Reasoning that the other war bands would have run off in the opposite directions from the towns that they had pretended to target, he drew out an interesting arrayment diagram from his memory and activated it a short while later. Upon its activation, his vision suddenly took on an interesting change, with many yellows, reds and oranges appearing within his line of sight as little blobs and miscellaneous shapes. He immediately spotted the two war bands in question, both of which were in the midst of circling around a much smaller group of lights that he recognized as the unwilling members of his group.

Snorting to himself, he couldn’t help but appreciate the thought behind their plan. He and Sersa had been virtually unstoppable whenever they had acted together on the battlefield, and it was evident that their enemies had decided to go after the former deacon of their invading force so as to make it easier to deal with him in the future.

Dozens of glowing serpents came to life around his allies while thousands suddenly appeared in the air above their enemies, the ambush unfolding before Jason’s eyes as he willed his own summon to sail through the sky as fast as it was able.

Impatience bubbling within him, Jason watched on in anger as attacks were exchanged by the stronger members on both sides. Several gigantic hands of glowing red energy appeared over Sersa and the others to swat at the oncoming attacks, though these were met with mirror activations of the Crippling Blood Palm from the enemy leaders. As the massive martial skills collided with one another, savage windstorms sprang up around the two forces in utter silence, the sounds of ear-cracking percussions hitting Jason over ten seconds after the exchange.

Sensing that the ambushing force boasted nine Genesis-staged cultivators—three more than he had sensed earlier on—compared with the five that led his group of slave soldiers, Jason had no choice but to contribute. Knowing that his mount was easily visible from such a height and in such darkness, he realized that the enemies had likely chosen to act as soon as they had noticed his approach.

Picking out the three weakest disciples of the enemy’s Genesis-staged members, Jason expanded his spiritual sense and locked onto their positions with incredible accuracy. Raising an arm, he activated the Life-Severing Spear martial skill and summoned an ordinary-sized projectile which he wasted no time in hurtling at a distant foe. A second spear appeared in the air the moment he released his hold on the first one, which was quickly followed by a third. He’d conjured and thrown all three in less than two seconds, each one finding its mark with devastating accuracy. Small though the spears were, they were composed of such dense and turbulent energies that the moment they pierced through their targets they went on to smash into the earth with tremendous crescendos that shook the land around them for dozens of metres and gave rise to large pillars of dust and debris.

At least thirty people were caught up in his attacks, those that had been standing directly adjacent to the stronger members of their group. Unfortunately for them, he thought, if they had been under the impression that it would be safer to stick closer to their leaders then they had made a grave misjudgment.

He watched on as hundreds of martial skills were unleashed in the direction of his allies, all of which were thankfully blocked by the five most powerful members aside from himself.

Of course that would happen. He might have taken out thirty people or so, but that was just a drop in the bucket. Sersa and the others were surrounded by thousands, all of which launched offensive martial skills at his companions the moment that he openly intervened.

Focusing intently, he summoned a much larger spear than the one from before, this one at least three hundred metres long and twenty metres wide, which he launched into the most densely populated area of the war band before its members could even close the distance between themselves and his people. If the shockwaves from before had been substantial, this time around they were devastating, as if an area of half a kilometre had been carpeted with airstrikes from an advanced weapons system.

As a terrible gale came to life within the area of the ambush, Jason sensed that the most powerful aura in his perceptions was suddenly closing in on him from ground level at a rapid pace. Realizing that she had ignored his large scale attack in order to seek him out from afar, he immediately understood that this person was decisive and cold in nature.

Tracking the outline of her body heat as it blurred across the landscape so quickly that the several kilometres between them were covered in a matter of seconds, he focused on the distant battle that was unfolding and summoned another massive spear of crimson energy. While the enemy leader was busy closing the distance that remained between them, he launched the spear from his high-altitude vantage point and watched as it flashed across the night’s sky like a devious thunderbolt in a nightmarish storm.

Sensing sudden danger, Jason leapt from the back of his summoned serpent just in time to see it get swallowed whole by the massive, ravenous maw of a much larger rendition of the Scarlet Serpent Summoning Technique that abruptly appeared in the air beneath him. Activating said technique to summon a second mount upon which to flee the area, Jason was distracted by the distant impact of the spear that he’d thrown just prior to entering into his current engagement.

Good throw.

The projectile smashed into a massive hand of dark, dense energy that had been about to meet Sersa’s Crippling Blood Palm in order to protect the two hundred or so disciples that she was targeting. Thanks to his intervention, both his martial skill and that of her opponent were cancelled out with a powerful explosion of energy that knocked dozens of disciples off of their feet while countless others braced themselves against the earth-shaking blast of wind, with many shielding their faces with billowing sleeves. This effectively sealed their fate, as the kilometre-long hand that Sersa had summoned crashed down into their midst with devastating effect. The hand left a massive imprint behind as it disappeared into the night like something out of a dream, with hundreds of dead lying crushed at the bottom of the crater as delayed sounds of impact reached his ears.

Jason didn’t have the luxury to look out for the others, for the woman that was now attacking him was far stronger than he’d previously anticipated. The moment his abiotic snake had been consumed by hers, she had relied on an unknown movement skill to dash along the back of her summon as if it were an animated ladder, covering hundreds of metres in a couple of moments. Seeing that she would make contact with him within the next second or so, Jason leapt free of his mount and willed it to intercept her despite the futility of the effort. Without even slowing, she dispelled the martial skill with a simple punch as if she were swatting a fly from her face in the midst of a morning jog.

Meanwhile, his jump had taken him about half a kilometre higher than he’d already been, putting him at an altitude of around 1,600 metres above the ground. Trapping himself in place with some expelled spiritual energy, he raised a hand and circulated his energies as per the Crippling Blood Palm’s activation sequence, investing a significant amount of inner essence into the attack.

I need to end this quick.

Pouring as much power into the attack as he was comfortable with, he gave life to a gigantic hand of energy that was substantially larger than the one Sersa had created, with a width of over five hundred metres. Whether it was the aged appearance of its long fingernails, the even distribution of wispy hairs along the backs of each of the withered fingers, or the realistic wrinkles that covered the ancient-looking appendage, the hand looked so real that it appeared as if an otherworldly giant had suddenly reached down from the heavens in order to assist in Jason’s fight. Without skipping a beat, he summoned a second hand about as long as he was tall and then dropped himself down atop the tips of its fingers before he used it to flick himself clear of the area just in time to avoid being caught up in his main attack.

Hurricane-like winds paved the way for the descending hand, the movement of which disturbed the underbellies of some of the low-riding clouds. Faced with this, the enemy leader abandoned the idea of meeting the martial skill head on and instead leapt off of the giant snake’s neck with so much strength that she broke it. As her summon dissipated into the night like a fading firework, she shot across the sky like a rail gun projectile, clearing the area of his Crippling Blood Palm’s effect and borrowing the wayward winds that it gave off in order to boost her speed even further.

Shit!