Avoiding Conflict

Xue Jian furrowed his brows as he noticed something that was quite troublesome.

"Try teleporting us a few more times, Hualing," Xue Jian said.

Hualing did as she was instructed, she willed the group back into her private dimension, and she once again folded the lower three-dimensional space so that two points were intersected.

As a result, the group teleported from one point to the other.

She repeated this process seven times in total, going to different random locations each time. After every jump, Xue Jian had told her to jump once again.

On the seventh time, Xue Jian didn't say anything; rather, he was contemplating the next course of action.

He had set a perimeter array that had been able to track any groups that were moving in a suspicious pattern. Specifically, ones that would lead any groups directly towards them.

"There is a large group of cultivators that has constantly been tailing us." Xue Jian spoke after a moment of silence, addressing each member of the group. "As Hualing has been teleporting us around, that group has been following us each jump, so far no jump has been able to increase the distance between them and us."

"It's a large group of around twenty cultivators or so. I think that it's very likely to be one of the three pillars. Having such a large group for this contest as well as having the ability to track us through Hualing's Dao of Dimensions. "

By removing both physical presence and karmic ties, it should have been more than sufficient to keep most cultivators off of them. Whoever was chasing them was surely someone to be wary of.

"Perhaps I can use dimensional shifting to create an unpassable rift between us?" Hualing asked.

Xue Jian pondered the question for a bit; perhaps there were a few more ideas that they could put to the test. However, if they spend too much time and effort trying to escape and end up failing, it would only put them in an even more disadvantageous position.

Maybe it was better for them just to confront the incoming group directly. This way, they would at least have some time to set up various offensive and defensive arrays. And also to find a better location to defend themselves.

"Instead of fleeing, I think it might be more suitable for use to prepare for a defensive battle." Xue Jian replied.

Hualing nodded in agreement as she instantly understood Xue Jian's intentions.

Quickly she teleported the group into one of the more enclosed locations on the map.

Against larger groups of enemies, one of the most primary aspects of defense was to prevent encirclement.

A physically enclosed location, along with Hualing's Dao of Dimension, was one of the best tools for defending against encirclement.

If it had really come down to it, this was probably one of the most advantageous locations in which they could fight.

As the small group of six cultivators were teleported into the destination that Hualing had chosen, Xue Jian took in his surroundings and noted, "Good choice."

As those words had left Xue Jian's lips, he and the rest of the group each started casting various arrays, some defensive and some offensive.

Once they were all finished, Hualing used her Dao of Dimensions to store each one of the arrays into a separate dimension.

This would remove any trace of the arrays for lower dimensional being while still allowing the arrays to affect their opponents from a higher dimensional plane.

Once the various preliminary tasks were accomplished, the group took a loose formation with Xue Jian and Hualing acting as the Vanguard and Gao Liang and Xiuying a bit further behind, even further behind them were Lihua and Zhongming.

This formation, while loose, was fully capable of instantly turning into a solid combat formation.

The idea was for each member of the group to feigned relaxation and inexperience.

This was mainly to lower the sense of awareness of their opponents, as well as potentially to deescalate the situation.

As the unknown group had gotten closer and closer Xue Jian, constantly sent out pulses of energy that could be construed into a message.

Zhongming noted how it functioned similarly to morse code.

It wasn't too long before a large group of nineteen cultivators entered the field of vision of the Mo Sect members.

It was a group of four Soul Integration realm cultivators and fifteen Nascent Soul realm cultivators.

Xue Jian and Hualing had both narrowed their eyes once the incoming group was in view.

From the outfits, It was quite easy to distinguish them as members of the Deng sect. Also Deng Xianliang was here. One of the people they had specifically been watching out for

Of the three pillars, the Deng sect was probably the most problematic to deal with.

Not only was the Dao of Principals problematic in and of itself. But the Deng sect had a large amount of very talented cultivators.

And this group especially was probably comprised of some of the most talented individuals of the Deng sect; the fact that they could move at such a speed with Nascent Soul cultivators in the group was proof of that.

Now it also made sense to Xue Jian how they were being followed through Hualing's dimensional leaps.

He had theorized that they probably used their Dao of Principles to achieve a particular effect. It could be something like, in principle, any movement between the two groups would only close the gap and never widen the Gap, and thus, even their teleportation would never bring them further apart.

Such an ability, no matter how well you hid, you would never be able to get away. Indeed, the reputation of the successor of the Deng sect was well deserved.