The Black Fox Iron Cavalry excels at illusionary arts and swift maneuvers, their tracks elusive. They are adept at ambushes and long-range raids. Only in direct frontal assaults is their power slightly diminished—

In my assessment, many among the Black Fox Cavalry are dual cultivators, proficient in both spiritual arts and martial prowess, making them rare talents. Forcing them to excel in frontal charges is impractical. In my humble opinion, it would be better to simply augment them with a secondary mount—one that is hardy, thickly fleshed, and capable of matching the speed of a fifth-tier Silver Scale Wind Steed when unburdened!

Reading this, Zong Shou let out a slight smile. This sentiment was precisely in line with his own thinking.

"Since they are dual cultivators, we can have every Black Fox Knight learn at least one readily castable spiritual art. The power level is temporarily irrelevant; the key is using it before engaging in the charge. No preparation, no hand seals required—just a thought. If they can disrupt the enemy formation during a charge, this cavalry arm will have no weakness left."

Closing the memorial, Zong Shou didn't immediately issue an order but fell into deep contemplation.

He already had a rough framework for the Black Fox Cavalry's supplementary skills.

It was specifically designed to enhance their frontal assault capability.

But now, thinking it over, it seemed his original plan would only offer a minor boost to the Black Fox Cavalry's combat power. It was far better to follow Zhuang Yu’s suggestion, focusing on improving the spiritual arts in which the Black Fox Cavalry already excelled, thus amplifying their existing strengths.

However, doing so meant all his previous preparations would have to be scrapped and redone.

Then there was the issue of instantaneously castable spiritual arts. Although the Black Fox Iron Knights under his command were said to be peerless in spiritual martial arts, their primary focus remained martial arts. Developing instantaneous spiritual arts that these men could master was no easy feat—

Aside from these two matters, the remaining military affairs were all minor details.

Zhuang Yu was clearly an astute man who understood boundaries and when to advance or retreat, never overstepping his authority. Many sensitive matters were delegated to the generals Zong Shou had brought with him from the Cloud Realm.

Furthermore, there were the rogue cultivators preparing to pledge allegiance to the Great Qian Immortal Dynasty.

Zhuang Yu dared not make decisions on these individuals either, unsure if their backgrounds were trustworthy. He deliberately postponed these matters, waiting for Zong Shou’s return.

At their peak, the number of rogue cultivators seeking asylum reached sixty or seventy. Later, perhaps sensing the worsening situation of the Great Qian, quite a few departed, leaving only about twenty.

Zhuang Yu suspected that among these remaining few, some were genuinely unafraid of death and optimistic about the Great Qian’s prospects, while others were simply too obtuse to grasp the situation, or perhaps they harbored malicious intent with hidden agendas.

While Zong Shou felt gratified by Zhuang Yu’s caution, he also recognized that the man had not truly integrated himself into the Great Qian system. He remained overly cautious, carefully maintaining distance, unwilling to cross invisible lines. This was a good quality, yet in the long run, it could lead to alienation. In critical situations, being constrained by such reservations, as Zhuang Yu was, could lead to major strategic blunders.

Zong Shou was not a ruler given to suspicion; given the established structure of the Great Qian Immortal Dynasty, the possibility of his subordinates staging a revolt was negligible. Zhuang Yu truly had no need to be so hesitant—

Zong Shou shook his head slightly. Such issues could only be addressed in due time; the present moment was not right for resolving them.

It took only a few moments for Zong Shou to quickly settle all the miscellaneous tasks. Following this, he conferred with his various generals to select elites from the existing armies to reorganize and form the fully realized Heavenly Dipper Sword Soldiers and Heavenly Dipper Crossbowmen, arranging for the integration and training drills for all units.

The armor customized from Cha Houhu would arrive in about a month.

