1802 Despair
There was a limit to how many people Alex could carry within his Soul Space, even if they dampened every little Intent and Spiritual sense.
As such, from the very beginning, the idea of bringing along a group of soldiers to the other continent had been a bad one.
After testing a bit, Alex had realized that he could only carry about 5000 soldiers without feeling anything for his normal day-to-day life.
At 6000, he felt discomfort, and at 7000 his mind felt heavy. At 8000 and 9000, he truly started feeling pain.
At 10 thousand, his mind felt as though it had somehow immolated itself.
When coming up with plans to attack the Emperor, the first plan he had was to just take Hao Ya over there secretly and have her fix the formation so he could teleport the others.
However, he quickly realized how big of a flaw that plan had. It relied entirely upon the fact that no one would know about his presence in the Eastern Continent, and somehow be able to come into this guarded area with cultivators all around and somehow manage to teleport soldier after soldier over.
That would never work. Instead, he had to bring the soldiers over there directly, which didn't work either as he couldn't take all of the nearly 30 thousand soldiers in any way.
So, instead, he came to a compromise with the two plans and mixed them into one. He would take as many soldiers as he could, and then bring the remaining through the teleportation.
Since he needed 10 thousand soldiers to form the next level of Hell Emperor's Divine Battle Array, that was how many soldiers he decided to take in the end.
It was a miracle that things went all according to plan. And now here he was, standing around with over 25 thousand soldiers, facing an opponent with close to 30 thousand of them.
The gap which seemed too massive just a minute ago, now looked almost as if it didn't exist at all.
Alex felt a great deal of hope surface inside of him. This was it. He was going to do it. He was going to win the war.
He stared at the enemies who looked with frightened faces and knew that if everything went according to plan, they were going to win.
* * * * * *
The Dragon Emperor felt a lot less fear at the situation than he would have expected himself to feel. What he felt more than fear was annoyance.
Annoyance at the appearance of another large number of reinforcements to the enemy army. They first had the strong beasts that came to aid them, and then the many cultivators that were entranced by his son and his previous war Head's words. Then, now there was another massive chunk of the army here.
The Dragon Emperor could only feel annoyed.
Even so, a sense of happiness and relief filled him as he realized that no Immortal had come with Alex at all. That was the main thing he had been dreading about in the first place.
As long as the Immortal wasn't here, the Dragon Emperor felt no fear at all. Sure there were a lot of enemies now, but that meant nothing to him.
He had more soldiers here and with decent tactics, they could still win this. Even if the soldiers somehow lost, the Dragon Emperor had another backup plan ready to go into action.
Something he knew none of the others could ever stop him from doing.
The Dragon Emperor looked at his soldiers and saw hints of fear in their eyes. He didn't need to give them any orders. Some people were already doing that for him.
However, either because they had missed it, or were deciding to ignore it completely, there was something they were not doing.
"Break up the arrays," he gave the order.
"Your Majesty?" Long Huogang, who was working as the General for this war turned toward the Emperor with a look of shock on his face.
"Do you disagree, Huogang?" the Emperor asked.
The man looked around quickly, trying to come up with an answer of some sort that wouldn't dissatisfy the Emperor.
"What is it?" the Dragon Emperor asked. "Speak your mind. I order you to."
The man took a deep breath. "It's like this, Your Majesty. Our soldiers are on the whole stronger than the enemy, but the enemy has an array that seems to make everyone stronger than they are, instead of just a few people."
"As such, a select few individuals are a lot stronger than we can handle if we break up all the arrays," the man said.
The Emperor thought for a moment and knew it to be correct. He felt angered at the thought of his enemy having something better than he did, but that could not be helped right then.
"Fine, only the leaders of the—"
Just as he was making his decision, the Emperor felt a surge of aura expand from the distance, arriving suddenly and violently.
He turned around, looking in the direction of the aura, only to realize it was coming from beyond his palace, from the backyard.
Just as he wondered what it was, he saw specks of something covering the air which quickly became visible for what they were.
Beasts.
A swarm of beasts flew out of the Dragon Emperor's own palace, making their way toward them.
The Dragon Emperor was confused and concerned, and he wondered exactly what was happening. He could not understand why there would be beasts coming out of his palace.
Just as he was thinking about it, he saw the beasts more clearly as they came closer, and he recognized a few of them.
He recognized the leaders of the beasts.
The Lizard, the Ox, the Elephant, the Deer, the Eagle, the Swan, and the Lion were at the front of the swarm of nearly a thousand beasts, who made their way toward the battlefield.
And then the Emperor's eyes went wide as he noticed who else was at the front of the swarm of beasts.
A mighty tall beast with the body of a tiger, the face of a cat, and a fur of pure white flew surrounded by the many beasts.
'No…' the Dragon Emperor said softly as he recognized what it was that he was looking at.
The beast was different from the one he remembered attacking. In fact, this one didn't look like a female at all. Instead, it was a male.
'The child,' the Dragon Emperor thought.
"No…" he said out loud that time around as he saw the beasts come and stop near them.
All this time, he had been trying to do what he could to stop this very thing from happening, and somehow it was still here.
The soldiers around the Emperor looked at him with concern as they didn't understand what worried him. They looked toward the beast, and still, they understood nothing.
Only the Dragon Emperor himself understood the extent of despair he felt at that very moment. His worst fear in his life, one that thought he had stopped but knew deep down was just a matter of time, was coming to life.
The prophecy was becoming true.
