Ten days passed without incident, slipping by in the blink of an eye. That morning, Zong Shou suddenly snapped awake from his deep meditative trance.

Then, from afar, he distinctly heard the faint, muffled sound of war drums. It begins!

That thought flashed through his mind, and Zong Shou shot to his feet. He scooped up Chu Xue, who was still sweetly asleep while hugging his tail, and they bolted out of the quiet chamber together.

In that very instant, the seals within his body began to peel away, layer by layer. As his vital energy surged, he retracted the form of the Nine-Tailed Profound Fox.

And just a moment later, the somewhat groggy Chu Xue awoke completely, a shadow of grim severity crossing her face. Zong Shou hadn't fully swallowed Chu Xue that day, only because the timing was wrong.

On the eve of his Sect's survival or demise, engaging in such intimate acts felt entirely inappropriate. This lovely little sprite would have to wait for another time— Together, they cut through the void, flying directly toward the center.

The five Boundless Sea Nine Palaces Sword Formations of the Cang Sheng Dao were spread across the four directions of the Qiong Realm. Whether out of consideration or some other reason, the single formation presided over by Zong Shou was stationed within the walls of the Academy City.

It faced the least pressure, yet it was also the final defensive line for the Cang Sheng Dao. Arriving at the spot, they stepped onto the pre-prepared central dais.

Shui Lingbo was already there, her expression grave, her face cold as frost. Each of the five central sword platforms possessed a Water Mirror, linked directly to the protective grand formation of the Qiong Realm.

Through this mirror, they could observe the sights inside and outside the Qiong Realm at any moment, allowing the leaders of the five formations to stay constantly informed of the situation and react accordingly. As Zong Shou took his stance in the center of the platform, the Nine Palaces Sword Formation was not yet complete.

When the war drums sounded, countless cultivators were rapidly traversing the skies above the entire Qiong Realm. Even at the formation stationed within the Academy, a majority of the personnel had yet to reach their positions.

However, that was no obstacle for him to begin activating the Sword Formation. Threads of spiritual conduits stretched outward, extending for dozens of miles, enveloping the entire Cang Sheng Academy.

He, without hesitation, seized the authority to control this formation. Having completed these tasks, Zong Shou finally had the leisure to look at the Water Mirror, and his pupils contracted sharply as he sucked in a cold breath.

The mirror displayed the scene within the Cloud Realm. Surrounding the connection point between the Qiong Realm and the Cloud Realm, a massive host had already amassed—an army numbering an astounding half a million strong!

—Thirty-five thousand Purple Scale Flame Lancer Cavalry from the Dao Spirit Qiong Realm, twenty-eight thousand Purple Sky Sword Riders from the Tai Ling Sect, thirty-two thousand Heavenly Demon War Riders from the Heavenly Demon Qiong Realm, twenty-four thousand Primordial Demon Spirit Riders from the Yuan Shi Demon Sect, all converged here. Beyond these, there were other scattered Daoist forces from groups like the Dao Ling Sect, the Demon Evolution Gate, totaling over seventy thousand irregular troops.

Merely the Profound Rank Dao Soldiers numbered nearly two hundred thousand in total. The rest were forces belonging to the Great Shang Dynasty, which Zong Shou recognized.

One hundred fifty thousand Profound Iron Siege Soldiers, eighty thousand Divine Arrow Archers, and fifty thousand Primordial Essence Blood Fiend Cavalry. The auxiliary troops below the Innate level numbered a staggering over four hundred thousand.

“It seems they’ve gone all out; what a grand display—” This did not even account for the cultivators gathered from the various Sects and Factions outside the Daoist forces. One Grotto-Heaven, two Qiong Realms, and hundreds of minor sects, totaling nearly two million individuals.

Looking through the Water Mirror now, the scene was a dense, suffocating mass, causing the surrounding atmosphere, even before the battle started, to surge with overwhelming power. Thousands of Immortal Cultivators at the Nascent Soul and Pure Yang stages were gathered there, causing the skies in every direction to shimmer with multicolored light.

Zong Shou felt his scalp tingle. This assembled strength was enough to directly sweep away the nascent Great Qian Empire.