As for the martial cultivators and spiritual masters among his ranks above the fourth-tier, although they usually practiced alongside their main discipline, many had already begun studying the supplementary techniques for the Heavenly Dipper Swordsmen and Crossbowmen with some success. However, they had never undergone formalized training as an army, so the current need for intensive drilling was paramount.

In the Primordial Lotus Realm, combat power below the Innate level could still be useful. But once they were set to campaign in other outer domains, the main force would still rely on the genuine second-tier Yellow and Black tier troops. In warfare, quality over quantity was key. At most, they could conscript low-tier vassal troops locally as supplements.

Organizing these two authentic tiers of strong Yellow-rank forces and augmenting the strength of the Black Fox Cavalry was the most urgent task for the Great Qian at this juncture.

Though the task sounded simple, the process proved exceedingly tedious once Zong Shou began overseeing it. Even with Zhuang Yu and Shi Ruolan assisting, it took a full three days just to lay down the arrangements for everything.

And on that very day, the first merchant fleet from the Asura race quietly arrived outside the Primordial Lotus Realm.

In the outer domain, the airships of the Nine Absolute Immortal Court and the Tianfang Cultivation Society had just sustained heavy losses. Under Shi Ruolan’s relentless pressure, their operational area was contracting significantly. Whether they had detected this fleet's arrival or truly remained ignorant, or perhaps assumed the Asura race would not interfere, remained unknown.

Five hundred Spirit Realm slave cultivators, ten Taiyi Divine Thunder Warships, and the materials Zong Shou had purchased for refining Dao Soldiers all arrived as scheduled, without any deficit.

While the other goods were welcome, the ten Taiyi Divine Thunder Warships were enough to make Shi Ruolan nearly jump for joy. All the ship captains and their subordinates were equally ecstatic. These were the most legitimate warships in the outer domain riverways. By comparison, the Great Qian’s own airships barely qualified as civilian vessels, only managing some combat capability due to the primordial destruction divine crossbows and the nine-armed spiritual crossbows they mounted.

Each of these Taiyi Divine Thunder Warships possessed Divine Thunder Towers whose striking power rivaled a peak Immortal Realm cultivator’s single blow, and their inherent defenses were formidable. Once integrated, the combat strength of the fleet officers would instantly surge by more than ten times.

What Zong Shou valued even more were the five hundred Spirit Realm slave cultivators and the materials to continue forging slave soldiers.

The day he received these 'goods,' he immediately entered seclusion again. Refining one Heavenly-tier Dao Soldier required an entire day, while an Earth-tier soldier took only about three hours. Logically, refining all these Spirit Realm slave cultivators, plus the Immortal Realm cultivators sealed within the jade discs, would take nearly a year. Fortunately, with the Cosmic Book and the newly acquired Immortal Stones, time was manageable. Zong Shou only needed to refine one or two Dao Soldiers daily. The rest of his time was spent referencing Zhuang Yu’s advice to perfect the Black Fox Cavalry’s supplementary techniques.

Progress was rapid. Even when Zong Shou encountered difficulties, he could consult Ao Kun and Ao Yi, who were hidden several worlds away, hoping to gain insight.

In just twelve days, a preliminary framework was established, and all the Black Fox Knights began transitioning to the new cultivation method. It was fortunate that the armor Zong Shou had previously commissioned required minimal modification. The restriction arrays within the armor were designed not only for defense but also to enhance the Black Fox Knights' ability to cast spiritual arts. Therefore, Zong Shou only made slight improvements and promptly sent the revised blueprints to Cha Houhu, hopefully ensuring that the true mobilization date for the Black Fox Cavalry would not be further delayed.

According to Zong Shou’s design, while the Black Fox Cavalry could not replicate the Blood Cloud Cavalry’s ability to absorb vitality to enhance combat power, when gathered in large numbers, they could link their vital energy channels. Under the leader’s control, they could unleash massive, potent spiritual arts. A force numbering over ten thousand could completely overwhelm a Blood Cloud Cavalry of equal size. The greater the numbers, the larger the multiplicative increase in combat power.

