Under One Person: The Puppet Immortal in the Tang Sect

Almost simultaneously, on the other side.

An arrow gleaming with a pale blue light pierced the gap in the stone giant's knee joint, and the power of the Dan Devouring Ink seeped in.

The stone giant's leg immediately stiffened, the stone at the knee turned dark, and fine cracks began to spread from the arrow hole.

The Onmyoji controlling it groaned, feeling the connection between himself and the shikigami becoming intermittent.

Although not every arrow is so "lucky" as to hit the vital point.

However, even with such a dense barrage of arrows, some arrows will inevitably manage to penetrate the shikigami's body and hit the area where the talisman's core is located.

Once the core talisman is directly shattered or severely damaged, the fate of the shikigami is sealed.

A hyena shikigami was hit in the abdomen by three arrows arranged in a triangular pattern.

The radiant energy on the arrow fused and erupted, instantly burning the talisman hidden there to ashes.

The shikigami of the coyote let out a mournful howl, and its entire body suddenly froze.

It then crumbled and disintegrated, turning back into a pile of lifeless, ordinary soil and withered vines.

A vengeful spirit attempted to pierce through the rain of arrows and lunge at the ballista on the mountaintop.

But a cleverly angled arrow pierced through the center of its indistinct head from below.

The power of the poison attached to the arrow quickly spread from the head.

The vengeful spirit's body twisted and swelled violently before finally dissipating like a burst bubble.

With a soft "poof," it vanished completely, leaving only a few wisps of cold, lingering wind.

The stone giant was the most tenacious, with no fewer than twenty arrows stuck in its body, making it look like a giant metal hedgehog.

Although its movements were as slow as an old ox, it had not yet collapsed.

Until a giant arrow fired from a heavy crossbow, with terrifying speed and kinetic energy, pierced its chest right in the center.

boom!

The stone giant's rocky chest blasted open a hole the size of a washbasin, sending countless fragments of rock flying.

Its raised arms froze in mid-air, and its massive body, as if stripped of all support, collapsed with a crash, smashing onto the platform and shattering into countless motionless stones.

The shikigami were defeated one after another, which shocked and angered the onmyoji who controlled them.

However, they are not without countermeasures.

When a shikigami is detected to be potentially threatened by an arrow to its core, a quick-reacting Onmyoji will proactively disconnect the connection.

By "recalling" the shikigami in advance, the shikigami's energy can return to itself or dissipate, thus avoiding the backlash caused by the destruction of the core talisman.

Then they can catch their breath for a moment, expend more Qi, redraw the talismans, and summon again.

This "clever" tactic did indeed save several shikigami in a short period of time, and also prevented the Onmyoji from suffering a serious backlash.

But this is undoubtedly a case of drinking poison to quench thirst. Each time a character is actively recalled and then resummoned, the energy consumed is far greater than the energy required to maintain the existence of the shikigami.

The rain of arrows was almost continuous, and although the death energy and resentment on the platform were dense, they could not be easily drawn out to replenish themselves.

More fatally, the gap in strength between the two sides cannot be bridged by such trickery alone.

The shikigami summoned by Onmyoji are like weeds that are constantly being replaced, with both their quantity and quality visibly declining.

The ferocious hyenas, the fierce stone giants, and the elusive vengeful spirits that were initially there gradually disappeared.

They were gradually replaced by smaller, weaker, and faster-summoning paper dolls and low-level wandering spirits.

Their original guards, the ronin and ninja, had already been wiped out in the first few rounds of barrage of arrows.

The few survivors were all wounded and bleeding profusely, their vital energy weak. They could only barely cling to life beside the remains of the stone giant, which had turned into a pile of rubble.

The Japanese defenses were already riddled with holes.

Just when the Onmyoji's Qi was nearly exhausted, their Shikigami were in short supply, and their hearts began to be eroded by despair.

Cui Ming and Zuo Ruotong arrived.

The two floated down from the mountaintop and stood on the edge of the platform, looking down from above.

Zuo Ruotong was surrounded by pure white qi, but he did not attack proactively.

But the oppressive feeling, as heavy as a mountain, had already enveloped the entire area, making every Japanese soldier feel breathless and their minds tremble.

Cui Ming, on the other hand, demonstrated to them through his actions what a more efficient killing could be.

Unlike when he used the short sword to kill Quanxing before.

He simply stood there quietly, the folding fan in his hand nowhere to be seen.

With a slight thought, the tips of the twenty-four black short swords floating beside him all turned around.

The target was the center of the platform below, the area where the surviving shikigami and the few onmyoji were located.

The next moment, a faint, almost imperceptible pale blue starlight lit up the tip of each short sword.

Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!