The disparity in power was approaching a ratio of ten to one. Now, he could only hope that the Guardian Formation left behind by Xi Zi all those years ago was sufficiently powerful.

“No need to worry!” Although Shui Lingbo’s expression was solemn, she did not pay much heed to the hundreds of thousands of elite troops and millions of cultivators reflected in the mirror. She simply hadn't taken them seriously.

“When my Cang Sheng Dao was first besieged by the Cloud Realm Sects millennia ago, the scale was only slightly less than this. However, over these past few thousand years, Senior Brother Wei Xu has managed things well, and the strength of the Cang Sheng Dao has gradually recovered, surpassing even those ancient days.

The Cang Sheng Qiong Realm combined with the Three Sects and Six Gates fields a total of seventy thousand Cang Sheng Profound Dragon Riders, which should be enough to hold them off. The Myriad Immortals Illusory Void Thirty-Three Heavens Formation of this Qiong Realm, legend says, was painstakingly laid down by Martial Uncle Xi Zi over a thousand years of effort.

It is no minor thing.” The Myriad Immortals Illusory Void Thirty-Three Heavens Formation was indeed the Qiong Realm’s defense formation. Zong Shou had naturally heard of this formation’s fearsome reputation.

The legend stated that the more Immortal Cultivators suppressed within the formation, the mightier its power would become. If ten thousand Immortals gathered, it was said to be absolutely unbreakable.

The Cang Sheng Dao naturally could not gather ten thousand Immortal Cultivators now, but after recalling all disciples traveling abroad, they still mustered over one thousand eight hundred. This was sufficient to unleash nearly seventy percent of the Myriad Immortals Grand Formation’s power.

Nevertheless, since it was only hearsay, and he had not experienced the great war thousands of years prior, Zong Shou remained uneasy about the might of this Myriad Immortals Illusory Void Formation. At that very moment, Zong Shou felt something and looked toward the skies above the central grand hall, the core of the Academy.

There, countless streams of spiritual light converged, and a magnificent, golden pagoda of immense scale materialized out of thin air, rising abruptly from the ground. Its tiers continued to construct, stopping only upon reaching the twenty-seventh level.

A halo of radiant light burst forth then, illuminating a thousand miles of territory. Shui Lingbo watched quietly, a flicker of regret crossing her eyes.

“A pity! Just a little more, and it could have reached the Twenty-Eighth Heaven—” Zong Shou shared the regret.

That golden pagoda was the manifestation of the Myriad Immortals Formation’s power. There were thirty-three levels in total, and with each ascending level, the formation’s might increased by several tenths.

But the difference between the Twenty-Seventh Heaven and the Twenty-Eighth Heaven was as vast as the gulf between heaven and earth. Yet, only a brief moment later, his eyes lit up again.

He clearly saw a figure treading the void, stepping onto the very apex of the pagoda. From afar, it was Xiu Guan.

Then, the purple-gold pagoda rose again, this time pausing only at the thirty-second level. When this Thirty-Two Layered Golden Pagoda solidified, the ethereal barrier of the Qiong Realm grew so firm that it made Zong Shou’s hair stand on end.

He tested it slightly with his own strength, using sixty percent of his power, yet he could not even breach the outer barrier of the Qiong Realm. This Myriad Immortals Formation even directly impacted the space outside the Qiong Realm, particularly within the Cloud Realm.

An identical projection of a massive golden pagoda manifested above the heads of the hundreds of thousands of armies in the Cloud Realm. Under the pressure, the surrounding spiritual energy nearly solidified.

Those hundreds of thousands of Dao Soldiers were directly affected, their inter-unit connections via vital conduits almost entirely severed. The world within a thousand-mile radius around this point seemed to be partitioned into thousands upon thousands of isolated spaces, slicing the half-million Dao Soldiers and over two million cultivators into discrete segments.

Zong Shou breathed a sigh of relief. To be unafraid of such a massive Daoist force was impossible.

In the past, the forty-three thousand Blood Cloud Cavalry of the Wu Lie Kingdom, commanded by high-level martial experts, could easily slay peak Saint Realm cultivators. The combined force of the Profound and Yellow tier Dao Soldiers gathered here, along with the two million cultivators, could support the equivalent of over twenty top-tier Saint-level combat powers.

