At daybreak the next morning, the two armies drew up their formations and faced each other across the field.
The Four Sages of Nine Dragon Island came out of camp together, each riding a strange beast:
Wang Mo rode a Bi An, Yang Sen straddled a Suan Ni, Gao Yougan sat atop a Spotted Leopard, and Li Xingba commanded a Zhengning. The four ancient strange beasts seethed with baleful air, their pressure sweeping across the battlefield.
The Bi An beneath Wang Mo and the Suan Ni under Yang Sen were not pure-blooded ancient divine beasts, nor were they direct-line princes of the Dragon Clan. They were merely strange beasts bred in later generations by the Dragon Clan, their bloodlines mixed and impure.
It was only because Nine Dragon Island bordered the Dragon Clan's territory, and because the Jie Sect and the Dragon Clan had always been on good terms and maintained close contact, that the Four Sages had borrowed the friendship between the two sects and traded treasures to obtain this batch of strange beasts with thin Dragon Blood from the Dragon Clan.
Though they could not be counted as top-tier ancient divine beasts, they carried a savage dragon's might by nature, their baleful presence pressing hard on all around them.
The generals and soldiers of the Zhou camp spurred their horses forward to meet the enemy, but ordinary warhorses went limp in bone and sinew the instant they smelled the fierce might of the strange beasts. They neighed in terror one after another and collapsed to the ground, throwing the front line into chaos.
Jiang Ziya's mount could not withstand that savage pressure either. Its four hooves went weak, and it bucked violently, catching him off guard and sending him tumbling straight down from the saddle.
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