Sect Master Wang knew this well, so she still sent a voice transmission to the others. Though her words were tactful, her meaning was clear. In truth, they needed to find a quick escape route. If the enemy's Golden Cores led the charge directly, it would be best for them to flee far away. With the no-fly restriction here, a Golden Core cultivator's flight might not be much faster than running on the ground. This, at least, gave Sect Master Wang and the others hope of escape.
When they came out, the Hall of Deacons had given the Feng Family Ancestor and her each a jade slip. Recorded within the jade slip was a temporary passage into the inner valley. There were thirteen such passages in total, distributed to cultivators in different regions, serving as their only retreat route to teleport back to the inner valley in a critical moment.
However, the sect masters and family heads of these small sects did not know that although they could teleport back to the inner valley, they would be entering individual cages within it.
How could the Falling Star Valley let them teleport back at will? If they were killed and the teleportation jade slip was taken by the foreign clans, it would be as good as directly breaking the restriction into the inner valley. Therefore, when any of them used the teleportation jade to return, they would find themselves trapped in an unbreakable cage. In that narrow space, their cultivation would be suppressed to almost nothing. Their identities would need to be verified again before they would be released one by one. Otherwise, it would be like walking straight into a trap.
However, the orders Lin Xinghe gave to the disciples guarding the cages were not as simple as just verifying identities. They were to inquire in detail about the battle with the enemy: who the enemy was, their numbers, where the attack had reached, and so on. If any temporary deserters were discovered, that entire small team would be annihilated, and their families and sects would be exterminated root and stem.
At the same time, that passage wasn't something you could enter just by finding it. It was guarded by Falling Star Valley cultivators who had to perform a simple confirmation. At the very least, there could be no enemies in hot pursuit. Otherwise, you could only fight to the death or surrender.
In that situation, the cultivators on the Falling Star Valley's side all knew that the fate of those who surrendered and fell into the hands of the foreign clans was extremely miserable, possibly ending with having their souls extracted and refined. Therefore, they had to fight to the death, holding on until the passage opened.
But all of this was unknown to Sect Master Wang and the others. They still thought that if they were truly outmatched, they could return to the valley unimpeded.
What kind of person was Tianxingzi? This thousand-year-old demon had long ago calculated everything with perfect clarity. Although he couldn't guarantee that absolutely no one would surrender, as long as he controlled the majority of the forces, it was enough. In any case, those who surrendered would ultimately die anyway. Whether they returned to the inner valley and temporarily escaped disaster or not, when the Falling Star Valley's line was completely routed, that would be the time he would self-detonate the Sect-Protecting Grand Formation. At that point, no one here would survive.
The moment Li Yan stepped out of the light gate, he also felt the pressure of the restriction from the air. Only then did Li Yan realize that there were many things Lin Xinghe hadn't told him. In a situation like this, they wouldn't have to worry about him escaping. He would probably be killed by Tianxingzi before he even fled the Falling Star Valley's grounds.
'If our own people could fly here while the enemy couldn't, that would be fantastic!'
Li Yan thought to himself. If they could achieve that, the Falling Star Valley cultivators could attack the enemy with speed alone, allowing one to fight two, or even more. But it was clear the Falling Star Valley couldn't do this; otherwise, how could he himself be suppressed by the restriction?
In just a few breaths, the power of Li Yan's Divine Sense had dropped sharply.
"This protective grand formation is so strong, it even restricts Divine Sense!"
Li Yan couldn't help but feel a greater sense of fear towards the Falling Star Valley's Sect-Protecting Grand Formation. The vast starlight that had risen from the formation last night was still fresh in his memory—a restriction that could briefly trap a Golden Core cultivator.
Although he immediately retracted it, Li Yan still noticed some Falling Star Valley cultivators who had just been teleported out, running wildly on the ground nearby.
On Li Yan's side, he was alone. Just now, when he had reached the teleportation light gate, the few disciples in charge of guarding it had all looked at him with strange eyes. They didn't know what a lone cultivator at only the fifth layer of Qi Condensation was going out to do. Although the requirements for disciples going into battle had been lowered, one still needed to be at least at the sixth layer of Qi Condensation. And a fifth-layer disciple wanted to go out alone?
Thus, the guard in charge had to send another voice transmission to the deacon on duty. Only then, under their peculiar gazes, was Li Yan allowed to teleport out. The news they received was, "This is the Sect Master's wish. This person may have been assigned a secret mission!"
Looking around, Li Yan had never been to this place before. But relying on his memory and making a rough comparison with the route he used to take from the mountain gate to the inner valley, he was still able to roughly determine his position. He should be relatively close to the entrance of the inner valley. It was a short distance from the mountain gate to here, and from here, there was a path that cut diagonally to the inner valley entrance.
Li Yan looked carefully for a while longer, his gaze falling on a small, not-so-high mountain to his side. He was currently standing in a deep thicket of bushes beside a mountain path leading to this small mountain.
After some thought, Li Yan did not choose to move closer to the mountain gate. He decided to stay and guard this place. Of course, this was assuming his judgment was not wrong. Li Yan was certain that his location was one of the paths leading to the inner valley entrance, but he couldn't rule out the possibility that everything before him was an illusion created by the grand formation. His newfound reverence for the Falling Star Valley's Sect-Protecting Grand Formation made him no longer dare to be certain of what he saw. But since he couldn't see through it now, going elsewhere would yield the same result, so there was no better choice. At most, he would be guarding for nothing, wasting some time. In a great battle like this, could he possibly be afraid of not encountering an enemy? That would be truly strange.