There was no deafening explosion, only a few faint whistling sounds cutting through the air.

Twenty-four fine, hair-like, and extremely refined pale blue beams shot out from the tip of the sword!

The speed of these beams was unbelievably fast.

Almost the instant the lights came on, it had already traversed dozens of meters and arrived at its target.

The beam of light ignored the fragile defenses formed by the resummoned paper dolls and faint wandering spirits that acted as obstacles along its path.

Like a hot knife cutting into butter, it easily pierced through those energy shells without even causing much of a ripple.

The true target of the beam of light is hidden in the innermost circle.

At this moment, the Onmyoji are desperately controlling their shikigami to block the incoming arrows and assisting their leader in performing a secret technique.

puff!puff!

Two soft sounds, almost like balloons bursting.

The two Japanese Onmyoji, who were concentrating on channeling their Qi into the blood array beneath their feet, froze simultaneously.

Each of them had a tiny, almost invisible hole in the center of their forehead.

No blood flowed from his forehead; only a wisp of very faint blue smoke rose from it.

The light in their eyes dimmed instantly, and the astonishment on their faces froze before it could even fully surface.

Immediately, his body went limp and he collapsed, breathless.

Of the twenty-four beams, only two were used to precisely take two lives.

The remaining beams of light were like living venomous snakes.

They patrolled the perimeter of the remaining Japanese defenses, defeating the newly summoned, fragile shikigami one by one.

Further restrict their space for maneuver and create panic.

The sudden deaths of these two core Onmyoji were the final straw that broke the camel's back.

The Japanese soldiers, whose morale was already low due to the constant destruction of their shikigami and the near depletion of their qi, finally had their psychological defenses completely collapse.

The remaining Onmyoji screamed in terror, their spellcasting movements completely distorted.

Even the shikigami maintaining the pale green barrier lantern above its head became shaky and on the verge of collapse.

The few remaining ronin and ninja had eyes filled with a deathly gray despair.

The defenses have completely collapsed, with leaks everywhere.

Cui Ming frowned slightly, looking at the chaos below, and estimated the time in his mind.

The blood array beneath the Onmyoji leader's feet shone brighter and brighter, and the eerie aura connecting to the Netherworld grew stronger. They could no longer delay.

"Nameless, you go too, let's finish this quickly."

He gave a brief order via communication device.

Below the platform, the nameless one, who had been providing long-range firepower suppression, moved upon receiving the order.

With a flicker of his figure, he leaped and bounded like a ghost, crossing the puppet formation of the Divine Machine Alliance and stepping onto the platform halfway up the mountain.

Twelve flying swords of different shapes flew out of the sword box behind him in succession, transforming into twelve streaks of light with treacherous trajectories, like a deadly swarm of living bees, rushing straight towards the remnants of the Japanese army.

These flying swords attack in a different way than Cui Ming's condensed beam of light; they are more agile and unpredictable, targeting the enemy's weak points in defense and gaps in their Qi connection.

The already chaotic Japanese formation was made even worse by the arrival of the nameless soldier.

The entire Japanese defensive perimeter melted away as quickly as ice and snow.

In an instant, many more shikigami were defeated, and the onmyoji who were controlling them behind the scenes suffered a backlash, spitting out blood.

Cui Ming's original intention was to have Wuming speed up the clearing process to prevent the Onmyoji leader's secret technique from being completed and causing unforeseen complications.

However, just as the nameless man wielded a crimson flying sword and pierced the third Onmyoji's back with lightning speed, killing him instantly...

Cui Ming's eyes flickered slightly.

Through that special ability, Wuming could capture the soul of his target the moment he killed them and obtain their martial arts techniques.

At the same time, it also allows one to glimpse the memories within the other person's soul.

At this moment, a crucial piece of information was transmitted to Cui Ming's mind through Wuming.

He saw the last thought of the Onmyoji who had been killed by the nameless man.

It was this thought that made Cui Ming realize what these Japanese Onmyoji were doing.

"For the 'Yellow Springs Impure Earth Reincarnation Array'... we offer our souls and flesh... to summon... all those who died in battle here... to reappear in the world... to pave the way for my empire..."

The Yellow Springs Impure Earth Reincarnation Array?

Summon all those who died in battle in this region?

Cui Ming instantly understood.

It turns out that this leader of the Onmyoji, at the cost of sacrificing his own lifespan and even inducing his companions to sacrifice themselves, set up this bloody evil array with this very idea in mind!

He wanted to use this platform, which had just experienced a bloody battle, as a base, and use the intense death energy and resentment as a catalyst, sacrificing the lives and souls of all the Onmyoji present.

Forcibly summoning all the souls of those who died in battle here not long ago.