1775 Isolated

Hannah couldn't be stopped by pure strength, so instead she was being stopped by numbers. Multiple people were sent to fight her, and that was something she wasn't very practiced with.

Attacks hit her left and right, and while they did little to damage her, she couldn't make it past the group of soldiers that had come for her.

Her spiritual sense was constantly active, searching in all directions for everyone and everything. She sensed her opponents around her, the Emperor who was ready to fight, her mother who was far away below them working on the teleportation formation, the other fighters that were on her side, and finally Alex.

She saw through her senses how quickly Alex defeated his opponent and moved up. However, in doing so, he also separated himself from the group.

She wanted to go help, but she was distracted.

* * * * *

Zhou Linfan fought a woman who called herself a battalion leader of the Talon Legion, but he had no idea who she was.

Whoever she was, she was supposed to be far too weak to deal with him. Her cultivation base was supposed to have been improved to Saint Transformation 9th realm at best with the array behind her, but somehow she was keeping up with him, stopping him from defeating her.

Zhou Linfan had some idea of why that was happening. He looked at the weird straw doll that the woman kept hanging by her chest, which was projecting some sort of technique that caused his attacks to get dampened.

The strength he got from being in the Hell Emperor's Divine Battle array was being countered with this weird artifact that he had never seen or known of before.

He couldn't even guess where it could have come from.

Zhou Linfan had spent the majority of the past 70 years outside the continent on a small island in the middle of the ocean. As a result, he was not very used to the idea of players and the amazing techniques and ideas they brought along.

It took a while for Zhou Linfan to even guess that the artifact might have belonged to a player that the woman had somehow received in the end.

"That little thing surely can't last forever," Zhou Linfan said and continued fighting. He noticed Alex moving on and getting surrounded, but that was something he would have to deal with on his own.

* * * * * *

Qiu Jianhong smashed against a water barrier with his large hammer, using the Dao of Wood to weaken the water-based defense to get past the person he had come across.

He had noticed Alex's predicament and wanted to go be of some help to his King, but the pathway ahead wasn't easy at all.

He had to continue fighting for himself instead of someone else.

Ren Guanting, Gong Liuxian, Huang Chen, Hou Xinya, Kang Xuefeng, Liang Shufen, Tan Yang, and Lei Zhong were in similar situations where they couldn't get to Alex.

As such, everyone started fearing for Alex's survival as he was further away from any of them.

* * * * * *

The soldiers in the Dragon Array that empowered the old man whom Alex had just killed started dispersing to go join other arrays where they could empower other people.

When Alex saw where they had gone, he noticed many of the array turning to face him with 10 different such fighters coming for him.

Other soldiers were flying toward the Dragon Capital at this very moment, so they didn't worry about how much power they were using to stop him.

As long as they succeeded in killing Alex, it would all be over.

Alex stopped moving and looked at them all, his eyes and senses scanning every single one of the soldiers that were empowered by the array.

Not a single one of them was weaker than Saint Transformation 8th realm at all. Nearly 3 thousand soldiers were dedicated to empowering these 10 people.

Curiosity filled Alex as to why not all of the 3 thousand soldiers weren't aiding just a single person. That person was bound to be super strong if they just did that, but they hadn't.

Had they done that, the war would look a lot different this early on.

Alex wondered what it was about the array that forced them from not using too many people. He was sure if he dug deep enough at the formation, it would show cracks in its usefulness.

For now, he had the 10 super-strong cultivators to deal with.

"How do you do, King Alex?" one of the 10 people asked.

Alex looked at the relatively youthful man and frowned a little. "Do I know you?" he asked.

"In passing, nothing much," the man said. "Would you mind giving up? I don't know if you've noticed or not, but you're surrounded, and it will take a while for your friends to catch up."

"Give up? Why would I do that?" Alex asked. "Why even ask me to do such a thing? Do you not want to just kill me?"

"We've been ordered to negotiate and try to get you to surrender on your own, first," the man said, his eyes flickering to Hannah and the others to make sure they were out of the way.

"I'm not going to surrender, so you might just come for me," Alex said. "No point in wasting time, do you think?"

The other 9 leaders turned toward each other, each one nodding to themselves as there was nothing more to talk about. They weren't going to beg Alex to stop or try to use their words to win this war. They only talked because the Dragon Emperor wanted them to talk of this first.

"Very well," the man said and brought out a spear. "Since you are trapped in here with us, you can forget about escaping. You can't even teleport out of here."

Alex realized that was true. It wasn't that he couldn't teleport at all, but there seemed to be a large barrier he had to get through to reach the Dao on the other side.

Something, most probably a formation, was making it harder for him to manipulate space.

"I see," Alex said. "You have come with quite the careful preparation to catch me off guard. I can't teleport, huh?"

"Thank you for your compliments. Now, please die," the man raised his spear to attack.

"It is quite the wild coincidence that you would go out of your way to catch me off guard," Alex said as a small smile appeared on his face. "Because I did the same."

"What do you—"

Flashes of light surrounded Alex, 23 in total, as beasts of all variety appeared around Alex.

Wildcats, leopards, tigers, bulls, horses, and many other beasts appeared from Alex's Soul Space where they had remained hidden all this time.

After bringing out his soldiers, he kept the beasts inside to create a false sense of weakness around them to catch the enemies off guard.

That was exactly what he wanted, and that was exactly what happened.

Each of the beasts here was stronger than Saint Transformation 5th realm in cultivation base, so as soon as they entered the Hell Emperor's Divine Battle Array, their cultivation prowess immediately went up by 4 realms.

The sudden appearance of these beasts caused what was an awful situation for Alex to turn into the best counter attack.

And just to add some salt to the wounds, Alex brought out the Blood God's Manual and summoned another 300 strong beasts.