Chapter 3152: Chapter 3152
“Master, I...” Xiao Heng’s face flushed scarlet as he tried to apologize to Ye Liuyun.
Ye Liuyun cut him off. “Mercy has no place in command. You’re not fit to lead.”
With that, he turned back to gather the Devil Vine, then began harvesting the entire planet. Li Zhaoyuan had just finished storing the soldiers in his spatial world when the planet shuddered and vanished.
Ye Liuyun waved a hand, sweeping both clones and Li Zhaoyuan into the spatial world, then used the black teleportation tower to jump to the He clan’s next mining planet.
They did seize five planets in succession. Yet on every one, Li Zhaoyuan’s tactics were only passable—advance too slow, killing too soft, nowhere near Ye Liuyun’s standard.
It struck Ye Liuyun that these commanders lacked any real combat instinct; they hadn’t tasted war’s cruelty. So they never weighed the bigger picture, and the troops they drilled were far from vicious.
On the final planet they ran into He clan reinforcements. First clone had to release the devil flood dragons and the demon army to intercept. One flood dragon was wounded; the newly-formed demon cavalry lost three hundred beasts and riders.
Ye Liuyun ached for every one of those demon soldiers. The losses had been avoidable—Xiao Heng’s delays had cost them.
In a fury, he sent the five thousand men to fight the ancient demon legion upon return. In a single clash, three thousand were wiped out and devoured.
Only the two thousand strongest remained when Ye Liuyun finally called a halt. The ancient demons had lost barely a hundred.
“Trash,” he muttered inwardly, stunned that Xiao Heng and Li Zhaoyuan could fail so miserably.
When the slaughter ended he left them where they stood without a word.
He’d never expected this army to match the Death Legion; taking five mines together was already acceptable.
What galled him was how badly Xiao Heng and Li Zhaoyuan had disappointed him—neither grasped the savagery of war.
He had no other commanders of sufficient rank, and refused to pull Ye Tiandao, Xiao Yunfang, or Meng Qingyin away from their cultivation to train soldiers.
So he simply took the imperial-guard commanders, added them to the elite force, and let them fight directly. As for the troops, he would waste no more resources on them.
He dumped them on First Clone’s demon world to serve as live targets.
Xiao Heng and Li Zhaoyuan knew they’d fallen from favor. They sought advice from demon commanders Black Rock and Black Mountain.
Black Mountain and Tiger Beast King had witnessed the Death Legion and the Speartip Regiment many times.
Tiger Beast King didn’t mince words. “Your aura is nothing compared to the Death Legion. To Master, you’re just trash. High cultivation means nothing—you can’t even beat us.”
Black Mountain drove the point home. “You commanders failed the mission. No wonder Master says you’re unfit. Every casualty in the rear—hundreds of us—was because of your delays.”
The demons spoke bluntly, sparing no pride, yet every word rang true.
Soon beasts and women arrived to use the soldiers as sparring partners. Ye Liuyun cut off all cultivation resources; even wounded men received no healing pills.
The women fought one or two at a time. The beasts showed no restraint—each devoured a dozen soldiers in a single bout.
Xiao Heng and Li Zhaoyuan watched in despair, certain Ye Liuyun had abandoned them. Again they begged Black Mountain and Tiger Beast King for guidance.
“Master has several women who once led the Death Legion and the Speartip Regiment. Ask them,” Tiger Beast King suggested.
So they sought out Ye Tiandao, Xiao Yunfang, and Meng Qingyin. After a brief discussion the women understood: Ye Liuyun hadn’t assigned them troops precisely to keep their cultivation on track.
They, too, needed every moment of training to avoid falling behind him; they truly had no time to drill soldiers.
Ye Tiandao passed the Speartip Regiment’s training methods to Xiao Heng and Li Zhaoyuan, along with recorded images for reference. How far they could progress was now up to them.
When Xiao Heng and Li Zhaoyuan watched the Speartip Regiment and Death Legion deploy, saw the killing intent in their eyes and the chill of their formations, they finally grasped the vast gulf between them.
“No wonder our lord calls us trash. Compared to them, we really are far behind!”
They returned to the army at once and passed every detail on to the soldiers. Then they began training exactly as Ye Tiandao had instructed.
Those who washed out were simply handed over to the demon beasts and the women for target practice.
None of their movements escaped the First Clone’s spiritual sense. When Ye Liuyun saw that they were eager to improve, he started handing out cultivation resources—but only enough for half of them. If they wanted to recover and keep cultivating, they had to use the supplies sparingly. Anyone whose training results lagged got nothing and was culled.
Every soldier pushed himself to the limit, because once you were eliminated, it was practically a death sentence. Besides, they were already at high realms and no longer needed formation drills; all that mattered was coordination with one another. After the brutal regimen, every man’s combat strength had risen sharply.
Ye Liuyun didn’t mind their frantic efforts. Even if he fed them resources, stronger soldiers made better sparring partners for the beasts—hardly a waste.
Yet watching Xiao Heng train his men gave him an idea. He summoned Wu Xiang and told him to join Yu Xiaofeng and the others in designing a combined-attack formation suited to high-realm troops.
Once the blueprint was ready, they handed it to Tang Xinyao’s squad for trial runs, then refined and compared it repeatedly. In the end they settled on a five-man assault array.
Tang Xinyao’s team began drilling the formation against Imperial Guards at the late Return-to-One Eighth Level, spotting flaws and tightening coordination. When the array’s lethality improved, they moved on to Return-to-One Ninth Level cultivators, sparring until they could reliably defeat late-stage Ninth Level experts.
Ye Liuyun himself joined Tang Xinyao’s group to test it and found the combined power far greater than solo combat. Only then did he finalize the formation as the army’s standard assault array.
Finally, he had Tang Xinyao pass the formation to the two demon legions and Xiao Heng’s unit, telling them to practice and gauge its effectiveness.
