The thousands of lower tier Cultivators rushed forward upon the backs of various Demonic Beasts. Seeing so many ferocious monsters charging towards a single direction was a truly impressive sight. The three Nascent Souls of the Alliance held their ground, and in front of them the hundreds of Core Formation Cultivators were being held back in reserve. They chose to send in the weakest members. The Alliance was prepared to make the sacrifice of their forces in order to accurately gauge their enemy. So many of the members of the alliance had already been killed by Lang Sheng that they had already decided that after this point they would truly join together as one. The Shou Clan, Yincha Sect, Sound Sword Sect, and all the others would only become factions within the Artful Life Sect. They had already reserved all their greatest talents, putting those youngsters into hiding, and all of their remaining forces were expendable.

All that mattered to the leaders of the Alliance were the strongest warriors, and the youths with the greatest potential. With the shelter of the strongest these youngsters would have all the best resources, and could grow into an even more powerful force than before. They almost considered it a blessing, as this crisis forced these leaders to cooperate in the name of survival. With such deadly impetus they gave up their differences and individual desires to try and make something greater. Once Lang Sheng was taken care of, the new Artful Life Sect would have access to a combined library of all the alliance members' techniques, and multiple Nascent Souls to guide them. These days spent trapped together under the Shou Clan Ancestral Hall had forced them all to spend time together. They had moved past the small disagreements and prejudices that kept them all at arm’s length previously and become comrades in arms from the constant threat.

Of course, none of this mattered to Sage.

At this point, he was standing a mile away from the cliff that had just been destroyed by the Artful Life Alliance’s expendable troops. Only a single squad of his own forces were waiting upon that cliff, as he had indeed laid a trap for the Artful Life Alliance, but it was not the one they thought. The alliance forces charged into the area, searching the ‘hammer’ of Sage’s forces. From the placement of his men atop the cliff and the formations lying in wait, they assumed the cliff, archers, and formations were the ‘anvil’, while the rest of Sage’s forces would be the ‘hammer’. It was a classical strategy that consisted of two parts. The anvil would be a highly defensible position or unit, something that could bear the brunt of an enemy’s attack without buckling. The second part of the strategy is the hammer, a mighty offense force that would strike the enemy from behind. With the anvil to hold them in place, the hammer could smash the enemy apart.

From the way they charged, it seemed the Alliance already considered the anvil to be destroyed and now they were going to attack the hammer before it was swung. With the hammer and anvil tactic, the anvil was usually a fort or very heavily armored group of infantry, while the hammer was usually the most powerful offense unit, cavalry. For a cavalry unit, the speed and mass of their mounts would be added to the force of their blows, which made them the most destructive members of the battlefield, but it also meant that a proper charge was required for them to show their full strength.

The Alliance seemed to want to charge into his forces before they could mount a proper charge.

Or maybe that’s just what they want their troops to think. This isn’t an ancient battlefield, these people have super powers.

They couldn’t be foolish enough to think that Sage would just ignore the absence of the highest level combatants and he realized that they were willing to sacrifice all these people merely to sniff out his location. With thousands of beasts and cultivators charging like a wave, they were ripping apart and trampling up the forest, leaving flat ground in their wake.

The problem was that Sage’s forces were not lying in wait close by. With the exception of that single squad armed with Stumblebows, the rest of them were behind him, nearly a mile away. After those first troops detonated themselves, the crossbow squad was injured and had already retreated, but they were also the weakest of his troops. The real forces were waiting with him for the main event. It was too bad for the Artful Life Alliance that this charge of weaklings was not that event.

Sage ran his Qi into his hand and then poured it into the tree that it was placed upon. The energy flowed through his palm and into the trunk, then up into the branches and over to the tree beside it. This tree, just like all of the others in this forest, had already been replaced by his Sacred Banyans. The enemy was right to think he’d prepared a battlefield for them, but it wasn’t with formation arrays. In his other conflicts with the Nascent Souls of the Artful Life Alliance, he was often on the run and after Lionheart Town his battlefield preparations were hasty. It was quite different this time as he’d spent weeks turning the entire forest surrounding their city into his own territory.

The Sacred Banyans of the forest were all linked up together with vines and roots, and by touching one he could order them all. At this point, the poison that had already been distributed through them all was suddenly released. A wispy pink vapor was emitted from the pores of all the trees. The trunks and other woody parts had a light coating of this gas, but the leaves were pouring it out in high volume. As the mist fell, the bushes, grasses, and other plant life that it touched were corrupted and also started to release the pink mist.

Before they could realize what was going on, the charging forces of the Alliance had already plunged into the clouds of the ‘Killer Garden’ poison. Almost immediately, the weaker members of the Alliance tilted in their saddles and toppled off the backs of their mounts. Worse yet, most of the mounts didn’t fare much better. Even with their strong beast physiques, they were only able to run onwards for a few more minutes before they too collapsed to the ground. For these powerful creatures, they could easily cover miles in a few minutes, but the poison was not putting them to sleep. Killer Garden actually caused skin irritation followed by numbness. It started like a highly accelerated version of poison ivy, and then turned into a shot of novocaine. At least, these were Sage’s thoughts of the two poisons that Guan Zhenyan had used on him.

One of those poisons, the Sweet Snow Slumber, made you feel extremely cold and then slowly numb. Like a combination of frostbite and a trip to the dentist. After losing all feeling it became extremely difficult to move around and perform tasks. Your body was still there and functional, but without the feedback of a sense of touch, everything became foreign and disconcerting. The Killer Garden replaced the sense of cold with itchiness, and these cultivators started to scratch at their bodies until all feeling disappeared. The Demonic Beasts began to grow itchy as well and started to rub their bodies up against the trees and rocks. This only served to make their poison worse and also knocked most of the numb riders off. By the time their numbness struck they wobbled about unsteadily, which completely collapsed the power of a unified charge.

Sage resisted the urge to finish these thousands of Cultivators off and signaled the group behind him. He rushed forward and they followed behind him, moving through a corridor cleared of poison. Just as he’d ordered the trees to release their poison, he could order them to stop. Only the Sacred Banyans were in his control, so they still had to avoid the other vegetation, but the natural release of the Killer Garden poison was not in great volume. Most plants would only have a very light coating of the gas around their surfaces. Releasing the poison in huge clouds was very strenuous for a plant, while the smaller coating was more akin to simply breathing.

His side ignored the thousands of weak cultivators served up on a platter and headed directly for the three Nascent Souls and hundreds of Core Formation Cultivators.