The Guardian race, following the integration by Lan Qisi, experienced extraordinarily rapid development, gradually showing signs of becoming a great clan within the Great Barren Desert. The harsh survival environment, driven by natural selection, resulted in a total population under ten million barbarians boasting a startling six or seven Nascent Soul level combatants, alongside over ten thousand Golden Core realm members.

Of course, this did not imply the Guardian race had separated from humanity to become a race of inherently high aptitude. In truth, fundamentally, the Guardian race was not significantly different from the normal human race. The sole difference lay in certain specialized methods employed by the Demonic Emperor Sect.

The origin of the Guardian race was the Demonic Emperor Sect assembling a large contingent of those with relatively superior aptitude from among humanity to artificially create this race. Naturally, Lei Dong was unaware of this fact; otherwise, he would certainly have remarked, "So the Demonic Emperor Sect was already dabbling in genetic optimization projects?"

In the broader sense, the Guardian race also possessed a familial nature. As is widely known, within family lineages, those possessing the life factor of a family with a stronger spiritual root were inherently more likely to give birth to children possessing spiritual root aptitude. While the proportion did not reach exaggerated levels, it was still far, far higher than the ethereal one-in-ten-thousand chance among ordinary mortals.

It was precisely because of this that throughout history, numerous radicals had emerged among humanity, seeking to completely replace the survival status of mortals with those possessing spiritual root aptitude. In essence, they advocated that mortals held no right to exist; only those with spiritual roots were truly human.

But the reason these radicals rarely succeeded was simple: although the probability of spiritual root aptitude emerging among mortals was far lower than in cultivation families, one could not ignore the extremely vast population base and reproductive capacity of the mortal world.

Many peerless experts and sect elders, now famous throughout the land, actually originated from mundane families. A significant portion of these individuals would absolutely never permit those radicals to succeed.

In reality, using the immense mortal population to continuously nurture cultivators and supply the cultivation world with a steady stream of spiritual root aptitude was, arguably, a highly beneficial method of inheritance. The larger the population, the greater the diversity in life factors during reproduction, making it easier to stimulate those with truly superior aptitude.

For example, if only one mortal couple bore a few children, the chance of those children manifesting a spiritual root would indeed be low. However, if that number expanded to hundreds of thousands, millions, hundreds of millions, or even tens of billions?

How many individuals with spiritual root aptitude so excellent as to be called geniuses would those tens of billions of mortal couples ultimately breed? And these individuals with excellent spiritual roots would introduce fresh blood—an unending stream—into the entire cultivation world.

Many clear-sighted individuals among cultivators have pointed out that without countless mortals continuously providing fresh blood to the cultivation world, the human cultivation realm would inevitably face extinction sooner or later. Mortals, in turn, only required some land and self-cultivated sustenance; they did not encroach upon the high-level cultivation resources belonging to cultivators. What harm was there in preserving a line of the same species?

This point has gradually been acknowledged by the vast majority of cultivators. Consequently, mortals lacking spiritual root aptitude were allowed to survive in this vast world, establishing nations and passing down generations that bred those with spiritual roots. Meanwhile, cultivators could maintain the glorious inheritance of noble bloodlines through the establishment of families.

The coexistence of these two methods was the most perfect arrangement.

Perhaps it was due to this balance that the current humans of the Nine Provinces, in a region like the Six Domains and Nine Provinces where powerful races abounded, managed to ascend from being a weak race to their current formidable status.

Of course, within this mainstream framework, there always remained some non-mainstream radicals. Perhaps the Guardian race was a product of the Demonic Emperor Sect's radical faction: a large family unit with a relatively complex life-factor library composed of many individuals with spiritual roots, breeding descendants, and then systematically eliminating those without roots or with inferior roots over generations until they formed a self-enclosed, cyclical race.

To say this was wrong might not be accurate. At the very least, the Demonic Emperor Sect succeeded in establishing the Guardian race by leveraging the rule that dual-spiritual-root bloodlines offered a higher probability of producing spiritual-root descendants, thereby ensuring a high yield of qualified offspring for the entire clan.

After evolving over a long period, while the Guardian race had not entirely stepped outside the human sphere, they had effectively become a small branch of humanity—a branch specialized in high-yield spiritual root descendants. Consequently, within a clan of barely ten million people, they managed to produce ten thousand Golden Core experts, hundreds of thousands at the Foundation Establishment stage, with the remainder, save for the very young, all being at the Qi Refining stage.

All offspring born within the race lacking spiritual roots were completely disposed of, through methods cruel and brutal. But in a narrow, localized sense, this was undoubtedly an effective approach.

