Today's fourth update: Chapter 3552! 4/4!
As the spiritual totem and "father of rebirth" of the Mount Tai Ghost Race, even if he personally entered the battlefield, how could he charge into battle like an ordinary general and expose himself to danger?
The most loyal and powerful guards would inevitably surround him, forming an impregnable wall.
This situation created a shared "deadlock" among multiple factions:
—For the Asura Race: they knew full well that as long as Chao Gai remained alive, Song Jiang and the other members of the Appeasement Faction would never gain absolute authority, nor would they be able to fully push the Ghost Race into the Asura camp.
Eliminating Chao Gai was the only way to complete the final piece of their Seven Sons Plan.
Yet the Asura Race absolutely could not act directly. If they were exposed, not only would the appeasement fail, but they would also forge a blood feud with the Ghost Race and break with them completely.
Unable to openly dispatch their own top assassins, while battlefield conditions restricted the free movement of high-level forces, they found themselves facing a seemingly simple but truly thorny problem: how to cleanly eliminate a heavily protected peak Heavenly King Realm expert.
—For the Ghost Race itself, including Song Jiang's faction: even though Song Jiang and the others longed for appeasement, they still retained a basic degree of respect and protection for Chao Gai's grace of rebirth and his status as their spiritual leader.
They could strip Chao Gai of power and promote their own proposals, but they could never tolerate Chao Gai dying "by accident," especially under circumstances that might implicate their own side.
That would shake the moral foundation of their rule and could even provoke fierce backlash or outright division among the forces