Most of these guards had reached the Qi Cultivation Third Layer. Each radiated a fierce aura, and their standard-issue equipment was engraved with the unique Array Patterns of the Evil Suppression Department.
"Feng Qin, Hu Hao."
Chu Bai’s gaze swept over his two most capable subordinates, his tone frigid. "Once we’re out of the city, status is irrelevant. All that matters is life and death. Chaotic Bone Ridge lies in a blind spot of the Law Net. You are to advance in five-man squads, forming Spirit Locking Arrays. No reckless charges for personal glory."
"We accept the order!" Feng Qin and Hu Hao declared in unison, cupping their fists. Their voices were clipped and forceful.
Now that he had achieved Five Elements Perfection and his Divine Thought could sense over two hundred zhang away, he didn’t underestimate the coming battle, despite the apparent disparity in strength. He wasn’t aiming for a costly victory; he wanted a swift and decisive slaughter.
"Move out!"
At Chu Bai’s command, the two-hundred-man column flowed like a torrent of black ink, slipping silently through a side gate of Anping County and racing toward the northern wilds.
「Chaotic Bone Ridge.」
This place had been an ancient battlefield many years ago. The terrain was low-lying, perennially shrouded in a chilly, lingering mist.
The closer one drew to this place, the thinner the "Righteous Qi" of the Great Zhou Law Net became, replaced by a chaotic, violent, and primordial Spiritual Mechanism.
"Halt."
Behind an earthen mound roughly three li from Chaotic Bone Ridge, Chu Bai raised a hand to signal.
The two hundred elites behind him halted instantly, their movements perfectly synchronized, without making even the slightest sound.
Chu Bai closed his eyes. His Micro Level Divine Thought washed out like an invisible tide, bypassing the mottled Yin Qi as it permeated the depths of the ruins.
At the very edge of his perception, some two hundred twenty zhang away, he captured a few unusual fluctuations.
It was around a half-collapsed dry well, where a faint light flickered.
Over a dozen auras, some strong and some weak, mingled together.
One aura among them was as deep as the sea. Though restrained, it exuded a terrifyingly condensed presence that made the heart palpitate.
’Black Sheep...’
Chu Bai slowly opened his eyes, a five-colored spiritual light swirling deep within his pupils.
"Proceed as planned." He looked toward Pang Song. "You take the Demon Suppression Guard and flank them from the left and right. Cut off their access to water and seal their escape routes. Feng Qin and Hu Hao, you will lead the Demon-slaying Guard in a frontal assault. As for the one at Qi Cultivation Perfection..."
Chu Bai tightened his grip on the long saber slung across his back, his eyes glinting with a coldness like ice and snow.
"Leave him to me."
In this desolate land, far from the reach of the Law Net, the two hundred-odd soldiers of the Great Zhou Official Army were like a great net, slowly tightening around the dozen or so Wild Wanderer Cultivators who considered themselves a cut above the rest.
Chaotic Bone Ridge. The night was as somber and black as ink.
Dark red Yin Qi churned in the air, and the occasional, mournful caw of a crow only made the desolate plains seem all the more deathly still.
Here, the grand and solemn Law Net of the Great Zhou Immortal Dynasty was reduced to a faint afterglow, like a guttering candle flame about to be swallowed by the darkness.
Chu Bai took a deep breath. The Five Elements Magical Power within him stagnated for a fraction of a second before suddenly circulating at high speed along an exceptionally bizarre path.
Secret Technique: Hidden Shadow.
In an instant, Chu Bai’s aura vanished completely. Under the precise control of his two-hundred-plus-zhang Divine Thought, he not only concealed all fluctuations of his Magical Power but even regulated his heartbeat and body temperature to blend seamlessly with the surrounding stones and withered grass.
Empowered by this Stealth Technique, which he had already brought to the Mastery Level, he was like a shadow drifting on the border between reality and illusion.
Like a phantom, he glided silently over the pale, accumulated snow, not even disturbing the finest cracks in the layer of ice.
Around the camp at the abandoned well, over a dozen Wild Cultivators were gathered. Some were tending to their Dharma Artifacts, while others murmured amongst themselves, utterly oblivious that Death itself had arrived.
Chu Bai’s Divine Thought was like an intricate web cast through the void, mapping every single change within a two-hundred-zhang radius directly into his mind.
’Pang Song is in position, having sealed off the pass to the northwest.’
’Feng Qin and Hu Hao are lying in ambush on the flanks, ready to strike at a moment’s notice.’
Everything was in place.
Chu Bai hid behind a broken, chest-high stone monument, a mere three zhang from a sentry at the camp’s edge. The sentry was a middle-aged Wild Cultivator at the Qi Cultivation Fifth Layer, currently taking large gulps of strong liquor to keep warm, his hazy gaze fixed on the distant mist.
Among Wild Wanderer Cultivators, someone at the Qi Cultivation Fifth Layer would be considered a capable expert, able to hold their own. But before Chu Bai—who had achieved Five Elements Perfection and wielded Micro Level techniques—this man was as fragile as paper.
Chu Bai slowly raised his right hand, curling his index finger slightly.
There was no dazzling Spiritual Light, no earth-shattering surge of Magical Power. Under the guidance of his Divine Thought, the ambient Water Attribute Spiritual Energy was instantly gathered and compressed.
Magic Technique: Spirit Water Needle.
An extremely fine needle, a blue so dark it was nearly black, silently materialized at Chu Bai’s fingertip.
This single needle not only condensed the immense Spiritual Power of Chu Bai’s Qi Cultivation Eighth Layer, but also contained a chilling, murderous edge born from the Five Elements Circulation.
’Go,’ Chu Bai commanded with a thought.
The black needle tore through the night, its speed pushed to the absolute limit. Because his control over Spiritual Power had reached the Micro Level, even the sound of its passage through the air was erased.
The Qi Cultivation Fifth Layer Wild Cultivator didn’t even have time to blink, let alone register the warning from his own Divine Thought, before the needle pierced cleanly through the back of his head and exited between his brows.
PFFT...
It was a muffled sound, so faint it was almost inaudible.
The Wild Cultivator’s pupils instantly dilated. Before the wine bowl in his hand could even fall, his life force was extinguished. With a flicker of his Divine Thought, Chu Bai guided a gentle breeze to catch the corpse and the bowl, lowering them silently onto the snow without alerting anyone deeper within the camp.
An instant kill.
A Wild Cultivator at the Middle Stage of Qi Cultivation had fallen to this one attack without so much as a scream.
Chu Bai drew back his finger, his cold gaze shifting toward the black silhouette deep by the dry well, the one radiating a terrifying aura.
’The first.’
With the fall of this sentry, the deathly silence of Chaotic Bone Ridge was shattered. In the unseen battlefield of clashing Divine Thoughts, a monstrous killing intent instantly surged forth.
Chu Bai raised his hand, giving the final signal to Pang Song and the others, who were hidden in the darkness, to finally close the net.

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