered close either. It was a good spot for Mi Jing Lun to oversee the entire battle.

Of the two Commanders of the North-South Army, Ou Yang Lie was the one who adhered to the principle of talking with his fists, and thus, Mi Jing Lun was the one who commanded the Army in battle.

The Purifying Black Ink Battleship was not alone in the Void as several Battalion-Class Warships hovered around it, each one crewed by an Eighth-Order Division Commander and an entire Battalion!

All of this was to ensure that the Purifying Black Ink Battleship would stay safe even when they were so far away from home.

One could not claim that the Humans were acting too conservatively. On the contrary, the Purifying Black Ink Battleship was just far too important. Not only did the battleship have a great variety of strategic functions, but both the battleship and the Battalion-Class warships around it were carrying quite a number of specialists who followed the Army to this battle.

The East-West Army had over 1,000 Artifact Refiners with them, along with Alchemists and Array Masters in similar numbers.

It was the same with the North-South Army.

These Humans were at the very least in the Fifth-Order Open Heaven Realm, with a few even being in the Eighth-Order.

Even so, they spent all their time fully focused on their respective Daos such as Artifact Refining, Alchemy, and Spirit Arrays; thus, they lacked combat power and were not suited to step foot on the battlefield. The loss of any one of them would be a notable loss for the Human Race.

They could only remain in safety until the battle came to an end.

If they were to remain here, then there had to be people here to protect them as well; therefore, even though the North-South Army had 30,000 soldiers in total, in reality, 3,000 to 4,000 of them were not taking part in the battle against the Black Ink Clan.

Mi Jing Lun’s brows were tightly furrowed as he surveyed the battle from the deck of the Purifying Black Ink Battleship.

What was happening was unlike anything he had expected.

Initially, he assumed that it would not be hard for the North-South Army to come out victorious as a Black Ink Clan Army of 500,000 would only have slightly over a dozen Territory Lords commanding it. The North-South Army had nearly 60 Eighth-Order Masters, which was several times more than their opponents’ number of Territory Lords.

The advantage they had in high-level combat power was enough to make up for the huge difference in numbers between the two Armies.

That being said, it would be impossible to ruthlessly slaughter the entire Black Ink Clan Army as they would undoubtedly flee once things did not look good for them.

The situation at this battle was different from the ambush that the East-West Army had set up at Wind and Cloud Pass.

Yang Kai had filled Mi Jing Lun in on all the details of that battle, and Mi Jing Lun knew that the East-West Army’s successful vanquishment of all 300,000 of the Black Ink Clan Army in such a short amount of time was mainly due to the circumstances of the ambush, and also the fact that they had an Old Ancestor with them. All in all, the Black Ink Clan had no hope of even putting up a strong fight against the Humans back then.

However, the North-South Army failed to set up an ambush and did not have an Old Ancestor to assume command, so they could not compare themselves with the advantageous position the East-West Army had.

Still, the North-South Army should have been able to achieve victory relatively easily without having to suffer too many casualties on their end.

Unfortunately, the reality was quite different.

The Humans did not seem to have as much of an advantage on the battlefield as they anticipated.

Despite the high hopes that Mi Jing Lun placed on the Eighth-Order Masters to turn the battle in their favour, they did not seem to be giving the Humans that much of an edge in battle.

The reason for this boiled down to the existence of numerous Seventh-Order and Eighth-Order Black Ink Disciples among the Black Ink Clan Army!

Even after experiencing so many years of everything from great battles to minor skirmishes with the Black Ink Clan, Mi Jing Lun had never encountered so many Black Ink Disciples at once, and all of them had such high Orders.

It was not surprising to find Black Ink Disciples, a rather unique form of being, on the Black Ink Battlefield. In the past, in every major battle, there would always be Black Ink Disciples taking part. Some unfortunate Humans ended up turning into Black Ink Disciples and becoming an enemy of the Human Race in every clash.

However, ever since Yang Kai came to the Black Ink Battlefield and brought the Purifying Light to the Great Passes, the number of Black Ink Disciples drastically decreased.

The Black Ink Disciples either died on the battlefield or were caught by Human Masters who used Purifying Light to restore their sense of self. Without fresh blood to bolster their numbers, the Black Ink Disciples naturally grew fewer and fewer.

This had become even more apparent in recent years as Mi Jing Lun had barely seen any sign of Black Ink Disciples on the battlefield.

Yet now, at the Great Evolution Theatre, he saw the Black Ink Disciples once more, including quite a number that had Seventh-Order and Eighth-Order Open Heaven Realm cultivations.

Most were in the Seventh Order, numbering in the hundreds.

Although they did not have quite as many Eighth-Order Black Ink Disciples, Mi Jing Lun had counted nearly 30 of them and he knew that there had to be more than that as there would be some he did not manage to spot in all the chaos.

No one would have ever thought that there were so many High-Rank Black Ink Disciples in the Great Evolution Theatre.

And this was only those that belonged to the Armies of the dozen or so Territory Lords present. The situation would certainly be a lot grimmer if all the forces in the Great Evolution Theatre were combined.

There was no other Theatre like this one.

While the other Theatres also encountered Black Ink Disciples on the battlefield, it was impossible for them to be confronted with such powerful ones and in such alarming numbers.

Nevertheless, after mulling in silence for a brief moment, Mi Jung Lun soon realized the reason for this.

The Great Evolution Theatre’s situation was unique due to the Great Pass having been lost over 30,000 years ago. No great battles had taken place throughout that time in this Theatre, which meant that the Black Ink Disciples could spend all their time on cultivation. They did not have to worry about going to battle and losing their life, and thus, they slowly managed to reach the Seventh-Order and Eighth-Order Open Heaven Realm.