After the spiritual energy was restored: Goddess girlfriends came knocking.

A few days later, early in the morning.

A menacing aura emanated from outside Chang'an City.

The scouts didn't dare get too close, but they roughly estimated that the combined forces of the four kingdoms—Tianlang, Tushan, Xuanyu, and Yinshan—numbered no less than 600,000.

War drums resounded atop Chang'an city walls.

The city's protective array was activated at full power, and a pale golden light curtain enveloped the entire city.

Chang'an was like a giant war machine, with all its parts operating silently.

The sounds of prayer converged from every neighborhood and market to the stone monument in the center of the city. The people of the city clasped their hands together, looked up at the golden characters on the monument, and their lips moved.

Jiang Yan clearly felt that, along with those prayers, a continuous stream of good fortune was quietly flowing into his body.

After undergoing the transformation through the Haoran Nourishing Qi Technique, I am only one step away from becoming a Nascent Soul cultivator.

He stood atop the city wall, with Tu Shan Jing standing beside him, his hand on his sword, and Pei Xiao, Cang Wu, and Lu Zhan Shuang lined up in order.

Liu Qingyi stood on the other side of the city wall, leaning on her cane.

His gaze swept over the flags of the allied forces, finally settling on the blood-stained battle flag of the Yinshan Dynasty.

The cane carved a deep mark on the city brick.

Jiang Shouzhou keenly noticed that his master was unusually silent today.

"teacher?"

Liu Qingyi snapped out of her daze and shook her head.

But the knuckles of his fingers, which were gripping the cane, were still white.

My thoughts drifted back to many, many years ago, when I joined the army in the Haoran Domain to guard the border, and it was these desperate criminals I fought against.

At that time, they had not yet established a country; they were merely a rabble composed of criminals and traitors.

The image of a little female demon with her back to him involuntarily surfaced in his mind.

He shook his head, suppressing those old memories, and gripped his cane tightly again.

That's all in the past. Right now, there are 600,000 enemy troops and tens of thousands of Yinshan Dynasty people under the city walls. There's no time to think about these things.

……

There was no communication between the two sides.

The first wave of the allied forces charged into the light barrier of the city's defensive formation.

The light curtain trembled violently, and cracks spread outwards from the point of impact like a spider web.

The city's defensive formation withstood the first wave of attacks, but the runes reinforcing the base of the formation had dimmed considerably.

"Hold on!" Jiang Yan's voice echoed across the city walls.

After several waves of attacks, the light barrier of the city's protective formation finally gave way, and the fragments turned into streams of light across the sky.

Seeing that the great formation had been broken, the enemy's horns tore through the sky.

Sirius charged from the front, Tushan's chariots spread out on both flanks, and Xuanyu's winged tribe swooped down from the sky, their wings obscuring half the sky.

The desperate criminals from Yinshan were at the forefront.

Arrows of spiritual light rained down on the enemy ranks from the city wall, piercing through the protective spiritual light of the Yinshan outlaws who were at the forefront, causing their bodies to explode in mid-air.

Jiang Yan remained calm, leaped down from the city wall with the Chang'an army, and faced the enemy tide.

With both swords drawn, the old sword in his left hand swirled like an ink dragon, while the ancestral sword in his right hand unleashed streaks of golden sword light.

One wave is driven back, another wave comes.

Corpses began to pile up below the city walls, some from enemy soldiers and others from the defending troops.

Above the clouds, Ao Tianxin's Guan Dao (a type of halberd) swept across the sky.

His robes fluttered in the wind, and the cold, blue light emanating from the blade was more dazzling than the sunlight.

As the blade pointed, four Mahayana masters lined up in a row: Tianlang, the National Preceptor of Tushan, Yu Lingxiao, and a Mahayana master from the Yinshan Dynasty.

The four men looked grave and did not make a move.

Meanwhile, fighting broke out on another battlefield.

Lu Zhanshuang's heavy blade collided with the two enemy cultivators at the Void Refinement stage, the blade's energy cleaving through half of the clouds.

Cangwu spread its wings angrily and engaged in a fierce battle with a member of the Xuanyu Dynasty in the clouds.

The remaining Void Refinement cultivators of the allied forces were entangled by the two retainers left behind by Tushan and other Void Refinement cultivators who had defected to Chang'an.