However, they were not definitively superior to the latter. The Blood Cloud Cavalry, once fully equipped and trained, were simple to field. But the Black Fox Knights required every member to be at least sixth-tier. They should be considered to have their own strengths and weaknesses, making it hard to declare one superior to the other.

Currently, there were not enough suitable candidates within the Immortal Court to serve as Black Fox Knights, even with the equipment forged by the Asuras arriving. The maximum size of the Black Fox Cavalry would only reach nine thousand. Nevertheless, with this single iron cavalry unit, he finally possessed the genuine qualification to contend against the armies of the four major powers in the Primordial Lotus Realm and the outer domain battlefield, rather than relying solely on the Heaven and Earth tier Dao Soldiers in his hands and Ao Kun’s strength.

On the twenty-fourth day, the second Asura fleet also arrived, unannounced.

This shipment contained the ten thousand five hundred sets of Black Fox armor and specialized weaponry that Zong Shou had custom-ordered, along with thirty-five thousand sixth-tier Single-Horned Thunder Rhinos—the charge beasts Zong Shou had selected for his Black Fox Iron Cavalry. These beasts were somewhat sluggish but possessed respectable speed, thick hides, and charging power nearly unmatched among crystal beasts of the same tier. Furthermore, when tens of thousands charged together, their thunderous energy could spread for hundreds of miles. Combined with the knights’ mastery of instantaneous spiritual arts, the charge combat strength of this Black Fox Cavalry was enough to make one's scalp tingle just thinking about it.

In addition, the equipment for the sixty thousand Heavenly Dipper Sword Soldiers and Heavenly Dipper Crossbowmen also arrived in full. The only awkward situation was that the quality of the core components self-manufactured by the Great Qian Immortal Dynasty was vastly inferior to the armor forged by the Asura race. This disparity effectively downgraded the overall quality of all the equipment by half a tier, leading to constant complaints from the rank-and-file soldiers.

By this time, it was not just the cultivators from the Buddhist Sword Sect who sensed something amiss. Even those native to the Primordial Lotus Realm, like Zhuang Yu, felt the strangeness. In less than a month, the Great Qian Immortal Court's strength in the Primordial Lotus Realm had more than doubled. Eight thousand Black Fox Iron Knights, forty thousand Heavenly Dipper Sword Soldiers, and twenty thousand Heavenly Dipper Red Crossbowmen had been successively assembled. In the outer domain, the ten Taiyi Divine Thunder Warships boasted a combat power equivalent to two or three hundred previous airships.

Supplying such a sudden surge in strength from just half of the Primordial Lotus Realm was clearly insufficient.

The Dao Soldiers Zong Shou had subdued, after their refinement was complete, were mostly stationed within the Grand Tranquility Immortal Palace. This matter could be hidden from outsiders, but not from those residing within the palace. Any disturbance within the palace was immediately known, let alone the sudden appearance of several hundred new Immortal and Spirit Realm cultivators? How could the Great Qian Immortal Court, with only two major strongholds, sustain such a massive influx of Immortal Cultivators?

Filled with doubt, they refrained from disturbing Zong Shou due to his seclusion. In truth, by recalling Zong Shou’s words to Feng Taiji at the border riverway, everyone had already vaguely guessed the truth. They waited anxiously, dedicating themselves to their own preparations. Zhuang Yu, in particular, no longer worried about Zong Shou’s perception and fully dedicated himself to overseeing the troop training, acting in Zong Shou’s stead. Since a major conflict seemed imminent, it was imperative that the forces under their command be as elite as possible.

Exactly one month later, Zong Shou finally emerged from his quiet chamber. All the Dao Soldiers were fully refined. Just then, he received news: Feng Taiji, after being kept waiting for a full month, was finally granted an audience by Hong Jiuchen.

Zong Shou inwardly sneered. Having been stalled for a full month, the attitudes of those few figures were already entirely predictable.

(To be continued)