There was another, most important reason: before seeing the enemy, and with his Divine Sense greatly restricted, Li Yan did not want to run around randomly and bump right into them. There were, after all, three Golden Core cultivators.
However, quite a few people still chose to follow Lin Xinghe's words. Within their designated defensive points, they were constantly searching for a satisfactory ambush position.
Li Yan's gaze fell upon the small mountain again. It was only about sixty-odd zhang high. A mountain path wound its way up from below to the summit, then slanted down the back of the mountain. If someone were to take this path and couldn't fly, they would have to set foot on this small mountain.
Li Yan soon stood at the peak of the mountain. Looking down, he saw layers upon layers of dense tree canopies, rising and falling like an ocean tide, stretching into the distance before being blocked by other, larger mountains.
Although the small mountain was not high, it was covered with rugged, grotesque rocks. In many places, sturdy rocks jutted out, some as tall as several people. The rocks were dark brown, and after years of weathering, they were covered with vertical grooves, their bases deeply rooted in the mountain. The bases of the rocks were surrounded by dense weeds, while their proud upper parts shot towards the sky, tapering as they went up, like black iron nails. And the path that passed through was the one that wound its way between these dark brown rocks. It was so winding that even without an illusion formation, one would get a little dizzy walking through it.
After standing on the summit and observing for a moment, Li Yan's figure flashed. The mountain top was once again empty and silent.
Just as the Falling Star Valley cultivators emerged from the inner valley and began to scatter like ants across the large area between the mountain gate and the inner valley, the attack on the mountain gate outside reached its final moments.
Led by Xue Qianzong, the three Golden Cores had been attacking the already damaged restriction at the mountain gate for about half an incense stick's time.
With a loud "boom," the scene inside the Falling Star Valley's entire mountain gate was revealed. That restriction had already been mostly destroyed by Lie Changfeng. Just now, a round of fierce attacks had been enough to shatter it completely.
Once a specific restriction on a Sect-Protecting Grand Formation like this was broken, it was not an easy task to repair. It required a large amount of raw materials and the time to refine them. Moreover, Tianxingzi had no intention of repairing it at all. His original plan was to lure the enemy into a trap. Therefore, when they saw that the restriction that was on the verge of breaking yesterday was still there, Xue Qianz-ong and the others were not suspicious. Calculating from the time Ning Ying met Lie Changfeng, the enemy simply didn't have enough time for repairs.
The moment the mountain gate restriction was broken, a Spirit Power shield flashed around Yu Rong, and she led her people to fly in without hesitation.
However, Xue Qianzong and Ning Ying, who were behind, did not move. It was not until several breaths after Yu Rong flew in and nothing unusual happened that the two pretended to scold their subordinates, telling them to hurry up and follow.
The moment the cultivators at Foundation Establishment and above entered the mountain gate, their faces changed drastically. They had all flown in, but then it was as if they were being forcefully pressed to the ground. In their alarm, although they tried to control their swaying bodies, the vast majority still plummeted. Some managed it with a bit more composure, while others fell like meteorites. Only a few with extremely high cultivation managed to hastily maintain their posture in the air, but they too quickly landed. The immense consumption of Spirit Power was not something they could bear.
Yu Rong's body swayed slightly, but she stubbornly remained flying in the air. She was spreading her Divine Sense to conduct an initial probe. However, not long after her Divine Sense extended, her brow furrowed tightly. The power of her Divine Sense was draining at an astonishing rate. If she persisted in probing forward, she would likely soon have a splitting headache and blurred consciousness.
At this moment, Xue Qianzong and Ning Ying had also flown in. Their bodies also swayed slightly before they stabilized. Without needing a reminder, both of them also shot out their Divine Sense. Just a moment later, all three retracted their Divine Sense, and the gazes of Yu Rong and Ning Ying fell upon Xue Qianzong. He was the one with the highest cultivation here.
Xue Qianzong shook his head lightly. "I can now be completely certain of what Brother Changfeng said. The Falling Star Valley's Sect-Protecting Grand Formation is indeed very strong. I too cannot probe very far. We must be extremely careful from now on. I urge you both to remind your clan's disciples to advance cautiously step by step and not to rush forward recklessly for merit. I cannot see the end of the road ahead, so naturally, I cannot find out how far we are from the hillside covered in wildflowers that our intelligence mentioned."
The "hillside covered in wildflowers" that Xue Qianzong mentioned was the entrance to attack the inner valley of the Falling Star Valley. In their Divine Sense, the path ahead was shrouded in mist. It either wound forward through a jungle or meandered along a small river. Some sections of the path were so overgrown that one could only vaguely make out the trace of a road, covered in thorns as tall as a person, like a demonic beast grinning with sharp, cold teeth at the crowd.
"Illusion formations and traps. They are using the grand formation to wear down our strength!" Ning Ying said softly.
"We still have to charge through it once!" Yu Rong had lost her confidence in certain victory, but she was determined to fight a battle before giving up. Before seeing Tianxingzi, she had already come this far. How could she be willing to retreat?
Naturally, neither Xue Qianzong nor Ning Ying would retreat either. Fortune is found in danger—this was an unchanging truth since ancient times.
And so, after a brief organization, the crowd began to charge forward. This charge caused the cultivators of the four sects no end of headaches. Various illusion formations, mechanisms, and traps constantly appeared in the grand formation, forcing them to stop and break through them time and again.