Originally, the Guardian race, lacking effective weaponry and existing as a disorganized rabble, still caused neighboring Zhao Province to fear them like tigers, referring to them as 'Barbarians' and refusing to supply them with cultivation pills or magical artifacts. Now, under Daiqisi’s efforts, the entire Guardian race was unified. Coupled with Lei Dong's potent support in refining artifacts and pills, the Guardian race had unleashed a fearsome strength.

The army Lan Qisi brought to Lei Dong this time was the elite core of the Guardian race: a super-elite legion of five thousand barbarians, every single one possessing at least the strength of the Golden Core realm. Currently, these individuals held fanatical faith and absolute loyalty toward Lan Qisi. Her methods and actions had reversed the awkward situation where the Saintess held only a lofty status without much real military power among the barbarians. It could be said that Lan Qisi now commanded the majority of the barbarian military might.

Besides these five thousand barbarian elites, Lan Qisi’s contingent also possessed one thousand Golden Core level Earth Giants, and a terrifying swarm of hundreds of thousands of Swift Stingers. Lei Dong had witnessed the power of the Swift Stingers before. What a terrifying scene would a swarm of several hundred thousand Swift Stingers create once they formed an offensive tide? At the very least, Lei Dong knew he dared not pit his Ghost Legion against them head-on; while he might not lose, the victory would be costly, with his Ghost Legion of ten thousand likely reduced to very few survivors by the final battle.

In addition to these forces, Lei Dong's direct, personally cultivated army, the Hidden Dragon Legion, was also brought out to witness the wider world.

Naturally, given the current strength of the Hidden Dragon Legion, for now, they could only observe, play a supporting role, temper their martial spirit, and pick up easy advantages. The Hidden Dragon Legion was an army formed from hand-picked children with superior aptitude, molded through rigorous brainwashing and training, bolstered by extravagant resources, and accelerated in their cultivation through the deployment of Grotto-Heavens and Blessed Lands.

This was a personal guard force in which Lei Dong placed great hope—a purely human, pure-blood military force. In building it, Lei Dong spared no expense. Currently, every member of the Hidden Dragon Legion had experienced one or two tours within a Grotto-Heaven or Blessed Land, making their strength considerable; a small number were already late-stage Golden Core, while most were at the mid-stage Golden Core level. Moreover, these individuals were generally required to cultivate the Ghost Control Art, as Lei Dong equipped every one of them with a pair of top-grade or high-grade spiritual ghosts to serve as guards.

It could be said the Hidden Dragon Legion was immensely powerful, but the problem was their number remained too small—only a mere eight hundred members to date. Furthermore, since their formation, they had only engaged in skirmishes against demonic beasts or sparred amongst themselves in the Ghost Legion.

This army was still very green. Despite the strictest training and the most ample resource supply, and with high morale, it remained a nascent force untouched by true warfare.

Thus, Lei Dong brought them here not to clash head-on with the main army of the Winged God Race, but to gain experience and be honed. Of course, 'honing' did not mean a mere outing. The chosen opponents would be those slightly weaker, but not too weak. The goal was to keep casualties below three hundred—a limit Lei Dong could still tolerate.

When the eight hundred Hidden Dragon soldiers, clad in menacing black armor, stood silently and impeccably arrayed before Lei Dong awaiting inspection, their eyes—burning, almost fanatical—fixed upon him, Lei Dong’s heart could not help but stir with emotion. This was a super-direct army he had almost entirely forged himself. In the Grotto-Heavens and Blessed Lands, Lei Dong had witnessed their growth inch by inch.

The Hidden Dragon Legion was unlike those Golden Core cultivators who grew up in the wilderness or within traditional sects.

Every member of the army was a pure-blooded soldier who had undergone the strictest military training and life regimen since childhood. They possessed none of the solitary individualism, self-will, laziness, or other various shortcomings common among human cultivators.

Within the Hidden Dragon Legion, there was only one voice: obedience, complete and absolute obedience. Even if ordered to jump into a pile of Sixth-Order Yang Fire Sources, or a heap of Sixth-Level Han Yang Fire Sources, knowing they would be reduced to ashes in moments, every Hidden Dragon soldier would execute Lei Dong’s command without hesitation.

In the establishment of the Hidden Dragon Legion and the forging of their loyalty, their entire fidelity was directed toward Lei Dong; no one else mattered. Even their current commanders, Qing Niangzi, Lei Qing’er, and Qi Feifei, only obeyed according to the chain of command when their directives did not conflict with Lei Dong’s orders. They did not obey Qing Niangzi because she was the commanding officer; they obeyed her because Lei Dong had commanded her to temporarily serve as the commander of the Hidden Dragon Legion.

Watching them stand so straight with their hands clasped behind their backs, despite lacking large-scale bloody war experience, Lei Dong had every reason to believe that although they were weak now, one day they would grow to become his reliance—his true pillar of strength.