However, once the Myriad Immortals Illusory Void Formation was complete, it directly suppressed them. By suppressing the spiritual conduit connections between the Dao Soldiers and segmenting their unified momentum, even the most skilled generals or martial experts adept at gathering 'momentum' within the army found themselves powerless here—a dragon trapped in shallow water, unable to stretch its limbs.

Unless they could first shatter this Thirty-Two Layered Purple-Gold Pagoda within the Cang Sheng Qiong Realm. Looking back at the Water Mirror, Zong Shou saw nearly seventy thousand Cang Sheng Profound Dragon Riders standing guard at the connection point between the Cloud Realm and the Qiong Realm.

Their formation was deep and imposing; merely seventy thousand soldiers generated enough force to contend with the nearly five hundred thousand surrounding Dao Soldiers. The Daoist, Confucian, and Demonic Sects all possessed distinct Dao Soldier systems.

The Qiong Realm, wary of its top-tier Dao Soldiers falling under the control of affiliated sects, remained cautious. And the various sects harbored desires for independence, preferring self-reliance even if their combat power was slightly inferior.

Only the Cang Sheng Dao, the Cang Sheng Qiong Realm, and the Three Sects and Six Gates shared fundamentally the same Dao Soldier system. Because of their precarious situation and limited resources, they understood the value of unity and the need to save unnecessary expenditure.

Furthermore, in the event of war, the Dao Soldiers maintained by the Qiong Realm and the Three Sects and Six Gates required virtually no adjustment period to fight alongside each other. With the aid of the Myriad Immortals Formation, they should be able to secure the entrance to the Qiong Realm from the Cloud Realm.

“In that case, the crux of this battle lies within the Qiong Realm itself—” As Zong Shou spoke, he made a slight gesture with his hand, switching the image in the Water Mirror to the void beyond the realm. There, within the Boundary River, he saw array after array of Heaven and Earth tier Dao Soldier formations.

Counting carefully, there were exactly forty-seven of them. Some held as few as thirty or fifty individuals, while the largest boasted several hundred, accompanied by nearly four thousand Immortal Cultivators, broadcasting a vast, imposing aura.

The instant Zong Shou focused his spiritual sense upon them, these Dao Soldier formations and the numerous Immortal Cultivators unleashed their spiritual techniques or sword lights, all striking the manifested form of the Qiong Realm simultaneously. Boom!

The entire Qiong Realm shuddered lightly, and the ground beneath them trembled momentarily. Zong Shou watched firsthand as the talisman arrays and restrictive runes the Cang Sheng Dao cultivators had set up on the periphery crumbled, layer after layer.

Just as Zong Shou expected the outer defensive array to collapse from this single blow, he saw Xiu Guan, atop the thirty-two layers of the golden pagoda, curl his lips in disdain. With a slight flick of his sleeve, the golden pagoda flashed with brilliance.

All the outer restriction talismans were instantly repaired, and the speed of restoration even surpassed the rate of their collapse. In the blink of an eye, everything was restored as before, rendering the efforts of the forty-seven Dao Soldier formations and the thousands of cultivators utterly futile.

Zong Shou’s tension eased. He mused that it was no wonder the combined might of the Cloud Realm Sects thousands of years ago failed to break through the Cang Sheng Qiong Realm, suffering heavy losses instead before retreating in defeat.

This Myriad Immortals Formation was truly formidable, far surpassing the Shang Xiao Profound Spirit Sect that was annihilated by the Blood Cloud Iron Cavalry in the past. Especially now, with a supreme expert like Xiu Guan suppressing it from within the formation, its stability was unbelievably cemented.

Observing this scene, Zong Shou felt that even if the Dao Soldiers and Immortal Cultivators in the external Boundary River exhausted all their magical power, they would not be able to shake the Myriad Immortals Illusory Void Thirty-Three Heavens Formation in the slightest. However, the Dao, Confucian, and Demonic Three Religions would certainly not give up so easily.

After this initial probing strike, the real spectacle was surely about to begin. The Saint Realm experts, and perhaps even the Supreme Saint Venerables of the Three Religions, should be making their appearance soon.