Chapter 9: The Battle Situation

The clash between the two Soul Douluo-level powerhouses erupted in an instant. The dark night sky seemed to be torn apart—one half engulfed in deep, shadowless darkness, the other crackling with brilliant lightning. In their martial soul true body forms, every collision between the two unleashed deafening shockwaves and fierce bursts of energy. Even the already small island trembled under the pressure. Waves surged again and again, gradually washing away the bloodstains lingering on the harbor walls.

At the same time, the more than twenty high-ranking soldiers (all of Soul Emperor level or above) who had followed Wang Xiao into battle began engaging with the reinforcements of the Western Sea Soul Engineer Regiment.

In terms of numbers, the Western Sea regiment held the clear advantage.

As one of the elite soul engineer regiments of the Sun Moon Empire, their full strength was two hundred soldiers. Even though a squad had been wiped out earlier by Wang Xiao's team at the city wall, they still had at least 160 soldiers remaining.

After subtracting the twenty-some soldiers stationed in the castle to protect Xu Zihuang, the Western Sea regiment still had nearly seven times the manpower of Wang Xiao's force.

However, when it came to overall cultivation strength, the Western Sea regiment was clearly inferior. All of Wang Xiao's men from the Imperial Dragon Soul Engineer Regiment were Soul Emperors, with a minimum cultivation level of sixty. The Western Sea regiment, on the other hand, had fewer than ten members at that level.

Unlike standard military clashes, battles between soul masters and soul engineers do not depend solely on numbers. Instead, individual strength often plays a greater role. With the endless variety of martial souls and the complexity of soul skills, it's difficult for soul masters to coordinate with each other seamlessly.

Even in the long-standing tradition of team battles on the Douluo Continent, the number of participants rarely exceeded seven per team. And to truly reach a state of perfect coordination, those teams usually required years of close training together.

Wang Xiao's twenty or so men were divided into tactical squads of three to five, skillfully slicing through the Western Sea forces. Each team fought independently while maintaining tight coordination with the others. Their combination of overwhelming strength and flawless cooperation quickly pushed the Western Sea regiment onto the defensive.

It was a glimpse into just how powerful the once-complete Imperial Dragon Soul Engineer Regiment had been.

"Don't break formation! They only number a little over twenty. Their energy consumption will be far greater than ours. If we keep this up, the advantage will shift in our favor."

A steady voice rang out from the front lines of the Western Sea regiment.

The panicked soldiers instinctively looked toward the source of the familiar voice with relief and hope.

"Vice Commander Qiu Ying!"

The speaker was a red-faced middle-aged man clad in the same dark blue armor as the rest of the regiment. He looked considerably older than Haixiao. He was short, barely 1.6 meters tall, with a stout frame—but oddly, his limbs were skinny and disproportionate to his bulky torso.

His body was hunched, and his skin was covered in pentagonal, whitish-gray scales that extended from his face down his back, forming a hemispherical shell-like armor that nearly enveloped all his limbs.

This man was Qiu Ying, Vice Commander of the Western Sea Soul Engineer Regiment, second only to Haixiao in cultivation, and a true Soul Sage-level expert.

His arrival was like a stabilizing force, quickly reorganizing the Western Sea regiment's nearly shattered formation.

However, the three closest members of Wang Xiao's regiment immediately tensed. Among them, a slim young man wielding a pair of green soul-powered rapiers narrowed his eyes with a flash of cold determination. The sixth, black soul ring on his body flared—and over a dozen green afterimages split off from him, streaking toward Qiu Ying's neck like lightning.

"Sixth Soul Skill: Verdant Shadow Devour!"

"Qingmu! Don't be reckless! That old bastard's martial soul is an Armadillo—he's not that easy to break through!"

The middle-aged man next to Qingmu, clearly the steadier of the group, tried to intervene—but his martial soul lacked speed, and he couldn't get there in time.

In a blink, the dozen green afterimages were already upon Qiu Ying. The soul-forged rapiers rained down like a storm, aiming straight for his exposed neck.

"Hmph."

Qiu Ying turned his head slightly, glancing at Qingmu's scaled face with icy contempt. With a sneer, he suddenly retracted his head and limbs into the hemispherical shell on his back. His already hunched frame curled further, the head and legs locking together to form a complete ball.

In an instant, the white-gray-scaled sphere exploded upward from the ground and slammed directly into the oncoming afterimages created by Qingmu's sixth soul skill.

As a ten-thousand-year-level technique, Verdant Shadow Devour was not a mere clone technique. Each afterimage possessed fifty percent of Qingmu's strength. However, destroying those afterimages would still deal backlash damage to him.

As Qiu Ying crashed through the illusions one by one, Qingmu's expression darkened. Gritting his teeth, he dispersed the remaining afterimages in different directions to reduce the backlash.

Meanwhile, the two comrades who had accompanied Qingmu began pushing back the surrounding Western Sea soldiers to come to his aid.

A series of deafening explosions followed as soul skills and soul tools clashed. The two men blocked all incoming attacks, shielding Qingmu. Behind them, Qingmu stood pale and breathless, his face twisted in shame.

"Brother Tang, Uncle Fu... I acted rashly."

The man Qingmu called Uncle Fu was the one who had tried to stop him earlier. His face was grim, but he didn't scold him—at least not in the middle of battle.

"Get up! Who taught you to turn your back on the enemy in a fight?!"

Before his words even finished, a soul-powered shock cannon, as thick as a man's arm, fired from his wrist and blasted past Qingmu's ear.

A Western Sea soldier dropped dead on the spot, warm blood splashing across Qingmu's body.

His limbs froze as he stared at the mangled corpse behind him. Then he quickly got up, clutching his twin rapiers tighter and shifting into a defensive stance, trying to regulate his breathing.

Though Qiu Ying hadn't managed to kill Qingmu, he wasn't particularly disappointed. He was confident that if this battle dragged on, victory would ultimately be theirs.

That is—so long as their commander could hold back Wang Xiao.

With that thought, Qiu Ying's expression shifted as he looked up toward the sky, where the monstrous fish and winged tiger were still locked in aerial combat.

To his shock—his commander was clearly being overwhelmed.

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(End of Chapter)

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