Looking up from the ground, all you can see are various colored lights constantly flashing in the clouds, each collision like a thunderclap exploding on the horizon.

However, the opposing side clearly had a greater advantage in the number of Nascent Soul Realm cultivators.

Two early-stage Nascent Soul cultivators from the Yinshan Dynasty and one mid-stage Nascent Soul cultivator from the Tushan Dynasty rushed towards Jiang Yan.

"Lord Jiang." The leader, a mid-stage Nascent Soul cultivator, was an old fox clan general. His long sword gleamed with a ghostly green aura. "For the crime of treason and defection to the enemy, you shall be executed here today."

Jiang Yan did not answer. He flicked his sleeves, and the two swords leaped up at the same time, transforming into two streaks of light, one black and one gold, which swirled around him within three feet, fluctuating in and out of place.

The three Nascent Soul cultivators on the opposing side attacked simultaneously.

The leading fox clan elder swung his longsword horizontally; even before the blade's edge arrived, the murderous aura had already solidified into a tangible form.

The other two early-stage Nascent Soul cultivators each held an ancient bronze banner, swaying it from side to side.

The dense runes on the banner lit up one by one, and hundreds of dark green chains appeared out of thin air, wrapping around Jiang Yan from all directions.

The three-foot sword domain surrounding Jiang Yan suddenly expanded.

"The clear water flows eastward and turns back here."

The moment the poem was recited, a phantom image of a celestial river stretched across the sky, forming a water curtain in front of him.

The chain crashed into the curtain of water and was swept back by the current.

The two early-stage Nascent Soul cultivators holding the banners paled in surprise, simultaneously forming hand seals in an attempt to stabilize the chains.

But they discovered that the chains had been shattered inch by inch by the sword intent contained in the water, turning into countless fragmented runes that scattered across the sky.

The scattered malevolent energy gathered in the void and did not disperse, condensing into a dark cloud.

The vengeful spirits in the dark clouds shrieked and swooped down, but were blocked by the water curtain ten feet away.

Each time a vengeful spirit collided with the water curtain, a thin, thread-like sword intent would emerge from the water and annihilate it.

Just as the water curtain and the evil clouds were locked in a stalemate, Jiang Yan's figure suddenly disappeared from the spot.

The next moment, his figure appeared high above the three of them, with the ancestral sword, which had been poised to strike, hanging above his head, its sword light surging.

"The waterfall plunges three thousand feet."

A waterfall of silver sword light descended from the sky.

This is a killing move he came up with after integrating official skills and swordsmanship during this period.

The sword light pierced through the evil clouds, and the vengeful spirits were annihilated before they could even utter a wail.

Then it pierced through the protective aura of the old fox general, pinning him and his sword into the ground.

When the smoke and dust cleared, a bottomless sword crater appeared on the ground.

The old fox general lay at the bottom of the pit, his long sword broken in half, his body covered in sword wounds, and his breath weak. Though not dead, he had lost his fighting ability.

The remaining two early-stage Nascent Soul cultivators turned pale and hastily retreated, daring not to go forward again.

Witnessing Jiang Yan slay the enemy general, the morale of the defending troops soared, and thunderous cheers swept across the city walls like a tidal wave, their fighting spirit growing ever stronger.

On the other side, the sword light of Jian Li's Emperor Sword Technique wove a golden net around her, and any enemy that bumped into it was shredded into pieces by the sword intent.

But the wounds on his body were visibly increasing, and his white soft armor was splattered with blood.

Liu Qingyi was carrying a sword.

His gaze pierced through the swarming crowd and landed on the figure of a human cultivator at the Nascent Soul stage.

The man was dressed in the armor of a general from Yinshan, with the corpses of the defending soldiers under his feet, as if he were taking a stroll in his own courtyard.

Liu Qingyi stared intently at him, her fingers tightening their grip on the sword hilt.

Images of that border war flashed through my mind.

The little banshee stood in front of him, taking the fatal blow for him.

Her voice was soft and gentle, like a breeze, yet it still echoes in his ears.

"Live on."

She did not survive.

He survived.

"Shou Zhuo."

"exist."

"You stay here." Liu Qingyi gripped her sword, the blade gleaming with a long-dormant blue light. "I'll be right back."